Lin Shu put Aoyan down. Her feet touched the soft, loamy earth of the deeper forest, and she let out a shaky breath. "Thanks...."
He gave a single, sharp nod, his attention already turning inward and outward simultaneously. Heat began to radiate from his body in visible waves, distorting the air around him as he cultivated on the move, diligently restoring the precious Infernal Force in his ivory. "We'll be leaving now, so let's hurry up."
Aoyan and Kai nodded, and they began to move again. This time, Kai took the lead, picking a path through the dense undergrowth. Aoyan followed, and Lin Shu positioned himself just behind her, his golden eyes a constant, sweeping guard over her back, the trees, the shifting shadows. His vigilance was a physical cage around her, both protection and prison.
In the trees, not too far away, Yin moved like a breath of wind. He jumped from one thick branch to another, his steps making no sound, his presence dissolved into the background hum of the forest. He was a persistent shadow haunting them in secret.
---
Soon after Lin Shu vacated the battleground, a new group walked into the zone of devastation.
A young woman with hair the color of a summer sky and a young man with black hair and vivid green eyes stepped into the carnage. Two others accompanied them: a slender youth with calm, calculating eyes and hair of a strange greenish hue, and a girl with a practical brown ponytail.
"This place looks like multiple peak-stage cultivators fought here," Xiyao said, her nose wrinkling at the stench of burnt flesh and ozone.
The greenish-haired youth, Ouyi, knelt, examining a peculiar, glassy depression in the soil. "Xiyao is half right. Some of this damage is from advanced techniques, but this residue..." He rubbed the black grit between his fingers. "Half of it is from Blister Bombs."
Han Lei looked around, his green eyes alight with a hunter's keen interest. He stepped over a charred corpse, a fierce grin spreading across his face. "Well, what are we waiting for? Let's try and find whoever is responsible for this. I'm looking forward to finding someone to challenge."
Han Yi, his sister, gave a silent nod of agreement, her blue hair catching the dull light as she surveyed the tactical horror of the scene.
---
Lin Shu, moving with controlled urgency, withdrew a pouch from his belt. As they ran, he began scattering a fine, phosphorescent dust across their trail. It settled on ferns and moss, emitting no scent.
"This is one of the things Yanqi gave me," he said, his voice cutting through the rhythm of their footfalls. "It will kill our smell and muddle our qi signature. It won't stop a dedicated searcher, but it will buy us time against most common tracking techniques."
From his distant vantage, Yin saw the subtle, glittering trail being laid. His lips pressed into a thin line. He's covering his tracks. Standard procedure, but thorough. He considered leaving a counter-mark, some clue for the wolves he hoped to summon, but the risk was too acute. Lin Shu's perception was risky variable; any anomalous qi fluctuation or physical sign might as well be a beacon pointing directly at him. For now, he would have to be the sole thread connecting the prey to the coming hunt.
---
In the brilliantly lit stadium, the air hummed with focused energy. Cultivators watched, impassive and untiring, as the drama below unfolded.
Yanqi reclined in his high seat, the ghost of a smile on his lips.
"I cannot help but compliment your disciple, Yanqi," Kuang Baotu said, his voice a low rumble. "His instinct for threat assessment and his tactical execution are praiseworthy. To survive an ambush, protect his charges, and eliminate an entire team so efficiently... you have forged a sharp tool."
Beside them, Lanyue sighed with exaggerated boredom. "Perhaps I should have offered that boy more incentives to steal him from you, Yanqi." She waved a dismissive hand at the central projection cube, which had been fixated on Lin Shu's retreat. "I concede he is competent. Now, will this wretched artifact show us something else?"
As if on command, the scene shimmered. The view now showed a different part of the forest, where a woman with a cascade of black hair stood facing a young man whose arms were sheathed in solidified, glowing light.
Yanqi's eyelids lifted a fraction. "Su..." he murmured softly. Then he recognized her opponent, and the smile returned, deep and private. "And Yu. Good." He is following my instruction. But he lacks the decisive power to kill her alone. Then again, she would not walk away from such a fight unscathed if they continue. Though i would hope Li kills her rather then Yu that way aoyan can have a closure by witnessing her death.
In the projection, Chi Su touched a finger to her ear, it came away wet with blood. Her gaze was fixed on Yu. "It's gonna take a bit more time to be done with this guy. His techniques are rather annoying."
