Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 173. Irrational Existences.
The sudden appearance of two youths and the subsequent deaths of three martial masters of the fifth rank caused all those in the close vicinity to pause momentarily. Be it Abdain’s men or the White Sword elites, they were all equally shocked and bewildered by what they were seeing. Those two boys had come seemingly out of nowhere and then, one of them had killed three powerful martial masters one after another as if it was the most natural thing to do. All those present had thought they were more or less aware of the strengths of those two boys, but now they were beginning to realize that those two still had far more cards hidden in their sleeves than they had shown so far.
Yet, this almost illusory moment of stillness continued only for the briefest of split-seconds before the flow of time returned to normal. There were no shouts or yells, but Abdain’s men reacted resolutely. No matter if those kids were able to somehow ambush and kill three of their comrades, the brats had put themselves in the middle of their formation while doing so, far away from those northerners. Their strength was impressive, but they were too young and too rash in their decisions. Once they saw an opportunity, they jumped at it without considering the next move like utter fools.
At the very least, that was what those elites of Abdain’s were thinking as the closest eight of them turned and attacked Laien and Yin from all directions. They were already struggling in this battle hard enough, so they were fully intent on attacking with all their strength in order to quickly get rid of the two nuisances. However, never would have they expected the amount of chaos, confusion, and death that those two adolescent youths would bring to their group in the next moments.
At the moment when the eight men turned and attacked them, Laien landed his last step and stopped by Yin’s side. He shivered in a mixture of pleasure and excitement once he sensed how sharp the connection between him and Yin had become. He didn’t need to think or ask anything anymore, he knew Yin’s intentions and Yin knew what he wanted to do, too. It was all hard to describe, but he even felt as if the two of them were sharing their senses on top of exchanging emotions. It hadn’t been like that just a while ago, their Spiritual Bond hadn’t been that clear nor that deep.
Was it that their emotional states were so similar that they had achieved some kind of a significant breakthrough? But why now and not during one of their previous, much more intense battles? Was it perhaps only possible to take this step forward once their Spiritual Bond reached a high enough level? Indeed, it did feel like the change was more of a qualitative one instead of a quantitate one, but truth to be told, neither Laien nor Yin spent any time pondering this question at this time.
“Just a little.” The indistinct intent passed through Laien’s mind. They could handle those eight men even if they stood as they were and waited, but it would be far easier if they took just three steps to one side and disrupted the timing of the incoming attacks ever so slightly. The idea of throwing off the rhythm of your enemies in order to gain an advantage was, of course, something Yin was extremely familiar with, too. However, Yin’s perspective was different as he was a practitioner that was inherently offensively-oriented in contrast to Laien’s preference for defensive maneuvers. It would have been a challenge for the two of them to coordinate seamlessly in terms of positioning alone without many years of combat experience, but they could do so effortlessly.
And, that first little decision that came from Laien’s side was merely the very tip of the iceberg as far as the potential of their Spiritual Bond went. They had for a long time been able to communicate things like their postures in relation to each other, the easiest and hardest spots to defend from Laien’s perspective and the best spots to attack from Yin’s perspective, and even the flow of the entire clash as each of them saw it. Yet, all of those things were flowing far smoother now, far easier and in a way that was as natural as if they were fighting on their own instead of coordinating with each other to such an unthinkably high degree. To them, it was quite an exhilarating experience.
So, when the time to act came not even a full second later, the two of them acted with confidence. Laien spun his spear over his head, the spearhead leaving a trail of stream-like water wherever it passed, while Yin lowered his stance heavily and crossed his swords in front of himself. Momentarily, Yin appeared almost like a crouching beast that was just waiting to pounce onto the first of the fools to approach it. And indeed, before those eight men could get close enough to attack with their swords, Yin jumped forward, aiming at a fire-element martial master of the fifth rank.
Intimidated by the seemingly reckless attack, the man chose to defend while letting the companions he had to the left and right kill that twin-sword-wielding youth. However, he suddenly felt a cold chill when the corner of Yin’s lips twitched the moment he switched to a defensive posture. Was this a mistake on his part? The question occurred to him, but at the same time, he saw the twin swords surge with white lightning. His body moved on its own to defend the attack that was aimed more or less at the lower part of his stomach, but then, something he incomprehensible occurred. The two slashes changed their paths in a way that shouldn’t have been possible and both bypassed his sword.
“Twin Thunder,” Yin mused the name of his sword art half-consciously as the blades sank into the man’s flesh. He made sure to discharge quite a bit of lightning within the man’s body and during that split-second, he shattered the man’s Qi Origin into little bits. Fire-element martial masters had great offensive power and in some rare cases, they could have self-regenerating abilities too. However, their internal defenses were extremely poor. It was due to this reason that Yin wanted to target this man first, it was because there was a very high possibility for him to kill that man in one attack.
