The spear saw it first.

"Saw" is more of a misnomer, and Jess updated her model of what level of cultivator the spear would be from a high fourth realm cultivator to a low or mid tier fifth one.

"Mistress, something is coming this way," Sa Kon said.

Mere seconds later, the river they were running aside rippled. Up ahead, the cultivators fanned out into a large circle.

About a hundred of the finest warriors that the school had created turned to face northwest, looking left along their route of travel.

"Is it the beast itself?" Is the question she really wanted to ask Sa Kon. Instead, she readied herself. If it was or wasn’t it did not matter. She would face the problem head on, or order a tactical retreat depending on what she saw.

What she saw instead, was the rhythmic thumping of trees getting crushed and moving aside.

Behind her the small river would have blocked lesser cultivators from fanning out into a defensive formation, but not these.

Two large circles formed leaving a gap where whatever was coming should have gone. Into the gap, Jess stood with Blue as her second.

A large boulder sailed over the treetops and nearly landed on Blue.

Inches away from his long brown hair, the rock kicked up a floof of fro better than any perm job that Jess could hope to do.

Blue stood motionless, steeled against what was coming.

And Jess was ready to throw him at it.

A large boulder popped up over the treetops in front of them. A thirty meter tall rock monster picked up a tree and threw it at Blue and Jessica.

Faster than her eye could match, a sandal flew straight and true at the tree, stopping to incinerate the tree into ash before it made its way farther.

"Thanks for the assist!" Jess yelled, "Blue, go!"

"Yes master!" The student said, edging into a sprinter's stance and then taking off like a shot. A trail of dirt passed behind him as he kicked it up

"God do I love seeing that," she murmured.

***

Blue ran, connecting his feet and pushing off the ground. It was electric the dance that his feet made as he closed the gap.

He planted a foot and threw himself up and over as his target came into view.

Blue's front foot came into contact with the giant rock beast and he pulsed qi into it, looking for its meridians in a crude approximation of a mystical sense.

He held on for too long not realizing that the beast could also move.

An articulated stone hand crushed him into the ground.

His hair and face peeked through the fingers, dwarfed by tree trunk sized appendages.

"Is that all you've got?" He yelled, kicking and screaming at the hand.

The rock face, void of any eyes or mouth slowed above him and there it was.

Blue vented qi, tapping a found meridian with one finger.

A trickle of the beasts qi, having nowhere to go, built up into the rock hand.

The rock didn't swell, but it got noticeably heavier as the demon tried to pull it up.

With all three of its other legs or arms it pushed, leaking more qi into the heavy rock.

Blue smiled weakly. His back was feeling a little twinge. Then his other hand found another hot spot and he hammered it back, cutting off another meridian.

The qi which had been gathering now had no outlet and the demon slumped over. Its approximation if a face dove directly into the dirt.

Blue pushed up with both arms and legs, itching to get out of his pinned situation.

One arm tore the now dead arm off, as the beast righted itself, and then Blue extended his master's other technique.

Air around Blue stilled as he called upon the cold itself, willing it to stop.

***

Mary watched Blue getting smashed into the ground as he yelled at the giant rock demon.

She had no illusions that she would enjoy being pressed into the ground by something that large. Perhaps something more her size, she thought, readying a qi shaped sandal. Or someone, with a nice moustache.

Three more demons had crushed trees as they ran past Blue, leaving a clear-cut path through the evergreen forest. When the first was within striking distance she hit it with her favorite shot.

The overarm throw went right into the closest beast, as she counter a slow two count.

Two of the three rock beasts lost a leg to an exploding sandal as scouts moved in to spear the unhurt one. Behind the four largest rock demons, a small group of human sized rock monsters loomed.

Mary closes the distance, leaping up to get a better view of the two downed beasts.

One moved weakly, barely fending off attacks and the other was only missing the lowest segment of a leg. Not the shot she has made, but what was a woman to do? Three aunties held a loose half circle around that one, keeping it off balance.

A downed tree made an excellent vantage point as she released two sandals in rapid succession. They sunk into the weaker one, and she turned away to follow the last unhurt rock beast.

