Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Li Yu watched the chaotic destruction unfold from his hiding spot. The western market plaza of the Aegis Bastion was a ruined crater of shattered stone and burning stalls. The rogue faction forces had successfully breached the inner defenses and the city guards were rapidly losing ground.

Then a massive shift in the ambient Qi drew everyone's attention toward the arid plains outside the city walls.

A heavy rumbling vibrated through the earth. The sound grew louder until it matched the roar of a crushing ocean wave. An army arrived on the plains outside the western gates. It was a reinforcement force of roughly 100 thousand troops flying through the air and rushing to defend the city. They wore pristine crimson armor and carried towering halberds that caught the light of the remaining suns.

At the head of the massive army hovered a supreme general. He radiated the oppressive aura of a Law Integration expert. He raised his hand and commanded the 100 thousand troops to halt their march outside the breached walls. He was preparing to crush the rogue insectoids pouring out of the city.

It looked like the Aegis Legion was about to secure a swift and brutal victory. However it turned out to be a massive trap.

The thieves who were mostly rogue spiders and slender dragonflies did not retreat back into the city tunnels. They flew over the shattered ramparts and faced the overwhelming army standing on the plains. The dragonfly leader of the group reached into his robes and pulled out a strange artifact. It was a woven tapestry made of dark shifting threads that pulsed with a sickening purple light.

The thieves poured their combined Qi into the tapestry.

The artifact unraveled in the sky, expanding across the horizon until it formed a massive dome of shadowy webs. The web dome crashed down over the plains and instantly trapped the entire army of 100 thousand troops inside.

The soldiers found themselves instantly locked in place. The force of the artifact pulled them and suspended the massive army mid air. They floated helplessly above the dirt and were unable to move their arms or swing their weapons.

The trap was vastly more sinister than simple physical binding. The dark tapestry began to slowly refine them. The shadowy threads connected to the floating soldiers and started siphoning their life force. The crimson organic armor of the troops began to slowly melt and sizzle. The soldiers screamed in agony as their raw Qi and blood essence were forcefully drawn out of their bodies to fuel the glowing tapestry above them.

The general of the army roared in fury. The Law Integration expert exploded his power and unleashed a barrage of devastating crimson energy spears at the shadowy dome. The heavy attacks struck the barrier but they merely rippled across the surface before dissipating harmlessly. He could not break through it.

The trapped troops were fighting off the refinement effects using their internal Qi and the various defensive treasures they carried. They summoned golden shields and healing auras to resist the melting threads but they were clearly on a clock. Their energy reserves were draining fast and the tapestry was only growing stronger with every drop of life and Qi it consumed.

Li Yu watched the horrific refinement from his position. He frowned deeply.

This was getting way too serious. The rogue faction possessed artifacts capable of subduing a Law Integration expert and refining 100 thousand elite troops simultaneously. This was not a simple heist or a random border skirmish. This was a highly coordinated attack and what seemed like a trap.

Li Yu decided he had seen enough. He wanted to be far away from the Aegis Bastion before whoever orchestrated this nightmare decided to turn their attention toward the city itself. He gathered his Qi and locked his sights on a distant mountain ridge several miles past the trapped army. He activated his spatial laws and executed a Void Step.

He expected to appear on the quiet mountain peak. Instead he slammed face first into an invisible wall of force.

Li Yu rebounded and landed heavily back. He rubbed his aching face and shoulder. He looked around in confusion. He reached out with his senses and probed. The space was completely locked down. The thick crimson dome projecting over the Aegis Bastion did not just act as a physical barrier against flying beasts or siege weapons.

It was tied to advanced arrays that actively scrambled the spatial coordinates of the entire region. The spatial fabric was hardened into an impenetrable block of steel. At least for his current level of understanding. It was clear now that the arrays here were built to withstand assaults and infiltrations from high level cultivators once the barriers were up.

Li Yu cursed his luck. He did not realize their defensive arrays could do such a thing. His lack of education in advanced array formations had just cost him his only reliable escape route. Not that it mattered, he was already in the city when the barriers went up. He was now officially trapped inside the war zone until the arrays were deactivated or destroyed.

