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3.42 - Payback
🕑 Added 2024-07-18 22:00:03 +0000 UTCWhen He Yu found Sha Xiang, she was in one of the inner sect’s many gardens. Cui Bao sat nearby drinking wine. Mo Zhiqiang and Da Ning were both present as well. Four sets of eyes turned towards him the moment he stepped from the path.
As he cupped a fist in salute, a faint breeze tugged at the hem of his robe. It was the robe Yongnian had gifted him in the shrine of the Thunder God, fashioned of dark gray silk and patterned with gold thread depicting dragons and billowing clouds. He caught the scent of fresh-fallen rain, and couldn’t imagine that Sha Xiang and the others wouldn’t notice. Although he gave them a salute, he declined to bow over it. Instead, he fixed each of them with his gaze. Then he spoke.
“I see you neglected my warning,” he said, looking first to Da Ning, then to Mo Zhiqiang.
“The fuck is he talking about?” Sha Xiang asked, rising to her feet and flexing her spirit.
The feeling of it very nearly caught him off guard. Only a week prior, she would have felt powerful. Now she only felt feeble. She hadn’t fully released her grip on her presence yet, but what measure of earth and fire she let roll out from her gave He Yu enough of an idea of the gap that now lay between them.
“The coward that he is, He Yu asked us to abandon your cause, Lady Sha,” said Da Ning. It was half a sneer as he spoke, with no hint of the fear he’d displayed when they’d last spoken.
He Yu moved. With barely a trickle of his own qi, he activated the Sky Dragon’s Flight. As he crossed the distance between himself and Da Ning, he summoned his guandao. He held his weapon in one hand, blade extended. A trickle of blood ran down Da Ning’s cheek where the edge had left a bright scarlet line. The air around the weapon crackled and flickered.
“I will reclaim Li Heng’s family sword. I owe him at least that much for all he’s done for me.”
“So you’ve finally grown a pair,” Sha Xiang said with a laugh, making no effort to hide her glee at the prospect of a fight. If he’d had any doubts left about his course of action, she dispelled them all then and there.
Sha Xiang fully unleashed her presence then. It hadn’t substantially changed since the tournament, evoking the feeling of flame and stone. The darkness that was part of her demonic technique had changed—it was stronger, more present, and more refined.
Taking his place at Sha Xiang’s side, Cui Bao’s spirit joined hers. Flames cascaded outward from him, licking at the flagstones. He gave off the impression of a leopard with burning red eyes.
Mo Zhiqiang and Da Ning were both about the same in terms of their advancement and the refinement of their presences. As Da Ning drew Li Heng’s jian, the feeling of gleaming metal radiated from him, but little else. He could only produce the impression of a blade, and no more. Mo Zhiqiang was slightly more developed, giving the impression of mist and early spring growth.
They all felt so feeble.
It came as a shock, the sudden realization that he was so much stronger than they were. Was this the reason so many immortals acted with such arrogance? He couldn’t allow himself to focus on that, however. He had something he needed to accomplish here.
He Yu flickered back to the far end of the garden. Holding his guandao in a relaxed one-handed grip, the blade a finger’s breadth from the flagstones, he finally revealed his own presence.
Thunder cracked as sparks of heaven qi danced along the length of his weapon and crawled up his arms. Winds churned around him, eddying down and around his weapon alongside the crackling lightning. The scent of fresh rain filled the garden. As He Yu’s spirit broke over his four opponents, he saw with his own spiritual perception a storm. Rain extinguished Cui Bao’s flames and drenched Sha Xiang’s dripping molten stone. Lightning arced towards Da Ning’s metallic spirit, splintering it and rendering the nascent blade of his presence worthless. Wind blew away Mo Zhiqiang’s mists and clouds, leaving him exposed.
Da Ning faltered, stumbling and nearly taking a knee before pushing enough of his own qi into an enforcement technique and remain standing. Mo Zhiqiang fared better. Sha Xiang and Cui Bao both withstood him the best—their presences being the most developed.
“Golden Core,” Da Ning gasped.
“Scared?” Sha Xiang shot at him over her shoulder. “There’s four of us. I may still be Body Refining, but I’m stronger than anyone else at my stage.” Turning her attention back to He Yu, she said, “Don’t think I’m going to make this easy for you.”
“I expect no less,” He Yu said.
It was Cui Bao who moved first. Flame licked at his feet as he advanced. Sparks erupted from his twin hatchets. Through the Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment, He Yu saw the shape of his attack and the arc of his swing as if he were moving in slow motion.
He Yu stepped forward. His fist slammed into the center of Cui Bao’s chest. Heavenly qi burst out from the impact with an accompanying snap of thunder. An instant later, Cui Bao slammed into one of the mountain’s red pines on the far side of the garden. Wood split and splintered. The tree and Cui Bao both hit the ground.
Wind tugged at the hem of He Yu’s robe. Lightning crawled over him and arced to the ground. He pointed his guandao at Da Ning. In a flash, he was by the noble’s side once again. His guandao scored a bloody line across Da Ning’s chest, and the noble stumbled away.
In the instant before he could follow up, Sha Xiang was on him. With a feral roar, she launched a barrage of strikes. Her arms and legs had become overlain with the black bulk of her Four Demon Fists, and the wrongness that had become so intertwined with her presence was greater than it ever had been. He Yu ducked back and away. For each of her strikes, he manifested the Spring Rain Mirror. Her blows only producing an explosion of steam as they crashed against his water-aspected defensive technique.
