The Cracked Earth Sect was a proud member of the Empire of Elements. Amalric was honored to be chosen for a mission where he was able to fight alongside the Empress herself. Even if he was only a supporting element, he would provide his very best- and so would those he led.
The Sovereign Primacy had chosen this war. Now was time for the first strike against them. Amalric was very aware that even when allied with another Exalted Soul Phase cultivator they were outmatched… but such things were only relevant on paper. He would choose to believe in the Empress and the man who refused a title of his own.
Winds pressed against their ships even before they reached the port, but Amalric was not concerned. He and his sect were merely passengers, having no talent with wind nor water to accelerate a sailing vessel. They hopped overboard, allowing themselves to sink to the bottom of the sea. Their target was a series of manned formations just beyond the piers.
They marched forward, the sea floor turning solid for them and carrying them along. Cultivators above attempted to launch attacks, but the fire cultivators couldn’t do much to reach them beneath the waters. They weren’t useless, of course, but they weren’t decisive enough. They should have immediately committed to boiling the sea, or dove down to meet them.
Lightning bolts were easily redirected into the bottom of the sands. The earth element the cultivators carried easily resisted the attacks- while providing a momentary reprieve for the ships.
Then they reached the shores- more or less. They didn’t bother to climb up onto the docks and out onto shore. They were precisely where they needed to be. Amalric slammed his fist into a stone retaining wall holding up the artificial edge of the island. He had no intention to break it, he just needed to reach as far as possible. His earth element carried fire element deep into the ground, where it continued to grow.
Those around him added their own strength. The attackers up above were too slow to respond to the actual threat. They’d already built up sufficient pressure.
The shore exploded upward, spraying lava in all directions. It was hardly worthy of being called a volcanic eruption, but on the scale of human cultivators it was decent. It blasted away the cultivators- except those who failed to focus on defense or who stubbornly held their position. Those who remained nearby were only charred corpses.
The fire cultivators could have handled the assault with their own expertise except that the power had been built up to beyond what they could handle. The maximum spiritual energy any cultivator could display in any given moment was their limiting factor.
The Cracked Earth Sect overcame that by building up their power in a location inaccessible to most. Earth cultivators found it difficult to suppress the fire- indeed they often contributed flammable spiritual energy and pressure accidentally. Obviously air cultivators could do little. Water cultivators could respond by building up defenses beneath them or seeping their energy into the ground, but they had to be familiar with the style first. Pure fire cultivators didn’t have the expertise to reach that deep.
They weren’t flawless, of course. Amalric knew that more than any. He had been defeated by the Empress using pretty much every combination of elements- in many different matches. That was before she was an Exalted Soul Phase cultivator, so they should have been essentially equivalent.
Amalric noted that some of the docks were damaged. Not so bad that they lost functionality though, so it was fine. The power they had built up wasn’t quite directed right, but that was why they were careful about where they placed themselves.
They continued to march forward, holding the frontlines against the air element island of the four they were assaulting. Walls would fall before them easily. And the most threatening cultivators… were already being targeted by Empress Aldara. Amalric squinted, even though the beams of light weren’t aimed at him. Just imagining them brought back memories of losing his eyesight for several weeks.
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After the defenses of the fire and air islands fell, people began to scramble. Some were able to flee, but only if they were running out to sea. Those who attempted to retreat towards their neighboring areas were chased down so that they couldn’t join forces.
It wasn’t long before the earth and water focused islands fell. The attackers did suffer casualties, even with Exalted Soul Phase cultivators present… but it was a decisive victory.
Those who retreated would then be able to observe what happened from afar. An unprecedented move that was beyond most of their understanding.
John and Aldara sunk their energy into the swirling cycle of the four core elements, taking advantage of the local spiritual energy to begin their task. They reached down to the bedrock, but instead of simply causing it to crumble to weaken the structure of a thin shell they had to do far more.
The islands trembled, sending waves out beyond them as they rose up and down. Then a large plate of earth broke off, a vast area containing the roots of all the islands. It would be less mass to simply sever each island individually, but John and Aldara had determined the extra mass was worth it for the stability.
Even doing his best to replicate the floating of the Sky Islands, the cycle was barely floating in the water. It scraped against the sea floor as they pushed it along with water and nudged it along with earth.
“Try some air beneath the island!” John called out. “Like a cushion! Some heat might help as well!”
Aldara didn’t respond verbally, but he felt her energy shift. The task required the two of them working together, and even drawing upon all of the spiritual energy around them it was probably the most effort they’d put into anything.
They did occasionally get the whole slab up to a decent speed, as fast as a sailing ship- without the benefit of spiritual energy, unfortunately. That meant they couldn’t outspeed their enemies. They also had to rest frequently. The two of them discussed dumping the islands into the deepest undersea gulch they could find, just so the Sovereign Primacy couldn’t have it… but even if they had only committed to themselves that they would steal the islands, they weren’t willing to give up.
They were assaulted frequently, but most of the groups weren’t willing to actively engage them in battle. Instead, they launched attacks from as far as they could and hoped that the Exalted Soul Phase cultivators were too busy to chase them down. They usually were, but those they had brought with them weren’t too shabby either. They simply wouldn’t go far from the rest of the fleet. They were still in enemy territory, and even if the Sovereign Primacy hadn’t concentrated their main forces in the area, the attacking fleet wasn’t strong enough to take on everyone without its Exalted Soul Phase cultivators.
