Destiny in Cinders

The serpent’s fearful attack wasn’t something that could be neutralized with brute force. An Jing stored the hoverbike in his void artifact. All the joints in his body trembled as the Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal engine revved into action. The air around him was sent blasting away as he generated a wall of defensive projected qi that revolved around him like metallic liquid!

He put his palms together in front of his chest, thumb to thumb and index finger to index finger to form a triangular aperture and lined it up with the incoming core. Within his body were two components: his innards that served as the base for the aspect of the five phases and his left and right sides that were the source of yin and yang. Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal was a technique that forged the body into a weapon.

An Jing circulated Evenstar lethal qi in his left and right hands using different methods, one yin, one yang, one a method of stillness, and the other a method of movement. Then, with Trueblitz Pentaphase Infusion, he generated lightning out of nothing!

A bolt of lightning far more massive than the previous ones struck the serpent’s core with great force, slowing it down immensely. The purpose of the lightning bolt wasn’t to destroy the core; An Jing knew that he would be hard pressed to use brute force to overcome a fey-core attack infused with the power of heavenly fiends. Instead, he wanted to use the lightning bolt’s explosion to induce a release of energy from the core.

Within a single moment, An Jing fired off eight bolts of lightning at it, scattering ripples of pitch-black fiend qi into the air that were visible to the naked eye, staining the surrounding air black. The core projectile also slowed down until it was no faster than a normal arrow. By the time it was three chi from An Jing, the supercharged core had lost most of its power and almost slowed to a stop.

At that moment, all the surviving cultists, the fiendfallen serpent and even Wu Qi believed that An Jing would use his lightning art on the core and turn it into a ball of electricity to be sent smashing back at them. Had that been the case, they had a countermeasure ready for it. The defensive formation around the hunting campsite was active and ready to repel an attack like that.

Yet, An Jing’s next move was completely unexpected. He summoned a drone from his void artifact and used it to carry the core as far away as possible!

”What?!” Wu Qi’s eyes were wide open with shock. Who could’ve expected something like that to even be possible? What manner of metal kite was that and how in the world was it flying so fast?

As far as An Jing was concerned, he couldn’t destroy the inner core of the serpent easily, nor could he put something that contained the psychic intent of someone else into his void artifact. As such, sending it as far as possible with the drone was the ideal method to buy time!

”Damn it!” Wu Qi’s heart immediately sank. The inner core of feys wasn’t something that martialists in the same realm would be able to destroy casually, making it quite the troublesome thing to deal with once they were unleashed. It was a natural weapon of the feys. But sending it so far away would force the serpent to spend quite a bit of effort to call it back. This would put them at quite the disadvantage against further attacks by An Jing, whether he engaged them on the ground or continued to toss lightning at them.

”Hide in the ground!” While Wu Qi was a hunter, he often fought fey beasts and other enemies of his hunting site, making him a martialist with far more combat experience than most. He immediately came up with a solution and ordered his serpent to hide in the ground while it called back its inner core, only engaging An Jing once it returned.

Right as the serpent turned around and prepared to burrow into the ground, it suddenly yelled in pain. Wu Qi just realized that the many flashes of lightning that An Jing had dropped on them hadn’t dissipated. Instead, their power was stored in the many metal fragments on the ground. The slightest movement of the serpent would disturb those metal pieces and cause the electricity to strike it, flaking off many of its scales and revealing a messy patch of charred flesh! The electricity that flowed into it greatly agitated the serpent’s nerves, sending prickling sensations up its mind and causing it to numb and thrash around wildly. The serpent ignored its master and ran off.

As Wu Qi was reeling from how ridiculous the whole situation was, An Jing used that chance to come slashing down with Ocean Domination aimed at his head!

”Aghh!” Wu Qi raised his bow with a loud grunt, fully tapping into his Mountain Windchaser lifearc. The effects of the many pills and talismans he used earlier were at full throttle, generating lots of black-green wood lethal qi from his body. It glowed green and manifested a mirage of mountain ranges and a lush, boundless forest behind him. Despite joining hands with heavenly fiends, this old hunter was still aided by the qi of the wild mountains. The dense, forest-like lethal qi of the wood aspect formed into a formless arrow of inky-green qi that shot toward An Jing’s brow!

