Ashlock had seen many powerful cultivators as a tree during his decade of life, so he had started picking up the telltale signs of a powerful cultivator. It was not their arrogance, clothes, weapons, or status that gave them away from the other cultivators, but rather their gaze. As they say, the eyes are the window to the soul, and in this world where cultivators empower and refine their souls with Qi, one could learn a lot from another's gaze. For example, Senior Lee had held a cosmos of knowledge and power within his gaze that he could not completely conceal behind his ever-changing body.
Despite looking like nothing but an older version of Dante Voidmind and having a cultivation level in the Star Core Realm, Ashlock could tell that this man floating on a sword above was one of the truly powerful. His void-like gaze sent a chill through Ashlock's trunk a mountain away, and the man had an aura of authority around him as if the world's Qi bent to his will. He was dangerous.
Upon his arrival, everyone seemed to freeze. Even Stella didn't move a muscle under the Voidmind grand Elder's scrutinizing gaze.
"You Heaven-loving bastards." The man said with a chilling calmness. "We still have two months until the agreed-upon start of the war. For you to come here and attack my home so blatantly, you must be tired of living." He then looked at Stella, standing beside Zeus and still wearing her white mask, obscuring her facial features.
"Tell me who you are, girl," the man demanded, "I don't recognize you, and you seem short for a member of the Skyrend family. Are you hired muscle to control this strange golem? Or has another family joined hands with the Skyrends against me?"
Ashlock was clueless regarding this two-month deal that the Voidmind Grand Elder referenced, but his goal from the very start was to have the Skyrend and Voidmind families fight each other, and this seemed like an opportunity to further that feud. "Stella, play along," Ashlock said through {Abyssal Whispers}, "If he believes this is all due to the Skyrends, it will take the focus away from us. Just avoid using spatial techniques in front of him as that will give you away."
Stella met the man's piercing gaze and laughed, "Only fools play by the rules; surely you know that? Or is the Voidmind family truly this naive?"
If there was one thing Stella was great at, it was antagonizing these old monsters.
"Obeying the Patriarch is foolish, is it? Then, I suppose you and your family can contemplate your betrayal in the afterlife when he receives my message and leaves closed-door cultivation in a bad mood. Not that you will be there to see it, of course." With those words, the void lance that silently floated overhead shot down toward Zeus at a flick of the man's finger. "Perish for me."
Thankfully, Zeus reacted faster than Ashlock could tell him to by raising his arm wreathed in lightning from the storm overhead. The golden lightning arced out and met with the void lance in midair. The two attacks annihilated each other without a trace as the void deleted the lightning but, in turn, consumed itself.
The Voidmind grand elder seemed unfazed by the result. At a snap of his fingers, ten void lances of similar size to the previous one materialized instantly, orbiting him and all pointing towards Zeus. A sneer appeared on his face, which was all the more harrowing by the lightning flashes illuminating half his face.
Ashlock's mind raced for a solution. He had no offspring nearby to use {Progeny Dominion} on, and he had already sent Sol to the White Stone Pavilions square in preparation for receiving and healing the mortals of Slymere. He also couldn't rely on a Bastion's firepower as Willow, alongside Diana, was off dealing with monsters eating his offspring to the east.
"So, all I have to work with is Stella, Zeus, and anything I can do through my roots." It was not ideal, as just one of those void lances could render Zeus incapable of containing the storm. Not to mention, Stella was undoubtedly no match in combat with this man, even if her bloodline activated.
"Mhm, what should I do..." Ashlock was no tactician, but one phrase came to mind for this situation. "Sometimes the best defense is a good offense. Right? What Zeus has is raw firepower, and with the storm raging overhead, he has nearly unlimited lightning Qi to wield."
Ashlock quickly spoke to his Ent, who glared at the tiny man in the sky, "Zeus, keep hurling lightning at that void cultivator and any more that arrive. Also, try to attack the building behind him, as he will likely move to defend it," Ashlock instructed his Ent.
The towering statue of marble-like wood grinned through his magnificent beard of white leaves, and his eyes flashed a heavenly gold as he raised both his hands wreathed in lightning. He attacked immediately without giving the Voidmind Grand Elder a second to react. The world lit up—thunder roared throughout the land as a hundred lightning bolts arced from Zeus's fingers like coiling dragons. Half targeted the man floating alone on a sword while the others fanned out to hit the building behind him.
The Voidmind Grand Elder's eyes widened, and he quickly sent his conjured void lances to meet the lightning bolts targeting him while summoning pockets of void to absorb the others before they could hit the magnificent residence of black stone and spires that lorded over Slymere.