Across from her, Yu stood firm, but his mind was a storm of calculation. "I didn't plan on meeting her now. Yanqi did tell me to kill anyone from the Chi clan, but I am not willing to risk fighting anymore than this. We're both already injured, and I don't know if anyone is going to come and help her. I'll have to postpone it. But I can't say that—she'll see it as weakness. I need to make her want to leave."
Just as he steeled himself, a flash of red and blue streaked into the clearing. Chi Ran skidded to a halt beside Su, her expression urgent.
"Good," Su thought, a flicker of relief cutting through her focus. "With Ran here, I can finish this without expending more of my core strength."
But before she could speak, Chi Ran leaned in, whispering rapidly. Su's expression shifted from predatory focus to sharp alarm. Her head snapped toward Yu, her eyes now holding not rivalry, but impatient dismissal.
"We'll finish this later," she stated, her voice cold and final. "I have something more important to attend to." Without another word, she turned and vanished into the forest with Ran.
Yu remained still for a moment, the tension bleeding from his shoulders. He immediately moved in the opposite direction, putting rapid distance between himself and the contested ground. "It's good that I didn't have to fight her. But what was so critical it made her abandon a fight she was not losing?" He stopped, looking back toward the direction the two Chi women had fled. A slow, intrigued smile touched his lips. "Should I follow her?" The potential reward glittered in his mind. "Of course I should. If I can kill her, Yanqi's favor will be considerable." He changed his trajectory, becoming a silent hunter once more, drawn toward the scent of greater prey and opportunity.
Chi Su moved through the forest at a steady, ground-eating pace, her sister matching her stride for stride. The adrenaline from the aborted fight still hummed in her veins, sharpening her focus.
"Are you absolutely sure about what you heard?" she asked, her voice low but clear over the rustle of leaves and the thud of their footfalls.
Chi Ran nodded, her breath even. "I am. Weize and I were scouting the western ridges when we stumbled on a gathering. Dozens of cultivators, just... talking. No one was fighting, so we moved closer to listen." She paused to duck under a low branch. "The whole clearing was buzzing with arguments. When we asked around, we learned the reason. Someone has placed massive bounties on the inner disciples of the four major sects—Stormbreak, Venomheart, Ironblood, and Silver Peak. It seems each sect has targeted the others. The rewards are so high that all these independent teams and solo hunters agreed to a temporary truce just to discuss it."
Su listened, her mind categorizing the information. A bounty war between the sects was unprecedented chaos. "They formed an alliance?"
"After a lot of shouting, they agreed on one core rule," Ran confirmed. "No killing each other until the bounties are claimed. The cultivator who lands the final blow on a target gets the sole reward. They're planning to hunt in packs to overwhelm them."
A thin, calculating smile touched Chi Su's lips. "That's not a bad deal for them. The rewards must be extraordinary to make so many hungry wolves share a single meal." Her own priorities, however, remained fixed. "But it's a distraction. Our path is set."
"There's more," Ran said, and her tone made Su glance over. "In all that noise, I caught specific whispers. About Aoyan and Kun. Some cultivators claimed to have seen them, or to have survived an encounter. The descriptions matched. I don't know if it's true or just bait in a trap, but sister... it's the only lead we have."
Chi Su fell silent for several paces, the only sound their swift passage through the undergrowth. The logic was cold and inescapable. A gathering of mercenary cultivators was a swirling vortex that could hide many things—including her younger sister. To ignore a potential location, even a risky one, was a greater mistake than walking into a possible ambush with eyes open.
"Then we take the bait," Su stated, her voice leaving no room for debate. "But we do it correctly. First, we regroup with Weize and the others. We share all the intelligence, assess the source, and plan our approach. Then we head to that location. If it's a trap, we'll be prepared to spring it on our terms. If it's real..." She didn't need to finish the sentence. The hardened resolve in her eyes was answer enough.
The forest lightened from pitch black to a murky, grayish green as a damp dawn crept in. Lin Shu's body was a coiled spring of controlled motion, his senses stretched thin. The last few hours had been a grinding cycle of movement, brief violent contact, and more movement. His Owl's Gaze flickered on and off like a faltering lamp, each activation a careful sip from his dwindling qi pool.
"This is bad," he muttered, the words lost under the sound of their footfalls. He had been recognized too many times. Attacks were no longer chance encounters; they were coordinated ambushes by teams who seemed to know roughly where he would be. "Did they actually offer a fortune for Aoyan's corpse? If this many people are looking for us..." His armor, unmarred, was a testament to his defense, but the relentless pressure was a tangible weight. "If I didn't have the Crucible, I wouldn't be able to keep using peak-level attacks to end fights quickly. I'd be worn down, overwhelmed. And I would fail."