“Left, huh?” Yin felt like chuckling. At this point, he no longer cared about behaving in an inappropriate way during a serious battle as the advantage the Spiritual Bond brought to him and Laien was just too dirty. He didn’t need to move his eyes or pay too much attention to his spread aura to know that the two men, one on his left and one on his right, were attacking him. So, he chose his next target according to Laien’s request and moved to the left. Simultaneously, just as he was switching directions, Laien’s spear clashed lightly against the sword of the man to his left.
The man, having expected a far stronger blow as the spear swipe had been coming directly for his neck, nearly stumbled when the attack pretty much slid off his sword and flew further. To make the matters worse, that green-haired monster was about to attack him from a low position while he had just raised his guard to defend. He had seen what happened to his friend when he focused entirely on defense, too, so he didn’t wait at all and swung downwards, covering his sword with a great amount of wind-element Qi. No matter how strange the attacks of that kid were, it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t reach him!
Yin, however, didn’t panic at all. He softened his grip on the sword in his right hand and quickly flipped it around. He then quickly twisted his body leftwards, allowing his center of gravity to get dislocated for the briefest of times. Since the man had just blocked a high attack from Laien, the current slash of his was moving downwards and from the man’s right to the left, or from Yin’s perspective, from the left to the right. Taking a full-strength blow from a martial master of the fourth rank would be quite painful, so if at all possible, Yin wasn’t planning on getting hit by it cleanly.
The next instant, Yin met the slash with the reverse-held sword in his right hand. He had the blades meet just by the hilt of his own sword and after withstanding the primary shock of the clash, he allowed the attack to slide away alongside the length of his sword’s blade. His eyes twitched a little when the wind-element Qi started cutting into his hand and the side of his arm, leaving dozens of small cuts everywhere it went. Thankfully, his body was quite sturdy and it appeared to have become even more durable, likely after that mysterious event in the Forbidden Lands. In result, he got away relatively scot-free instead of having his arm ripped to shreds, much to the attacker’s surprise.
The price of this maneuver, however, was that he had lost balance in mid-air. But, having fully expected this to happen, he didn’t resist the remnant force of the clash of the swords and allowed his body to be quickly pushed down to the ground. The moment he got close to the ground, he hit the earth with his left hand and using this point to propel himself, he twisted his body rightwards. Before the man could launch a second attack, he already kicked the ground with his leg and accelerated once again, simultaneously flipping the sword in his right hand to the normal position.
He then slashed the man’s stomach, ripping his internal organs, spine, and Qi Origin to shreds all at once. Like that, a martial master of the fourth rank and the second of the eight enemies at hand fell, all in under one second. “Bang,” Yin called out within his mind an instant before the sound of the clash behind him reached his ears. The heavy sound alone was enough of a proof that there was a lot of strength behind that singular exchange. But, Yin knew that it wasn’t the time for him to stop.
He turned around in haste, just in time to see how Laien’s spear escapes his foe’s sword in a water-flow-like manner, only for the smooth withdrawing movement to suddenly turn into a thrust, forcing the man to defend abruptly. The thrust subsequently managed to leave a relatively deep scratch across the man’s chest, but nothing more than that. Yet, what threw the man off even more than the spear arts he couldn’t follow in the slightest was that Laien didn’t withdraw his spear again and in fact, he stepped in close without putting his guard up. He was never given the chance to solve this riddle though as the very next split-second, his head went flying alongside a surge of lightning.
Meanwhile, the remaining five men had just slashed through the unexpectedly durable stream of water Laien had left behind a second ago and were charging at them. The situation seemed dangerous and in fact, it was very much so. If either Laien or Yin made a mistake, they would pay for it dearly given the reckless approach they had taken, but they didn’t feel like it was possible for them to screw anything up as they were now. Unchangingly, there was a smile on Laien’s lips as he turned around and faced the five incoming martial masters. The smile grew slightly wider when Yin, who moved behind him, stored the most recent corpse in his interspatial ring so that it wouldn’t get in the way. Truly, fighting alongside Yin felt so good that Laien almost felt guilty about it.
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“No martial techniques yet, huh?” Laien mused half-consciously while preparing to swipe with his spear from left to right. Like always, he kept his aura filled with the essence of the Aspect of Awareness spread out, so he could tell that those five didn’t gather enough Qi to launch any sudden martial techniques and naturally, he knew that Yin’s perception of the situation was the same. “Okay,” he chuckled inwardly and swept out horizontally with his water-engulfed spear. The blow didn’t have enough reach to endanger the leftmost of the five men, so it fell onto the next one in the line. The man happened to be an earth-element martial master of the third rank, so while he did manage to block the swipe with his sword, the spear quickly slid away from his blade and moved further to the right, though admittedly at a much slower speed and with less strength than before.