When the blows subsided, He Yu called the wind. The Sweeping Wind now sparked with jagged fingers of heaven as the arc of his attack sped towards Sha Xiang. She brought up her arms in a block, the solid earth aspected qi of her body art encasing her. Stone shattered and blood sprayed. Her face twisted in rage, and her presence redoubled itself as she somehow poured more qi into her techniques.
“Coward!” Mo Zhiqiang yelled, advancing with his spear. “Assaulting disciples of a lower realm!” Wind and water trailed in the wake of his attack, and obscuring mists covered the spear’s head.
He Yu swatted Mo Zhiqiang’s attack aside, then levered him into the air with the blunt end of his guandao. “No more a coward than you lot, ganging up on my friends when they were alone.”
He followed Mo Zhiqiang using the Sky Dragon’s Flight. When he was level with the noble, He Yu blasted him away with the Bracing Wind. The fury of heaven trailed Mo Zhiqiang as he crashed back to the ground.
Sha Xiang leaped at him once again. The Four Demon Fists had now almost completely obscured her natural limbs, and the fire and earth qi that radiated from her had become even more infused with the wrong-feeling presence of the technique. She drew back a fist, earth qi coalescing around it as she activated her primary combat art, the Earth Sundering Fist.
A boulder several feet across coalesced from Sha Xiang’s earthen qi as she launched a punch. Her fist slammed into it and shattered in a spray of stone shards. The Spring Rain Mirror dealt with the majority of them, but not all. The remainder pelted against He Yu, bouncing ineffectively against his robes and skin. The Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering, now with three pillars instead of one, gave him durability far beyond what such a technique could overcome.
He Yu turned to Sha Xiang. His voice remained calm as he spoke. “You only understand one thing—strength. If you won’t listen to reason or appeals to whatever better nature you may once have had, then there’s only one way left to deal with you. I had hoped we could resolve things peacefully between us, but you showed that was impossible. It is a lesson I won’t soon forget.”
“Fuck off,” Sha Xiang growled. “If it weren’t for that bitch, Zhang Lifen—”
Like a bolt of heaven’s fury, He Yu slammed into her. She didn’t even have time to bring up her guard. The blade of his guandao bit deep into the meat between her neck and shoulder, and grasping fingers of lightning scored jagged burns up her neck and down her arm. She cried out in a mix of fury and pain, the black substance of her Four Demon Fists technique writhing under his assault.
A rushing blast of burning air was the only warning He Yu had of Cui Bao’s attack—but it was more than enough. Even as he turned, He Yu beat back the flurry of strikes with the Spring Rain Mirror. Flames wreathed Cui Bao’s arms and legs. Much like the leopard He Yu had sensed earlier in his presence, Cui Bao’s eyes had turned to a dull burning red.
“Now!” the fiery cultivator shouted.
From either side, Mo Zhiqiang and Da Ning attacked at once, joined by Cui Bao from the front. It was the first time since the fight had broken out that He Yu felt like he even needed to try. A brief formation of the Bracing Wind broke the momentum of their advance. He Yu spun his guandao, beating back sword, spear, and hatchet with a series of looping sweeps. Anything that slipped by his weapon deflected off the Spring Rain Mirror. The Cloud Emperor’s Peerless Judgment made sure not even the slightest flicker of movement escaped his notice.
Cui Bao hooked his hatchets around the haft of He Yu’s guandao and pulled. He Yu cycled a fraction more qi into the Empyrean Ninefold Body Tempering and pulled back. The other cultivator stumbled forward, off balance from the reversal of his own move. He Yu swept at his feet with the haft of his weapon, then kicked him away.
At the moment he’d committed his focus to Cui Bao, Mo Zhiqiang and Da Ning moved to flank him. A shift in the area’s qi—a rumbling of earth and a great belching of sulfur and flame—indicated Sha Xiang had finally recovered. It had only been a few moments, but He Yu still would have expected her to be back in the fight a bit sooner. He was still getting used to this—this feeling of being in an entire realm above his opponents, rather than struggling against someone who was at least his equal.
Despite all the advantages he held, He Yu still regarded Sha Xiang as the most dangerous. He turned to face her and a wave of horror washed over him. The unnatural bulk that came from her use of the Four Demon Fists now had a familiar red tinge—similar to King Hao’s arm after his resurrection. As she moved towards him, she seemed unsteady. As though she weren’t wholly in control of herself.
Most disturbingly, whatever she’d given herself over to was accompanied by a now all-too-familiar sense of want. It was the same sense he’d felt from King Hao. The same sense he’d felt from the western wilds. The touch of the Sunset Empress.
He had known that she had been treating with the Sunset Court all this time. That her power had come from them, not from her own efforts. He’d never imagined she would go this far.
“What have you done?” he asked.
Comments
Henry Johnston
The Dao of Genre Awareness is strong with this one! Good! Good!
Henry Johnston
He might have a few shreds of naivete left.
Tommy
Standard. Gotta give the enemy a chance to level up! Cos killing her quickly would be far too easy. 😂 Ah well, he’s golden core so hopefully he’ll still be able to kill her. Far past time for Sha Xiang to be dead! Thanks for the chapter!
Literally Goose
Thanks for the chapter… I’m not sure why he is surprised she would take it too far!!
