In a valley covered in yellow sand, Alexis was fighting beasts all around her. She was completely drenched in blood, having wounds that went through her entire body. She had been fighting for an extremely long time, killing the grey beasts that came in all shapes and sizes. Wheezing from the effort, as she slew another beast with a bone pike, blood splashed on her face, giving her a demonic aura. As the beast fell, it turned into grey smoke and was absorbed into her body. There was a flash of gold and her wounds recovered at a slow pace. Without waiting for her recovery to finish, the nearby beasts were already pouncing on her. Without taking a break, she moved her bone pike, impaling the skull of another beast while biting the protruding eyes off a different beast as it bit her neck. It was a brutal battle, leaving behind all the charm and grace she possessed as a divine daughter. This was the landscape of calamity where she had been mystically transferred to as soon as her calamity fate had erupted. She had suddenly gone from being on a battlefield with the devils to another battlefield crawling with monsters. All these beasts were unintelligent and none of them was too strong for her to handle. It was only that their numbers were almost endless, and having killed them for days at an end, she was overwhelmed quickly with exhaustion. Alexis knew that the calamity fate that she had been born with had erupted and that she was currently facing the beast calamity. She had read about this calamity in the records of the sect. Thus, she knew that if she died in this place, she would die in the real world as well. But not dying to an endless beast tide was impossible for a cultivator that couldn't fly. If it had been ten years ago when she had just known about her condition, she would have given up all hope. But the ten years of hellish training from her mother had turned her will into that of a warrior. Even if her fate was to die young, even if no one would see her battle, she was still going to give her best!
Luckily, she managed to get some help along the way. Whenever she was about to kick the bucket, she would get an infusion of vitality that would heal her injuries rapidly. In the original calamity, this should have been impossible as her true body and her presence here was connected through a one-way channel of fate. Thus, healing her body in the real world should not have affected her at all. But, with her mother's grace, she had obtained a reliable healer. With Michael's fate tied to hers, she was able to obtain the vitality from him in this realm. If it was someone else, rather than receiving any help, she would even suffer a backlash. With his help, she managed to last for what felt like months to her. Also, killing the beasts would destroy a part of her calamity fate and enhance her powers. It would increase her bloodline purity, or strengthen her blessings. She also obtained benefits for her body and soul. As such, she was able to handle the first wave. But, the second wave had almost killed her. Not only were the beasts more powerful, but there were also more of them. She had been very close to death as one beast was about to bite her head off when suddenly, she felt the power of life and death converge on her, making her almost immortal in this space. Even when her head was bitten off, she did not die. The beasts had also become weaker. This allowed her to reach the end of the second wave after a truly brutal battle. But now, she could feel the power of her protection slipping away. Most importantly, her mental strength had dried up. She could hardly bring forth the energy to fight. Her entire existence had become incredibly heavy and she felt like she would pass out anytime. Her vision was blurry, she was hallucinating and, she still had to face the final wave in this condition. From her calculations, the beasts in the next wave would be almost grade-4 to powerful grade-4 level. What was awaiting her was an almost endless army of law master level beasts. If the power of flight was to be taken away, even experienced upper-ascendants would only die in such a situation.
This was the reason why it was known as calamity fate. According to the historical records gathered by the Divine Sea Sect, many great geniuses had been cursed with this fate and most of them died facing their first calamity. Compared to those geniuses, Alexis was only average. It was truly a despairing fate. As she barely managed to hold on, she suddenly heard her mother's voice.
"Alexis! Wake up!"
Hearing her mother's voice suddenly woke her up from her trance. The voice continued, "Michael is going to conduct a fate-sensing ritual soon. You need to learn how to sense fate through this opportunity. I will guide you through it. Don't lose hope my daughter, we will overturn your fate!"
Alexis originally thought that she was hallucinating in her despair but the voice continued with detailed guidance for her to follow. Forcibly gathering her mental strength, she started listening to the instructions and following them.
