Book 3: Chapter 37: A Battle of Dragons |
The valley’s ambient sounds continued without knowing the magnitude of what was about to transpire in a few seconds.
Two mammoth forces gathered before one another and committed to war.
Hu Rong relied on his instincts and moved first, hoping to end this battle before it could start. He could not hesitate against a foe so dastardly as Zi Zhen. The ancient Heavenly Demon had a thousand tricks and plots within his sleeves that could consume a stronger foe with ease if they were not careful.
The boy form transformed into the spirit of spiraling blades and death incarnate. Charging the monster before him. Dozens of blades that carried sharpened blade Qi that carried enough spirit energy to bisect five hundred yards of trees around him coalesced into a single point, refined by merely existing in the vicinity of the Hu Patriarch. Each one hummed at frequencies that made the stone beneath them fracture in spiderweb patterns radiating outward from his position.
He isn’t dodging?
Was his last thought before he crashed with full force into the waiting form of the Patriarch of Dark Gate Palace.
Zi Zhen had done nothing but raise a single hand and the dark Qi that had been seeping across the valley floor surged upward in a wall of black so dense it became a physical solid thing.
Rong's slammed into the wall–
Only to be stopped dead in their tracks. Rong’s form shaking with visible effort.
Hu Rong's eyes widened and mind struggled to understand what had happened.
He yanked them back. The blades tore free with a sound like ripping cloth, trailing streamers of black corruption that clung to the steel and hissed where it met his spirit energy. A few of the outermost blades dissolved entirely. Just gone and reduced into nothing but motes of Qi that faded into the ambient air around them.
Rong jumped back and reformed into his human body.
The loss burned in his chest like a physical wound, but he refused to let the monster before him notice.
Zi Zhen lowered his hand and the wall of darkness receded, flowing back into the ground in the form of the ribbons that surrounded the gaunt skeletal body the creature before him carried. He smiled slightly, a quirk of his lips that looked down upon Hu Rong. "You’ve gotten stronger.” Zi Zhen paused and walked to the side as though he was studying the person before him anew. “But not strong enough. Not nearly enough if you lived for another hundred years."
Hu Rong launched himself forward.
The core in his body rumbled to life without holding back. There was no need to speak or talk. This was the time for action and one of them had to die.
Hu Rong was going to make sure it was the thing before him and not himself.
He crossed the distance between them in a blur of manifested steel and spirit fire, his form shifting mid-flight from the sharp-featured young boy into the same form that had carved streaks of blood and agony upon the form of a weakened, but still, Calamity. The Blade Storm in full expression. A hurricane of cutting edges that filled the valley from wall to wall, each blade independent. Each one seeking flesh and carried in accumulated fury.
Letting the anger and sorrow he felt out with every strike.
The mountain groaned under the assault.
Cherry blossoms disintegrated in the crossfire.
Stone sheared from cliff faces and tumbled into the valley below.
The air itself screamed as dozens of blades carved through it at speeds that turned atmosphere into heated fire.
Yet, he missed everything.
Zi Zhen moved through it like smoke through a forest.
His body twisted, bent, danced, ducked, spun, and flowed around cutting edges that should have opened him from throat to groin. Dark Qi trailed from his limbs in ribbons that intercepted blades Rong hadn't even aimed at him yet, predicting trajectories a dozen moves ahead. His void-black eyes never blinked. His smile never wavered.
He was faster than before.
Much faster.
Hu Rong pressed harder and committed everything he had to the assault. His spirit form blazed white-hot as he poured energy into every remaining blade and the flames of Qi that coated the world around them. Tightening the kill zone and layering attacks in sequences so complex they would have required a dozen cultivators to coordinate.
Hu Rong roared as it reached a crescendo–
Zi Zhen’s smile widened and he stepped deeper into the storm, appearing directly before Hu Rong.
He jabbed with a finger–
The wall of flames shattered and Hu Rong was blasted through the trees and brush like a comet, craving through the earth, unhurt except for his pride.
