A clawed hand removed one Elephantine ear from the Wretched Emissary’s scalped head from its base, and as it ripped the giant fan-like organ body part away, a string of flesh, veins, and fat dangled from the hole.
The Flareful Empress clicked two claws together, igniting the origin qi in between in the manner of a particular martial art, and a spark of violet fire appeared in the darkness inside the Wretched Emissary’s skull, followed by an explosion of light that poisoned and burnt every surface it touched.
The Elephantine monster screamed in pain. Long gone was its mocking grin, all that was left was a wailing mouth with both tusks broken.
Underneath the monster’s pale skin, flashes of iridescent violet appeared and disappeared.
The Flareful Empress catapulted away from the other side of the monster’s head, but not fast enough to avoid the Voidfiend’s trunk, which swung the chalice in its grasp faster than even her eyes could see, as though it was swatting away a fly with a bludgeon.
“Your strikes have weakened,” the small imperial muttered aloud as if mocking the voidfiend. She blocked with her scaled arms just in time to shield herself from the attack.
A second later, she was flung out like a kicked ball. Her arms and ribs shattered, but her draconic bloodline would heal it in a few breaths time.
Behind the Wretched Emissary, An Xing the Dark Star battered it with punch after punch. Dull thuds rang out, and air pockets blasted out from the monster’s front in a straight line from where the punches made contact. The fat body of the monster seeming to take each hit with ease.
But a closer look revealed another story.
The monster, despite all its savage conduct, had exquisite control of its void qi, using the bare minimum necessary to shield its body from each of the punches. With minute sway of its magical prowess, it completely re-directed the force of the punches away as vibrations in the air.
It similarly deflected the sword strikes from Youjin Gengxin, Han Xinglou, and the martial arts from the Wereformed Twilight Blood Palace Elder.
It had been a while since the Plump Elder from the Victorious Tide had to ‘retire.’ The Flareful Empress could not blame her for not pouring her True qi into the fight. She had already done enough.
But the problem remained. Even though the monster didn’t disappear and reappear unharmed anymore, none of the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realmers could break its defences without True qi.
Even the plucked apart ear was healing fast, the fat, skin, muscles, and veins regrowing like fungal hyphae.
The Flareful Empress showed a toothy smile, a youthful look despite her aged self. Her whole body now resembled a hominid lizard clad in purple-black scales. Her claws were like scythes, and spikes lined her spine with the very tips glowing as though they were torches. Yet even through her reptilian features, her feminine beauty and charms shone with her willowy curves and graceful valleys.
As did the manic bloodlust through her bleeding lips and slit eyes.
She was happy. To have the chance to go all out and fight. It was as if the itch from not being about to punish the rude madlander boy was being scratched.
Better yet, though progress was slow, they were winning against the Unfolding Heaven 1st Order foe.
The voidfiend used to disappear into nothingness when it was ‘destroyed’, then reappeared fully healed. But it had been a while since such a method was used. Ever since the Empress had managed to land one good hit directly onto the body of the void cultists grafted inside the voidfiend’s bloated stomach, that ability had not once been activated.
She needed one chance. One more square hit. And she would slay this beast.
The strange man decided to show his cards.
He grabbed the Elephantine trunk of the monster dead in the middle of its serpentine length with a crushing vice grip, and planted his legs into the ground without so much as a grunt. The end of the trunk swayed like a whip behind him, the chalice grasped swinging like the ball of a morning-star. It splashed the lanky man’s body with the corrupted liquid.
An Xing did not budge. He pulled, the trunk of the fiend stretching taut.
The spirit qi gathered on the edge of his Malignant Moon Sword, and the man slashed down while chanting the motions of the Malignant Moon Sword Scripture.
A vertical tear in space flew out like the fin of a shark, radiating an aura of illness that had no cure.
The Voidfiend conjured a shield right at the place where the attack would make contact.
Han Xinglou coughed up blood. He would not be able to repeat this attack, and everyone knew it wasn’t strong enough to pierce the defence of the fiend.
But in such a battle, trust was crucial.
An Xing’s mask cracked like glass, but did not fall, and every joint in his long, hunched body seemed to snap louder than volcanic eruptions. A strange flavour of origin qi travelled from inside his body, through his fist clenched around the Elephantine trunk, into the trunk itself, finally arriving at the point where the Voidfiend had erected its shield.
A quiet pop rang out, followed by the shattering of the shield.
Han Xinglou’s attack split the trunk in two. An Xing, before passing out, threw the split portion with the chalice far away.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Throughout this whole ordeal, he had not uttered a sound.
The Voidfiend roared louder, the many heads on its body turning their dead eyes towards the collapsing mercenary. Void qi gathered in its giant hands as it made a fist.
But the magnitude of the qi was far lighter, the speed at which it gathered far slower. Its fine control over the qi was nowhere to be seen too, as thought the chalice had been the artefact guiding its sinister arts.
It was a chance not to be missed.
The Flareful Empress kicked off against the wasteland ground and arrived under the belly of the Voidfiend in an instant.
The fiend’s eyes grew alarmed. It tried to change the direction of its punch mid-air towards her.
It succeeded.
The attack which was already in motion hit the Flareful Empress on the left side of her body.
Her own punch hit the Elephantine body dead centre. The amethyst flames of her fist turned into a drill and punctured out from the other side of the fiend, taking the burning body of the cultist with it like a rag caught in a hurricane.
The Wretched Emissary raised its Elephantine head towards the sky and wailed mournfully as though it had lost something important. The many eyes in its many embedded ren heads sent vengeful glares at the Empress, then at An Xing, even as its corporeal body turned into flakes of purplish-green ash.
