Despite telling herself that her role was critical, Omilaena shifted restlessly as they planned the assault. Kai was trying to consume the fruit of an Insanity, taking on a threat like only she had attempted and undergoing an unprecedented chakra experiment at the same time. She wanted to see it, and - she could be honest in her own mind - she worried about him. He had an injection from her for support, but otherwise he was on his own.
Meanwhile, she was putting together a team she hadn't expected: Gorutiel and a squad of demons alongside Yonto and some elves. If they were going to attack Jonijix, they needed to be careful that it was obviously an attack from Rosemount so that he didn't call on the other invaders to start killing.
Of course, in the back of her mind she couldn't help but think that playing by the invaders' rules might come back to bite them in the end. The invaders didn't want to trigger the genocide clause, because it would mean the end of all their privileges, but nothing forced them to follow the rules. If someone became desperate or paranoid enough, they could set off the others for no reason.
That was why their plan was a limited strike on one of the weaker invaders, not Jonijix himself. Omilaena would make one more appearance, hopefully distracting them and protecting any unfortunate elves in the region, then the rest would be up to the team from Rosemount. If Jonijix stopped thinking with his dick enough to recognize her from Deadwaste, she would have a clear alibi that she hadn't been part of the attack.
Before she left, Omilaena had one last critical role to play: she walked up to Yonto and held out her hand. He pulled one of the Thunderbird arrows from his quiver and handed it to her wordlessly. She gripped the arrowhead and used her Heart of Poison to create a fully phased liquid that not only coated the arrow but sank deep into the metal.
Once she was done, the arrowhead glowed with poisonous energy. "Will that do?" she asked as she handed it back.
"Aye, that'll do." Yonto took the arrow extremely cautiously.
She'd planned to say more than that, but if Yonto was being so laconic, she'd do the same. Omilaena glanced over to the demons and Gorutiel grinned savagely at her, his eyes burning with demonic light. As far as he was concerned, they were about to get their feast of ultimate power - whether or not that would work was uncertain, but it would be a good enough distraction.
Hopefully. The timeline was getting increasingly messy due to all the unknown variables moving in different directions, so she wasn't sure how things would come together. There was a chance that she'd need to flaunt herself to Jonijix to keep him occupied while Kai handled the rest, but she hoped that she'd be able to join Kai and fight the Colossus.
Of course, she also wanted to fuck on top of the Slumbering Colossus afterward, and they didn't have time for that. The world was a cruel place for dreams.
Instead, she nodded to Yonto one last time, then went with one of the other elves to teleport to the eastern Commonwealth. She nodded farewell and began repositioning her dress for maximum seduction. It didn't make her feel dirty, but it was getting a bit tedious. Simple men like Jonijix were irritating to deal with because so few levers worked on them.
She found him pacing across a leveled palace, ranting at assembled invaders and locals. When he saw her, she saw him catch his breath and then turn purple.
"You teasing bitch!" Jonijix was rushing toward her with a full speed phase, eating up the ground with troubling speed.
"Aww, you know you love it." Omilaena ran backwards for a brief time, long enough to give him a wink, then had to turn and actually sprint away.
"Get back here! I'll kill everyone in the city if you don't!"
"Nah, you won't." Omilaena grinned over her shoulder and wiggled her ass at him, prompting a howl of rage.
The grin felt even more false than before. She'd out-bluffed him this time, but if Jonijix was making threats like that, he was becoming increasingly irrational. This wouldn't work forever and she could only hope that everything fell into place in time.
.
..
.
The deeper she fell into meditation, Zae Zin Nim felt as though she had returned to her roots: pure meditation, pursuing truth instead of the power of cultivation. She delved deep into herself, facing every part of her own being, from privileged young mistress to broken wreck to pure cultivator to wife to matriarch.
Each of those stages of her life held truth, carried a piece of herself, but none of them were the truth alone. The final layer would peel back soon enough and she would cast aside being a matriarch. She sought to be a pure cultivator, but that didn't mean she was unable to be a wife.
As she meditated, the cultivation happened almost unnaturally. Her dantian should have been overflowing, cracking from the pressure, yet she discovered that she could absorb even more qi within her body, enlarge her dantian further, condense qi even more. She used what she'd learned from mastering phases, yes, but more than that, she felt as though she grasped the truth of her own soul instead of the structures that a child had been given in order to help her understand.
"Matriarch?"
The interruption awakened a fury in her that might have been a shadow of her father's, but Zae Zin Nim was not her father. Besides, the Brightwind Sect members had been very good about not distracting her up to this point, so they would not have interrupted her for no reason.
"What is it?" She remained seated, hoping that it would be only a brief interruption, but judging from the nervous looks of the cultivators, she was not so lucky.
"Matriarch, this is very disrespectful, but you asked us t-"
"Out with it." Zae Zin Nim glared at the cringing group.
"It seems that... Yangix has become aware of your presence. He suggested that... you fought on Deadwaste?" The aide saw that Zae Zin Nim hadn't flown into a fury yet and continued with more confidence. "He has demanded that you join him in the Heavenly Mountains and Lakes. There have been no direct threats yet, but all the factions under the Yangix Sect have begun pressuring us..."
"I see."
She remained silent for a time, considering this outcome from the peace borne of her meditation. It had always been inevitable that Yangix would hear about her eventually - there was only one matriarch on the continent with gray skin, after all. This development was unquestionably negative, because he could begin destroying things that she cared about.