However, Laien was far beyond the point where his Water Flow Spear Art relied on pure strength and speed. So, he did with a cool head something that looked nigh-suicidal to those five men. He withdrew his spear ever so slightly and right afterward, he actually leaped forward in one large step and thrust his spear slightly to the left. The astonished martial master of the third rank wanted to defend, but he discovered that the water which still lingered around his sword was restricting his movements. He felt as if he was trying to pull his sword and hands against the flow of a great river, so by the time he managed to break through those restraints, his side had been pierced with the spear.
Admittedly, the spearhead had only sunk into his sturdy body halfway thanks to the protection of the earth-element Qi. However, in the end, he was merely a martial master of the third rank without any significant insights. When the Qi and spiritual energy which had forced its way into his body suddenly transformed into an extremely cold mass and started to spread in all directions, he was helpless to stop it. He couldn’t block this invading energy at all and the best of his efforts was akin to leaving some wet cloth in the way of the flooding water. The quality of his Qi and of this invading energy was simply far too different for him to be able to put up any fight once it had invaded his body.
At the same time as the martial master of the third rank had his chest frozen from inside out, the man in the middle roared furiously and slashed at Laien. His sword of fire was fueled by the Qi of the fifth Realm of Heroes and in his anger, he had put all his weight and strength behind that one downward slash. The blow was mighty indeed, but Laien’s eyes smiled as he turned his body to the right and raised the shaft of his spear, bringing both the steel and the water surrounding it upwards.
The two weapons clashed with the sword hitting dangerously close to the back end of the spear, just a little bit below Laien’s right hand. Immediately, the fire and water began sizzling and fighting for supremacy, causing hot steam to rise up into the air. The blow was heavy indeed, but the slight smile didn’t disappear from Laien’s face as he tugged his left hand in front of his chest and while completing the turn to the right, rested the shaft of his spear on his left shoulder. The fiery sword pressed relentlessly, but all it could do was slide down the shaft to then slash the empty air.
“This crazy…!”
The fire-element martial master of the fifth rank was furious. His good friend had just been killed by Laien, but his mind was still clear enough for him to realize one thing. The spear arts of this kid were far beyond his own sword arts! Moreover, his Qi seemed to be incapable of overcoming the spiritual energy of the kid’s, too! Had this been a one-on-one fight, then he would have felt no confidence in winning it. However, by defending in this crazy manner, the black-haired kid had shown so many openings both from the front and behind!
The very next attack that came Laien’s way was from a wind-element martial master of the fourth rank who had been running to the right of the middle of the five of them. The man started his attack when Laien had still been neutralizing the slash of the fiery sword, so by the time Laien turned fully, he was already about to slash his torso. With how little time it would take for his sword to cross those tens of centimeters, he didn’t think he would need to fear any attacks from that second monster. So, he wanted to make sure to quickly kill that spear-wielding freak of a child in one blow.
His heart seemed to almost burst from the pressure as he watched his attack approach the kid’s body, and it thumped with elation once the steel connected with the boy’s arm. Yet, the next instant his right hand felt something weird as the familiar sensation of cutting flesh and bone wasn’t there. The next split-second, the change was registered by his eyes and he saw that under the torn sleeve and the ripped middle of the boy’s shirt, the boy’s skin had turned unnaturally pale, almost jade in color. Much more alarmingly, however, his sword and his wind blade left merely a long white scratch alongside the kid’s skin instead of cutting him in half as it should have!
He couldn’t help but shudder when he noticed that the kid smirked at him just as the rest of his body turned to the same jade-white color. He saw how the boy’s black eyes turned silvery, almost starry-sky-like, and how his black hair all turned silvery-white with the exception of a few strands of black. Before he could express his shock, the boy’s muscles tensed up. The kid, apparently using the spear which he had pierced into the ground behind himself, lifted himself up into the air and upside down only for his spear to be slashed by the sword of flames of the man who had been behind him.
That wind-element martial master knew that he could do something, that he could attack, but his mouth opened when he saw the boy calmly lift the spear up in a half-spin while at the same time putting his hand on their leader’s shoulder to stabilize himself in mid-air. He only moved once he saw the spearhead coming straight at his face in a light swing, which he promptly blocked. Still, a sense of foreboding overcame him once he realized he had lost his cool and stopped paying enough attention to his surroundings. Once he sensed the danger nearby, he didn’t think at all and moved to dodge purely on instinct, what in consequence saved his life as the incoming sword of lightning left only a mild wound on the side of his stomach.