From speaking to Elaine and his own experiences, Ashlock knew the amount of void Qi the man had just used at the snap of a finger to block Zeus's assault was not trivial, and this feeling was further supported by the Grand Elder's grave expression.
"Keep going," Ashlock told Zeus, "Don't give him a second to rest."
Zeus raised his hand to the sky above and reclaimed the spent lightning Qi by gathering a few more lightning bolts. As Ashlock instructed, Zeus didn't give the Voidmind man a second to recover as he unleashed another barrage of lightning that arced through the smoke-filled sky and then another. Flashes of lightning followed by roaring thunder that shook the mountain went on without pause.
Despite the cultivation difference between Zeus and the Voidmind Grand Elder of three entire stages, it was clear who was on the back foot. It was all due to the environmental advantage, one of the most critical factors in determining a victory between two cultivators. Zeus had endless Qi to gather from the storm overhead, while the Voidmind Grand Elder had to dig deep and extract precious void Qi from his Star Core to neutralize the assault.
"Stella, while he's distracted, let's save as many people as possible. Since my root coverage here is spotty and the ambient spatial Qi in the air is low, you may struggle to make long-range portals. So just try to lead as many people as you can to the forest at the mountain's base in the valley, where I will have a single large portal that leads to the White Stone Pavilions. Got it?"
She nodded and jumped down the hole. After casually dropping a hundred meters to the house below, a fall that would have turned the ex-mortal Julian into a paste, she dusted herself off and began sprinting through the smoke-filled air. Glancing around momentarily, she traveled towards the sound of the most chaos, which was quick thinking on her part.
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Once Stella was far enough from the battle between Zeus and the Voidmind Grand Elder, she began to use portals to teleport across the aflame city. She soon came across a market square with hundreds of mortals huddled together and surrounded by flames and rubble on all sides.
Hiding in a nearby abandoned building away from the mortal's eyes, Stella's Star Core ignited, causing her arms and white mask to swirl with lilac flames. Peeking through the broken window, she clicked her fingers, and a portal that led a few hundred meters down the city appeared in the middle of the market square, much to the mortal's shock.
Discussion, confusion, and shouts of a savior ran rampant through the group of mortals. They scanned the fiery surroundings for a sign of the portal creator, but Stella had no interest in taking credit as she was already gone. A pop of air that sent the smoke swirling was the only evidence she had briefly been in the room as she used Spatial Step to rapidly travel to the next area.
"Good job, you handled that well. Remaining anonymous is for the best." Ashlock complimented Stella, "I will feed the portals you make with Qi through my roots, so don't worry about maintaining them from afar."
"Thank you, but I just felt dealing with the mortal's adoration would be annoying," Stella said through her mask—she popped in and out of existence as she stepped through the spatial plane. "Tree, are you still there? I will send them down as far as I can. Hopefully, you can handle the rest."
"Don't worry, leave it to me. I have an idea."
Although Slymere was much smaller than Darklight City, there were still far too many people for Stella to save all by herself, given the limited timeframe that Zeus was buying her.
"I would make portals myself to help her evacuate people, but my roots are only present in the city's east side, so making anchor points for portals myself is difficult," Ashlock grumbled. "Not to mention, using my Qi so far from home is very inefficient."
It was a little annoying how little influence he had over the world the further he went from his trunk, but that is what his Ents and sect members were for.
"Can't believe I am complaining about this," Ashlock chuckled. He was sure cultivators would cough blood in rage if they learned he was whining about being unable to use his full power while being an entire valley away.
Ashlock decided to summon Titus through a portal from Red Vine Peak and deposited him in the lower section of the city that appeared to be the industrial sector. The titan had much more room to move between the warehouses and broader streets down here than in the upper levels of the city.
The titan of twisted black wood emerged from a giant portal and loomed over the city with his glowing purple eyes, which understandably caused even more chaos and screams from the people below who had just come through the portal Stella had made.
"Titus, I need you to—" Ashlock began but was interrupted when multiple bolts of lightning struck Titus, sending a shower of splinters and leaving scorching holes in his body. Titus roared at the sky as his body lit up with purple flames, which helped him tank the lightning bolts without sustaining as much damage.
Although Zeus was drawing an immense amount of the storm's wrath to himself to fuel his assault on the Voidmind Grand Elder, the storm spread for miles, and the two Ents were on opposite ends of the city. So, Titus was like a giant lightning rod that had appeared and now drew most of the lightning on this side of the city.
None of this was ideal. Titus was already a bit obvious due to his towering height, but now he was a beacon of purple flames, drawing all the lightning to himself.