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Danzo Silver or the Sword Saint divinity was currently sitting across his wife who was sitting in the middle of a ritual circle. Looking worried, he felt helpless about the situation. In his life, he had gone through many ups and downs. The path of his sword led him to many places. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, he had eloped with a young fairy from the Heaven realm. In those days, he was a hero of the world, going around upholding justice as a cultivator of the sword. He slew demons and devils, killed evil cultivators and practised his sword with righteousness. Having come across a beauty from the heaven realm who was also following the path of sword naturally led to an attraction between them. Not considering the situation entirely, he chose to elope with the girl. Alas! fate was not kind to them. His first wife was a disciple of the Yin Source Sect, a powerful sect in the heaven world headed by a god. According to the rules of the sect, their disciples were not allowed to marry people of their choice. This was because the Yin Source Sect was an all-female sect, and they took in very few disciples each time. The disciples entered the sect during childhood and were brought up and cultivated diligently by the sect. They would then usually marry powerful cultivators with either political power or special positions. It was a system of arranged political marriage that allowed the sect to form connections. The sect brought up disciples and the disciples had to give their life to the sect in return. The sect also valued the purity of yin of these female disciples a lot. After all, the person taking their virginity would obtain a tremendous boost in their cultivation using special techniques. As such, falling in love and eloping was the taboo of this sect. After all, they could not allow their investment to just go down the drain.
The sect naturally sent their enforcers to capture this unruly disciple to make a spectacle out of her. That was the beginning of his tragedy. In the end, the enforcers led by a powerful divinity took away his wife. Most of his comrades died in the battle and he only managed to survive due to breaking through to the divinity rank with the yin source of his wife. For many years, he had been blinded by revenge, sharpening his sword to one day cut apart the Yin Source Sect and rescue his wife. During those years, he gradually came close to Miranda Reeves, who had her own grudge with the Yin Source Sect. In the end, he fell in love with her. He tried to find his first wife multiple times, but against the powerful sect of heaven realm, he did not manage to even see her face. Later, he found out that his wife had passed away in captivity. Thus, he could only wallow in pain and hate against the Yin Source Sect with his companion and partner, the Fate Seer Divinity. But it all changed on the day when Fate Seer got pregnant. It was a blessing out of blue, and unprecedented happiness flooded his heart. When they gave birth to their daughter Alexis, it was as if he had found a new meaning to his life, beyond hate and anger. The blessings came in pairs, and one day, he was visited by a woman carrying a young child. Surprisingly, it was his child with his previous wife! His wife had sealed the child and removed her from her womb before the sect could find out about her pregnancy. She had asked her closest friend to incubate the fetus so that the child could be born and had asked her to deliver the child to her father. That was how he got his second daughter, Elaine. Due to his guilt of not being able to save her mother, Danzo had sacrificed one of his stars to bless Elaine with an extremely powerful blessing.
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After Miranda accepted Elaine, Danzo felt like he did not want anything more in life. He was finally able to have his own family, and he was happy. But fate is not kind, and later, he found out about Alexis' condition. Since then, he and Miranda had been trying to come up with solutions for their daughter's condition. And currently, Fate Seer was taking great risk to find a chance of survival for their daughter. Using the power of this world's will, Fate Seer was able to trespass the boundary of fate and send her instructions to Alexis inside the calamity landscape. Despite spending a large part of their savings, they were only able to do this much. At this point, far away from Azure city, the shamans of the Iron Lion tribe completed the final step of the ritual causing the world-will to descend and directly imprint the fate-sensing ability to Alexis' soul. Even though she was currently in the calamity space, she should be able to get the new ability, as it was anchored around Michael, who had acceptance from the calamity fate.
As this happened, Fate Seer divinity threw up streams of blood from her mouth and nose and a star on top of her head shattered! The power of her law permeated the world, and subtle changes occurred one after other like a well-designed chain reaction. On the other side, Michael suddenly felt a tug from deep inside his soul and before he could understand the situation, he closed his eyes and fell like a log.
Danzo stepped inside the circle to help Miranda who had a smile on her lips. She smiled and said, "I succeeded in sending him to the calamity landscape." Soon, she passed out from the backlash of using her law in this world. Danzo held her, desperately praying in his heart, "Alexis, please be alright and survive!"
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When Michael opened his eyes again, he found himself standing in a hellish landscape, surrounded by yellow sand. He could see Alexis barely standing in front of him with several wounds on her body. Before he could ask anything, Alexis immediately explained to him about the beast calamity and the last wave that they were going to face soon. Speed was the essence and they needed to come up with a plan soon.
Michael frowned and said, "I am confident in my strength. I recently managed to learn the cultivation system of this world, which allows me to manifest an astral avatar. In close combat, I can take care of the beasts. As we can't fly in this realm, against a beast tide, without fortifications and a team surrounding us, there is no way to fight at a distance. But I am not confident in being able to protect you. After all, I can only fight so many at the same time. What abilities can you use currently?"
