“Forward, break their ranks!” bellowed Commander Rian, a burly officer whose plate armor gleamed like polished obsidian. His halberd, wreathed in crackling violet lightning, was the first to strike, aimed squarely at Shen Yimo’s chest. A thousand soldiers surged behind, a sea of spear-points and shimmering projections. The air howled with their combined might. Shen Yimo blinked. A violet lightning bolt, streaking towards him, looked suspiciously like a poorly installed conduit. He held up his rusty masonry blade, treating it as an implement for precise application. With a flick of his wrist, a dollop of grey, viscous paste, laden with the heavy Qi he had absorbed, flew from the metal tip. It intercepted the lightning bolt mid-air, not shattering it, but rather encapsulating it. The crackling bolt, trapped within the rapidly hardening compound, fizzled into an inert lump that plunked into the mud beside his boot. Commander Rian’s charge faltered. His eyes, once blazing with righteous fury, narrowed in confusion. “What… what sorcery is this?” Before he could react, a volley of spirit-arrows, each fletched with runes of binding, shot towards Shen Yimo. Shen, remembering Gong Zui’s insistence on ‘clean workspaces,’ saw them as errant splinters. He scooped a wider arc of mortar from his bucket with the tool, performing a sweeping motion he internally dubbed the ‘Debris Consolidation Swirl.’ The slurry expanded, forming a swirling shield that swallowed the shafts whole. They emerged on the other side, cemented together into a blunt, harmless block of wood and hardened Qi, which clattered down like a discarded building material. From a distant, cloud-borne war-palanquin, Gao Rufeng watched, his face ashen. “It’s him,” he rasped, clutching the side of the ornate carriage. “The demon! He’s turning our attacks into… into plaster!” Beside him, Elder Jiao Wei, his calm cracking into raw confusion, peered through his monocle. “Impossible. This follows no registered scripture. It’s… it’s crude!” More warriors surged forward, now unleashing flying swords. These were manifestations of their owners’ cultivation will, humming with destructive force. As they arced towards Shen Yimo, he recalled Gong Zui’s warning about ‘loose fittings.’ He swept his hand with rhythmic, practiced grace, coating each blade mid-flight with the wet mortar. The swords, instead of striking, became hopelessly entangled. One by one, they collided with each other, not shattering, but fusing into grotesque, multi-bladed sculptures. A dozen flying swords congealed into an unyielding hunk of iron and dried grit, thudding into the dirt beyond recall. “My Azure Serpent Blade!” cried a young officer, staring in horror as his prized steel fused into the misshapen clump. “It’s… it’s stuck!” Shen Yimo hummed to himself, satisfied with the clean deflection. “Loose fixtures lead to structural instability,” he muttered, echoing Gong Zui. “Always best to seal them tight.” He then turned his attention to a rapidly approaching cohort of heavy infantry, their shields glowing with defensive arrays. He perceived them as ‘unnecessary barricades.’ With a swift thrust of his forearm, he flung a heavy scoop of mortar. It struck the lead shield, then instantly spread, binding the front rank’s bulwarks together into an immovable wall. They stumbled, entangled, shouting in dismay. Inside the sect’s dilapidated main building, Gong Zui yawned, stretching his arms above his head. “Good lad,” he mumbled, peering through a cracked window pane. “He’s making decent progress on that perimeter. Much better than that leaky drain in the privy.” He reached for a mug of lukewarm tea. Commander Rian, now utterly disarmed and bewildered, scrambled back. “High elders! The anomaly defies all known arts!” he shrieked, his voice cracking. “He’s… he’s repairing our attacks!” From the highest palanquin, an arch-magistrate in crimson silk stood upright. His face, etched with lines of immense power and severe displeasure, surveyed the chaotic scene. “Enough of this farce,” he boomed, his voice resonating across the mountain peak. “The creature is an affront to the Heavenly Dao. Initiate the Heaven-Smiting Array. Cleanse this blight from the Ocher Expanse.” Three other cloaked prelates, flanking him in a triangle, took up a resonant chant. Their combined cultivation essence surged upwards, forming an amber vortex high in the clouds. Ancient runes flared in the sky, fusing into an incandescent column of concentrated destruction. It hummed with power dense enough to shear off ridges, capable of leveling an entire campus in one blow. The amber pillar descended, an inevitable lance of heat. It bypassed Shen Yimo, who was diligently attempting to patch a flagstone with grey slop, mistaking a fleeing soldier's flare of Qi for a structural fissure. Instead, the beam bypassed him entirely, cutting a searing path directly towards the sect’s inner courtyard. Its target: a small, ramshackle shed, leaning precariously against the main pavilion. Gong Zui’s handyman shed. “The shed!” Gong Zui yelled, spitting his tea across the room. His eyes, usually half-lidded with boredom, were wide with genuine, unadulterated fury. “My tools! My *three-copper* wrench collection!” The Heaven-Smiting Array struck with a blinding flash of brilliance and an ear-splitting blast. The handyman shed, along with all its contents – the spiritual toilet plungers, the leaky buckets, the half-eaten steamed bun from yesterday, and Gong Zui’s prized, rusty wrench collection – was instantly obliterated, leaving nothing but a smoking crater where it once stood. The ridge shook, and a shockwave tore through the courtyard, threatening to rip away the remaining eaves. The blast was so immense, so utterly devastating, that for a long moment, the entire battlefield fell silent, the screams of the Tribunal warriors choked into gasps of awe and terror. Shen Yimo turned, his brow furrowed. “Supervisor, what was that? Did someone just drop a really big hammer on your work shed? The vibrations are compromising the wall’s integrity!” His earnest voice cut through the stunned silence. He had seen the blaze, but assumed an apprentice had dropped a kiln torch. Gong Zui, however, was not looking at Shen Yimo. His gaze remained locked on the smoking pit, then shifted upward to the floating palanquins. A tiny, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the very air around him, a ripple of something ancient and utterly terrible beginning to stir. The floating elders stiffened, sweat beading along their collars. Borin took half a step backward against the silk drapes, his knuckles whitening on his staff as his gut twisted with sudden panic.

Spiritual Cement Mixing Under Fire