"Die!" the eerie youth shrieked, lunging through an opening in the fight. His hand, now a venomous, inky black, shot toward Jiang Dao's chest.
Jiang Dao didn't even flinch. He met the attack with a guttural roar, choosing to trade blows in a brutal calculus of pain. Instead of defending, he drove both of his massive fists into the youth's temples like twin meteors.
BOOM!
The air cracked. The youth's poisoned palm slammed into Jiang Dao's chest, and a horrific venom flooded his system. It spread like ink in water, a black stain of death blooming across his torso. At the same instant, Jiang Dao's own Poison Sand Palm found its mark. The youth let out a choked scream as his skull visibly caved in.
Jiang Dao followed through, his foot stomping down on the youth's chest with the force of a falling anvil.
CRACK!
Both men were thrown back by the impact, crashing to the forest floor yards apart.
Jiang Dao coughed, spitting a mouthful of black blood. A sickening sizzle rose from his chest as the poison went to work, his flesh beginning to bubble and rot like it had been doused in acid. It was only his Eagle Claw Iron Shirt technique, honed over a century of practice, that had kept the blow from shattering his ribs and stopping his heart. Still, the venom was relentless, eating away at him.
But a deeper power stirred within him. His Health-Nourishing Art, a technique he'd pushed to its absolute limit just the night before, roared to life. He forced his internal energy into circulation, and an invisible wall rose against the tide of poison. The venom's advance halted. Then, beneath the skin, this power began to squeeze, forcing the black, toxic blood out of the wound.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Each drop sizzled as it hit the ground, corroding leaves and stone, sending up tiny plumes of acrid smoke. This was a poison that could kill the very earth it touched.
Across the clearing, the eerie youth staggered back to his feet. Blood trickled from his eyes, ears, and nose. The crushed-in hollows of his temples began to slowly, unnervingly, inflate back to their original shape, twisting his face into a grotesque mask of hatred. His eyes burned with a venom of their own.
"You worthless insect," he hissed. "You actually hurt me. For that, I'm going to devour you, piece by piece."
He raised a single, blackened finger, which began to glow with a dark energy. The light coalesced at his fingertip, then shot forward—a needle of pure darkness that seemed to tear through space itself. It crossed the distance in a blink, reeking of decay.
Jiang Dao's instincts screamed. He threw himself aside just as the bolt of black light ripped past, grazing his shoulder. Even with his defenses, the skin where it touched instantly blackened and died. A graze. If that thing had hit him square on, it would have been over.
His heart hammered in his chest. No more games. He drew his long saber and charged.
A cruel smile stretched across the youth's face, revealing rows of sharp, dense teeth. He fired off another volley of dark energy, then another, the bolts coming as fast as lightning. Jiang Dao weaved and dodged, a blur of motion. The trees and boulders behind him exploded, pierced clean through by the necrotic energy, the holes rapidly decaying into sludge. He was fast, but not fast enough to avoid being nicked again and again. He couldn't get close.
With a final, desperate roar, Jiang Dao tightened his grip on his saber and poured his energy into it. The blade shattered into a cloud of razor-sharp fragments. He swung his arm forward, unleashing a shotgun blast of steel.
The shrapnel storm tore through the air, faster than any bullet. The youth's face went slack with shock, but he had no time to react. The steel fragments riddled his body, embedding themselves in his chest, his stomach, his face. He screamed, a high, piercing wail, as blood streamed from a dozen new wounds.
But Jiang Dao was already moving. He closed the distance in a heartbeat, his muscles bulging, his own palm now radiating a toxic, black aura. He aimed for the youth's gut, putting everything he had into one final Poison Sand Palm.
The youth, though impaled and bleeding, managed to lash out with a clawed hand. "I'll kill you!"
CRACK!
The sound of their final collision was horrifying. Jiang Dao's palm struck home with unimaginable force, blasting a hole through the youth's abdomen. He vomited a torrent of black blood and was sent flying like a discarded rag doll. At the same time, the youth's claws raked across Jiang Dao's chest, tearing flesh and leaving deep, bleeding furrows. An unnatural flush colored Jiang Dao's face as he stumbled back.
"Damn you," came a gurgling, hate-filled voice from the heap on the ground. "I will find your family… I will eat them all!"
The youth began to stir, then to rise. The clothes on his torso had been shredded, revealing a gaping, black-rimmed crater in his stomach. Yet somehow, impossibly, he was still alive.
Then, something broke.
His body began to twist. Bones seemed to dissolve as his form elongated, stretching like hot taffy. Beneath his skin, a layer of fine, dark scales shimmered into view. He flowed upwards, a boneless, serpentine horror nearly four meters tall, thin and whip-like. He slithered across the ground, closing the distance with terrifying speed, a stench of utter corruption washing over Jiang Dao. He was no longer human. He was a nightmare given form.
The creature coiled, its poisoned hands slashing through the air. Jiang Dao backpedaled, but the thing was too fast. He threw a palm strike, focusing all his remaining power, but when it landed, the creature's body was slick and cold. The force slid right off, neutralized.
In the next second, the creature's long body wrapped around Jiang Dao's waist, squeezing with crushing force. Pain exploded in his midsection; he felt like he was about to be snapped in two. The coils slithered higher, pinning his arms to his sides. Trapped, Jiang Dao could only watch as the creature's blackened hand, claws extended, shot toward his face.
"It's over, little thing," it hissed, its voice a triumphant rasp.
Rage, pure and absolute, erupted in Jiang Dao's heart. He roared, not with his voice, but with his soul. He called upon every ounce of power from his Health-Nourishing Art, flooding his limbs, his bones, his very blood with raw energy. His strength didn't just return; it multiplied. His muscles swelled, straining against the creature's hold, growing to an inhuman size.
"OPEN!" he bellowed.
CRACK!
With a final, explosive flex, he tore his arms free. The force was so great that a sickening series of snaps echoed from the creature's body. It let out a piercing shriek of agony, its bones shattering from the inside out, and its entire body went limp.
But Jiang Dao wasn't done. He seized the creature's noodle-like body, ripping it from his waist. What followed was not a fight. It was a demolition. Gripping the boneless horror like a whip, Jiang Dao began to smash it against the world around them.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM!
He was a whirlwind of destruction, a force of nature. He slammed the creature into boulders until they were dust. He smashed it against trees until they were splinters. The ground itself trembled and broke under the relentless, savage impacts.
The members of the Jiang clan could only stare, their faces masks of awe and terror. The man they saw before them, silhouetted against a backdrop of ruin, was not the Jiang Dao they knew.
He wasn't a man at all. He was a god of destruction—a demon of rage.