Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 147. One Attack!
“What’s up, what’s up?!” Abdain laughed and smashed downwards, towards Jasmine’s torso with his left hand. Once again, his first whistled through the air as Jasmine dodged his blow at the last second. However, he cared little about the miss and didn’t bother with defense either; he allowed the momentum to carry him and smashed his fist into the ground, his raw strength causing the ground to sink in and crack and over. At the same time, he felt a single thick tongue of flames hit him across his legs. Yet, he laughed again when the attack crashed against his Iron Skin martial art and dissipated without doing more than burning another bit of his clothes.
“Don’t you get it yet?” he asked boomingly, both his smile and expression looking equally bloodthirsty and battle-crazed. “Your attacks are too weak! You can’t even scratch my Iron Skin, much less wound me critically! Just give yourself up, woman!” he shouted, but despite blabbering his fighting didn’t get sloppy in the slightest. He pursued Jasmine immediately and didn’t allow her to gain any distance, nor did she allow her to catch a breath.
Ah, that exhausted image! Those scratches and bruises, those cuts all over her body! And yet she wasn’t giving up and kept fighting him with all she had! She surely understood how pointless it was, but she kept going despite feeling exhausted after four straight hours of intense fighting, despite running low on Qi and despite the plethora of mild wounds all over her body! This sight was truly causing his blood to boil! It was more pleasurable and exciting than anything else in the world!
“Show me your blood!” he yelled again and slashed out with the sturdy broadsword, sending it flying straight downwards. Just like he expected, Jasmine moved slightly to the side in order to dodge it; she was obviously trying to conserve strength as she was leading him further and further towards the south-east, to the lands of the Ruishi Federation. Yet, they were still thousands of kilometers away from it… and it wasn’t like he was planning to toy with her for all that long.
The meat… it’s only good when it’s fresh and juicy, still lively! The moment it started reeking of despair, it would be spoiled! Thus, to make sure that his meal would be kept fresh, he attacked seriously. He allowed himself to lose his balance and the sword-attack, what in a normal fight would have been a critical mistake. This time around, however, he used the opportunity as he was falling forwards and struck out with his left hand, his first meeting the arms which Jasmine hurriedly crossed across her chest.
Although there was no weight and not all that much Qi behind this punch, the blow still sent Jasmine flying into the air. The striking force of a strength-oriented marital master of the sixth rank was no joke! Her body crashed against some of the trees that were in the way, sending her flying sideways almost like a ragdoll. Finally, she stopped on a thick trunk of a tree, which she heavily dented with her back as she crashed into it.
After coughing up a mouthful of blood, Jasmine cursed silently. “My right arm is gone along with several ribs,” the thought crossed her mind. She would have never fallen for such an obvious attack when she was in her top shape, but she was too exhausted. Holding this man back for four to five hours? If he insisted on chasing Laien and Yin, there would have been nothing she could have done to stop him! She was barely holding onto her life as Abdain kept attacking her…! If it wasn’t for her immense experience and the agility of her body, she would have long since been killed by him!
“Am I going to be able to do it?” she asked herself. It would have been great had she developed some great single-target martial art of immense power, but even though she had gained some new insights thanks to those two boys, she was already far too old to quickly increase her strength. The best she had managed to do was come up with a half-complete, half-assed technique… but it was the best shot at surviving that she had. She wouldn’t be able to win head-on… so she needed to rely on deception, technique, skill, and luck!
She had already given the man a thorough impression that she had no means of wounding him… though that one last attack wasn’t something she planned to receive. Still, it was the perfect proof of Abdain growing overconfident and careless. As the same battle-rage-type, she understood that when one allowed emotions to take control of him, he would inevitably show some openings. Those openings wouldn’t perhaps show in their immediate battle style, but they would be akin to a chain of events that one somehow overlooked and was led into without realizing. This one tendency of types like her and Abdain was what she was willing to bet on, with the stakes being her life and death!
“What, not running anymore?” Abdain asked with a laugh, the fire in his eyes flickering in a mixture of content and disappointment. Did she give up? Did the woman famed as the Death Reaper of the countless battlefields lose her heart? If so, then it really would be a boring ending.