He went back to his hiding spot and waited to see what happened. He kept his hand on the token Garrick had given him. Ready to crush it at any point he believed he things were taking a turn for the worst for him.

The fighting inside the city slowly died down over the next hour. The elite city guards were all but defeated. They lay dead in the streets or were disarmed and taken prisoner by the roaming squads of spiders and scorpions. The rogue faction had successfully conquered the border fortress while the massive reinforcement army remained trapped outside. They were still floating in the air and slowly dying.

Silence fell over the Aegis Bastion. It was the heavy suffocating silence of total defeat. Just when Li Yu thought all hope was lost for the Ant Empire, a golden light tore through the clouds above the plains.

The sky shattered with a deafening boom. A figure descended from the heavens striking the earth with the force of a meteor. The impact sent a shockwave of kinetic energy rolling across the arid plains kicking up a massive storm of red dust.

When the dust cleared the Ant Queen stood revealed. The supreme ruler of the Aegis Legion had arrived herself. She held a large war hammer.

Behind her the horizon darkened. She did not come alone. She led an even bigger army of royal guards, elite beast riders and heavily armored troops. Millions of fresh troops marched behind their ruler and were ready to crush the insurrection.

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The Ant Queen did not waste words. She looked at the dark tapestry refining her soldiers and swung her golden hammer.

A wave of crushing force erupted from the weapon. The attack slammed into the shadowy dome, tearing the dark threads apart with zero resistance. The artifact shattered into a million useless pieces. The 100 thousand trapped troops fell to the ground and were gasping for air. They were clutching their melted armor but they were alive.

The Queen stepped forward, her golden compound eyes locked onto the rogue thieves standing on the breached walls. The sheer pressure of her presence forced the scorpions and dragonflies to their knees.

Li Yu let out a slow breath from his hiding spot. He thought this would finally be resolved now. The supreme ruler had taken the field and her power was absolute. But the coup was far from over.

Just as the Ant Queen raised her hammer to execute the thieves, the ground beneath her feet erupted with blinding white light.

A massive array formation activated in an instant. Five figures emerged from the dirt and were surrounding the Queen in a perfect pentagonal shape. It was a massive armored spider, a slender mantis, a heavily plated centipede and two rogue ants. They were all Law Integration experts besides the spider. The spider appeared to have the same cultivation as the Ant Queen herself.

They plunged their hands into the glowing array lines and channeled their Qi.

Floating in the very center of their formation and directly beneath the Ant Queen was the stolen treasure. It was the special rock. The rock pulsed with vast and untamed earth laws. It acted as the supreme power source for the trap.

Thick chains of dense earth Qi shot out from the rock and wrapped around the Queen's golden armor. The chains pulled tight, locking her limbs in place and anchoring her to the ground.

The Queen roared and flared her Domain King aura. She was trying to shatter the chains. But the formation was flawless. Not only did it hold her firmly in place it too was actively siphoning her energy. Her dense Qi was being drained by the rock and feeding the very formation that held her captive. The more she struggled the stronger the earth chains became.

The massive spider standing at the head of the pentagram stood up. He reached up with two of his arms and pulled off his featureless pale mask and tossed it onto the dirt. He revealed a scarred and jagged face with clusters of dark eyes.

The Ant Queen stopped struggling for a fraction of a second. She stared at the unmasked spider, her golden eyes narrowing in shock and pure hatred.

"Venrik." The Queen spat her voice echoing across the plains. "Is this how you pay us back, adopted brother?"

Venrik smiled. It was a twisted and cruel expression that was stretching across his mandibles. He looked at the supreme ruler trapped in his snare and let out a victorious laugh.

"You look beautiful in chains sister." Venrik mocked as his voice carried a dark echoing resonance. "I told you I would return for what is rightfully mine. You will become my queen whether you like it or not. We will breed a whole empire together and I will rule over it from the supreme throne."

The Queen pulled against the earth chains as her armor groaned under the immense pressure.

"I will burn my own soul before I let you touch me." The Queen promised. "Never."