He glanced at Aoyan running beside him. Her breath came in sharp gasps, her face pale with exhaustion but set with determination. "Hang on. We'll find a place to rest soon," he said, his tone leaving no room for negotiation.
She nodded, pushing harder.
Kai, on her other side, was faring better but wore a deep frown. "Don't you guys think this is a little too much? We keep running into teams. Good for points, sure, but my qi won't last forever at this rate."
Lin Shu's gaze remained fixed ahead, scanning. "You have no choice. We are being hunted, which should be obvious by now. No one flees or hides anymore from us they all charge at us and smile like they found some form of treasure."he then looked behind him as he said"Every fight we take will force us to stop and thay only brings every other hunter in the area one step closer to us."
As the first true rays of sun speared through the canopy, Lin Shu triggered his Owl's Gaze one more time. The world bled of color, leaving stark outlines of life force and terrain. He swept it forward along their path and froze.
Two figures stood a hundred paces ahead, directly blocking the narrow game trail they followed. Not hiding. Waiting.
The first was a tall young man with close-cropped hair and a calm, imposing stillness. A long, straight blade was sheathed across his back. Behind him, radiating a furnace-like heat that was visible even in the qi spectrum, was an enormous ape with ashen fur and eyes that glowed like banked coals.
Beside him stood a younger boy, blindfolded, his face serene. A small monkey with enormous ears and luminous eyes perched on his shoulder, its head tilted curiously toward them.
Aoyan and Kai skidded to a halt. Kai's breath hitched. "Kun!" he spat, the name a curse and a recognition that made his previous frown look like a smile.
---
In the trees, farther back and well-concealed, Yin let out a soft, incredulous breath that curved into a smile. He adjusted his viewing lens. "That's Kun. Hah. Turns out luck is finally on my side." His mind raced, adapting his plan instantly. "Li is strong, but Kun is a monster of a different breed. They will be occupied. Seriously occupied." His fingers tightened around a black, needle-like dart. "All I have to do is wait for the moment Li's focus is entirely consumed. Then I take my one, clean shot at the girl and vanish. The prize will be mine alone." He settled in, becoming part of the tree, a vulture awaiting carnage.
Mang's smile remained warm, a gentle contrast to the tension coiling in the clearing. "Long time no see, Kai."
Kai didn't answer. He just stared, the hatred twisting his features, making the burn scars on his face seem to writhe.
"Mother entrusted me to bring you back," Mang continued, his voice soothing. "She said she's willing to forget and forgive you for what you did. She'll even help you stay safe from the other elders. All because she missed you kai. So let's go back to our home together."
Kai's face grew uglier, his hatred a physical distortion. Lin Shu saw the tremble in the younger boy's hands, the precursor to a reckless release.
"Don't even think—" Lin Shu began, but he was too late.
Kai moved with a burst of desperate speed, a fist wreathed in corrosive black gas and searing orange flame rocketing toward Mang's placid smile.
Mang's smile didn't falter. He simply shifted his weight, the attack whistling past his cheek. In the same fluid motion, his own palm, glowing with a cleaner, hotter flame, shot upward. It struck Kai squarely in the solar plexus with a sound like a damp log cracking. The air left Kai's lungs in a choked gasp, lifting him off his feet.
A shadow loomed. The giant ape, having moved with surprising silence, was already there, its two massive fists raised high above the helplessly suspended Kai, ready to hammer him into the forest floor.
"Damnit!" Kai wheezed, forcing his qi. A concussive blast erupted from his back, propelling him sideways just as the ape's fists smashed down, cratering the earth where he had been. He tumbled, scrambling for balance.
He found none. Mang was already there, his warm smile finally gone, replaced by a look of mild disappointment. A fist sheathed in condensed flame aimed for Kai's face.
The blow never landed. Another fist, encased in ivory and dark steel, intercepted it from the side. The clash was a dull, resonant thud that shook the air. Mang's eyes widened slightly as he was shoved backward, not by technique, but by raw, physical power.
Lin Shu stood between them, having closed the distance in a blur. Without a word, he grabbed Kai by the collar and hauled him back, throwing him toward Aoyan's position.
"The hell are you thinking? You're gonna die like that," Lin Shu snapped, his voice a low growl.