He rose, mud, dirt, stone, and trees falling off his spirit form as it transformed back into that of a child.
Zi Zhen stood where he'd been standing the entire time. He hadn't moved from his original position.
The valley around him was devastated, stone gouged, trees felled, cliff faces scarred, but the man himself bore not a single mark.
"What did you do?" Hu Rong shouted across the distance. His voice cracked as the sound bounced off the ruined peaks and came back to him distorted..
Zi Zhen tilted his head. The void-black eyes caught the mountain light and reflected nothing. His robes settled around his gaunt frame as the last of the dark Qi tendrils retracted into his body, coiling beneath his skin in patterns visible through the fabric. Veins of absolute black that pulsed with a rhythm too slow for a human heart. A demon like Zi Zhen grew through suffering and death. Through consumption, corruption, ruin, and the systematic dismantling of everything that made cultivation a path toward something greater rather than a descent into something worse.
Every advancement came at a cost paid by someone else and breakthrough was built on a foundation of suffering and agony.
Hu Rong knew this and had known it for centuries.
The path of a Demonic Cultivator was not for the light hearted or those with an ounce of mercy in their hearts.
Made for the evil and damned.
"Nothing special," Zi Zhen said as he raised his hand above him and stared at it. He turned it over, examining the dark veins that crawled beneath the skin of his palm, down the wrist and disappearing up his sleeve. "Just used Peng Du and Zhong An as cultivation cauldrons. That's all."
The words hit the mountain air and hung there.
Hu Rong stared in sheer terror. “T-That isn’t possible. They were both–”
“Ah, yes. Strong? Powerful? Monsters in their own right? Or were you going to say legends that would not fall so easily?” Zi Zhen’s smile faltered. “Bastard Peng Du knew what I had not when he died. Smiled because he understood and I had not seen. Hmph… Matters not for you, little Spirit. You and your Hu Clan will die here today, land salted and made inhabitable.”
"You're a monster," Hu Rong said.
Zi Zhen's smile reached his ears. "Yes. An apt description, I’d say. I had to transcend the limitations of humanity and have come so close… Yet so far away."
Hu Rong attacked while he seemed distracted.
Zi Zhen met him head-on.
Dark Qi exploded outward in a dome that swallowed the valley whole. The collision of their energies produced a shockwave that flattened every remaining tree on the surrounding peaks and sent avalanches cascading down six different mountainsides simultaneously. The sound was beyond thunder. Beyond anything the mountain had ever contained.
They clashed and separated a hundred times.
For all the talk and show of strength, Zi Zhen never allowed the blades Hu Rong struck with to touch him. Zi Zhen had heard enough from the rumors and tales of the Original Calamity and he was no fool. His body was in no way or shape stronger than that of the monstrosity that needed the whole world to gather against just for a chance to survive.
Yet, the issue of Hu Rong’s inability remained.
He couldn’t touch Zi Zhen while the damage stacked against him. Each empowered by the combined might of the planet's strongest beings fused into one gaunt, smiling, void-eyed abomination that moved through Hu Rong's attacks like they weren’t there. .
Hu Rong hit the ground.
The impact cratered the land beneath him. His spirit form flickered. His Qi blade edges had gone dull and the razor sharp intent that defined the Blade Storm had eroded under the sustained assault of dark Qi that corroded everything it touched.
Zi Zhen descended from above in a leisure pace, hiding the exhaustion that clawed in his chest. His ribbons of dark grey cloth trailing behind him like the lines of a funeral procession. He landed ten paces from Hu Rong's crater and folded his arms behind his back."You've improved. The Calamity's influence, I assume. Proximity to power of that magnitude tends to elevate those nearby. A rising tide, as they say."
Hu Rong pushed himself upright.
His form solidified through sheer will and the edges of his Qi blades sharpening, light returning to his manifestation in stubborn pulses that refused to die.
"But elevation is not transformation." Zi Zhen's head tilted. "You are still what you were. A spirit playing at war. I am something new."
"You're a parasite."
