Elimination of the remaining demon horde, still hundreds of thousands strong, took the rest of the night and the entirety of the next day. Much of this work was conducted by the sect's many elders, who systematically exterminated the giants and ogres, while the grand elders stood upon the walls and kept them clear to minimize disciple and initiate losses. Once the more powerful demons were eliminated, a sector by sector purge of all surviving ghouls was conducted using the sect's full force.

  It was only when the next morning came at last that a fully tally could be made. Casualties were, as Itinay had hoped, almost miraculously light. That did not mean they were zero.

  One hundred and three cultivators of the Celestial Origin Sect fell against the demon horde of the Fuming Shade. Most were initiates in the body refining realm, slain by rocks thrown by giants or the shockwaves unleashed by the battles of immortals. An equal number, including many vitality annealing realm initiates and many disciples, had suffered severe injuries that would require months of convalescence.

  The heart of engagement, which unleashed Black Howl's sonic assaults and the Fuming Shade’s clouds of toxic, burning ash upon the Starwall, had taken no more than a few short minutes. These attacks claimed one in ten of all the sects members in that brief interval of carnage.

  Losses had been especially severe among the sect's newest members, who lacked any experience of battle. Unable to properly secure their bodies beneath defensive protections to block such immense blows and the poisons and toxins they left behind, they were swept away by the devastation at a ruinous rate. A day ago Qing Liao's recruit clash had provided the sect with eighteen members. Now it was nine.

  Mourning seized many throughout the initiate sections of the twelve pavilions. Wailing filled the air as those stricken reckoned with the cruelty of the cultivator's fate for the first time. Lives changed in those hours, and terrible oaths were sworn. The demons made enemies of the survivors at great speed.

  Others took solace in labor. Alchemists churned out medicinal pills to aid the wounded and speed recovery. Armorers and blacksmiths worked long hours to repair and replace damaged implements. Carpenters churned out arrows by the tens of thousands to fill the void now occupying the sect's supply. Others worked to repair the devastated walls, field fortifications, and embedded formation protections.

  All were grateful that the plague reclaimed its own. Those who had fallen beyond the walls were recovered swiftly and carefully. The demons left behind only bloodstains.

  Sorrow warred with triumph among the sect's combat veterans. Those who studied history knew this blow had fallen lightly. Casualties were barely a third of the average major attack, and only a single elder had fallen. Significant achievements had similarly been registered.

  The Fuming Shade was slain. That name surfaced many times in the Annals of the Demon War, a text all cultivators studied. A potent warlord who had laid waste to whole sects and left nothing but wastelands in the wake of his ashen tide, he had even once faced Grand Elder Iaray in battle. Having risen two whole layers since the war ended, he was counted one of the most powerful old monsters still remaining in the enemy's ranks.

  Eight grand elders, gathered in their quiet room, knew all of this. They had tabulated it immediately, long before the last ghoul fell. Many thoughts hung over them, and they varied just as they did among their juniors.

  Several bore physical reminders. Akiray had burn marks dabbed across most of her arms and legs, and she coughed regularly. Eculay had suffered from severe qi depletion and would be unable to so much as stand for over a month. Itinay, feeling the assessing gaze of her sisters, had taken the worst of it. Healing pills repaired the most grievous cuts and stabs, but this drew immensely upon her reserves. Pain accompanied her every move, and she could only lurch about slowly. It would take weeks of intense cultivation to fully erase the marks of the golden blade, and months to reach fighting strength again. Even attending the meeting relied upon alchemical extracts to dull the pain and stabilize her rattled senses.

  Recognizing that her damaged state projected weakness, she avoided intense participation in the discussions that followed. Though her regrets were mountainous, there was nothing to be done about them, not immediately. This meeting was not, truly, necessary, but they were a council. Deliberation offered solace, steadiness.

  “Of the three demonic cultivators, two were destroyed utterly. I have studied the qi flowing through the base of Mother's Gift and confirmed this,” Neay asserted herself by taking control of the conversation from the outset. “The third, a female cultivator in the fourth layer the celestial ascension realm named Scoria Scorn, suffered physical death, but was able to thrust her remnant soul beyond the gateway and into the Ruined Wastes.

  No one said anything. All had learned this truth while they were busy slaughtering demons. The ability of a demonic cultivator to manage such a feat was impressive and rare, but far from unknown.

  Iay, however, revealed additional permutations. She had pursued the remnant, and though even the most powerful concealment talismans allowed her to move beyond the gateway for now more than a few seconds that ought to have been enough. Had the soul fled overland a swift attack would have ended the threat forever.

  Instead, Scoria Scorn fled downward, bodiless, following strange paths through stone and metal to places deep below the earth that not even Iay could attack freely. The white eyes displayed intense curiosity, triggered by this strange action. Novelty was very rare indeed to one who'd lived so long and seen so much.