Kai stumbled, his breath ragged, but his furious eyes remained locked on Mang, whose warm smile had returned, as if flicked back on by a switch. "That piece of shit," Kai seethed. He shoved himself upright, shouting across the clearing. "I'll burn that filthy smile off your face!" He then turned his glare to Kun, who watched with detached calm, arms crossed. "I knew she'd send her favorite dogs after me! In fact, I hoped that piece of shit would send you!"
Mang's smile vanished again, wiped away like chalk from a slate. His voice grew quiet, dangerously soft. "I don't think I heard you correctly, Kai. But please, correct me if I am wrong. Did you just insult our mother?"
Kai spat on the ground. "Braindead bastard, I did. And I'll say this too—I'm gonna make sure you traitors die alongside that freak!"
Mang's face underwent a subtle, terrifying shift. The warmth didn't just disappear; it inverted into a sorrow so deep it looked like pain. "What a shame," he whispered, the words carrying clearly in the sudden stillness. "What a shame. I just wanted us all to be together again. Why must you make me do this, Kai? Why must you hurt me, and Kun, and most of all, our mother, after all she's done for us?"
Kai looked at him with pure, undiluted disgust. "Maybe she's the mother of you nutcases, but she sure is not mine."
Mang took a step forward, then another, his gentle demeanor hardening into something purposeful and grim. "Mother did say you were growing more insane with each passing day. But I didn't think it would reach the level where you cannot even remember what she did for us." His hands came up, flames kindling along his fingers. "Do not worry, Kai. I will bring you back to her. She'll make you go back to how you were before. Everything will be back to how it was."
He stormed forward. Kai met him head-on, and the two brothers clashed in a storm of exploding gas and scorching fire. Mang moved with an eerie, predictive grace, his head tilting just so whenever the large-eared monkey on the blindfolded boy's shoulder let out a sharp screech, allowing him to slip every one of Kai's furious attacks.
Lin Shu's focus, however, had never left Kun. The taller young man had still not moved, but his gaze had settled on Lin Shu with the focus of a sculptor viewing a block of stone. "I'll have to end this quickly, before we get overwhelmed by other hunters," Lin Shu thought. He the. spoke to Aoyan without looking away. "I am going to be fighting Kun and his tamed beast. I want you to try and help Kai whenever he's in danger, and watch out for yourself. Anyone can join at any moment, and I might not be able to protect you. So keep your mind sharp, Aoyan."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod, her hands tightening into fists, red light already flickering around them.
Finally, Kun moved. He didn't rush. He simply reached back and slowly, drew the long blade from his back. As the steel cleared the sheath, red flames, deep and hungry, raced from the hilt to the tip, engulfing the sword without consuming it. The air around him wavered with heat.
Lin Shu moved forward to meet him. Heat of a different kind—a dry internal blaze—radiated from Lin Shu's own core as he tapped the Infernal Marrow Crucible. White light flickered in the joints of his armor.
Lin Shu didn't wait. He closed the distance toward Kun and his beast in a blur of motion, not as a blind charge, but as a calculated approach, his golden eyes tracking both threats simultaneously.
The ape reacted first. It let out a ground-shaking roar and brought its massive fists down, not on Lin Shu, but on the earth in front of it. The impact was a seismic shock, sending a wave of shattered stone and dirt directly at Lin Shu's chest, meant to stagger him. Instead, Lin Shu used the debris as cover. He kicked off a larger chunk of rock, altering his trajectory to the side just as the ape, using the crater as a launching pit, propelled itself into the sky. Its enormous body blocked the weak morning sun, casting a deep shadow over Lin Shu as it descended, a living comet aimed to crush him.
"Brainless beast," Lin Shu muttered, but his assessment was tactical. He raised his right arm, A thick bolt of lightning, one of his two stored surges, roared from his fist and struck the ape squarely in the chest mid-descent.
The beast convulsed, the smell of ozone and singed fur filling the air, but its dive didn't falter. It tanked the blow with a pained grunt, its momentum only slightly slowed, and smashed into the ground where Lin Shu had been a moment before. The earth erupted.
Lin Shu had used the lightning not to stop it, but to blind it. As the dust and electrical afterglow filled the air, he was already moving, not away, but in a tight arc around the crater's edge. His target was Kun.
