You have suffered multiple Serious Wounds from Dark Qi overload!

Alex grimaced past the pain, not daring to let himself be distracted again even as he channeled just a fraction of the monstrous potency flooding his frame into Prismatic Fox Restoration Technique.

He couldn’t instantly heal or bring himself back like he could his Ruidian companions, cultivation being so much more complex than the crystalline paradigm favored by his fellow otherworlders, but damn if he couldn’t channel the potency now crackling through him much like he had once used beast cores to boost Eternal Fox a hundredfold as he lashed out with his fangtian ji once more. Even as he just barely twisted and darted through the air in time to avoid the massive maw of hooked teeth that could so easily spell his doom with a single misstep, his limbs throbbing with the agony of over-exertion and spiritual backlash both, he reveled in the sensation of time seeming to stretch and slow as he raced along the carapace of his foe using the power of flight and furious resolve at speeds so close to Silver as ancient dreams grew flush and clear once more.

Dancing on the cusp of oblivion, against a serpent eerily similar and completely different from the one that had locked him away for countless years.

Perhaps it was the fierce desire to hone himself and break free of his shackled limitations that compelled him to race down the writhing monstrous carapace his howling fangtian ji was now ripping open like a fishmonger filleting a choice eel. Perhaps it was simple battlefury. Either way, he couldn’t deny how the crucible of peril honed and shaped him, reforging him anew as his soul shrieked with the added pressure of his super cable whirling with ever more angular momentum around the singularity of his soul.

Even as the monstrous flood of potency now roaring through his meridians, along with the fierce, absolute focus that survival itself demanded, all but compelled ever more of the howling cries swarming his psyche to cross causalities event horizon, forever fueling the furnace of his ascension.

Soul Sight skill check made!

And that was when Alex sensed it, the sudden terrible buildup of pressure.

Only in that instant realizing that the monstrous titan of a beast he fought and bled against hadn’t been there to destroy him.

Only to delay.

Delay as it seemed the entire desert shook with a terrible vibration building to an unspeakable crescendo.

A sudden terrible pressure in the air making it clear that their enemies hadn’t used darkest rituals to send this rift crashing into the depths of Silver…

but outright Gold.

Alex had no time for speculation, the muted relief he felt at sensing his friends free turning to heightened dread as he sensed the one soul that dared to stay behind.

“Ya Ling, get the fuck out of here!” He screamed, feinting left before swirling and looping counterclockwise through the air to dodge the hideous lamprey maw eager to devour, now racing through the air to Ya Ling’s determined side, who was gazing his way with such fierce determination.

Such vulnerability.

A Bronze in a Delve he realized had broken through to Gold.

“Alex, the core of the giant you killed!”

“This place is death! We have to leave, now! Now!” Alex cried out as he fled the second giant, no matter how certain he was that his foe, now leaking a horrid viscous black fluid and slick blue entrails crackling with spiritual energy from the gaping wounds Alex had left, was now completely unable to submerge without filling its gaping wound with abrasive sand.

But it didn’t matter. None of that mattered, compared to what was to come.

Then Ya Ling said words that changed absolutely everything, her eyes lit with fiercest vindication.

“I know where it is, Alex!”

Alex didn’t dare hope, for all that he raced toward her as fast as he could. Yet she had already turned and began racing ever deeper into the desert now thrumming with the promise of oblivion soon to emerge and consume them all.

“You were right! There is a formation buried in the desert sands, and I know exactly where it is!”

Alex near froze with those words… before redoubling his speed.

Away from the entrance that was a life boat in the most stormy sea imaginable, no matter the awful wave of dread that threatened to drown him. A terror he could sense from Ya Ling as well, her face set in a mask of fierce determination, even as he sensed her growing terror.

“Ya Ling...”