A larger explosion behind her kicked up rock dust as she saw Grace with her entire forearm through the last largest threat standing. As she pulled back, the lesser rock monsters that had almost reached the aunties groaned audibly, as more than half were forced to their knees.

Grace radiated power and Mary, well Mary was here for it.

She turned and readied another sandal.

***

Two scouts danced a stalling dance with a group of lesser rock demons, expertly stopping them from flanking.

Hu and his newest soon to be disciple, Jo Jo, took turns with Sa Kon. Hu would dart in to get their attention, and when the focus was on him, Jo Jo would pierce one, reducing it to a crumbly mess, and absorbing it's qi.

It was rough light work, but they’d been at it for a minute before Blue had created a cone of absolute zero in the center of the fight.

Rock beasts stopped fighting, turning to see what had happened, and then rushed to the center.

As they pushed through a blue white tinted cylinder of energy, they slowed to a crawl. Dozens of grey and brown rocks slowly covered themselves with frost as they creeped to the center.

Most of the cultivators knew to anticipate this and pulled back giving Jo Jo ample targets to soak qi from.

With a hand on the newest volunteer, Hu stopped the scout from running into the cylinder of death.

"Not there."

***

Blue pushed his way through the frozen bits of rock, surfacing in his cone of cold. Looking around, he brought out his favorite comb and began to hum a tune as he cycled through the remainder of the beasts qi.

It felt volatile inside of him and foreign and it took a lot out of him to just sit there and act pretty for long enough to get his point across. Someday, he would get noticed for more than his skill. Well, he hoped.

It would be another drop of qi in his ever larger bucket. One more rock for the collection.

Blue took one small mound of rock dust and formed it. The cold slowly went away as other cold cultivators drew in its aura. A large circle closed in on the absolute zero kelvin zone he had created.

He rolled the mound in his hand, hardening it into a marble.

Then he slipped the marble into the small pouch he had neatly tied into the inside of his robes. This was a fight that he would remember. And that feeling? Of being crushed but surviving? He would remember that for a long time.

Already his bruises had slipped away, healing with the qi he had absorbed. He crackled with light blue energy as the last of the rock beasts qi cycled through him, no longer fighting against his core.

A few more of those marbles and he would be ready to advance, zooming up to the fourth realm. He might even get close to his master's level at this rate.

***

Jess watched the other cultivators draw on Blues cold until the aura had fully gone. He had done a lot with what little he had, and she was pleased.

Blue got a line of back slaps from the grateful cultivators as they renewed their spend qi.

Wild captured qi was much superior to factory farmed, at least as far as Jess liked it. At the very least it was non gmo but cruelty free? It was almost one hundred percent cruelty.

For the monsters destroyed at least.

Jess made a mental note to update her assessment of what Blue was capable of for the third time this week. Rather, she thought as the scouts went down the line, checking each other and getting a bit of rest, she should start betting on how many times he could surprise her.

She was willing to bet that it was a lot.

"Grace, Hu, are they ready to go?" She asked the two.

They had been doing a rock drill in the middle. Something that Hu had learned from his predecessor was to lay out the walking or running order of the scouts, and then go over what they would do in certain scenarios. Jess approved, and as Grace and Hu went over certain things, the rest of the scouts slowly filed in.

"That attack has given us a lot to think about, Elder Jessica. Blue might have died there."

"He didn't, though," Jess said.

Grace raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She was setting up the line again. The next time, she would brief all of the assembled scouts.

"The double circle? That worked okay," Grace said, conjuring up thirty snowballs in an even figure eight pattern. "The rock beasts tried to charge the center, either looking for a soft target or an easy way through. We don’t know why they did that. It could be that they really wanted to die."

Hu snickered, coming up from sitting as he gestured for the scouts to circle up.

"We had the numbers, and we had some strong cultivators do some fantastical feats of strength. I myself was in reserve the whole time, ready to stop it if it went too far but, unless they throw a lot more of those at us, we will be fine."

“According to what the aunties got from the women of Blessing, we are less than a day from that town, and we need to move on from there, directly to raise the help from the Heaven’s Blessing school.”

Hu nodded.

“If we can.”

“Indeed. Get them ready to move,” Jess replied, walking to Blue.