It did not reappear.
The Flareful Empress took a deep breath. The left side of her body had turned pale white, as if made of chalk. As she stood there, cracks started to form on her skin, causing parts of it to slowly crumble off and expose a chalk-like flesh underneath.
She took out an elixir from her storage artefact. One of the few Unfolding Heaven 2nd Grade elixirs she possessed, bought from the Multitudinous Athenaeum Valley with enough spirit stones to buy a dukedom.
With trembling fingers, she tried to uncork the vial. It was protected by an etched formation that would explode all the medicinal power like a makeshift bomb, reversing the effect into deadly poison, in case the correct key was not used.
It felt as though she didn’t even have the origin qi necessary to accomplish such a simple task.
But she did, with high effort, and drank the contents. A warm feeling spread throughout her body, followed by a cool wave.
The stress left her in wisps of pale white smoke.
It would leave scars.
As would the pale wounds on everyone present.
They might have won, but it had by no means been an easy battle. Han Xinglou’s arm would take a specialised healer to be set perfectly back into place, and Youjin Gengxin really needed to do something about the hole in his right chest rather than staying here to argue.
An Xing opened his eyes.
The Flareful Empress was impressed. The mercenary recovered quickly. Whatever bloodline he possessed was surely unique.
Far into the distance, she could see the other mercenary, An Ping was her name, rushing towards them, followed by the spectating local clans and sects.
There were Youjin Liu, the Patriarch of the Zheng Clan, the Right hand of the Duan Clan head, that minister from the Westmoon Kingdom, and many more.
The vixen princess and her entourage still were not out of the caves then.
It had been some time.
“Han Xinglou, the trophy is not yours alone,” the Empress spoke. Her communicator was still intact, but she felt no need to use it right now.
The device was strange. She would need to look into it farther.
Han Xinglou sent her a glare he thought he had hidden, but nodded nonetheless. The Flareful Empress sat down, her body returning to that of a ren's as she donned another set of imperial robes from her storage artefact, marking her as merely the Empress Dowager of an Empire she could care less about rather than as one of the Grand Elders of the Dawn Dragon Throne.
“What now?” Han Xinglou asked, opting to defer judgement to the most powerful present.
“We wait for her Highness the Revived Grace from the South,” the Twilight Blood Palace Elder replied as though that was the most natural thing to do.
If Han Xinglou was dissatisfied, he hid it better this time.
But the monotone man from the Twilight Blood Palace was right. It was perhaps the only thing they could do.
In the meantime, the Flareful Empress meditated. The elixir was working well to heal her flesh. But right here, right now, she would pay anything to taste another sip of the Grape and Pear Fiery Wine the owner used to share with her back in the tavern, so many many years ago.
No medicine, not even elixirs could heal her body and her soul like the wine those drunk lemurs housed in their attic once brewed.
***
"Chiri?” The Fiery Wine Lemur pup bundled up in a sack behind Youjin Chao made an adorable chirping noise. Her giant eyes and cute face covered in soft fur looked at the sinister cavern walls in wonder.
Up to down. Left to right. And back again.
She pointed at a particularly gnarly-looking stalactite and clapped.
“Chri?” She chirped.
“Quiet.” Chao said under his breath. It was dark; he could only see by sending precious alchemical qi from the potions to his eyes. But he knew he was getting closer to the treasure.
Or trap.
Whatever it was that was calling out to the extreme yang essence qi he possessed, it was near.
A strange rumble vibrated through the cavern walls, like an earthquake shaking the very mountains, as though a giant was burping.
Dust and pebbles fell down, and some rock outgrowths crumbled like castles of sand and gravel.
“Chirrri!” The lemur pup cried in jubilation, tugging at Chao’s hair.
Chao wondered why in the world he was doing this. There was still time to drop the chaosfiend off somewhere and never think about it again.
But something about it felt wrong.
The way the Fiery Wine Lemur Leader had looked at him before it died, the way it was protecting Chiri.
“Shouldn’t have named her.” Chao now understood why the farmers who domesticated cattle rarely named the beasts meant for slaughter.
The boy grabbed onto the walls again just as the tunnels shook. A tiny fissure opened somewhere near, and water leaked out.
The little lemur got even more excited. This was the first time she was witnessing such a phenomenon. And it did not hurt! So, it was exciting.
“Fiends… Two of them at least,” Chao muttered. His special vision could pick up the trail of two mighty behemoths.
The qi they radiated stood out like ink in clear wine.
Perhaps he’d see them just around the corner.
Were they Imperfect Heaven 2nd order?
No, they were at least 3rd order, or higher! The auras were just as strong as the Dusk Valley Lion King’s.
But with the creepy auras, the smell of the yang-aspected treasure also got stronger.
Chao advanced through the darkness step by step, trying his best to keep the little lemur placated. The stealth talismans he used would hopefully keep them hidden, but you never knew when the gap in strength was so far apart.
Finally, after crossing a precarious bridge, naturally formed by a fallen stalactite over a narrow but deep chasm, Chao carefully exited into a cavern larger than any he had seen before in these caves.
He stood on a thin ledge at the very end of the cavern, a bit up on the wall so he had a better view of the place with the qi in his eyes.
Beneath, two titans were fighting.
One was a Chaosfiend with four heads, one of which had a giant hole in the forehead but somehow still moving. The other was a Voidfiend, a gigantic snake seemingly made out of bones and exposed flesh, constricting around the Chaosfiend as if trying to crush it to pieces.