Humanity's final stand was made by the nine hundred and eighty-eight surviving cultivators of the Orthodox Alliance. The enemy force brought against them had numbered approximately twelve million demons and two hundred and six demonic cultivators.

  The monstrous traitors who'd allowed the plague to corrupt their souls in exchange for the ability to share its consumptive power had begun the day with an overwhelming advantage. That the demon horde had been carved asunder without killing a single orthodox cultivator changed none of that. In exhausting the alliance the cannon fodder had served its purpose.

  One to one, the demonic cultivators were vastly greater in power than their opponents. With their strength vaulted up to great heights by draining qi from their enemies instead of undergoing the long and hard work of nurturing enlightenment, there were elders to the last. Though worthy of nothing but spite for their short-sighted choice, the strength it won them could not be denied.

  Worse, the plague would support them as the fight wore on. Every defender slain would have their qi stripped away and added to the strength of their murderer. Slaughter rejuvenated the demonic cultivators and even carried the potential to increase their layers of cultivation.

  As the sun set these monsters charged out onto the battle, fresh and ready, seeking to hunt down and consume depleted and fatigued foes.

  On the orthodox side, all those below the fifth realm, over two-thirds of their total, could contribute nothing against these enemy elders. As had been previously arranged, they fell back from the front, seeking to protect the surviving humans from the remaining demons as best they could without elder support. Their part was done. The battle would be decided by elders alone.

  Dangerous though this gambit was, it represented the first stage of the final, desperate, plan to win the day. Severed from the support of their horde, the elders on each side would do battle. In that clash the seeds of victory still existed, if they could but be nurtured.

  Hope, a forlorn and slender thread though it was, remained. Itinay knew this, and looked forward to the grim clash to come with fire in her eyes. A single, critical, aspect of the enemy offered this final chance.

  Though all demonic cultivators were tied to the plague, and driven by its singular consumptive will, they were not the mindless automatons of the disease the demons became. In this way, they lacked unity. Each demonic cultivator prioritized their own advancement above all, competing with each other to acquire the most qi and rise the fastest. Rather than fight united, each one was ultimately alone, directed entirely towards personal achievements.

  This was the seed of hope, that the enemy could be broken apart and defeated one piece at a time.

  It had already begun. Ninety-eight demonic cultivators, including the second strongest warrior and best general among their entire ranks, were absent. A valiant sacrificial lure by nine selfless immortals had drawn that second army, a full third of the enemy's strength, to the other side of the world.

  If such a grand gesture could be duplicated on a smaller scale, victory might just be snatched away from the crushing grip of the plague. The defenders, accordingly, spread out, joined into small groups that sought to isolate and overwhelm the enemy one by one. A systematic effort to win the battle of attrition through brutally ruthless arithmetic.

  A cold and cruel strategy, one the demonic cultivators had not anticipated, for it doomed the overwhelming majority of the surviving cultivators and human population to death on the claws and fangs of the demon horde. Even if this means might achieve victory, it would carry an almost immeasurable cost. More than, perhaps, humanity could ever endure. Many of the immortals among the orthodox alliance had balked at this plan, despite no alternative being offered.

  Itinay had, in council, pushed hard for this approach. She'd spoken her mind despite being among the least of the immortals present, and perhaps, she hoped, had swayed some opinions. There had been no other plausible option, nothing more than empty prayers. If they wished for anyone to survive, they must be willing to push beyond the acceptable, beyond the reasonable, and embrace the rational.

  In the battle that unfolded now, she had been given a position of importance, as had the rest of her sisters, one tied to the superior speed of their movement technique.

  The demon horde, once unimpeded by the line of cultivators slaughtering it at every step, charged forward in a rush. High above, nearly at cloud height, the vanguard of demonic cultivators flew forth to bring devastation. Their various movement techniques allowed them to treat the air as perfectly solid and to battle freely in the vast openness of the atmosphere. The champions of the orthodox sects, weapons in hand, countermeasures unleashed, rose up to face them there.

  A clash between nearly one hundred immortals shook the skies. These were the strongest cultivators remaining in the world; those in the fifth, sixth, and seventh layers of the celestial ascendancy realm. Famous names all, whether hero or traitor. They were colossi who's histories had shaped the world that was, and the doom that had come upon it. Itinay's master, Orday, was among the champions of the orthodox side, a brilliant white sun of qi shining within the vermilion fog.

