Destiny in Cinders

A loud metal clang rang out as Lu Jin backed off a step. An Jing was sent stumbling back seven steps from the sheer difference in brute force.

What the hell?! Does he just have the solution to everything?! Lu Jin wasn’t the least bit happy about the slight edge he just got, knowing that his opponent was at the Tide Aura Stage at most. Yet, he did seem to have some kind of wonder or body refinement technique that made him as strong as Fortification Realm martialists. There was a good chance that the brat could kill him.

Punching the shield made Lu Jin feel extreme pain in his fist. An Jing already backed off to reduce the force from the impact, but the punch still landed hard enough on the shield for it to hurt Lu Jin, and the shield didn’t break either!

I refuse to believe this! Lu Jin let his rage take over and charged in rather than backing off with yet another punch and roar. Jing Xuan must’ve used some forbidden technique that gave him a short-term explosive boost! There’s no way an Aura martialist can go toe-to-toe against a Fortification martialist head-on!

The sound of crumbling rock got louder and louder, causing the nearby residents to shriek in terror. The rumbling building slanted at an even stronger angle.

Fists landed time and again on the shield; it sounded like a massive bell was being rung. Each loud bang shook off fine dust from the building’s crevices and shattered its many windows. The building itself shook more and more as smoke rose, much like a volcano at the brink of an eruption. Mountains of dirt and stone fell to the ground. Had the building not been built on incredibly firm foundations to sustain the heavenly fiend’s arcane seals, it would’ve collapsed long ago. The battle pressed on amidst the smoke and dust.

”Die! Die!” Lu Jin threw close to a hundred punches, each one packing as much force as a blast from the OverSight sword case. However, the sword case did have higher penetrative power due to the same amount of force being spread across a much smaller surface area.

As the fight rose to the climax, Lu Jin found his chance to use his fourth and final trump card. His eyes glowed right before black-brown beams of blazing magma shot out of them! This was his wonder, Ocular Blaze! It converted pure aura into spirit fire that easily slipped through the slight opening in An Jing’s defense, reaching for his neck that the helmet didn’t protect!

An Jing didn’t even flinch as a semi-translucent barrier appeared to block the stream of blazing lethal qi. This was none other than the artifact he got from Ochre Hill, the jade armor pendant!

”Fucking kill me! How many damned artifacts do you have?!” Lu Jin almost lost it when his killer move failed. He simply couldn’t imagine why someone like An Jing who shouldn’t even exist in the first place came to cause him trouble. ”What kind of grudge would a scion of a large tribe have against me? Can’t you just go away and let me do my thing?!”

”You harm and eat people,” An Jing said. These were the first words he spoke to a member of the True Fiend Cult, but it didn’t sound like an attempt at communication. Rather, he was announcing his verdict. ”And thus, I shall kill you. All of you here shall die today.”

”Harm people? Eat people?” Lu Jin was stupefied before he laughed in violent rage. ”I love to eat people! It’s none of your fucking business! Their lives are not even worth a single meal of yours. In fact, even a single shot from that sword case of yours costs more than what I get from selling a few hundred people! If you really want to do good, why don’t you eat less? Stop fighting me and use that money to save lives!”

”What did I do to deserve being subjected to a fiend bastard’s pre-death monologue?” An Jing’s expression darkened, leaving nothing but his seething blood-red eyes. His fists were gripped so tightly from his burning urge to cut the lowlife before him into a million shreds.

I don’t know how he did it, but this fiend worshiper actually made the Heavenly Demon Cult look like a charity. There are many people in this world that deserve death, but none so much as members of the True Fiend Cult! Any semblance of world order that remained from Void Embrace’s antiquity was wiped away by these bastards! Fiend followers need to be killed, no matter what, no matter how!

”Die!” An Jing regulated his breathing and stepped forward, using his rage without letting it overwhelm him. He raised his blood-colored blade and swung, not even thinking about how badly hurt he could get as long as he could stop Lu Jin from speaking.

Lu Jin noticed An Jing’s wild obsession to eradicate fiends and gave up on negotiation. He took out a red pill which could give him enough of a boost at the cost of some lifespan only to notice that something was off. His arms and legs were numb.

”What?!” Only then did he notice a faint fragrance that had been present from the moment the fight with An Jing began. He had thought that it was the smell coming from his destroyed medicinal cabinet. He didn’t think it was a concoction that had been used on him!

”Is this... a bedazzling agent?!” Lu Jin looked up at the helmeted figure. ”This is the Heavenly Divine Cult’s medicine... Are you a member of their cult? You fucking madman!”

That realization seemed to make Lu Jin a hundred times madder than before. ”How could someone from the Heavenly Demon Cult do this?! You’re no better than we are! You spouted all that nonsense about justice earlier only for you to have been on the side of evil all along!”

An Jing didn’t waste any words. He had many tricks in his arsenal, but poison worked just as well. The bedazzling agent was something that could knock him out easily if he was exposed to it. It wasn’t just any concoction; the demonic cult’s recipe was extra potent.

Lu Jin was dead the moment An Jing set his sights on him. Had it not been for the fact that An Jing wanted to test out his combat prowess as someone with three seals of the Spiritual Awakening Realm and a martialist of the Tide Aura Stage, he would’ve just used his weapons to keep Lu Jin evading with bated breath, speeding up the bedazzling agent’s effects. An Jing stepped forward without hesitation and swung his blade down.

”Aaaaaagh!” Lu Jin howled from being the full-force slash by the black-iron blade. No matter how hard he tried to struggle, he couldn’t muster the strength to move his body. The blade cleaved through his neck and decapitated him right away, which should have been the end.

An Jing subconsciously felt relieved as well, but this situation was anything but typical. No blood spurted out of the stump of Lu Jin’s neck. Instead, the tensed muscles stopped all blood from flowing out. His incredible vitality as a Fortification martialist coupled with the black fiend qi that seeped out of his body kept him from dying right away. The headless body raised its arms and grabbed onto the falling head before crawling away even though it should’ve still been paralyzed by the bedazzling agent!

”Haah?!” Calm as he was, even An Jing couldn’t help but be taken aback at such a ridiculous sight for the very first time. The sword case had to charge up to fire a shot, so he used his handguns instead. The bullets, however, sounded like they struck metal and didn’t bore holes into Lu Jin’s body at all. The headless corpse scrambled back to the half-collapsed secret chamber like a massive cockroach.

”Chase?”

”Chase!”

An Jing and Yvelbane made up their minds at the same moment. He ran into the secret chamber without delay and was greeted by an eldritch sight.