  “Reckless,” Neay noted, her green-tinged expression grim. “Demon souls usually don't last, the plague subsumes them,” she continued to repeat what they all knew. Remnants had escaped before. They never lasted long enough to matter.

  “Maybe,” Uzay's energetic presence inserted alongside a shake of her fiery hair. “But the deep stone spaces are strange, and filled with deadly forces. The qi fluctuations there are able to tear a remnant soul apart just as the stellar flares will one that tries to fly away to space.”

  Itinay had never attempted to travel beneath the mountains or below the sea, but her sisters had. She could not confirm those words, but she trusted in their assessment. It was a hopeful possibility to consider. She certainly knew the truth of the latter, as they all did, intimately. Their mother had bathed them all in the stellar winds, ages ago.

  “Is it possible that a suitable host exists? Somewhere in the depths?” Eculay interjected from where she lay wrapped about her orb, fingers tapping erratically as she struggled to control her depleted form. That sphere had itself been drawn up from far down below, taken out of a crack of incredible depth. “That is a risk, if so, but minor. A stored body left in such a place is unlikely to ever be found, not before isolation drives the remnant insane.”

  Seven heads nodded at this. Immortals they might be, with minds tuned to endure the lengthy isolation of closed door cultivation, but this only meant they understood all the more fully the true terror of confronting the infinity of the dao alone and unaided. No one could endure that state forever. All who had tried, and there had been many who attempted to force ascension by staring at the sun for too long, broke their minds. The journey to the heavens could not be made in a single step.

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  Itinay rather hoped this was the ending the remnant faced. It seemed appropriate for one who so readily abandoned her allies.

  “An artifact might bring about the same result,” Neay returned to her summary. None objected to this measured grandstanding. Someone had to guide the conversation. Their sister's willingness to take the reins was welcome, not regretted. A settled role all had accepted long ago. “Most suitable receptacles are found in the lost vaults of the great sects or the tombs of ancient monarchs. No one has touched them for millennia. Lying in the dark within a crown or scepter is likely to bring about the same result.”

  Considering this, Itinay felt somewhat relieved. She had known it, but it was beneficial to hear the words from someone else. The unsaid piece aided considerably in restoring her to equilibrium. A remnant soul could not pass through the gateway to a hidden land unhoused. All contained ritual protections embedded in their very structure that barred access to bodiless spirits. The ancient records revealed that such protections had been invoked from the first for that very purpose, a defense necessary in a time when powerful ghosts were a persistent problem.

  Few indeed were the receptacles capable of securing the soul of an immortal out in the Ruined Wastes. Most had long since been looted and turned to martial purpose anchoring formations and rituals. Those that remained were lost beyond all knowledge. Should Scoria Scorn chance upon one such gemstone she might well survive, but it would be only to face a slow, lingering expiration. The chances of ever being discovered were remote.

  But it was not zero, and they all knew that as well. It was, after all, the impetus behind this rushed assembly.

  Ohlay, speaking for the first time, drew them back to that purpose. “Unlikely as her survival may be, we must consider our options in the event she does emerge.”

  “Do any even exist?” Uzay's rapid objection burst with her furious energy. “She tells Bloody Roam, thirty or more of the enemy descend upon us and hope dies. We can't change that.”

  “That presumes she can find her way back,” Neay cautioned. This time she emphasized a detail the others had disregarded. “She went into the ground. It is possible that she emerges on the other side of the world. Land changes over time. As the centuries pass and the rivers drift, will she find us easily?'

  “She might, but only if she tries,” Akiray spoke for the first time. Her voice was weakened by injury, but the vibrant rose core stood untouched. “Scoria Scorn, cautious to the point of cowardice, betrayer of a greater master. Does she have the courage to tell Bloody Roam, knowing he'll kill her for her failure? He'll take that much, in the Fuming Shade's name, he has to. A fourth layer can't outlive a sixth. She ran, and ran fast. Would she really choose vengeance at such cost?”

  Six sets of eyes turned to Itinay, a motion she felt without needing to look up. The essential thoughts, the cold calculation, churned through her consciousness as she reasoned out from the initial prompt. Akiray's insight, her assessment of the demonic cultivator, she agreed with entirely. All twelve of the initial sisterhood had witnessed Bloody Roam at least once. He was a deeply strange being, contradictory and confounding, but he utterly lacked mercy and had no acceptance for failure. The one who brought him such news would indeed face obliteration, if only because the other demonic cultivators would believe they deserved it.

  Scoria Scorn had sacrificed her arm in order to escape. She had taken the strike, a wound that must have been absolute agony to endure, without the least hesitation. That moment, that decision, that was the key. Itinay did not understand the strange, masked, demonic cultivator, how could anyone understand those who had chosen disease over humanity, but she found clarity in reflecting upon that move.