"I'm transcendant!"
Hu Rong gathered every ounce of his power. Everything within his damaged and beaten form for a final hurrah. Instilling upon it the Dao of his existence, intent, and everything else he could in that moment for this final, single shot.
That was all he had left.
One shot that would either pierce through Zi Zhen's defences or shatter against them and leave him with nothing.
Hu Rong launched.
The compressed Qi attack of sharpened intent and Dao screamed forward, trailing spirit fire and his accumulated fury. The air split into two before him. The stone beneath his trajectory liquefied from the heat and pressure. The mountain itself seemed to lean away from the path of his attack.
Zi Zhen smiled and leaned his head.
The blast slammed into a endless dark ribbons, only to be redirected inches away from the form of evil before him.
Hu Rong stared in shock.
“Was that all? I expected more from the blade storm–”
Both of them snapped their head to the left in shock.
A figure stood among the trees.
Neither of them had sensed his approach. Neither of them had felt a displacement of air, a fluctuation in ambient Qi, a tremor in the earth, a disturbance in the spirit frequencies that Hu Rong monitored as naturally as breathing. The figure simply existed where a moment ago there had been empty space and undamaged cherry blossoms. And still now they could not sense him at all if not for the crunch of leaves and branch under his foot.
Pristine robes of black rested upon his shoulders like a waterfall. Nothing on the battlefield covered in ash, dark Qi residue, and the pulverised remains of several mountain peaks could touch upon it, floating away and deciding it could not afford to land upon his form. Not a speck of dust, wrinkle, or a single thread out of place.
The figure's posture radiated something that made Hu Rong's remaining blades go quiet.
It made his breath catch and only felt it with a single other person he had ever met.
An authority so fundamental it didn't need to announce itself.
W-Why does he feel like Patriarch?
An arrogant expression looked down at both of them from his hardened sharp jawed face. He surveyed them and found them wanting. Beneath him to address. The stranger surveyed the devastated valley. The cratered stone, the felled trees, the avalanche debris, the scorch marks, the residual spirit energy and dark Qi that hung in the air like smoke after a fire. His gaze passed over all of it with the disinterest of a man stepping over a puddle.
"I am looking for someone," the stranger said.
His voice carried no Qi or cultivation pressure. No intent, domain, spiritual resonance, Dao, Qi, or any of the thousand subtle markers that cultivators used to project authority and establish hierarchy. Just words spoken with the casual certainty of a man who expected the universe to arrange itself around his needs rather than the other way around.
Zi Zhen's jaw tightened and muscles along his neck corded and his void-black eyes narrowed to slits. "Neither one of us are whom you are searching for. Leave and leave us be."
“No.” The stranger's arrogant expression didn't shift by a single degree. His eyes moved from Zi Zhen to Hu Rong and back again with the unhurried assessment of someone comparing two items on a shelf and finding both lacking. “That is for me to decide.”
Zi Zhen's dark Qi surged beneath his skin.
The veins pulsed faster, darker pressing against the boundaries of his body and demanding release. His lips peeled back from his teeth.
The stranger ignored him entirely.
"By any chance," the stranger said, and his gaze settled on Hu Rong with a focus that pinned the spirit in place more effectively than Zi Zhen's dark Qi ever had. Said stranger had already dismissed Zi Zhen like the monster before him did not matter. “Does this make any sense to you? I was told to tell a certain being this sentence.” He paused. "'The one who dragged you out of the manor of horrors has sent me to you. The outer court may flock once more if you deem me, Hei Gu, worthy.'"
Hu Rong gasped and a cold that drained all the tension in his body flooded his senses.
The manor of horrors... Master sent him!
"I am Hu Rong!" The words erupted from him before thought could intercede. “I am Hu Rong! Spirit of the glades!”