  Itinay could devote no more than a single glance to that stratospheric battle. Everything else must be given to the task at hand. Drawing qi through her bones and muscles, she channeled strength to the very limit of all that her body could hold. Even forged to immortality as her blue-skinned tissues were, she pushed hard. Then, as the strain compounded, she timed her motions with those of her allies, her sisters, and released everything in a single burst.

  Hundreds of cultivators shot forward, diving beneath the epic struggle on high and seeking out the second rank of the enemy, the lesser elder demonic cultivators, divided up, unsupported, and vulnerable.

  Light is fast, faster than anything. Cultivator movement techniques derive from many origins, many principles, and many sources. Though swift and sure daos inspired them all, light remained its absolute preeminence even in that company. All the followers of their master, the personally chosen students of Orday, knew this. When they wished to, their speed could surpass anyone's.

  They did so now. Twelve streaks of qi, outrunning the immortal eyes of their enemies, shot across the hills. Even the great names high above could not follow. The deadly techniques they launched down in attempt to intercept struck nothing but flickering afterimages.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Faster too, than the enemy could react.

  Itinay had chosen her target long before she moved. A demonic cultivator in the sixth layer of the soul forging realm, he was weak, still partly mortal, an easy kill. He resembled a human being coated in red ash, the common distortion of appearance inflicted upon those who embraced the plague but had yet to pass the boundaries of mortality and manifest their dao. His hands held a heavy halberd forged of black steel. Jade-enameled bronze lamellar armor surrounded his torso, each plate inscribed with potent sigils. A defensive artifact of considerable potency, it suited the dead immortal from whom it had been looted, not this overly-ambitious opportunist.

  The demonic cultivator must have felt the oncoming rush of qi, but too slowly. The variance of a full greater realm of cultivation and the incomparable speed of light-inspired motion, the Stellar Flash Steps, overwhelmed his reactions. The halberd was still slowly rising up to guard position, the body in the midst of dropping into proper dueling stance, when the motion completed. Everything adjusted one critical half-step too slow.

  A gap that allowed Itinay to drive home a single free attack.

  Nine Spheres Arsenal Sword Arts. She invoked the devastating, signature first technique of her chosen weapon art. A simple strike, one direct thrust down and in, but driven with absolute speed and power and tied to a qi construct of perfectly focused fury and her full power as an immortal cultivator of the celestial ascendancy realm. First Form: Stellar Impact.

  Blue steel, sharpened to an almost invisible point, cloaked in qi narrow as a ray of light, pierced through artifact jade, qi-tempered bronze, alchemically treated leather backing, and a double layer of under-slung protective talismans as if all were vapor. The flesh beneath, butter before the heated blade, surrendered completely. Metal pierced the heart. Qi detonated; the construct collapsed.

  The demonic cultivator's chest exploded.

  Itinay raced past, outrunning even the blast of gore unleashed by her killing move. Other targets reared up before her, and she dove toward them, desperate to even the numbers both the enemy fully understood what had been unleashed amid their ranks. Her sword flashed. Hard and fast strikes, merciless, unwilling to compromise, rained out with the full force of her immortal dao. The vulnerable, identified, were struck down before they could possibly recover.

  Demonic cultivators had betrayed the world. They delivered up a billion deaths. They stole the enlightenment of others and twisted it into alignment with a hideous dao anathema to all that was born of heaven and earth. A cold and merciless hatred lodged in Itinay's blue-white core burned endlessly against them all. Their deaths were more than a need for survival, they were a demand laid down upon her personal path to ascension, one she would deliver without a sliver of remorse. Only absolute resolve remained.

  Twice more she pierced the bodies of her foes. Weaker enemies these, merely in the spirit tempering realm, lowest of the elder states. They were barely strong enough to endure the flares of qi falling from the incredible clash high above. When pressed by the unrestrained assault of an immortal holding nothing back they completely lacked the strength to resist.

  Monstrously dangerous, such attacks. Any coordination, any countermeasures, would have found Itinay completely open, exposed to deadly interception and riposte. But the enemy would not act to protect each other, ever.

