NOVEL NEXT Chapter 92: Despair and Awe
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"Humanity severed, Hunger unshaken.
"Bury your Heart under tar, and carve your name on Heaven's breast."
— Creed of the Howling Meadows
Shao did not hold much hope for a victory.
Oh, sure, she agreed with the Young Master's secret 'plan' and forced Jun to commit to his defence, but the disciple of the Split-Headed Carnivore held no illusion that the three of them could win this fight.
Shao was strong. With the unholy biological modification made upon her by the Sect's so-called 'Chirurgeon', the female disciple was leagues stronger than her cultivation standing should suggest.
Like her surgically enhanced male counterpart, Dai, Shao had gone up against the Elders of her Sect before in those rare instances they left their glacial palaces.
Often regarded as some of the strongest cultivators in the Outer Provinces, those Nascent Realm practitioners boasted such terrifying transformations that the mere sight of them would have left any mortal dead with shock.
Against Shao, their strength had been woefully inadequate.
The disciple had engaged most of those venerable Elders at least once in one-on-one duels and had been the victor every time. The strongest of them had been in the fourth Step of the Nascent Realm and had still fallen to the fury of Shao's transformation.
Save for Matriarch Chen and her mistress, Lianshi, Shao would consider herself the strongest combatant in the Split-Headed Carnivores Sect. That she could triumph against opponents in the Nascent Realm despite being only in the Tempering Realm already spoke volumes of her prowess.
However, this opponent… This was a step too far for her to deal with.
The twin biomechanical barrels on her titanic frame roared once more, sending explosive cases of superheated chemicals exploding onto the intestinal roots of that giant summon. They were some of the strongest bio-projectiles Shao could produce on her person. She had personally seen practitioners of the Tempering Realm melt to bones within seconds upon a direct hit.
The pool of slimy ooze bubbled and hissed with ghastly fury, but ultimately did nothing to her target.
A haunting screech echoed from across her position. A dozen of Shao's insect-like eyes looked up and saw the descent of an enormous headless bat of fire. Its strange beaded wings — all fourteen of them — were the size of several metres and appeared to be made entirely of human skulls.
A Circuitous Raptor, an apex predator native to the Marble Mountains of the Inverted Monk Sect. Jun had an interesting arsenal of weapons as well, it seemed.
There was an intriguing story in that summon. Circuitous Raptors could not survive outside the reality-waxing confines of the Marble Mountain, which meant Jun had somehow gained permission to enter the insane labyrinth of the Inverted Monk at some point during his self-imposed exile.
Or perhaps, more likely, the man had sought no permission at all and was imprisoned there as a punishment for some transgression.
Obviously, he escaped, though the how of it was something she was very much curious about.
It was something to ask later, should they both survive by some stroke of luck. The price for entry into the marble labyrinth was steep in youthful lives, and for all of Jun's hilariously hypocritical hatred of cultivators, he was not a man to sacrifice children for personal gain.
The summoned Circuitous Raptor swooped for the floral head of the giant woman. The winds shifted, bringing with them invisible razor gales that sought to cleave the winged creature in two.
Somehow, the descending form of the Raptor jerkily dodged and weaved past all of them at impossible angles, moving with physics-defying agility as it manipulated its speed and inertia at will. The beast gave a final, distorted screech as it dive-bombed the chrysanthemum head of the giant, exploding with an earth-shattering roar and flash.
The giant woman made a gesture with her fingers. Wuthering gales blew the smoke away, showing that her head remained intact and unharmed.
Nothing they did could harm the monster.
Nascent Realm, Sixth Realm. That was the standing of their opponent. The strongest opponent Shao had ever defeated was an Elder within the Fourth Step of the Nascent Realm, but that meant next to nothing in this particular case.
She could safely say that the martial competence of that Elder was barely a third of her current opponent, despite the relatively small difference in standing.
Cultivation standing alone was not the sole determining factor in a duel's victory, though it did matter a lot. The quality of their cultivation and their training within the martial and technical spheres of advancement would decide the depth of their Path towards Immortality. It was how someone of inferior advancement could defeat an opponent of superior standing, rare as such cases may be.