At this time, Yin clicked his tongue once he failed to kill the man in one blow. He wanted to save some Qi so he hadn’t approached with Lightning Steps and hadn’t used any martial techniques to attack, but the man’s reaction ended up being faster than he had predicted, so he missed the kill. It was regrettable, but he had other things to worry about than finishing the job right now as for example, that martial master of the fifth rank who was right to his left. The man, who still had Laien supporting himself on top of his shoulder, chose to ignore Laien and slashed at him.
Yin understood that he was in no position to dodge or defend in any efficient way. Yet, he kept smiling as he employed his Lightning Steps and moved behind the man’s back.
“Fool,” the martial-master of the fifth rank snorted inwardly. Did those two freaks think they were the only ones able to cooperate? This green-haired one had shown his Lightning Steps earlier, so as the cream of the crop of the elites under Abdain, how could they have no plan to counteract it? He couldn’t see it, but he could tell through his aura. The companion of his which was left behind his back was ready to cut that detestable green-haired monster down just as he reappeared!
However, little did he know that he was the one who was still far underestimating the multiplicative strength that came from Laien and Yin fighting in a battle together. Just as his attack missed due to Yin using Lightning Steps to dodge, the man felt Laien’s hand jerk his shoulder as the boy readjusted his position in the air. Then, just barely, he saw how the now silvery-haired kid formed a platform of water under his feet and to his utter shock, flew past him like an arrow, just ten centimeters over his head. To top it off, if he wasn’t mistaken, it looked like the kid was taking a thrust with his spear at the same time! In this chaos, in those split-seconds, without looking or planning in advance… it couldn’t be!
And yet, the next second he had his body ripped into two halves by that green-haired monster’s slash and at the same time, he could tell that the man he had been counting on had been impaled by the second of those freakish children. He cursed in his mind, but weirdly enough, he fell to the ground with a smirk on his face. He was killed, but he was forced to admit that he was killed by true monsters. If the spawns of Djinn truly existed in this world as the ancient texts claimed, then those two truly deserved to be called such!
With six of them falling in a matter of seconds, the remaining two martial masters were frozen as the two latest corpses of their companions fell to the ground. They had no courage left to attack Laien and Yin, but they couldn’t very well afford to turn around and flee. Unfortunately for them, this moment of hesitation on their part was more than enough for Laien and Yin to reorganize themselves and attack again.
Once Yin sprinted and attacked that wounded wind-element martial master of the fourth rank, the man was overcome with so much fear that he forgot to use his brain. Had he been fighting against someone like Julien, an adult powerful expert, then he would have been able to steel his resolve and fight to the death. However, against those two irrational existences, he was unable to keep his cool. Be it the way those two fought or the plethora of abilities they displayed one after another, he found all of those things to be too ridiculous to be true.
Thus, when he attempted to block Yin’s attack with his sword, Yin used his Elemental Sword of Lightning, Thunder, to bypass those defenses and wound him gravely with the first slash, then finished him off with a second, normal attack in order to conserve some Qi. After all, with no immediate pressure to speak of, Yin felt no need to force himself to kill the man with one attack anymore. He could have done so had he wanted to prove a point, but he couldn’t be bothered.
Finally, the last of the eight men appeared to have lost it as he screamed ‘Devils!’, turned around and tried to run away back to the protection of the rest of his companions. By the time he took four or five steps, though, a surge of ice reached his feet and froze them momentarily. He did try to use his fire-element Qi to melt the ice and continue running away, but before he could do so, he was beheaded by Yin who had quickly caught up to him in a few large leaps.
“…”
“…”
No one could be sure why and how, but at this moment, soon after the desperate cry of the last man to die rang throughout the battlefield, everyone fell silent. In the very center of their clash, there was now an open area free of martial masters. Seven corpses laid there, while in the middle two youths stood unperturbed, smiling even. The two youths exchanged a brief glance, then took a quick look around them. And, just this act alone caused dozens of enemies and allies alike to flinch nervously.
Those who had seen that entire exchange, which from finish to end had taken no more than five seconds, were even more terrified. Eight elite martial masters, of which two were martial masters of the fifth rank, had all died so quickly it could be said that they had been slaughtered one-sidedly. Additionally, those responsible for their deaths looked like adolescent boys, young teenagers at best. They weren’t even wounded, they looked fresh… and they were smiling! Amidst this bloody battle where everyone laid their lives on the line, those two boys were smiling joyously! This sight was far more horrifying than if they had stood there bathed in blood!
And, when those two smiling devils moved, about to join the fray once again, the hearts of all those around them shook with indescribable fear.