"How the hell are we supposed to kill this thing?!" Jie yelled as more cracks formed on its surface and began to widen.

"This one senses a powerful artifact within it. Perhaps it can be shut down?" Ithilix suggested.

Jie formed a dragonfist and punched the pommel of the blood sword she'd left stuck inside it.

The blood sword exploded into the creature. The monster's frozen outer surface shattered like glass and its liquid form reeled back, splitting the monster almost in half as lightning arced over it.

Seriously? Even indirect strikes power it up? Jie thought bitterly.

It splashed backward, exposing a metal ring the size of Jie's waist, covered in runes that surrounded a large violet sphere. It hummed and liquid metal rushed in around it as the creature reformed.

"There!" Ithilix yelled, "That is the artifact this one sensed!"

The humming intensified as the creature drew in more treasure and its size swelled. It levitated off the ground and formed into a ball of liquid metal as weapons and other treasures that refused to melt swirled around inside it, including Jie's blood sword.

Violet fire enveloped the orb and a wave of heat washed over the room. Jie's friends cried out and retreated as far as they could as the floor below the hovering sphere glowed and began to melt. Several scrolls near it caught fire.

"Leave our treasure alone you jerk!" Pan Tian shouted as she lashed out with several arcs of moonlight qi that left only shallow gouges which quickly healed.

Jie held her remaining blood sword at the ready as globules of liquid metal stretched out of the sphere and then split off. Hundreds of them. They then reshaped into razors of liquid metal and started to rotate around the orb, slowly at first, but picking up speed until they howled around the sphere like a hurricane of sharp, fiery death that chewed up the ground and treasures around it.

"Ithilix, can you sense where its power core is?" Jie asked.

Ithilix's antennae quivered. "It's moving it around in the larger sphere," she said, "by the time this one says where it is, it will already be somewhere else."

"Awesome," Jie said.

She stared at the cyclone of whirling death that gained intensity with every passing moment. She couldn't hope to parry even a fraction of the blades. Especially not while trying to carve her way through the monster's core.

There was only one thing Jie could think of. One way they might win. Though it would mean certain death for all of them if she failed.

Jie stored her blood sword in her ring with a thought as qi armor sparked to life around her. She clenched her fists as snarling, crackling dragon lightning qi ignited into dragonfists around them and she prepared to do something only a genius or a moron would ever even attempt.

Guess I'll find out which I am... the dragon advances, Jie thought.

She bent her knees as she pushed more qi into her lightning step and qi armor skills. Then, like an arrow loosed from a bow, she sprang forward. Jie leaped at the bubbling, burning orb of liquid metal, trailing arcs of lightning behind her. She roared at it, propelled by some primal instinct as metal blades howled all around her, moving so fast that the air shrieked.

Blade after blade smashed into her, liquid metal thudding into her and splattering against her qi armor with such force they knocked her off course. But, she formed a lightning step platform in mid-air and surged into the heart of the storm.

Jie gritted her teeth as the countless blades shredded her qi armor, draining it rapidly as she struggled to replenish it and failed to keep pace with the damage. In moments, it would break, and boiling razors of molten metal would shred her to pieces.

Jie reached the orb and struck out. Snarling dragon lightning qi met liquid metal and exploded outward, sending it spraying away even as dragon lightning arced all around her, empowering the treasure monster further.

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Jie saw no sign of the core, so she struck again. The blow landed with explosive fury and blasted more liquid metal in every direction even as shards of molten metal continued to slam into her.

Jie's qi armor dropped alarmingly low. Moments away from shattering completely as her strike empowered the metal monstrosity even further.

But, she saw it. A small piece of the creature's core. The outer ring was just barely exposed for a moment before the monster sucked it deeper into its body. Jie targeted that area and delivered another strike.

The blow detonated with the fury of unrestrained lightning as liquid metal showered the room, splattering against Jie's armor and draining the already failing skill even further. Lightning arced over glowing hot metal as the monster grew even more powerful, but its core was exposed.

Jie grabbed the outer ring of the core even as liquid desperately flowed over the rest of the core, trying to drag it deeper into the monster and away from her.