  The assembled demonic cultivators did not form an army, a sect, or even a mob. They were simply countless different breeds of predator, gathered by the scent of wounded prey. All were driven by their own desperation to outrun the flames of mortality they feared more than all other fates. Against such maddened, degraded beings, human cunning offered a measure of equalization.

  Inevitably, the enemy resisted. Even as demonic cultivators in the spirit tempering and soul forging realms were slaughtered by the blades of orthodox cultivators in the celestial ascendancy realm or the grouped efforts of lesser alliance elders, those on the side of the demons who had attained immortality struck back.

  Seeking to reap and claim power for themselves, these enemies in the highest realm under the heavens pursued Itinay's strategy in reverse. Even outnumbered, they sought to counter, kill, and drain their opponents, increasing their power and restoring their stamina as the plague tore away the qi of the fallen and fed it into their bodies and souls. If cornered, they would seek to break through, tearing out and healing through slaughter again and again.

  This too, the plan had anticipated. The strategy mandated the sacrifice of many orthodox elders. Gathered in small groups, the weak among them could cover each other, endure long enough to allow the celestial ascendancy immortals of their side to thin the enemy ranks until the balance of numbers changed. One by one, these men and women carried out that terrible directive. Bodies collapsed to the earth, bleeding out from hideous wounds, clinging as long as possible through defenses, pills, and talismans to keep their qi from the enemy's grasp for critical seconds even when mortal blows were struck.

  All knew the price, one inscribed upon their very souls by a century of warfare. Hesitation was not longer acceptable. It had been burned out of all the remaining veterans. Victory or death. Either was preferable to surrender before the pestilence and its servitors.

  Itinay had finished grieving long ago. Today was a day of death and slaying. The last day of the Demon War, everyone on both sides knew it. Fittingly, it unfolded beneath the stars. So much the better for her and her sisters, followers of a path traced in stellar qi.

  The next stage was simple. The celestial ascendancy realm cultivators of the Orthodox Alliance formed strike groups of their own and fell upon their demonic opposite numbers while the foe remained engaged. Pin and kill, a tried and true tactic old as the dawn of humanity, one not even the mightiest cultivator could easily overcome.

  United into a trio, Itinay stepped forth side by side with her fellow sisters, Aekay and Iaray, who bore halberd and blade into battle respectively. Soul forged immortal bodies of soft blue-white shades, each was a similar but unique result of the melding process each cultivator endured to shed the mortal flesh. Visually, they could be seen as sisters in blood, ladies of a bizarre lineage dropped down from among the distant stars. That they had not been born as sisters meant nothing to the three. Centuries of companionship and one hundred years of warfare entwined them in a bond deeper than any mortal terms could properly describe.

  In battle that camaraderie expressed itself in devastating tandem coordination. Blows, movements, techniques, these complemented each other perfectly. Their enemies, like most cultivators, had never learned to fight together and were not inclined to support each other. Forced to defend against the combined assault of three immortals striking from all directions at once, they succumbed swiftly.

  Red Lash, a whip-using demonic cultivator famous for drinking the blood of those he slew even though qi was not conveyed in such visceral exchanges, lost his head to a cleaving blow from Iaray even as he countered strikes from sisters on his right and left.

  Aekay lopped off both legs of the Hollow Ophidian, a bizarrely serpent-aspected individual, before piercing his heart as he sought to race between pummeling sword strikes.

  The neck of Swift Dread tore open beneath the blue steel slash of Itinay as the demonic cultivator tried to shift his bone-covered form past two of the sisters only to find himself directed into the jaws of a trap laid by the third.

  Scenes of a similar nature repeated themselves across the battlefield. Small victories achieved one by one. Loses accompanied them, but slower, lesser, until they ceased as the balance shifted to overwhelm the demonic side completely.

  Hope, long thought lost, sparked anew. The prospect of triumph dared to rise in the hearts and dantians of humanity's last defenders.

  A single thunder-burst detonation of power brought all such dreams to shattered ends.

  High in the sky the greatest warriors of the old world had done battle. Most had fallen, famous names riven from history until a mere handful remained.

  And the demonic cultivators triumphed.

  The final blow, splitting the heavens, was one Itinay felt through to her core. The hand of the enemy leader had slapped aside her master, flinging her broken body aside at terrible speed to slam into a crater of her own making far to the west. Though not slain, Orday lay on the edge of death, and the skies were quiet once more.

  Doom had come.