Worse, she couldn't fight him yet. There was the threat of the other invaders attacking, of course, but even if it was the two of them in a straight fight...
<
Name: Zae Zin Nim
Total Power: 1864
Cultivation: Earth Soul 109% (536)
*Heavenly Sash: Cultivation +10% (53)
Coldfire Corona: 46 (438)
Pure Yin Shroud: Spinel Rank (285)
True Blackblood Physique: E-12 (472)
Soul Level: 9 (81)
>
After so long meditating without even considering her soul in numerical terms, she was pleased to see that she had reached 109% of Earth Soul. She knew that she could break through to Sky Soul at any moment, as in fact it had been challenging to maintain her dantian lately, since it threatened to explode to new power.
"Begin taking delaying actions," Zae Zin Nim ordered her subordinates. "I am not yet prepared to fight Yangix, but I intend to defeat him utterly. Until then, do whatever is necessary for the Brightwind Sect to survive."
"Are you sure, Matriarch?" Those were strange words for a sect leader to say, contrary to the usual ethos of Cloudspire... but she had killed her father and taken over with overwhelming power, so she thought they would obey.
"Start with promises. They may eventually invade the Eastern Plains, but I will depart from here in time, drawing their attention. Retreat is acceptable if it buys time - by the time I am done, the Yangix Sect will be crushed."
As the others left, it looked like they might actually believe her. That was probably easier because they hadn't seen the raw power of the invaders yet, but if all went well, they never would. Zae Zin Nim was confident in herself... if she could take the final step.
First she considered simply rising to Sky Soul, but that felt wrong to her new instincts. The numbers seen via spiritual sight might seem artificial, but they represented truths of the world. Orders of magnitude frequently mattered, as seen in the 99 and 999 Power barriers. In the same way, she felt certain that 110% meant something on a deeper level, and she needed to obtain it.
But as she cultivated over several days, Zae Zin Nim realized that she wouldn't reach it soon enough. Even if she reattained her perfect meditation, the minions of the Yangix Sect were pushing into the Eastern Plains.
It was tempting to remain in her chamber cultivating, even if she knew that her presence was causing trouble for the Brightwind Sect. What finally interrupted her wasn't an attack or a tragedy, it was an arrival that she never would have imagined in a thousand years.
"Matriarch? There is a strange crystal woman who says she knows you..."
Zae Zin Nim blinked in surprise, then rose to her feet. And, as little sense as it made, she discovered that Cragrila was waiting for her. It was so strange to see the Krysali woman here that Zae Zin Nim just stared at her in silence.
"I'm here to ask for your help," Cragrila said. "The situation is worse in the Southern Rivers than you know."
"What are you doing on the continent?" Zae Zin Nim asked.
"It's been over five months since the invaders attacked, do you realize that?" Cragrila frowned at this distraction, then shook her head. "I was focused on phase training at first, but when they split up, I realized that I needed more power. Well, I've cured myself of the delusion that I will ever be able to take on the strongest invaders, but I can help."
"I see. And you went to the Southern Rivers because they were familiar."
"Yangix is sending his weaker allies out to conquer the continent for him, and he has such a reputation that no one challenges him. That is... until Wan Fei. His qi phase is intense enough that he was able to fight the weaker ones, so the invasion of the south has stalled."
"Ah." Zae Zin Nim folded her hands as she considered this new information, imagining how these events would proceed in the future. She had been handed a distraction for Yangix, but it was one that came with unpleasant new consequences. "Does Yangix know?"
"At the moment his subordinate is embarrassed, trying to win on his own." Cragrila gripped her spear tighter. "If the invaders retaliate, the cost in lives will be terrible. Wan Fei is strong, but Yangix would slaughter him, and I'd do even worse. But if we had one person with us strong enough to fight him, I think our allies across the Southern Rivers could fight their allies..."
"I understand your concern. But how are you so confident in knowledge of their inner court?"
"Oh, Hul Ping rolled over for the invaders to welcome them. He's feeding us information and trying to pacify them while Wan Fei leads the resistance from among the rivers. That's another risk - the longer he stays there, the higher the chance they get angry and start killing people."
With the Brightwind Sect it was easy to revert to the role of matriarch, but with Cragrila, Zae Zin Nim felt like she was back in the revolution again. There were no commands to be given here, only strategies to defeat their enemy.
"Thank you for telling me," Zae Zin Nim said. "I will be honest with you: I need to retreat to finish my cultivation, but I'm not sure where I'll go."
"Doesn't the continent have enough abandoned places?" Cragrila asked.
"Not that have massive sources of qi, not with the Yangix Sect spreading everywhere. Give me time to search for a location. Then we can go and fight them together."
There was another problem: Wan Fei and the other locals could fight the invaders without triggering their threat, but could Zae Zin Nim? It seemed like the rules should be different for her, given that Yangix had invited her by name, but she couldn't be sure. There were four other men with him, little more than thugs, and any one of them could panic and set off the other invaders.
However, that problem faded to the back of her mind as Zae Zin Nim sent out secret messages to other sects and clans, searching for anywhere that would shield her. She didn't expect any Brightwind allies in the Eastern Plains to provide support - fair weather friends all. But other factions returned negative messages and no doubt informed Yangix about what she was doing. Even when she got desperate and contacted the Manticore Tribe and the Bloodcoral Sect, they refused to respond.
Just when she began to wonder if there was no answer, she received a pale white letter. Not what she would have chosen, but it would have to do.