NOVEL NEXT Chapter 252: Cleaved
Nyxara's brows furrowed deeply. Her gaze locked on Damien, her sharp mind already trying to decipher what his next move could be. He wasn't retreating. He wasn't raising another wall. He wasn't even summoning more undead.
He was charging.
"What is he doing?" she murmured.
"He's committing suicide," one Celestial Blaze Sect elder sneered.
"He's mad," another said. "Even one breath of that divine fire would disintegrate a sovereign. Wu Jinhai used it to kill one of our elders just three months ago."
"Look at him. He's finished. He's nothing."
Their voices rose in collective amusement and scorn, filled with the intoxicating confidence that came from watching countless enemies fall to the same flame.
Even Wu Jinhai smiled, his arms still raised, basking in the glory of divine annihilation. "Ashes to ashes," he whispered, voice trembling with pleasure. "You think yourself bold, punk, but not even the strongest undead can—"
Kablam.
The explosion wasn't fire.
It was air being torn apart.
Through the heart of the divine flame, Damien emerged, spear first, eyes burning not with madness but calculation. His robes were scorched at the edges, his boots half-melted, but his flesh…
His flesh was untouched. His skin bore no burns. His aura was stable. And his expression… was almost disappointed.
"Too weak." he muttered. "How can this sort of weak ass fire be called Divine? Such a disappointment! This sort of low level heat is not even enough to boil my piss!"
The spear of eternal storm shrieked as it tore through the air, trailing black lightning and spirals of condensed death. The very air itself seethed and surged as the horrifying spear attack bore down towards Wu Jinhai.
It pierced through the lotus of flame like a scythe through grass, slamming into Wu Jinhai's chest before the young master could even form a defensive posture.
Crack.
The sound was unmistakable, something solid breaking under pressure. Wu Jinhai stumbled back, a look of shocked disbelief contorting his face. He clutched his chest and pulled back a shattered fragment of golden armor.
"You—" he gasped. "You bastard! You broke the divine armor plate! That was a gift from my grand master! You… you damn insect! I'll kill you! I'll kill your whole family! I'll rape your mother and sister and send your father back in pieces!"
Damien raised an eyebrow, mildly impressed.
"Oh," he said coolly. "You actually blocked that. Good for you. Let's see you block this."
He surged forward, his spear spinning once before he plunged it downward again, this time infusing it with everything, lightning, death, time, space, and the full fury of his Necromantic Core. The strike wasn't fast. It wasn't flashy. It was inevitable.
The very air around the tip collapsed inward, dragging fate itself toward it.
Wu Jinhai tried to dodge.
He almost succeeded.
The blade missed his heart but it caught his left arm.
The limb exploded into ribbons of flesh and bone, trailing blood and divine flame as it fell away into the abyss below.
"Aiyeeeeeeeee!!!" Wu Jinhai's shriek echoed through the realm, shrill and unrestrained, a cry born not from pain alone but disbelief, he had never been wounded like this, not once in his life.
"Impossible!" someone shouted. "No one survives the Divine Fire Seed!"
"That bastard even broke Grand Master's Five Element King Armor! Just what sort of freak of nature is he?"
"Attack! Kill him!"
The Celestial Blaze Sect exploded into motion. Their formation shifted from pride to panic-driven obedience.
Dozens surged toward Damien at once, flames bursting from their limbs, mouths chanting battle incantations to rain hellfire upon the battlefield. They had no choice. Their young master had been wounded. If they returned without avenging him, they would suffer fates worse than death.
The sky itself seemed to ignite.
In that moment, the battlefield slowed. The heat from the incoming Celestial Blaze Sect cultivators warped the air in thick waves of distorted flame. The golden clouds trembled beneath the collective advance of dozens of elite fire-path warriors. They came fast, screaming war chants, their blades and fists wreathed in divine fire, their eyes burning with hatred and fear.
But all Damien saw was light.
Not the radiant energy coming from Wu Jinhai, not the flickering fire born of fury.
A path. A thin, golden trail, visible only to him, etched across the air and the battlefield like starlight laid in motion.
The Path of Slaughter.
He inhaled, and in that single breath, everything sharpened.
His vision narrowed, not dimmed, but focused to a clarity so perfect it bordered on madness. He could see every ripple in the air caused by approaching blades, every fluctuation in spiritual energy, every slight delay in footwork or unstable core resonance among the charging cultivators.
He could smell them too, smoke, scorched oil, the bitter copper tang of fear buried beneath all that bravado. He could hear the beat of their footsteps against the cloudstone, the rattling breath of the ones in the rear ranks already beginning to regret the charge.
And he moved.
He stepped onto the path.
It lit beneath his feet, every footfall echoing like the beat of a war drum struck by a divine hand. The moment his boots touched that golden trail, his spear of eternal storm surged in his hand, its shaft humming with lightning, its blade trailing threads of death and time and space all fused into one impossible stream of elemental power.
He didn't lunge.
He vanished.
And reappeared in front of the first attacker, a young man who barely managed to widen his eyes before Damien's spear punched clean through his throat. There was no scream. Only the gurgle of severed breath as blood, thick and glowing faintly orange, sprayed out in an arc.
The second attacker swung a flaming hammer the size of a mountain ox.
Damien ducked under it, not backward, but forward, sliding along the golden path, and as he passed beneath the warrior, he twisted. His spear sang. The strike cleaved the man's legs off mid-air, and he collapsed with a scream that was cut short by the edge that followed through and took his head.