“If I don’t run,” Jasmine said with a smirk. “Will you stop attacking me?” she asked, deciding to refrain from attempting to provoke Abdain too much. If she suddenly turned talkative and attempted to rill him up, he might sense that she had a plan of some kind and put his guard up. She couldn’t allow that to happen or she would be giving up her only chance to survive!
“If you don’t run, I’ll kill you either way,” Abdain replied with a laugh. “Just don’t let those eyes of yours die before that happens. I hate rotten meat the most,” he added, readying himself to finish this duel. It had been fun and all, but everything in too large of an amount would stop tasting as good.
Jasmine snorted, tightening the grip on the scimitar she was holding in her left hand. She had saved up one-fifth of her Qi especially for this moment, the most of which she poured towards her left hand, making it so that she could use it at any time. She was fully aware that Abdain would be able to sense what she was doing, but she had no other choice. She wouldn’t be able to accumulate enough Qi in an instant and still pull off the half-complete martial technique of hers without doing some beforehand preparation. This risk… she had no choice but to try and use it to her advantage.
Thus, after steeling her mind, she kicked the ground and leaped towards Abdain at the top speed she could reach at the distance of a dozen meters or so. Just like she expected, she was met with a broad swipe from Abdain’s broadsword, which despite its simplicity was very hard to deal with. All other times, she would have attempted to dodge either to the side or by lowering her stance so much her torso would be almost touching the ground. However, as of now, there was no ‘next time’ for her to be concerned with, so instead of planning her fourth or fifth move in advance, she traded the future safety for the immediate advantage and leaped upwards, jumping over the broadsword’s swipe.
“Last-ditch effort, eh?” Abdain thought half-consciously, within the split-seconds that it took for this clash, like the final one, to play out. “She’s aiming for my neck, does she want to try and get my spine? So naïve,” the thought crossed his mind, but his body reacted instinctively. He wouldn’t give Jasmine a chance to even hit him, not when the woman was making her last desperate attempt. Thus, he let go of his broadsword and forced his body to come to a halt, then sent his left arm in an uppercut, aiming straight at the scimitar which Jasmine thrust at him.
Still, this kind of a maneuver had little probability of actually succeeding fully. With Jasmine’s rapier erupting with a large amount of highly concentrated, almost pin-like fire-element Qi, the blade ended up being merely deflected to the side instead of being rendered entirely harmless. It was almost as if it was yet another of those slippery tongues of fire that Jasmine loved to use, but far more concentrated and far hotter.
As such, the scimitar’s blade flew forwards, towards Abdain’s neck. It collided with his Iron Skin… but after struggling for the briefest amount of time, it simply slid off Abdain’s neck, leaving a white scratch on its right side. The penetrative power at this level, even if it had hit perfectly, it wouldn’t have been able to do more than leave a small wound.
It was to be expected, though. If a half-baked martial technique could pierce through the defenses of an earth-element martial master of the sixth rank, then Abdain would have died a long time ago.
With Jasmine’s attack having failed to harm him just now, Abdain didn’t waste time and counterattacked in an instant. Thanks to his previous movement being a compact one, he was able to follow up with little to no delay. He had allowed his broadsword to fall, but since Jasmine was literally flying at him, he didn’t need the longer reach. He simply punched out with his right fist and smashed it into Jasmine’s chest, crushing her bones and ripping her internal organs into shreds.
With that, this duel was over… or so he thought for a split-second when he noticed that Jasmine had similarly let go of her weapon and grabbed onto his upper arm with her left hand. This allowed her to not be blown away, but she paid a heavy price for doing so. Not only had she increased the seriousness of the wounds Abdain’s punch gave her, but moreover she dislocated her left shoulder, broke her wrist along with all five fingers of her left hand and had all her nails ripped to shreds.
However, she forced herself to ignore both this pain and the screaming of her body. She twisted her body and forcefully pulled herself forward as fast as she could, before Abdain’s follow-up attack could arrive. Her torso slid against the man's right forearm and at the same time, ignoring another burst of pain, she thrust out with her broken and mangled right hand in a spear-like manner, gathering the remnants of the Qi in her body on the tips of her middle and index fingers. She could already see Abdain’s left arm coming towards her to push her away, so she grit her teeth and used all the strength that remained within her to make her thrust just a little bit faster.