But Kun was not idle. The moment Lin Shu emerged from the dust cloud, Kun was there. His movement had been silent. The long blade, wreathed in deep red flames, was already in motion—a horizontal slash aimed not at Lin Shu's body, but at the space he was about to occupy. It was a prediction, not a reaction.
Lin Shu twisted, but the tip of the flaming blade still caught him across the upper back. The force was immense, a concussive whip-crack of fire and sharpened steel that sent him crashing through two slender trees before he skidded to a stop.
He pushed himself up immediately, the steel of his armor groaning as it reshaped itself. He looked at Kun with a sharp frown. "I couldn't dodge that attack in time. He read my evasion path." His fingers traced the new groove across his shoulder plate. The dark steel coating was sheared through, revealing the pristine white ivory beneath, scored with a deep, smoking scratch. "That was definitely a peak-tier technique. It penetrated the steel and reached the ivory. It would take him a dozen of such hits to compromise the armor or at least use a rank 2 technique even a quasi rank two while it might heavily damage the armor it wouldn't kill me and if he had such a thing using it would either hurt him more then me or just drain all his qi and even then I can just remake my armor of course I won't be able to use my qi for anything else but both my armor and infernal force are enough to keep me alive until I can restore it, but still I cannot let him use such technique nor should I let him hit me with any technique if possible."Lin shu looked at them as he thought"for now I need to split those two. The beast is a brute-force distraction yet lacks judgment. Kun is the precise killer but lacks the defensive and physical power of the beast this way they're covering each other's weaknesses."
Across the clearing, Kun watched Lin Shu stand, a flicker of assessment in his own eyes. He made a subtle, quick gesture with his left hand.
The ape, shaking off the last of the lightning's sting, bellowed and charged again, a relentless force of nature.
This time, Lin Shu didn't meet it head-on. He ran toward it, his speed flaring. As the beast swung a trunk-like arm, Lin Shu dropped, sliding through the mud and leaf litter directly between its widespread legs. As he passed underneath, he didn't aim for its legs. Instead, he pivoted on his back, planted a foot, and drove a fist crackling with his last reserve of lightning straight upward into the beast's exposed groin.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The lightning, concentrated and vicious, discharged directly into the sensitive tissue. A sound that was neither roar nor scream tore from the ape's throat, a raw signal of pure, debilitating agony. Its eyes rolled back, and its massive legs buckled. It crashed to its knees, then toppled onto its side, writhing and clutching itself, completely incapacitated.
Lin Shu was already rolling clear, coming to his feet. His goal was clear: finish the beast now, remove one major variable. He lunged, a hand forming into an ivory spike aimed for the ape's temple.
But Kun was already upon him. The swordsman had anticipated this exact move. He hadn't chased Lin Shu under the beast; he had circled wide, and now he stood between Lin Shu and his wounded companion, his blade held in a middle guard, flames licking hungrily along its length. The message was clear: to reach the beast, Lin Shu would have to go through him—and Kun was ready to make that a costly, time-consuming process.
"Got you," Lin Shu thought, not with triumph, but with cold acknowledgment of the trade. He had baited Kun into a defensive position. White flames, cold and silent, erupted from the seams of Lin Shu's arms. The heat radiating from him spiked dramatically as he actively channeled his Infernal Marrow Crucible, beginning the process of replenishing the force he was about to spend.
Across from him, Kun's grip on his sword seemed to weaken for a fraction of a second. The red flames around the blade flickered, dimming noticeably. His eyes, locked on the white fire wreathing Lin Shu's limbs, widened in stark, unmistakable recognition.
"The Crucible…" he muttered, the word ripped from him in a breath of shock.
That moment of shattered focus was the opening Lin Shu needed. Kun had lost precious seconds to disbelief.
Lin Shu closed the gap. He didn't use a technique. He used the raw, reinforced power of his body, propelled by a surge of Infernal Force from his feet to reach kun and then with a simple, devastating straight punch hammered into Kun's undefended stomach.
The internal calculation was clinical. "This is 40 percent of my current Infernal Force. I can't afford to use more; other hunters will come. But this should be sufficient. Twenty percent equals one peak-tier technique's destructive power. Forty percent is two. The Chi Clan favors offensive arts. They don't specialize in layered, absolute defense. Nothing in his repertoire should be able to withstand the equivalent of two peak-tier techniques concentrated in a single point of impact."
The result was visceral. The force didn't just hit Kun; it erupted inside him. There was blast of white flames, alongside a terrible, muffled thump and the sound of cracking internal latticeworks. Kun's eyes bulged. He was lifted off his feet and flung backward like a ragdoll, crashing through one tree, then another, before disappearing into the thicker foliage with a crash of splintering wood.