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John thought his idea was pretty stupid. And yet… it was getting slightly better. He hadn’t just been pouring spiritual energy into holding things, after all. He had been actually changing the island itself to suit their purposes. They now had a layer of air injected beneath the island in sections they had carved out. There was no way for such a thing to occur naturally or remain stable without their active input, but it helped support… perhaps a tenth of the islands’ weight. Maybe less.
The project would have actually fallen apart without two more factors. First, that the spiritual energy remained with the islands- they still had a core cycle that was constantly feeding into itself- up to a limit. Otherwise it would have exploded long before. The second thing was further modifications made to the island that were more extreme.
John treated it like advanced body tempering. He was slowly transforming the base into the antigravity crystal that held aloft the sky islands. It was two steps forward one step back as his old work didn’t always last, but the journey was actually easing slightly. They were getting better… and stronger.
John couldn’t quite tell if he had advanced a rank of cultivation. It was much more vague than the earlier phases. However, he was certain that both he and Aldara were growing. And when they grew tired, they found a shallow area to settle their prize. Then, they would recover together.
If he didn’t kind of hate Aldara, John thought they would have recovered unimaginably rapidly. As it was… well, he had a fairly big imagination. He was likely going to crash for an extended period after this was over. Maybe they wouldn’t even make it all the way… but the strain on his abilities was a good one. And even if part of him was constantly nagging him not to, he felt comfortable in Aldara’s presence.
Sometimes, humans were contradictory. But rather than trying to overcome that, John knew that as a cultivator you sometimes had to accept it. Light and darkness could survive together.
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“... Where are we going to put it?”
That was the question John had to ask when they were, theoretically, halfway back.
Aldara made a face. “You didn’t even think about that before we got this far?”
John smirked. “Well, I didn’t hear you make any suggestions.”
At the moment, they were moving towards neither of the continents. Instead, they were aimed right in between. If they kept going, they would hit the Molten Sea. Which… was fine.
“How about just this side of the Molten Sea?” John suggested. “It can be shared territory. A sign of future cooperation.”
Aldara considered that for a few moments. “And of course, it would also be a defiant gesture against the Sovereign Primacy. Daring them to attempt to claim it back.”
“Exactly.”
“I think that is worthwhile. We shall do so.” She slowly stood up. “But first we have to get back.”
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The Sovereign Primacy didn’t make their life easy. It was a risk, to spend so long on a mostly predictable path. Darkness could confuse any trackers, but anyone could piece together the various conflicts along the way into a cohesive pattern. Regardless, it was already clear that the Triptych was not close enough to respond. John and Aldara had discovered a few methods the Sovereign Primacy had to rapidly transmit information between their islands, but it wasn’t instantaneous. Mostly it was fast boats and messenger birds- easy enough to disrupt if they had to. No signal towers or the like, but it seemed to work well enough to keep them cohesive.
Though for how long? Could a planet-spanning empire really last without rapid communication? John decided the answer was only barely… and specifically because of the Exalted Soul Phase cultivators.
An attack came at night, while the two Exalted Soul Phase cultivators were resting. That was actually their mistake, because they were craving something different. A quick bit of battle wouldn’t tire them out too much, but it would ease their boredom.
John snapped awake when he felt the spiritual energy of those around him rising. Aldara was no slower, and soon they were both flying towards a battle.
“Whoever sinks fewer ships has to stabilize the earth region,” John declared. It was a pointless bet- both of them had to make sure everything was working. But the earth element section was heavier.
“I accept your challenge,” Aldara said.
John thought he would win because he wielded a sword. He could chop ships in half now. Technically, he could do that without a sword but it was easier with a solid shape to work from. Even if his spiritual energy reached far beyond it, the basic form was important. That might only be because people thought it was important, but it didn’t really matter.
He cut down several ships in the time it took Aldara to line up her spear… at which point she pierced meter wide holes through multiple vessels in a line. Asking what elements the two of them used for their attacks was a difficult question, because of course they used all of them. This time, though, John was a little more fire dominant as he seared the edges of his cuts. Aldara was closer to a mix of air and light. Her attack was similar to a laser mixed with lightning, which was quite difficult to look at.
Then John used earth, breaking down the wood of the ships instead of destroying it. He flew on the winds, cutting apart ships one after another. Aldara won the match, though just barely. There was a single ship remaining and she threw her spear to get it when John was just about to slice it through. He could have claimed that his following attack sunk it, but water was already flowing inside.
The cultivators aboard the ships were both offended and terrified that their existences were basically being ignored. They tried to launch attacks on the Exalted Soul Phase cultivators, but they simply couldn’t hit them. Spreading out their attacks to cover the sky just resulted in the two pushing through like it was a wall of paper and not fire, lightning, earthen spikes, ice, weaponized light and darkness, as well as various weapons like arrows, spears, and even siege projectiles meant for targeting ships.
The Sovereign Primacy thought they had finally gathered a sufficient force. Indeed, if they had kept their morale up they might have caused significant casualties, but only their fastest ships had even engaged the enemy fleets. Then they had people running away over or through the water, and everyone took license to flee.
John and Aldara chased down a few of the stronger cultivators to prevent them from being trouble in the future. Then they finished their break and started moving a combined island once more. They actually didn’t have to put it that close to the Molten Sea. Instead, they would have it far enough out to feasibly claim a large swath of the seas. Practically and militarily, of course. There wasn’t much of anyone around to respect anything but force, now, since the Sovereign Primacy was basically the rest of the planet.