Then, a loud boom could be heard as snow and rock were sent flying. The powerful qi explosion rumbled across the surroundings, disturbing all manner of metal fragments, rock, dirt, snow, mud and plants, sending all of them spurting upward like a gigantic geyser. Once the air cleared up, a large, straight gash stretched some tens of zhang across the ground.

While Wu Qi remained standing at the center of the gash, his bow-wielding arm had been completely severed. He was also at the brink of collapse. He could only unleash his full power with the fey serpent by his side, but it had scurried off after losing its inner core and being zapped endlessly by lightning. Wu Qi had already expended all the energy he could within that timeframe to take on An Jing’s powerful slash.

”You... Who...” His legs trembled as they struggled to support his weight. The skeletal figure grit his teeth and glared menacingly at An Jing, as if he was trying to burn him with his gaze. ”Who in the world are you?! How did you know that we were here?! And why have you come to cause us trouble?! Did the others in the city betray us?”

”They’re all dead, and it’s your turn.” An Jing stepped forward with Ocean Domination. The closer he got, the more strands of razor-sharp metal qi emanated from his body. There was a trace of blood lethal qi swimming within all that metal qi essence like tiny dragons. ”I didn’t think that you would be that much harder to deal with despite being weaker than the young master from the divine capital. His experience simply paled far too much in comparison to yours. He wasn’t able to adapt quickly enough, nor did he consume any pills to ensure he had the best fighting chance. Either way, neither of you cut it. He might not know how to fight, but your wonders are a complete mess.”

”Heh, you might be right, but you’re still far too young... I finally have you grounded!” Wu Qi smirked as a single bloody thread appeared from the center of his head. Though he was already biologically dead after An Jing’s heaven-sundering slash, his Withered Body wonder and his incomplete Filthless Marrow wonder allowed him to squeeze out just a bit more life before the final moment. He wanted to take An Jing down with him with that extra time!

Far away from the site, the wild serpent suddenly looked up and swallowed its inner core along with the drone. Then, the major terrestrial-vein formation deep under the site began to circulate, channeling all the qi essence and death essence from all the dead cultists as well as the hate and resentment of the dead innocents in the area and even a trace of fiend-corrupted dragon qi to the massive serpent!

It would try to break through to the Clearing Realm right there! Within a short ten breaths’ time, it would be able to evolve into a great-fey wyrm. While inducing the transformation before the fiendfallen fey’s surgical modifications were complete would cause it to lose control, Wu Qi was already a dead man, so he didn’t care!

The massive serpent that should have become one of the mountain rulers of Brokeblade Mountain was an earth-aspect fey bearing traces of dragonblood. If it was able to break through while remaining under control, it would gain the ability to burrow into the terrestrial veins near Riverside to refine dragon qi. But with the traders guild gone and their operation about to be wiped out completely, Wu Qi decided that they might as well go out with a bang.

Haha, there’s no way he’d be able to kill the serpent within that span of time... Wu Qi laughed as his consciousness began to blur. What... where?

An Jing had suddenly disappeared from his view.

How...

Then, there was a flash of lightning on the ground, followed by a massive burst of gold and crimson lethal qi that combined into a flash of a blade.

...is...

Thick, pitch-black fiendblood spurted all across the air.

...this...

The presence of the serpent suddenly stopped growing and rapidly faltered. ℴℴ𝘮

...possible...

Wu Qi turned back with a desperate look. ”Impossible!”

An Jing, who stopped using Temporal Grasp, flicked his blade to shake off the serpent’s blood from Ocean Domination. The serpent’s body and head continued to thrash about in front of him despite being severed from each other.

I will claim your heads for my own purposes! The youth turned to Wu Qi with a look of annoyance. ”Isn’t it about time you dropped dead?”

Right after that, Wu Qi’s innards spilled all over the ground from his body right as the last bit of his lifeforce drained out completely.