“There!” She cried out, jabbing her finger down towards a completely barren stretch of sand like all the others, and Alex desperately stared, looking for something, anything, as they dove from the winds that had so helpfully carried them aloft, Alex buoyed by the potency of his kills just as Ya Ling was her growing wind mastery, the pair now plummeting to the ground.

“There, Alex! Can you sense it?”

Excited words washed over Alex, but all he could sense was death in the form of half a dozen lesser sand worms that were still monsters in their own right, in addition to the growing rumble of the sandy desert itself… and Alex was filled with the sudden awful sense that this was where the monstrous titan of Gold would emerge.

“Ya Ling, we have no time!”

Yet even as he said the words, he was the first to crash to the sands, lashing out with his fangtian ji as fast as he ever had before.

Qi Perception detects Desert Worm swarm!

You have successfully evaded ankle ambush.

You have successfully dodged leaping maws!

Storm Strike!

Storm Strike!

Wind Slice!

You have slain three Sand Worms!

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“Alex, buy me time!”

But Alex was already doing all he could after getting a look at Ya Ling’s desperate hopeful features, his fangtian ji snaking through the air to rip open one dark lamprey after another, trading a storm of whirling steel and crackling lightning for the three extra feet of blade length that his Enhanced Wind Blade granted him, his mastery over the winds now so great that he was able to leave devastating gashes with that singular element alone.

And the triumphant cry as Ya Ling flashed a fiercely proud smile, claiming a massive dark jewel from the desert sands with a surge of Sand and Wind, filled Alex with joy and terror in equal measure.

Because of course that was the moment the swarm returned in full, doing their utmost to crash over Ya Ling.

“No!” Alex roared, lashing out with windmilling blows as Ya Ling instinctively ducked, two more of the horrors neatly bisected as Ya Ling glared at the desert sands that immediately formed a howling whirlwind around the both of them.

A whirlwind which couldn’t stop the massive hoard of worms… just slow them down.

And far from stopping, the vibrations got so bad that they would have knocked lesser cultivators right off their feet.

“Alex, please hold them off! I just need to get the other four jewels and we’re out of here!” She pled, tossing him the one pristine Dark Qi core she had already claimed, Alex immediately putting it into storage a heartbeat before his half-moon axe heads cleaved open the first snake to shove its way through Ya Ling’s whirling ward in an explosion of entrails and gore.

You have critically struck Desert Worm.

Fatality!

Experience Earned!

Alex paid no more heed to the messages flooding his soul, even as he felt his body move with greater fluidity and grace than it had in quite some time, so many ancient lessons flooding his soul as his core shrieked with devoured potency and his chosen weapon weaved a dance of defiance and death that sent their slinking foes back to oblivion where they belonged.

Alex flashed a fierce smile, even as yet another worm slipped through to tear into his hip before a spinning heel kick sent it flying. Because at least they didn’t have to worry about the worms striking from below.

For they were at the gate, and the titanic abomination that might soon break through would brook no competition.

Just minutes away from emerging, Alex was deathly certain, and devouring them all.

“Alex!” The word jolted Alex out of his battle haze to catch sight of Ya Ling screaming.

A Dark worm had just latched onto her hand, sheering it right off, as well as the Dark Qi jewel she had retrieved.

“Die!” Alex roared, lashing out with a snarl to cleave open the writhing worm before touching it, commanding both halves into his storage space, sensing both the pristine Dark core and a Silver-tier beast core suddenly present in his storage space as Ya Ling crashed to the desert sands.

Alex’s heart pounded in panic when she seemed to shrink into the sand. “Ya Ling!” he cried, desperate fury propelling his Wind Blade strike like never before, roaring with mindless fury as he cleaved through each and every one of the ebony worms oozing through the wind ward now fading as if it had never been.

“Ya Ling!” Alex’s panic grew desperate as the awful assault finally stopped.

Panting, wild-eyed, Alex gazed in disbelief at the sight of dozens of slaughtered worms now splayed about the desert sands, and no trace of his companion at all.

“Ya Ling!”

