Destiny in Cinders

”Senior Brother is dead!”

”He’s too strong! Quick, retreat!”

An Jing didn’t even need to catch his breath after killing a high-level Fortification martialist with one strike. He swung the mace in his left hand and crushed the head of the next nearest martialist of the Seated Mirage Sect. The blood and flesh sputtered out of the cracked watermelon of a skull.

It had all happened far too quickly. It took two dead martialist for the rest to finally react and get into combat formation. ”Use the formation to stop him!”

The martialists immediately channeled their aura and qi to resonate with one another, activating a formation in the process. Just like how martial cultivation involved a formation-like structure within the body, group battle formations in Void Embrace also made use of formation theory.

Among the five Dustdawn Sects, the Seated Mirage Sect was the most adept at wonders that affected the mind. They used the bewilderment yin qi within their bodies to instantly conjure more than a hundred yin-qi birds within the formation, assembling a dreamlike mirage. These birds’ wings were as sharp as blades and they flew around the area in odd trajectories, forming an avian sword formation!

Every single yin-qi falcon of the Thousand Minds Falcon Formation could cut into the soul directly! With nearly a thousand of them all linked up and circulating boundless yin qi between them, they were excellent at wearing down a target with brute force, which was just what they needed to hold An Jing back.

He observed the trajectory of the yin-qi falcons calmly as he advanced without hesitation, not intending to back off in the slightest. His hands also moved in simple motions. As he stepped forward, he channeled energy from his waist to raise his mace-wielding hand before leaping ahead.

Though it only seemed like he kicked off with a light step, the air itself seemed to liquefy. Then, wave after wave layered upon the mace. This was an optical illusion created by the generation of aura. The density of aura around the mace shot through the roof so quickly that the qi around it couldn’t scatter in time!

An Jing’s mace strike utilized the full power of Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal. His sinew, membranes, bones and meridians were operating at full capacity. He also used the Imperial Sky Art’s Armorpierce Impetus to amplify the force of his swing, making it even more capable of breaking through heavy armor! All that force was concentrated on the top of the mace!

With a loud boom, the formation of a thousand yin-qi falcons forcefully got reshaped. Despite the formation’s force-mitigating effect, An Jing’s strike was far too overwhelming. It was as if he had focused the eruption of a volcano to a single point, shattering the formation instantly!

The Fortification martialist that coordinated the whole formation felt his arms turn numb before he blacked out. As he flew off into the distance, he thought he had just been rammed straight to the face by a fully armored horse.

”Gaaaaah!” He cried out in pain as blood and chunks of his internal organs spurted out of his mouth, quickly followed by his death.

There was still so much leftover momentum that all the other martialists in the formation took one step back, then another, causing them to tumble into each other like dominos. An Jing joined the chaotic fray and went on a rampage, sending chunks of flesh flying all over the place. Each parry he unleashed thundered so loudly that it shook the entire restaurant. It didn’t take long for every single person in the formation to be obliterated.

”Get in formation, now!” cried the bald leader from the Poolsea Sect. He knew that the scar-eyed leader of the Seated Mirage Sect was his equal in power. Not to mention, while the Seated Mirage Sect as a whole was inferior to the Poolsea Sect, that difference didn’t carry over to smaller squads like theirs.

The fact that the scar-eyed martialist and the Thousand Minds Falcon Formation were both crushed by a single blow was more than enough proof that this youth was their target all along. The legendary Jing Xuan who had managed to enter a dao-comprehension state was a bona fide genius! It was no wonder their superiors wanted them to take action right away. Jing Xuan was the kind of monster that could take on a whole dozen people on his own.

In almost no time at all, the martialists of the Poolsea Sect assembled into the Wave Current Formation. Foundational ocean qi tumbled and cascaded upon itself, synchronized by the martialists’ perfect coordination. The blue-green qi weaved densely together, interlocking to form a massive tidal wave that could both attack and defend.

However, that didn’t make the bald leader feel the least bit safe. ”Send word to our martial uncle! We need to hold this brat back while we wait for reinforcements to arrive!”

Alas, it was all too late, for An Jing had raised the mace in his hand once more. He looked at them as he would corpses. His heart beat powerfully with a steady rhythm like that off a ringing bell or massive drum that heralded their impending deaths.

An Jing moved ahead, each step shaking the ground beneath him. Even though it was a single person against a whole formation of martialists, the latter were the ones who shivered and backed away. If they didn’t do so, they would be ground into paste!