The opponent before her now was not inferior in any way. Bad enough that they were born and raised within the Inner Provinces — where the potent ambient qi would give rise to more developed meridians and spiritual systems — but they were also a Young Master.
The scion of a head Clan, blessed with powerful bloodlines and the resources of an entire Sect from birth. The depth of their cultivation would not be left wanting, unlike some of the Elders that Shao had once faced.
Once again, this was a battle they could not win.
The giant woman made another gesture. The pressure in the air doubled, then redoubled again. Shao's monstrous frame tried to scuttle to safety, but her legs gave out from the sudden force, shattering beneath the invisible hand pressing down on her. The rigid plates of her chitinous armour began to crack.
Jun fared no better. His swarm of summons all detonated prematurely as barriers of solidified air enclosed him. They started to move inwards, trapping Jun in an increasingly small space. Like being trapped in a box, the Elder's body began to squeeze in upon itself.
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Shao levelled her weapons and fired upon Jun's position. Shells of acid and fire rained down upon him, weakening the enclosing barrier enough that the Elder was able to punch a hole in the invisible walls.
It was nowhere big enough for his body to squeeze through, but just large enough for his head to pass. With a resigned look, the Elder poked his head out of the hole just in time as his body was crushed. His eyes bulged, tongue sticking out, as his limbs and torso were squeezed down into a space barely the size of a shoe cabinet. Blood burst from his mouth, nose, and other facial orifices.
One of his last surviving summons — a Stonehook Monkey — leapt to him just in time to cut off his head before Jun popped from the blood tension. The moment he was decapitated, blood exploded from the stump with such pressure that it jetted all across the length of the arena. The Stonehook Monkey threw the head towards the relative safety of Shao, right before a stray gust of wind diced it into a dozen pieces.
Shao's transformed body was being crushed, and so in a moment of desperation, she disengaged her transformation, manipulating the dying biomass to eject her forcefully out the side. She escaped death by mere heartbeats, the entire titanic mass of reinforced bone and muscles pancaked to bloody gore as the pressure bearing down on it redoubled again.
Shao grabbed the head tossed in her direction and ran for her life. Jun's remaining summons — still somehow operating independently without their master's command — bought precious seconds by distracting the giant woman, but soon they too were smote down by hammering winds.
They were out of time.
"Young Master! It's been a minute already!" she cried out. "Whatever you plan to do, do it now!"
It was a desperate hope. In the first place, not even thirty seconds had passed since Shao made the bold proclamation that Jun and she would hold off the giant.
Though Jun had recommended escape earlier, it had been a doomed plan from the start. The main exit was blocked by the massive bulk of the summoned floral woman, and the very air above them had become filled with scything winds the moment she spawned in. Even if Jun and Shao had distracted the thing with all their might, the chances of the Young Master's escape were abysmally slim.
Thus, the pair of them had taken to the previous plan of buying time for reinforcements while defending the Young Master. No doubt Sect disciples from both the Split-Headed Carnivores and the Beheaded Phoenix had already arrived, but they had likely made the — frustratingly wise — decision to stay outside rather than offer aid in the arena. This was a battle far beyond their ability to influence.
The only people nearby whom she knew could bring them a decisive victory were Lianshi or Patriarch Shang. The latter Shao had no idea where he was, but the former she knew was no longer near the Beheaded Phoenix monastery.
Her mistress's sorrow had run deep, and Lianshi did not want to stay in a place that only welcomed her with vile rumours and the cold shoulder of her husband-to-be. The disheartened woman had taken to hunting in the nearby valley rather than staying within the suffocating confines of her soon-to-be home.
It was why Shao had even been in the arena in the first place, mutilating fools and gossip-mongers to avenge her mistress's honour. No small part of her had seethed that the Young Master's callousness had brought about such shame, and she had half a mind to seek him out when he at last made his public appearance at the arena.
While she was at first pleased that the stupid male had, at last, found his manly side and sought brutal recompense from his fiancée's slanderers, Shao now found herself in the ironic position of wishing the youth had simply stayed at home.