Jie gripped the ring with single-minded determination even as the monster tried to pull it away from her. But, she'd die before she released it.

Jie's qi armor disintegrated into fragments around her as she formed a lightning step to give herself leverage and kicked off it with all her strength, her fingers still locked in a death grip around the core.

For a heart-stopping moment, Jie didn't move.

Then, the artifact gave all at once and she pulled it free with a mighty heave and a wet sucking noise as she leaped backward. The force of her leap caused her to overbalance in the air. She leaned into it, backflipping from the motion as she soared across the room and landed feet first up on the floor above. A trail of qi armor fragments crackled in her wake and countless cuts and burns marred her skin and robes but she had the core in her grasp.

Jie's elation was short-lived, however, as the violet core hummed louder than ever with an intensity that vibrated her bones.

Coins, liquid metal, one of the chandeliers, and a weapon rack came flying toward her in a tsunami of deadly treasure. Jie ran as she cycled a dragonfist and struck the core. A hairline crack formed from the impact as the wave of treasure shattered a pillar behind her.

Jie struck the core again. More cracks formed. Bigger this time.

A wave of treasure hurtled toward her from ahead as yet more came from behind and the side, surrounding her from every angle as the core's intense humming drew everything metal toward her. Jie cycled a fresh set of qi armor and poured as much qi into it as she could, as she braced for what was coming.

Jie struck the core, widening the cracks. She struck again and at last her fist broke through.

Foreign, violet fire qi seared her hand and exploded out of the hole she'd made in a blinding roar of energy. It washed over her skin and into her meridians where it rushed to her dantian. It dwarfed the scraps her swords had gathered, burning her from the inside out. Jie screamed, but despite the pain she sucked it into her dantian and cycled her qi, trying to refine it as she had before.

Some distant part of her was still aware of the incoming danger through the pain and she dived into a trough of blood in the hope it might at least cool the liquid metal rushing toward her.

The world turned red as she plunged into the thick, sticky red liquid. Violet fire qi lit the trough like the sun as Jie greedily absorbed its energies. An instant later the treasure hit her like a hammer. Liquid metal boiled the blood around her and pressed tight against her qi armor, burning through it faster than she could replenish it as it squeezed her like a vise.

Jie could only hope the blood would cool it enough for her to survive when it inevitably broke through her qi armor.

As when Jie had cultivated before, cultivating rapidly grew painful and the fact she was drawing in violet fire qi of incredible intensity only made it all the more agonizing. It lit her dantian like an inferno as she wrestled with it, forcing it to refine into dragon lightning qi as fast as she could as ever more energy poured into her.

Violet fire spun around her dragon lightning qi, forming a storm cloud of conflicting ferocious energies that threatened to rip her apart.

She spun it faster and faster as even more violet fire qi flooded into her. Her head swam as liquid metal engulfed her, eating through her qi armor all too quickly.

Still, she forced the violet fire qi to rotate even faster, stripping it of impurities in a howling vortex of blue and violet energies like a storm upon an alien world.

She felt the marble trough break. Felt herself fall and smack against the floor below. She couldn't move, trapped as she was in the cocoon of metal. It breached her qi armor in places and burned her skin, yet not even that stopped it as the violet fire qi drew it through her skin and into her body.

Molten metal cooked her flesh, adding to the orchestra of pain that destroyed all capacity for thought. Driven by instinct and the sheer will to survive, Jie refined the metal as she would a body conditioning resource, assimilating the foreign substance rather than allowing herself to burn to death.

Violet fire qi broke apart as she forced it to obey her and refined it into dragon lightning qi. Impurities and unwanted energy were thrown out, unable to spin fast enough as it glowed brighter and brighter within her.

Finally, when she'd broken the violet fire qi down, she forced it all to stop rotating. The explosion within her dantian rippled through her and blood boiled out of her throat, yet as she opened her mouth to vomit it out, liquid metal poured through the opening.

In a singular instant of sanity, Jie wished she could scream.

Then, that thought was snuffed out once more by all-consuming pain.