  Survival. The veiled foe elevated that above all, regardless of the costs. A bizarre priority for a demonic cultivator, but one not in opposition to their plague's central nature. “She would never choose death, ever.” Solemn words, and brief, but filled with conviction. “And she will never reveal our position, use that bargaining chip, unless she feels secure, restored to an immortal body at the least.”

  Slow silence enclosed the room as this declaration filtered through the thoughts of the eight immortals. Itinay, reflection upon it, felt only growing certainty in her deduction. Such a self-centered and simultaneously cautious dao would permit nothing less. Revenge might not even matter. Scoria Scorn would seek the destruction of the Celestial Origin Sect because it represented a threat to her, as a sworn foe of all demonic cultivators. She might not consider the personal aspect important at all.

  “Recovering a body is not impossible, but many times less likely than simple survival,” Neay solidly confirmed what they all knew. It was something they had all studied recently, having reviewed all existing scholarship prior to placing Sayaana on the brow of Qing Liao. A remnant soul could seize the body of one bound to them, if the gulf between their cultivation was wide enough, but it required the flesh be compatible with both their self-image and their dao.

  A demonic cultivator, with their dao bound to the plague, would only be able to subsume one of their own kind. Attempts to do otherwise had been tried, and failed, many times during the war.

  Given that low realm demonic cultivators were extinct, this made any possible restoration very unlikely indeed.

  “Even if that should occur,” Neay continued, growing in confidence. “It would take many centuries for her cultivation to recover to the point at which she is once again a threat, if there are even sufficient targets at all.”

  It was indeed, Itinay knew, highly improbable. Demonic cultivators required the qi of living humans to grow in power, and there were precious few left that any without the strength of an immortal could possibly seize. Without that, time would do the work they all desired. Scoria Scorn might well restore herself to flesh only to perish of old age.

  An ironic fate for an immortal, but a perfectly possible one.

  “Then, do we intend to simply ignore this?” Eculay advanced the critical question.

  It was the default option. All of them calculated out the probabilities and while they came up with eight different numbers, they were universally tiny. Against this they knew any sort of action, any attempt to exert influence in the Ruined Wastes, carried significant risks, potentially far worse. Despite this, such a blithe approach was not the natural inclination of meddling immortals.

  Everyone looked to Iay, but their eldest sister, as usual, said nothing.

  Itinay sensed, in this lack of direction, a moment she had suspected might come had finally arrived. “One thing has changed. We now have an agent able to act beyond this land's boundaries at negligible risk. I propose fostering and using this asset to remove any remaining risk of Scoria Scorn.”

  “He is a long ways from ready, however laudable his performance on his assigned task during this incursion,” Ohlay cautioned with great swiftness.

  It was not really an objection. They all knew that much. “We have centuries, at least.” Itinay conceded deftly. “But I believe this path suffices to secure against future risks.”

  To her surprise, Neay, otherwise deeply supportive of Qing Liao, shook her head firmly. “Until he surpasses the first tribulation, that young man is nothing more than a tool. He is not a proper resource of the sect.”

  Though Itinay did not agree with this statement, she acknowledge that an initiate was too weak to achieve much. As a disciple he would be capable. She could wait until then to push for the proper utilize of the young man his peculiar gifts. It would be decades at least, perhaps a century or two. The shape of the council would be different then. She found no need to press the issue at all. Having already laid the path out, she could wait to convince the others to walk it. “You have other measures in mind?” she questioned instead.

  The answer, in a convenient accommodation of her desires, moved away from the question of Qing Liao entirely. “Three demonic cultivators, but only a half million demons,” her sister pivoted easily. “The lowest ratio so far, and following long-recognized trends. I believe the old predictions are correct, and time has finally turned to our advantage, the enemy's numbers have begun to fall precipitously. This victory, additionally, with its low casualties, means the sect will face the next attack with great numbers than ever. I believe that we can, and should, reorient and restructure the defensive arrays accordingly.”

  It was a good suggestion, and one that could make real differences upon the margins. Itinay was only too happy to have the discussion drift to such spaces. She let her sisters debate resource allocation, prioritization, and targeting. Her belief in the ability of such small tweaks to effect change eroded down to nothing long ago.

  Instead, she considered very carefully the young man whose actions had won them this great, if flawed, victory. He remained an incompletely solved puzzle. No certainty existed as to whether or not he would offer all she hoped for, all that was necessary. It worried her, those doubts, especially at the moment.

  Itinay's initial impression regarding the escape of Scoria Scorn had been clear; a great disaster upon them. The dao rarely offered such clear omens, and she had learned to trust them in her long life. The only one who could avert that agent, in lands far beyond the boundaries of Mother's Gift, was Qing Liao.

  She could only trust in the youth, a gamble she despised.