”Guuaaaaahhhh!” The bald leader reached deep into the inner force within his abdomen, straining so hard that his eyes were at the verge of popping out. His arms and chest expanded and swelled as he inhaled the foundational ocean qi generated by the formation. He was using the Poolsea Sect’s signature move, Ocean-Swallowing Toad, in tandem with a variant of the Dantian Ocean wonder. This allowed him, the central formation eye, to gather all the power of his juniors to boost himself to an incredible degree, making him far stronger than An Jing!

However, he didn’t engage An Jing directly and instead slammed his arm against one of the load-bearing pillars of Blessed Virtue Garden. The pillar crumbled from impact almost immediately and caused the whole building to collapse!

”Run! Quickly!” the bald leader cried right after he pushed the rubble aside and flopped away like a fish in water. ”This brat has no doubt received the secret core teachings! We should split up and escape in different directions! We must get our martial uncle to kill him! There’s no way we can take him out. We need an adept from the sect!”

The bald leader immediately scurried off. There was no way he would fight Jing Xuan head-on. The leader was a disciple of a large sect; people like these tended to be good judges of strength. He knew that given their relative strength, if he exchanged blows with the youth, he would be defeated in a single move and explode like a dolphin while the youth would only shrug it off and suffer a minor nosebleed. Rather than throwing his life away, he wisely chose to let an adept from the sect deal with this problem child.

What the fleeing leader didn’t know was that An Jing was preparing to use his mace like an assassin’s weapon. He used the mace in his left hand to smash apart the falling rubble before leaping out of the wreckage. Then, he turned to the direction the bald martialist fled in and gathered Evenstar lethal qi in his right hand so densely until a thunderous boom could be heard.

Layer after layer of black meridians surfaced on his right hand as explosive, volatile qi blended with the sound of thunder, the compression of which generated even more faint, high-pitched hums. He had used Trueblitz Pentaphase Infusion, Golden Blitz, to convert the qi armament he just manifested into lightning before infusing it in his other mace and sending it flying![1]

A golden light streaked across the sky like lightning and crashed into its target with a thunderous boom!

”Aaaagh!”

The flying mace looked like a spear of lightning unleashed by the gods themselves, crackling like violent thunderclouds despite the clear weather. It pierced the fleeing bald martialist from behind instantly and unleashed a cage of lightning around him right as he cried out in pain. Sharp and powerful qi explosions lacerated his entire body within and without, scattering his blood into the air as fine mist!

An Jing raised his hand and the metal qi responded to his will, pulling the mace back into his hand in a smooth arc just as the other martialists of the Poolsea Sect emerged from the rubble. He turned around silently, bloodlust filling his eyes. He ignored their pleas for mercy and sent each one back into the rubble with a powerful strike of the mace, grinding them to paste.

”Fool! If you had used that chance to run, you might’ve survived!” said one final martialist of the Poolsea Sect who seemed to have lost his marbles, crying and laughing at the same time. He raised his blade with trembling hands as An Jing approached him menacingly. ”You will die for sure! Just like your master! There’s no doubt about it!”

An Jing’s mace sent his blade flying. Then, he sheathed one of the maces and gave the sole surviving martialist’s head a twist, plucking it off as he would an apple from a tree branch. He had used a little too much force and crushed the head in his hand because of the sour mood he was in.

”Tsk, what a soft-boned fellow.” He had wanted to bring the head to the authorities to ask them to investigate who was behind this, but the crushed head was no longer recognizable. He tossed it away with disdain and shook off the blood and brain matter. ”How unlucky.”

Having finished up his killing streak, he turned around and ignored the employees of Blessed Virtue Garden, furrowing his brow as he headed back home. ”Some martialists are looking for me and my master. Are they doing this to explicitly target me? Or is this some kind of internal strife or personal grudge?”

It didn’t really matter. An Jing knew that this was all part of his celestial arc. The precise chain of events that led to this outcome wasn’t important. He would cross the bridge when he came to it, however troublesome it may be. His days of peace were over. It was time for carnage once more.

1. This is a rather difficult visual pun to translate. The original terms used here are 杀手锏 (pronounced: shashoujian) and 撒手锏 (pronounced: sashoujian). The former is sometimes rendered as ”assassin’s mace” and is a figurative way of saying ”trump card” or ”silver bullet.” The latter, on the other hand, roughly translates to ”loosening your grip on your mace as you fling it away” to figuratively describe using the most powerful move you have in your arsenal at the critical timing to obtain victory. This pun is layered in many ways, starting from the incredibly similar pronunciation both terms, the rather similar yet distinct figurative meanings, the visual pun on An Jing using maces as his weapons as well as the action An Jing proceeds to carry out: throwing a ”weapon” at the critical moment to strike the enemy from afar. ☜