Lin Shu immediately turned, his senses snapping toward Aoyan and Kai's fight. He saw it in a flash: Aoyan, a look of pained concentration on her face, holding a gleaming, needle-like dagger mere inches from her own chest. Her hands were bloody where she gripped the blade as it pierced her palms, stopping its heart-seeking point. Small cuts adorned her arms. She was fighting for control of the weapon against the weight of someone stronger.
Her eyes, wide with effort, instinctively flicked toward Lin Shu.
He was already moving, his hand extending in her direction.
---
Earlier, as Lin Shu fought, Yin had seen his moment. While the ape's charge and Kun's flashy technique drew all obvious attention, he had become a shadow, slipping through the blind spot of the chaos. His needle-dart, void of any qi signature, had flown true toward the base of Aoyan's skull. It never struck. An unseen barrier—a familial protection artifact—flared a hair's breadth from her skin, deflecting the lethal point just enough for Aoyan to sense the danger and spin, catching the dart's hilt as Yin willed it forward toward her heart.
They became locked in a brutal, silent struggle. Yin leaned into the weapon, his face a sculpture of concentration behind his mask nad glasses. "I wish I could've fought at night, but right now I am only slightly stronger than her," he thought, pouring his shadow-wrapped strength into the push. He could feel her resisting, her cyan flames battling his umbral energy around the blade. He was winning, but slowly.
Then a primal sense of danger screamed down his spine. He released the blade entirely, throwing himself into a desperate roll.
Aoyan stumbled back, gasping, as the needle-dart clattered to the ground. She looked past Yin and saw a fully grown tree topple, severed at the base. They looked towards who was responsible for that as they saw him, Lin Shu heading towards them, his extended hand leaving a trail of small, consecutive white explosions in the air as he annihilated anything between them.
"Damnit!" Yin's mind raced, scrambling for understanding. "How the hell is he already finished with Chi Kun? That bastard is a clan heir! How did he beat him and his beast? His armor is strong, but he never showed techniques with enough variety or power to match Kun's arsenal!" His analytical framework was cracking.
He tried to stand, to flee. A thin, incandescent line of white fire—a Scorch Piercer—seared across the clearing and took him in the shoulder. The pain was instant and profound, a burning corrosion that bit deep. "AHHH!" He fell back.
Aoyan seized the opening. A fist wreathed in her red flames shot toward his head. Yin, clutching his shoulder, threw up a hand. A blast of shadow concussed the air between them, giving him just enough room to scramble backward as she dodged.
But then Lin Shu was there, a storm of contained fury. He didn't run; he appeared, having covered the remaining distance in a breath. His fist, gathered for a final, skull-crushing blow, rose into the air as he leapt.
"Unlucky me," Yin muttered, resignation flooding him.
The fist never descended.
A wave of blistering heat and rage intercepted it. Kun, his robes torn and bloody, a horrific, burned and disfigured wound gouged across his stomach, stood beside Lin Shu. His sword was in his hands, but the flames were gone, replaced by a raw, amber glow of pure, unstable qi. He didn't slash. He swung the flat of the blade like a club, a massive horizontal blow fueled by desperation and pain that caught Lin Shu in the ribs and blasted him off his feet.
Lin Shu twisted in mid-air, but the giant ape, one eye streaming blood and its face a mask of animalistic rage, was already there. It ignored its own grievous wound, driven by a final command or pure hatred. Its two massive fists came down together in a hammer blow on Lin Shu's back as he fell.
The impact was thunderous. The dark steel coating on Lin Shu's armor shattered like black ice, fracturing and flying apart in shards, revealing the pure, scratched ivory carapace beneath. Small scratches were painted across the ivory, but they immediately began to knit themselves back together, the living bone regenerating as the steel, like liquid metal, started to flow back over it from undamaged sections.
Before Lin Shu could reorient, Kun was on him again, his movement fueled by agony and fury. A fist sheathed in unstable amber flame shot out and caught Lin Shu by the ankle. With a pained roar, Kun pivoted and threw him bodily across the clearing toward his ape.
Lin Shu spun in the air, righted himself, and met the ape's next swing not with a block, but with a kick to its already ruined face. An Ivory Detonation erupted from his heel on contact. Whump. The beast's head snapped back, its rage finally overwhelming its failing body, and it toppled over for the last time, unconscious or dead.