"It should be fine. The Voidmind family is busy dealing with Zeus, and even if they see Titus, there's no way for them to connect him to me—I think." Ashlock sighed; if only this was all occurring closer to his trunk, he could avoid all this mess by doing everything himself. Though he couldn't make portals throughout the city, he could make one that crossed a tremendous distance back to the White Stone Peak, so picking a spot in a forest near the industrial sector, he did just that. Qi surged from his pulsing Star Core down his roots for hundreds of miles, and a portal rippled into existence.
"Titus, I need you to create hundreds of portals near groups of people that lead to this portal. Stella is handling the movement of people from the upper city, so you handle the area down here."
Obeying his command, the titan of purple flame waved his arm, and under its sweeping shadow, many portals formed on the streets below, which all led to the larger one Ashlock had made out in the forest.
Ashlock watched everything from above through the smoke and flames as people rushed toward their nearest portal with bundles of cloth carrying their belongings. Parents dragged their crying children by their hands or hoisted them over their shoulders, shopkeepers tried to lead their terrified horses through the portal, and everyone from nobles to the poor joined a shuffling line to safety while helping one another.
It was chaos, but Ashlock had given these people hope and a chance at survival. Whatever selfish reason caused this storm, whether war between families or a cultivator ascension, the mortals didn't deserve to be left to burn to death in their own homes as the cultivators they had put their faith into for protection abandoned them and waited out the storm in their palace of black stone behind defensive arrays.
"The fact I am the one to help feels terribly ironic, though," Ashlock was not a good person, that much he knew. He was a man-eating tree that grew in power through the death of others and had done many atrocious things, such as using people's corpses as puppets to write words in their own blood.
***
Many hours passed, and the skies darkened over Red Vine Peak. Thousands of mortals were gathered in the large square surrounded by White Stone Pavilions. Members of the Redclaw family stood in the streets leading off from the square, providing answers and food to those who asked and making sure nobody wandered off.
"That should be the last of them," The Redclaw Grand Elder declared after poking his head through the large portal that dominated the center of the square. The stream of people had died down to a trickle at this point, and as benevolent as Ashlock was feeling today, he wasn't thrilled about wasting any more Qi to save a few stragglers, and the longer the portal remained open, the greater risk he was putting on himself and his precious sect.
Not to mention, the sun was soon setting, and he was looking forward to a long sleep under the nine moons to recover the Qi he spent today.
"I will be closing the portal in a minute," Ashlock told the Grand Elder as his vision blurred back to Slymere. The storm was still raging on and, if anything, had become even more ferocious. Yet all that lay below the heaven's wrath was a deserted burning city. Smoke swirled through empty streets filled with rubble from shattered spires and discarded belongings left behind in the rush to escape.
The destruction was unlike anything Ashlock had seen before, and the speed at which it had occurred was frightening. "Is this what Darklight City could have become without my sacrifice and cursed sap turning the Dao Storm into a beautiful forest of scarlet trees?" Ashlock wondered.
If this storm truly was the work of the Skyrend family, perhaps they deserved the fear and recognition they received. Even with Zeus, Ashlock was uncertain of shielding millions of people from a storm of this magnitude.
"My lightning resistance fruits would be near useless in the face of this," Ashlock mused as he scoured the city and soon located Stella near Titus in the lower section of the city. Her blonde hair was dyed an ashen grey from the smoke, and she looked exhausted.
"Thanks for your hard work, Stella," Ashlock said in her mind, "You did a great thing today by helping these people. But the skies are darkening, so I believe it's time we left."
"It's been that long, huh?" Stella looked up at the sky, "Your thanks are unneeded. I didn't do that much. I just opened a few portals and ran around."
Ashlock laughed, "I doubt the mortals would agree if you walked through that portal to the White Stone Pavilions and told them what you did for them."
Stella eyed the portal and furiously shook her head, "Nope! Absolutely not. If you dare tell them of my involvement Tree, I will never help you like this again."
"Relax, I was joking," Ashlock reassured her and summoned a portal that led to Red Vine Peak instead, "Go through this one and have a good rest. You earned it."
"What I need is a bath, not rest," Stella grumbled as she walked through the portal, and despite her dismissiveness, Ashlock could tell she was in a good mood by the slight spring in her step. Titus soon followed behind Stella, and with that, Ashlock closed both portals.
All that was left for him to do was have Zeus retreat. The only issue was the grinning Ent of white wood was facing off against not only the Voidmind Grand Elder but also a few Elders that had come to assist their leader, and he was somehow winning.