At this last moment, the advantage of making her ‘final attack’ into a throwaway one showed itself. That briefest time it took Abdain to realize that the fight didn’t end and that he was still in danger allowed her to be just a little bit faster. As a result, her attack hit first; her two fingers plowed straight into Abdain’s right eye, sinking into the eye-socket and burning away everything within.
The next instant, Abdain’s left-hand shove arrived and pushed her away. With no will or strength to keep holding onto Abdain’s arm, she was blown away and after flying in the air for a few meters, she crashed against the ground and proceeded to roll for a few meters before stopping at the trunk of one of the many trees in this forest.
“Fuck,” Jasmine cursed in her mind, unable to as much as breathe, much less force any words to come out of her mouth. “I’m too hurt to even move…. if I don’t receive treatment soon, I’m probably just going to die like that. Luckily, my heart didn’t rupture from that last punch or I would have died already… but it probably won’t matter at all,” she thought to herself, her consciousness slowly slipping away. She could no longer feel pain and everything in front of her eyes was getting cloudy and dark; undoubtedly, she was very close to losing consciousness.
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“At least I took that bastard down with me,” she consoled herself. “It’s good enough… my life for his. If those two can actually arrive in the Holy Union safely and pull through with the alliance, then everything will be a lot easier for our side,” she told herself, but she wasn’t even clear-headed enough to consider whether everyone would still want to go through with their plan after those unexpected events. Yet, wouldn’t have wanted to think about anything unpleasant anyway.
“I wonder if they won’t try to capture me to use me as a trading chip,” just as her mind was about to slip away, the hopeful question crossed her mind. She might have lived close to a thousand years, but there were still many things she wanted to do. She wanted to fight many more battles, to train many other disciples, to watch Arslan grow and to guide him on his path as Mustafa’s successor… and with Reian… maybe even someday, she would have given in and become his woman and had his children… there were so many things she was yet to do! She didn’t want to die!
“Fk’ing hell,” a voice that shouldn’t have been there reached her ears, causing her barely present consciousness to strip up once more. Perhaps due to the surge of adrenaline, her vision cleared for a few seconds and she saw an indistinct, bulky figure standing above her. “That was dangerous. If I didn’t reinforce the interior of my body before you attacked, I might have died,” the voice said without laughing, sounding rather impressed. However, such a thing brought her no comfort.
Her lips and throat moved, but all that came out was blood and no words. How could that be…? She had staked her everything on this one attack and she had succeeded, but she still failed to kill that man? Blood was flowing down his face and his left eye was gone, burned out, but this could be easily healed! Did she really achieve nothing…? Did she trade her life no gain at all?
“I’ll remember your name, Death Reaper,” Abdain said respectfully as he lunged downwards with his broadsword and skewered Jasmine’s chest, destroying her heat at once. One last mouthful of blood was forced out of Jasmine’s throat by the force of the blow before unwillingness disappeared from her eyes, which then turned bleak as the last breath of life left her body.
“Now,” Abdain murmured after storing Jasmine’s corpse in his interspatial ring. “Were those two kids captured?” he wondered and looked around with his one eye. A few water-element spiritual masters were coming his way by now. Those people were weak and useless in battle, but they would be more than enough to heal that wound Jasmine gave him. After they were done, he would see what the reports were saying and if needed, he would join the chase of those two boys.
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At the roughly same time, Laien and Yin were getting closer and closer to the cliffs. They were already very close to their goal, but they had two huge things to worry about.
On one hand, they had exhausted themselves mentally by allowing the five readers to steadily catch up to them. In consequence, the five were merely four hundred metres behind them; just a little bit more and they would get close enough to attack them safely.
On the other hand, now that they were only an eight or nine kilometers away from the cliffs of the mountains, they could see the area well enough… but neither of them saw any signs of the secret shortcut that Yin mentioned! If they didn’t spot the area they needed to go to within the next minute, then they would reach the dead-end and their whole plan would shatter before they could as much as attempt to go through with it.