"I can use my blessing to divert most of the attacks to you. How is your tanking ability? I am injured and lacking in mental strength, thus I will make lots of mistakes in combat. But if I can take it easy for a while, I can regain enough spirit to protect myself.", Alexis replied.
"Don't worry, I can tank attacks very well. My recovery is good and in my astral form, I have high resistance to all forms of damage. Let's keep our backs to each other and remain in the vicinity so that we can cover all directions. I will face the beast tide from the front."
They soon decided on the most practical strategy. They decided to use Michael as the main combatant and Alexis was only supposed to use her blessing to evade all attacks. As they prepared themselves, grey smoke started emerging from a distance. The rumbling sounds caused the entire landscape to vibrate. Michael could see a sand tsunami coming towards him from a distance. Getting himself ready, he activated his avatar. Black energy emerged from his soul and covered him perfectly, turning him into a black giant standing 11 feet tall. At the same time, a black sword appeared in his hands and expanded to fit perfectly with his giant stature. Black sword qi started forming on the sword. Many runes started appearing on his body one by one, giving him a strong primal air. In the blink of an eye, Michael Rageberg was replaced by a primordial giant holding a sword facing the calamity of beasts.
Michael prepared himself. A great amount of strength from his divine strength blessing poured into his legs and arms. The indomitable dao merged with his sword qi turning it into a dazzling black light. His martial will from his astral avatar erupted and guided the flow of his strength into his sword. Crouching for a bit, a terrifying amount of strength was poured into his upper body which was flawlessly transferred to his shoulders as he swung his sword. The power of his sword bloomed as a black light was launched from it, cutting apart dozens of beasts in half! The sheer strength of the slash caused the beast tide to fumble for a bit! Alexis, who had never seen Michael in this form was left with her mouth hanging open. She had not imagined that someone could become so much stronger in such a short time! Even with obtaining benefits of fighting in the calamity landscape, she was nowhere close to his level. As she watched on, Michael continued to send out extremely powerful slashes from his sword, splitting apart beasts in a storm of sword qi.
Michael's sword technique was called the five-stance sword art, which allowed one to cultivate a balanced sword style to the great-master level. Thus, even after reaching the end of this style, Michael's sword did not have any specialities of his own. But now, he was using his sword in a primitive and barbaric style for chopping apart the beasts manifested by the calamity. It was completely coloured by his indomitable dao and in sync with his giant astral avatar. Even though the level of his sword qi was low, his power had increased the damage of his sword exponentially. Each of his slashed raised a storm that would push the beast tide back. The grand momentum was already responding to his sword strikes, paving his way to becoming a sword-path grandmaster. He single-handedly managed to stop most of the beast tide for a while. Of course, it was impossible to truly stop the beast tide with his own power and soon, they were surrounded. But Alexis had obtained the method to sense fate which complimented her blessing to subconsciously choose the best fate for herself. Thus, she was able to evade attacks from the mindless beasts extremely efficiently. Most of the attacks meant for her were either diverted to other beasts or to Michael who was getting beaten up badly. But more and more black energy poured from him, repairing the damage he was dealt. In return, his sword kept chopping apart beasts without stopping. He had truly become a killing machine, slicing apart the calamity beasts. Most beasts would die in a single attack, and only the stronger ones required a second hit from his sword.
The corpses of beasts would turn to smoke and get absorbed into him, slowly but steadily increasing the grade of his astral avatar. This gave Michael even more enthusiasm to kill these beasts. But what was incredible was that he kept on swinging his sword and killing beasts for several days straight! It was as if he did not know exhaustion at all! Alexis was able to take it easy as Michael completely overwhelmed the approaching beasts. Some beasts were barely grade-4 and even Alexis could kill them in one attack if her fate laws were unsealed. But Michael was destroying multiple of them with every swing, and doing that at an extreme rate. He was truly grinding this calamity landscape to raise his level! After some days, the entire wave was completely decimated by him! Meanwhile, his astral cultivation had reached almost the peak of grade 3 and his height reached 15 feet! As long as he could complete his dao framework, he could even breakthrough into grade 4! He had crossed the gap between himself and the best geniuses of this world in just a few days.
As the last beast died, the entire landscape crumbled and both Michael and Alexis were thrown out of the space. The first fate calamity that had claimed the lives of countless geniuses in history was over just like that.