Kun descended from above, his sword now reignited with a faltering, sputtering red flame, a final, overhand slash aimed to split Lin Shu from crown to chest.
Lin Shu met the blow with an uppercut. He channeled another surge of Infernal Force—30 percent of his restored reserves—into the punch. The fist, wreathed in white fire, met the falling blade.
CRACK.
The sound was of breaking technique, not metal. Kun's flaming sword technique shattered. The force of the blow sent him higher into the air, a spray of blood arcing from his lips.
Lin Shu landed in a crouch, his mind instantly tallying the cost. "Had to use 30 percent now, and 40 earlier. I've restored about 10 percent since then. I have roughly 40 percent of my total Infernal Force remaining."
Kun landed hard twenty feet away, staggering. He clutched the horrific, sizzling wound on his stomach, his face pale. The burn was deep, disfiguring, the flesh melted and cracked. "I guess he did have a defensive technique," Lin Shu observed coldly. "Something to mitigate a single peak-tier attack. But it wasn't enough for two."
He raised his hand, ready to fire a finishing Scorch Piercer.
But Kun's ape, in its death throes, made one last effort. It lunged from the ground, not with skill, but with sheer mass, wrapping its arms around Lin Shu in a crushing bear hug from behind, pinning his arms.
Kun, breathing in ragged, wet gasps, tried to stand, using his sword as a crutch. "You…" he spat, blood flecking his chin. He looked not at Lin Shu's face, but at the white flames that had just faded from his fists. "Where did you get the Crucible from? Answer me now, before I tell him to crush you!"
Lin Shu, strained against the ape's final strength, looked at Kun from the corner of his eye. The question, the recognition, the sheer hatred behind it—it mirrored Aoyan's reaction when she saw it. "He recognized it too? What did Yanqi give me for everyone from his clan to have this reaction?"
"I SAID ANSWER ME!" Kun screamed, the sound raw and tearing from his injured body.
The ape tightened its grip, bones creaking.
"I'll have to use another 10 percent," Lin Shu thought. He didn't struggle. He let the Infernal Force build within the cage of his own armor and the beast's embrace, then released it inward.
A contained, muffled whump of white flame bloomed between them. The ape's fur ignited; the concussive force was driven directly into its chest cavity. It convulsed violently, a fountain of blood erupting from its mouth, and its grip went slack.
Lin Shu dropped free. "Shouldn't hold a bomb to your chest." He kicked the beast's buckling leg, sending it off-balance, and followed with a devastating punch to its jaw that drove it fully to the ground. He didn't let up. He mounted its chest, his ivory-reinforced fists rising and falling in a brutal, mechanical rhythm, beating its face into a pulp of blood, bone, and matted fur. When a limp arm tried to rise, he dodged, grabbed the beast's face, and with a sickening tear, ripped one of its remaining eyes from the socket.
In the same motion, he flung the gory orb aside and fired a Scorch Piercer from his free hand, not at the dying beast, but at Kun, who was using his last dregs of strength to charge.
The Piercer forced Kun to abort, deflecting the beam with a weak swing of his blade.
Lin Shu stood up from the corpse, his ivory armor now streaked with dark blood and viscera, the steel slowly reforming over it like a second skin. He looked first to Aoyan, who was staring at him, her own minor wounds forgotten in the face of the brutality. Then he scanned the treeline for the glasses-wearing attacker. The boy was gone, vanished into the forest. "I wanted to at least rip his mask off and see his face," he thought with a spike of irritation. "But whatever. He's gone."
His attention returned to Kun. The clan heir was on one knee, panting, one hand pressed desperately over his stomach wound, the other trying to raise his sword. The hatred in his eyes had been diluted by pain and something else—a desperate, consuming confusion.
"How… how did he get that?" Kun whispered to himself, his voice trembling. "She promised… she promised she'd burned it. She promised not to use it, not to sell it… Did she lie? No… no, damnit, damnit!" The internal turmoil was visible on his ravaged face. Then another thought struck him, and he looked up at Lin Shu with dawning, horrific understanding. "Wait… what if Yanqi gave it to him? But doesn't that mean she didn't abandon it? That she gave it to Yanqi? Is that bastard also doing what she did?"
He fumbled at his belt with a bloody hand, pulled out a healing pill, and swallowed it with a grimace, his body shuddering as he tried to stabilize his ruinous injury.