In front of them were only mountains, all of which were beginning to rise sharply towards the sky at the mark of a few more kilometers. Climbing up… they might as well try and fight those five men as the final result would be the same; death. Yet, no matter how much they strained their eyes, they couldn’t see anything that looked remotely like a path they could ride into. To top it off, they were starting to get too distracted and nervous and they started slowing down dangerously. If they lost one hundred more meters of distance, then they would also meet a pitiable end.
“Where, where?” Laien thought restlessly. He would still be able to accept it if they tried their luck and died, but if they ended up falling in such a stupid way, then he would never be able to rest in peace! “Let’s think about it calmly. There isn’t anything resembling a path, so it either doesn’t exist or it’s hidden really well. I refuse to accept the first option, so it must be hidden. However, nothing grows here and there aren’t any unnatural piles of stones, so where can the entrance be?” he wondered, aware that each passing second was bringing him and Yin closer to crashing into the cliffs.
“If we can’t see it now, could it be hidden with an illusion? With something like that ability Raphael used when fighting with me?” he questioned. He was ready to assume that his guess was the correct one, but even then, they had no time to slowly probe the mountainside and look for the entrance. They could only ride into that path at the speed of nearly four hundred kilometers per hour. If they ended up not finding anything, they would plant themselves into the rocky walls head-on.
“Come,” Yin said aloud, making sure that Laien heard him properly. Although he had understood what Laien was thinking, he couldn’t be sure that Laien would notice what he wanted him to do when the two of them were under so much stress. “I’m going to pick a spot as I remember from the map. Use your aura to look for the entrance,” he said resolutely, seeing no other way than to try their chances in this manner. If they still couldn’t find the shortcut despite that, then it could only mean that they weren’t destined to find it to begin with.
“Okay,” Laien replied quietly. They had about twenty seconds left until they would reach within three hundred meters of the wall of cliffs, so he didn’t want to waste time on needless words. “My aura is quite a lot stronger than Yin’s thanks to my slightly fused Qi and spiritual energy… but if simply looking with it was enough to find this path, then wouldn’t someone have found it in all those thousands of years? Especially if it’s still a safe path early on,” he deduced, though it wasn’t because he was so calm and collected that he could think in this manner. Simply, he had a weird feeling that using his aura in any usual ways would be pointless and thus, he added a theory to his feeling.
“Let’s assume it’s really something like a layer of illusions. If it works in the same way our aura cloaking does, then using normal aura or strands of aura won’t be helpful. I need a more forceful method… but will I be able to do it?” he wondered but had no time to hesitate. The twenty seconds passed and the idea which just appeared in his mind needed to be executed.
As such, he didn’t think twice and took control over his aura. First, he withdrew all of it deep within his body, then started accumulating it as fast as he could. In the beginning, he had no idea if it was possible to actually ‘accumulate’ a larger amount of something like an aura, but when he sensed that it indeed was happening, he felt relief. However, he couldn’t relax just yet as at the same time, he felt how incredibly large of a strain this act brought to his mind. It was far worse than his early days of spiritual training; he felt as if his head was going to split into thousands of little pieces. He even lost his balance and came to feel dizzy, but luckily, just keeping his legs tightly pressed against the sides of the saddle was enough to keep his body in place.
The moment he couldn’t hold on anymore, he stopped trying to compress his aura and instead, willed for it to shoot outwards. His aura responded immediately and eagerly as it spread from his body at an incredible speed; if one could see the aura, he would see an explosion of it spreading with Laien as a center, sweeping in all directions. The weird sensation assaulted the five riders behind them as unbeknownst to Laien, they came to feel a bit lightheaded. Still, more importantly, the moment his aura explosion hit the cliffs in front of him and Yin, it caused a part of them that was eight or ten meters up from the ground level to shake and turn somewhat transparent.
“It’s there!” Laien rejoiced. Luckily, he was already regaining the clarity of his mind, so he wouldn’t have much trouble with directing Bellicose to do what he wanted. However, the path was very apparently too small for two war horses to ride side by side. Given their respective abilities, it would be better if Yin went first. He thought that and sent over the intent that he wouldn’t accept any arguments, after what he slowed down by half a beat and directed his horse to the right.