And that was when he felt it, even his prismatic teeth, unbreakable, still vibrating in sympathy with the monster about the erupt, Alex snarling with bitter hate at what would be the greatest, and perhaps shortest, fight of his newest life.

He gripped his fangtian ji in a death grip… and then, in the blink of an eye, the pressure was gone.

Alex stumbled back, gasping as the awful killing aura of a Jade-tier monster he hadn’t even realized he had been fighting against was suddenly no more real than a dream.

He fell to one knee and took a shuddering breath, panicked eyes flickering over the corpses as he eyed the desert sands.

He blinked back a tear of horror, afraid he was already too…

“Miss me?”

Alex gasped and spun around, lips stretching wide in a disbelieving smile to behold a beaming Ya Ling glowing with health and power and unmistakable potency, flourished her entirely whole hands to reveal a prize of dark beast cores that Alex immediately claimed as she gave a throaty chuckle.

“I realized I was being an idiot! The instant I healed myself, I recalled that no worm would dare the sands below the formation, so I didn’t have to fear them tunneling through me. So why not just claim the stones all at once?”

Alex shook his head in wonder. “I think you did it,” he dared to whisper. “The pressure of that awful Gold...”

Ya Ling’s beautiful features grew solemn. “I know. It’s gone.”

The desert sands then echoed with the roar of the wounded monster now slowly approaching throgh the desert sands.

Ya Ling turned to glare in its direction. “That abomination’s still alive, and you know it’s a half-step Gold. But if we compare it to the horror that almost emerged...” She shook her head and sighed. “There’s no way we could have finished off that living cataclysm. No one could. Nothing could!”

Her eyes turned to furious slits. “The bastards who tried to doom this rift weren’t just making it perilous, they were assuring it could never be used at all, by anyone! This wasn’t just political maneuvering. The Li clan imperiled the entire caldera for their own selfish ends.”

Alex gave a hard nod, before eyeing all the corpses. “So what’s say we claim all the lamprey heads and get the hell out of here?”

Ya Ling grinned, quickly nodding. “Damn right.”

As one, they got about the both grizzly and thrilling work of decapitating the Sand Worms and storing away their prizes. And when Alex sensed that his storage devices were utterly full, he couldn’t help chuckling darkly. “I’m guessing we can’t let our guard down, even now.”

“Of course not. More worms could come at any moment.”

“Good,” Alex said, Before flying off a short distance, earning a surprised look from Ya Ling, just seconds before he dropped prizes he’d rather no one ever suspect he had.

Ya Ling’s features blanched as one lifeless corpse after another crashed to the ground in painfully still heaps.

Alex blinked then felt a flush crawling over his cheeks, forced to wonder what thoughts were going on inside Ya Ling’s pretty little head as she saw nine bodies dropping lifeless to the sands.

So damn ruthless, and so necessary it had been.

What woman could possibly be comfortable with someone as savage as he?

Yet she said not a word, only giving him a sympathetic smile as the sand itself suddenly swirled over the bodies.

“Come on, Alex. Let’s finish up and get the hell out of here.”

And together they did just that.

Before being stopped cold by the final emperor worm that had maneuvered itself to block the gate.

The giant abomination howled, the air vibrating with its killing aura, and Alex choked back the bile in his throat, fierce inhuman vitality and flashes of perilous insight tempered with the first tinges of true exhaustion.

“Alex!”

He could taste Ya Ling’s terror and dismay in the pitch and timber of her voice, and by her growing panic, overwhelmed and exhausted, that he sensed from her mind.

He grit his teeth, glaring at the soaring titan sinuously winding about its own coils as if it were a serpent and not a worm at all. Certainly its lamprey mouth was open wide to hideous effect, pointed right at Alex, as if challenging the mortal that had dared to hurt the sky-scraper sized monstrosity to a final showdown.

And if Alex wanted to ever get out of there… he had no choice but to endure one final battle.

No matter how perilous it might be.