His first step at trying to fix the upcoming marriage he bungled, and it turned out to be a disaster that might see him killed. Honestly, it was almost as if fate had it out for him.
Shao fell back to where the Young Master was kneeling, eyes still closed in concentration. She set down Jun's smoking head and evaluated her options.
Her qi reserves were running dry. She could maybe attempt one more transformation, but it would not last long, and all her attacks thus far were utterly ineffective. Without Jun to hold half of the giant's attention, Shao doubted she would last five seconds.
The only solution she could see was to sever the Young Master's head and try to toss it over the edge of the stadium's height. It would be a near-impossible feat to get it to safety — given the whirling wind blades that swarmed the skies — but if Shao timed it well and provided cover with her projectiles…
A slim hope, almost non-existent. It would damn Jun and her to die as well. While that was a price she would have gladly paid to see the Young Master safe, the odds of success were too small for her to try.
Shao resigned herself to a final fight instead. If she bought enough time, Jun might resurrect and find a way to save the Young Master. Or maybe all she would achieve was buy them a few more seconds before the winds killed them all.
She hoped Dai would mourn her, but it was more likely that the man would still be too busy pining over that flaming whore of a dead Young Miss to even notice she was gone.
An uncharacteristic pang of vulnerability washed over her at the thought. The female disciple shut it down viciously.
If she were to die, she would do it with her head held high, proud and fearless.
The winds of death closed in. Shao prepared to sell her life away to buy a few seconds, when suddenly…
Heat.
A trickle at first, but then a wave of warmth pervaded the arena. All of it was rushing into the centre point of the stadium, draining energy and light from the very air itself to fuel the voracious shimmer. The screaming gales above seemed to slow as their sharpened waves were blunted by a feverish heatwave that seemingly appeared from nowhere.
The ground was shaking. Shao's eyes opened in shock when she felt a new colossal qi signature rising from the earth.
The Young Master breathed out.
[Severed Heads Apostles, Feng's Variant — Infernal-Ironed Plague Wyrm]
A massive maw erupted from the sandpits of the arena, showering spittles of melting magma everywhere as it roared. The encroaching winds were blown back by a scalding shockwave.
The blooming chrysanthemums in the field were uprooted instantly, turning into kindled petals that fuelled a whirling firestorm, blazing in surging spirals as they ascended alongside the climbing mountain of volcanic flesh.
The infernal summon shadowed over everything else — save for the flower giant, which rivalled it in size, though only barely. A coiled fusion of molten alloy and searing magma, the phantom scales of its metallic conflagration shifted in perpetual flux. Bronze, brass, iron, and steel in abundance dripped from its flanks alongside slabs of glistening rock-flesh.
The sides of its serpentine torso peeled away, crimson meat unfolding outwards like wings of molten shields. It had no maw, no head — only a gaping opening, vomiting bubbling magma like blood from a severed throat. Thick clumps of yellowish sulphur plumed from the pits of its furnace-like belly. From the ash clouds that bellowed forth, sparks of lightning snapped and clawed like the fingers of a great beast.
When it shuffled, the ground quaked. When it roared, Shao's eardrums and eyes bled. Its very breathing was boiling the blood in her body. The arena was awash in a sea of living fire, molten tendrils destroying even the extensively rugged material expended in the stadium's construction.
It was as if the creature was born from the heart of the earth itself — a living hell given life, forged in the deepest volcanic layers of the world to become an embodiment of its destructive will.
More than anything, it was the sheer cultivated aura that exuded from its form that made Shao's jaw drop.
Spirit Realm, First Step.
To Shao's continued shock and awe, it spoke.
"Hrrghhh… This is new," it rumbled curiously. "I had not thought to wake again… for another thousand years, at least… And this form…"
There was a cough on her side. Shao tore her eyes from the spectacle and beheld the paling face of the Young Master. Rather than surprise or fear, he looked more vaguely annoyed than anything.
"The lady says I'm to call on your rent," he snapped testily at the giant molten beast. "In her words, 'Shut up and get to work, you useless god.' I concur with her statement."
The creature's chuckles shook the world.
"As you wish, Lord Dragon."