Yin, on the other hand, sped up as much as he could and made his brown war horse jump. The magical beast felt that it was crazy, but it had noticed the strange place just the second before, so paired up with the loyalty it felt towards Yin, it didn’t refuse to obey and jumped up at this extremely high speed, heading straight towards what normally looked like a rocky wall. Before Yin and his horse even landed, Laien made Bellicose follow them.
The five ruby-golden-robed riders who were a few hundred meters behind failed to comprehend what in the world were those two boys doing. Yet, their mouths went agape when they saw first Yin, then Laien go right through a part of the mountain and disappear. The five of them might have been confused for longer, but the illusion which kept the path hidden shattered the moment the two boys passed through it when it was destabilized due to the assault of Laien’s aura.
“#$%#@!” the long-haired man in the forefront cursed hideously. “Come, we chase them!” he yelled without looking at the other long-haired man. He roused his wind-element Qi and leaped off from his horse, jumping at charging into the hidden path at a great speed. Thankfully, his companion didn’t waste any time either and used his own wind-element Qi to follow up in step. The two of them could run at the speed up to six hundred kilometers per hour at short distances, so if they hurried, they should be able to quickly catch up to those boys!
The boys’ war horses weren’t at all suited to traversing a path that was so tight and full of turns, so it should have been simple. However, when they saw many meters tall masses of ice that were left in the middle of the path, blocking it entirely, their expressions sank. Although it wouldn’t be hard for them to deal with this ice, it would still cause the rocks to collapse if they pushed through recklessly!
Thus, they had no choice but to limit the strength they were using and strike out repeatedly, cutting the masses of ice apart section by section instead of blowing right through them with one powerful martial technique. They were still going at the speed of almost five hundred kilometers per hour though… but when they saw that ahead, that ice-wielding boy started to collapse the upper parts of the path with his magic in addition to leaving the masses of ice behind, they felt like cursing. How in the world was a kid in the mortal realm able to create so much ice without getting exhausted instantly…? It truly looked like the strength of those boys they’d heard about wasn’t exaggerated!
“He won’t be able to keep that up for long,” both long-haired men came to the same conclusion. They needed to stop those two before they reached too deep into the Forbidden Lands, but still, they weren’t willing to try their luck and jump up high. It wasn’t known what was the exact height at which danger of death appeared, so as they feared to die randomly, they could only keep slashing at the obstacles the black-haired kid was throwing their way.
Alas, the five of them were quite wrong in their assumptions. Assuming that the secret path was indeed fifty kilometers like Yin said, Laien was confident that he would be able to keep releasing his spells to the very end. After all, he wasn’t doing much more than creating regular ice that was only a little thicker and more durable than normal. His energy consumption was minimal and unlike common spiritual practitioners or spiritual masters, he could also use his Qi to freely create this ice. If it was just to obstruct those two men in their tracks, then he could manage to do it for that long.
In this way, the stalemate continued as Laien kept on creating obstacles and the two men kept on persistently destroying them little by little. Due to that, the two men failed to close the distance between them and their two targets by too much. However, it still was incredibly dangerous; when ten minutes passed and finally, Laien and Yin saw the exit of this path, the two men were merely a few dozen meters behind them. Were it not for how many turns there were in this small path, then they would have probably already assaulted them with some kind of a large-scale martial technique.
“Hide your aura,” Yin’s reminder brought Laien back to reality. He did as he was told, by this point too tired to think about anything else. He used his last remaining energy to create the last layer of ice, one that wasn’t easy to see through, then charged out of the small passage and just like Yin, immediately turned to the right.
The two of them found themselves riding through an unnaturally flat and quite spacious road that seemed to be carved right through the mountains. They had little time to appreciate the scenery, though, as two seconds after they did, the two men charged out of the passage, their attacks carrying with them many shards of ice and pieces of rocks that flew in all directions.
Luckily for Laien and Yin, the large road turned strongly to the right just a few hundred meters further in. Before the two men had a chance to attack them, they disappeared behind the turn. “Get them, hurry up and get them!” the leading one of the two men yelled and charged in pursuit. On a path like this one, catching those two would take them mere seconds! They didn’t want to get any closer to the core of the Forbidden Lands, so they needed to capture them as soon as possible!