The stranger's arrogant expression cracked and broke apart like ice on a spring river. What replaced it was a smile so wide, bright, and incandescently relieved that it transformed his entire face from disdainful aristocrat into something rawer and filled with desperate with gratitude. "Well met." Hei Gu's voice shook. His pristine robes shifted as his shoulders dropped and the rigid posture that had held him upright through the entrance, the declaration, and Zi Zhen's killing intent released all at once. "My redemption has finally found its conclusion!"
Tears filled Hei Gu’s eyes.
Hu Rong stared at him just happy that this strange and awkward person was on their side.
Zi Zhen huffed. "Another ally of yours? Matters not. Both of you will die–"
Hei Gu vanished.
Hu Rong's perception caught nothing.
No blur of movement.
No displacement of air that moved the branches.
No trail of Qi, spirit energy, kinetic force, or any other measurable phenomenon that would indicate a physical body had transitioned from one point in space to another. One frame he stood among the cherry blossoms and the next frame he stood behind Zi Zhen.
The Patriarch of Dark Gate Palace hung in the air.
His head faced the wrong direction.
Neck twisted a hundred and eighty degrees with a precision that spoke of absolute control rather than brute force. His void-black eyes stared backward at the cherry blossoms he'd been facing a moment ago. His mouth hung open mid-word, the die still trapped between his teeth. His dark Qi spasmed, surging and retreating in chaotic waves as his body tried to process what had happened to it.
Hei Gu held Zi Zhen by the back of his robes with one hand. The way someone held a sack of grain they intended to toss onto a cart. "You aren't likely to die, old man. Best you run and recover for some time before I grow angry with you." He looked down his chin at the monster that had just dodged everything Hu Rong had thrown at it. A sneer spread across his face. "Succor stands before me and I care not for your pathetic struggles. Be gone before I change my mind, insect."
By God… What just happened? I-I don’t understand.
Hei Gu huffed and threw the old man away..
A flick of the wrist that launched the Patriarch of Dark Gate Palace across the valley like a dirty rag tossed toward a refuse pile. Zi Zhen's body tumbled end over end, dark Qi trailing behind him in streamers that dissolved into ink-like miasma. Death ribbons erupted from his frame, coiling and lashing at the air as his body fought to stabilise and process the damage to his cervical spine while simultaneously maintaining his cultivation base.
He vanished mid-tumble as the ribbons surrounded his form.
Gone like he hadn’t almost killed Hu Rong.
Said Spirit stood in the silence that followed without knowing what to say or how to say it. "I–I felt no Qi."
Hei Gu turned to face him.
The arrogant expression was gone and with it the smile too. What remained was something stripped bare. A face that carried the specific weight of a man who had walked a very long road and arrived at a destination that meant more to him than the journey itself. His eyes held a depth that hadn't been there during his entrance. This was a being that was older than anything Hu Rong remembered seeing except for certain Calamities.
"Qi?" Hei Gu shook his head. "No. I have no Qi at all."
The words landed in the valley and sat there.
"Senior Yin Hu brought my arrogance into line." Hei Gu's gaze drifted south and toward the distant flatlands. Toward the city that squatted somewhere beyond the horizon, housing a being whose absence was more present than any power Hu Rong had ever encountered. "He said, and I quote: 'You walked the entire way without an ounce of Qi as penance. For you to protect me… Or was it that I was meant to protect you…” He looked down at Hu Rong. “Yes. Protect you, Senior Hu Rong. That has to be what he said because you are… not strong and I am being kind… He went on to say, ‘Until the day I arrive at the Hu Clan to reclaim my territory. Now get out of my sight. You are not forgiven until then.'"
Hei Gu sighed.
The sound carried a sorrow that filled the ruined valley from wall to wall.
His eyes found Hu Rong's with grief within them.
"Now. Point me toward this Hu Clan so I may reclaim it for Senior Yin Hu and fulfil my penance."
Hu Rong pointed at the cut world tree and watched as ruin came upon everything and anything that existed upon that land.
No survivors.
No traces of anything existing.
It only took minutes and it was all over.
Then Hei Gu pulled up his sleeves, found a bucket, water, mop, and hundreds of rags. Only to start scrubbing the floors.