Venrik just laughed again. It was clear that she could not break out. Her Qi was being drained far too quickly by the special rock to mount a proper counterattack. Venrik raised his hand and signaled his hidden forces.

The ground across the plains erupted. Hidden tunnels collapsed, revealing a massive underground army that Venrik had secretly amassed in the neutral zones. Millions of rogue spiders, centipedes and exiled ants charged forward and began clashing with the Queen's royal army.

A titanic war broke out right outside the Aegis Bastion. The sky filled with explosive elemental techniques and the ground ran rivers of golden and crimson blood. Because the Queen was trapped and her aura was suppressed, her royal army lacked their supreme anchor. Venrik's forces fought with fanatic zeal and they were steadily winning the massive clash.

Down below the surface level the city of Aegis Bastion was in ruins. The citizens who survived the initial breakout were huddled together in reinforced basements and underground storage bunkers. They were all hiding from the catastrophic violence above.

Li Yu had left his hiding spot and moved with the crowd. His thought was that it was safer to be with the others. He wouldn’t be suspected of being a spy or something else if found alone by himself. He sat among them in a dark and dusty cellar beneath a collapsed armory.

The cellar was packed with dozens of terrified merchants, low level guards and civilian families. They clung to each other and were trembling as the earth shook from the clash happening outside.

Li Yu sat quietly in the corner with his back against the cold dirt wall. He did not speak but he listened closely to the frantic and panicked clatter around him. The locals were sharing information with one another and trying to make sense of the nightmare. Of what they saw and witnessed before finding this hiding spot.

Through their hushed whispers Li Yu pieced together the dark history of the royal family.

Venrik was indeed the adopted brother of the current Queen. According to the older merchants, the Queen's mother had found Venrik as an abandoned baby in the deep wastes. She decided to bring him back and raise him alongside her own daughter.

No one in the empire knew why she chose to raise a spider among the royal ant lineage. Some thought she was going to raise him up to be her daughter’s protector. Others say it was because she was a kind person. No one really knew, it was a secret she took to her grave.

Venrik and the current Queen grew up together. They were a terrifying pair of prodigies. They actually conquered the surrounding rival hives together and forged the modern Aegis Legion through military brilliance and shared bloodshed. They built the empire side by side.

Then a long time ago Venrik was suddenly exiled. His name was scrubbed from the official histories. The huddled civilians debated the reasons in terrified whispers. The most accepted rumor was a simple power struggle. Venrik wanted to be the sole ruler of the empire. He wanted to be King and the current Queen won the political war, casting him out to secure her throne.

But there were more dark rumors that circulated in the shadows. Some older guards whispered that Venrik's ambition was much more twisted. He did not just want the throne. He tried to enslave his sister. He wanted to make her his personal breeding machine to create an endless army of elite hybrids. He was hoping to rival the endless swarms of Emperor Xerxis.

The most common and tragic rumor among the commoners was a tale of twisted romance. They whispered that Venrik lusted after his adopted sister this entire time. When he finally confessed his desires, he was brutally rejected. His pride could not take the humiliation and he left the empire, swearing to return and claim what he felt he was owed.

Li Yu listened to the gossip and shook his head slowly.

He noted how some of the most dangerous things were intricate plans and long standing grudges. Raw power was terrifying but a patient scheme fueled by obsession was vastly more lethal. Even powerful beings like Domain Kings fell to them and were destroyed because of such traps.

He noted internally that Venrik was indeed smart and deeply cunning. The usurper had orchestrated the theft of the special rock, the decoy breakout in the city and the ambush of the reinforcement army all to draw the Queen out of her capital. He got everything he wanted in one single masterful swoop.

Li Yu wondered what was going to happen to the Ant Queen now that she was drained and at the mercy of her deranged brother. He did not think about it for long though.

These kinds of things happened all the time in the cultivation world. Empires rose and fell. Rulers were assassinated or overthrown. He was just a traveler trapped in a basement in a foreign land with no real attachments. He closed his eyes and focused his breathing. He was waiting for the war above to end so the spatial arrays would finally drop and he could get far away from this.