Destiny in Cinders

The secret chamber was anything but dark. Instead, it was covered in a purple glow that came from the oval embryo that pulsed like a heart where the idol used to be. It looked purple and red and was shielded by many gray hands of varying age and sex. They were the hands of the people who had been sacrificed. The hands were linked with their hearts while their souls had become a part of the embryo after being devoured.

Lu Jin immediately jumped into the embryo, into the embrace of the countless hands. Then, he gradually got absorbed. Fiend qi poured out immensely like boiling steam, forming yet another dark-purple smokescreen that shrouded the embryo.

An Jing just entered the chamber and launched a shot with the OverSight, yet the embryo rapidly reacted and made a shield out of the arms around it. The damage still went through, but it wasn’t enough to kill it.

”Child of the Heavenly Divine Cult... Once I am restored, I will tear you apart, limb from limb, tendon from tendon, and sacrifice it to my god!” Lu Jin no longer seemed aware of the state he was in. His mind in a dreamlike haze, he believed that his body was recovering and didn’t know that he was being slowly assimilated. In fact, the Beast Tamer lifearc that manifested behind his head burned bright brown and red, fueling the growth of the embryo.

”The heavenly fiend is devouring the lifearc! That should be impossible! I knew it. Heavenly fiends in Void Embrace are not the same!” Yvelbane exclaimed.

An Jing furrowed his brow and was reminded of something else. Void Embrace is filled with fiend qi, yet it seems to not react with other things. Most normal folks don’t seem to be corrupted by it. So why are heavenly fiends unable to persist for long periods of time in the corporeal world and have to return to the nether realm? It’s not just that they aren’t accepted by the fiend qi. Rather, they seem to be rejected by it.

The logic was weird, but if heavenly fiends were rejected by fiend qi, inverting it would mean that they would be accepted by lifearcs! Then, it wouldn’t be that out of the ordinary for them to be able to devour them! This was impossible in other places, but that didn’t seem to be the case in Void Embrace.

Is it harder or easier to wield dao in an inverted manner? No matter. The thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant. An Jing took a deep breath and began to circulate Evenstar lethal qi within his body, infusing it into the sword case.

So far, he had used twelve streams of Evenstar lethal qi, a third of the spirit qi that he had, to push Lu Jin into a desperate corner. This time around, he infused six streams to pack the OverSight to the limit. The white crystal core of the sword case crackled explosively with lightning as the metal aspect of the lethal qi infused within it.

Then, the sword case fired. A sword beam of platinum pierced through the fiend fog and burrowed through the gray-hand shields, breaking through the embryo! Thick liquid that emanated fiend qi leaked out of the orifice, through which a vaguely humanoid fiend could be seen. It was supposed to metamorphose in that embryo yet again after the whole city had been sacrificed to it, yet it was forcefully aborted and brought into the world in its incomplete form.

It let out a devastating shriek that blended together with the crying of children. The fiendnoise stunned all lifeforms in the vicinity of the building. Everyone ranging from the authorities of Grand Chen who were fighting the fiend followers at the terrestrial-vein nodes or Madam Huai and You Ruhui who had evacuated the teahouse to leave the city and even the people working behind the scenes felt a chill in their hearts.

Honor Pavilion finally crumbled for good. Vapor rose into the air like vapor and smoke from a fire. An Jing spun around as he fell in mid air before landing on the snowy ground on one knee. Then, he got up and looked intensely at the building.

”I think I actually managed to stop their grand plan!” Everything had happened too quickly, from the death of Lu Jin to his assimilation by the fiend embryo and the infestation of fiend qi into his lifearc, which caused it to perceive the heavenly fiend as a beast that could be controlled and strengthened.

An Jing could tell that the embryo could not be allowed to mature and produce the fiend. The True Fiend Cult probably wanted to use the vigor of all the people in Keensight as well as the corrupted power from the terrestrial veins to birth the heavenly fiend. Had it gone as planned, the fiend that resulted could be as powerful as a peak-level Clearing adept or even a sage of the Void Divine Treasures Realm.

An Jing’s actions had forced the embryo to be birthed as it was, so it wouldn’t even reach the Clearing Realm in power. Perhaps it was only a little bit stronger than Lu Jin. The rise of the sinister fiend qi into the air wasn’t a sign of the fiend’s power, but rather, a sign of it being forced to undergo the birthing process.

The next instant, black sparks of flame scattered within the fiend qi, carrying the scent of scorch and ash. The pillar of fiend qi rising from the debris of Honor Pavilion gradually took the form of a fiend as a harrowing shriek resounded all throughout.

An Jing furrowed his brow at the sight as a being of invisible pressure descended to the stormy, snowy land, basked in dark-purple light, spreading the arcane domain across the nearby streets. Ghostflares emitting powerful fiend qi ignited and extinguished nonstop in mid air, tracing flaming steps across the air. The being had a feminine appearance, sporting a beautiful countenance, smooth, fair skin, and a pair of raven-black wings that flapped gently. Its long, black hair was straight as a waterfall, undulating elegantly in the air. It looked like a night raven that heralded the coming of death.

”Wait, is that the heavenly fiend that was sealed in Direlife Canyon?!” An Jing wasn’t drawn in by its humanoid appearance in the slightest. Instead, he recognized this familiar presence. ”That’s right! It’s at least a subfiend! It’s just like the vilespawn fiend and the greater heavenly fiend that was unsealed!”

”Heartdoubt! It’s Heartdoubt’s subfiend!” Yvelbane cried with rage. It had lost most of its memories, but it still remembered the name of the nemesis it had felled. ”So it’s you! You tried to swallow an entire terrestrial vein and all the people here to recover your power, huh?!”

The fiendborn didn’t answer. Its eyes were completely devoid of emotion as it hovered in the air. Dead souls floated around it, linked together by dark-purple ghostflares. Behind its head was a similarly colored halo of light. This was the lifearc called ”Death Tamer.”