章 344: An offered soul.
Lao Ye stood within the mist as he observed Liang Chen, or at least did his best to. The blood vessels in his right eye had all exploded thanks to the unbearable headache that assaulted him so part of his vision was dyed a deep red. The throbbing also made his vision ripple like water so he had a hard time keeping track of Liang Chen's smaller movements.
What...exactly was the man standing ahead of him, clutching his spear like an immovable vice? His chest had been pierced and his side had been gouged out, yet the wounds repaired themselves in basically an instant. It wasn't unheard of for body cultivators to do this, it was the way the wounds healed that was strange. They hadn't used his abundant life force to regrow the flesh, no, they had just taken in the surrounding wind and water and turned it into fresh flesh and blood. It was unnatural, body cultivators should rely on their insides, not the outside world.
Then there was his domain, that peaceful and contrasting landscape he had brought down upon the world. When two domains met, the stronger one would crush the weaker one, or at least compress it down to a minuscule size. But that didn't happen here. Lao Ye's domain pushed down on it but was unable to budge it at all, it was in fact Liang Chen's domain that was slowly eating away at his domain, forcing him to constantly expend some energy to maintain it.
And then there was his law of time. Lao Ye had already tried his sure-kill technique, dragging Liang Chen's soul and mind into the river of time so that it would get lost within the aeons. But somehow, the technique he had polished and perfected over several hundred years had failed to work. Liang Chen's mind had definitely fallen into the river of time, but it simply floated about as if it had returned home, it didn't even show a trace of dispersing under the weight of time.
And then he erased a timeline, which was perhaps the most mind-boggling of the things he had done so far. Timelines were often erased, every time the present moved past a possible timeline that unused timeline would be erased, it no longer had a use after all. But Liang Chen had erased the timeline before it could even be reached.
Sure, Lao Ye urged the river of time to guide it towards the path, the future, that he wanted. But that took all his effort, and at best he could push it towards a future that was very close to the most likely future, and even then it wasn't guaranteed to work due to outside factors. For example, he couldn't just push the future towards one where Liang Chen was suddenly hit by a meteor and died, even if that future did exist at all times. The possibility of that future coming to pass was simply too small, he didn't think that there was enough energy in this universe to force that future to happen.
But to erase the future? That was an entirely different concept, you weren't guiding or prodding the river of time, you were forcing it. All of a sudden the odds of that future happening dropped to 0, a concept that shouldn't be possible for a river of time that encompassed all possible futures.
Was it the law of destruction, was that what facilitated that law of time and the domain that was currently corroding his own? It was a possibility, but Lao Ye didn't have all that much faith in it. He had seen a destruction domain before, the carnage brought about by the descent of the Void King. That domain had been a black hole, it had swallowed everything equally and left nothing but a black void, it would never be capable of creating a serene landscape like this.
He wanted to keep thinking, wanted to keep going over all the strange things that surrounded the man in front of him, this Storm Lord that had taken up the duty of wrath. That was the problem with the pain that wracked his head after Liang Chen erased the future he had been trying to push the river of time towards, it had messed up his thoughts to the point where he wasn't focusing on the fight.
But his thoughts were quickly forced back into the fight, the spear in his grasp was suddenly yanked out from his hands. He had been so absent-minded in pain and confusion that he hadn't even been grasping his weapon properly, it would have been a death sentence if he hadn't maintained his domain and remained hidden.
His gaze followed the weapon as Liang Chen pulled on it, extracting it from the mist. His brows were a bit furrowed and he clicked his tongue so it seemed like he had been hoping to pull him out of the mist at the same time, in that case it perhaps wasn't all bad that he had been absent-minded enough to lose his grip.
Lao Ye grit his teeth firmly, cracking one of his molars to wash away the throbbing headache. Death or life, neither mattered to him in this fight. But he wouldn't just hand his life over to Liang Chen like that, he would have to prove that his wrath was the one that had the right to swallow up his, he would have to prove that he had the strength to carry their wrath into the future.
He let out a long breath and raised his arm slightly, the weapon Liang Chen had taken from him melting and seeping into the ground. It rose up again beneath his feet and reformed in his hands, the tip glinting sharply as he pointed it at Liang Chen.
His body regenerated in a strange manner but there was a good chance that it still required energy. And if it required energy then there were likely some spots that required more energy than others, more complex parts that would take longer to heal. The brain was likely one such part, no, it was perhaps the only part. After all, he hadn't even reacted when his heart got pierced.
His eyes narrowed as he observed his opponent, a soft glimmer catching his eye. The air three metres to his right was shimmering softly, a tiny arc of lightning passing through it. He instantly reacted and thrust out his spear, the tip arriving right in front of Liang Chen the instant he reached that area. A grey spear met his weapon to block it, but he touched upon the law of water inherent within his weapon to bend the shaft.
It meandered like a river, bending and twisting in tune with every move Liang Chen tried to make. The world could crumble, it could tremble and break, the river would never care, it would just change shape. And his spear did just that, it bent and curved, it rose and sank, all depending on how Liang Chen tried to block.
His spear tilted downwards one final time and dug into Liang Chen's thigh, running it through and spilling more blood, each droplet crackling with electricity. He immediately pulled back his weapon, but Liang Chen's hand was too fast, reaching it before he could fully retract it. So he let go of his weapon again, he allowed it to melt into the ground and then simply reformed it in his grasp.
This was the advantage of having a good weapon, especially a good weapon with capabilities your opponent didn't know about. But Liang Chen moved the second Lao Ye's spear melted, in the second before the weapon got to reform.
Lao Ye once again caught a glimpse of a tiny arc of lightning passing through the air, this time only half a metre away from him. He hurriedly stepped to the side to put some distance between him and the arc, vanishing into the mist just as Liang Chen appeared there.
That was what he had been trying to tell Liang Chen all along, what he didn't seem to learn. To move at the speed of lightning, to ride lightning, actually had a very simple weakness. Predictability. Lightning moved in a very simple pattern, it was practically a straight line most of the time. And beyond that, lightning was a very dangerous thing, it affected the world around it strongly, especially the air. It charged it so much that errant arcs were inevitable. Once you found the arcs you would know where the lightning would travel, and once you knew the path it would be much easier to react to it.
Granted, the speed was still so extreme that even Lao Ye only had a split second to react, there wasn't even a moment for hesitation, and that was with him being supported by his domain. But it was better than having to react to it completely blindly, or even worse, wait with reacting until he saw Liang Chen directly in front of him.
He observed Liang Chen quietly after his weapon reformed, the training and teachings he had received in the past made him unaccustomed to making the first move so he was content with just waiting for Liang Chen to reveal an opening. But he just stood there for a bit, his gaze calmly sweeping the surroundings as if he was waiting for the inevitable attack.
"Got it, so you can't reform the spear instantly after you melt it. It's a Bloodwind Weapon so I'm guessing that you actually need it to move through the ground and back to you?"
His voice cut through the mist and reached Lao Ye, whose eyebrow ticked up slightly. So he had just been waiting around because he wanted to gauge the time it took for Lao Ye to reform his weapon. He was a bit surprised that Liang Chen managed to pinpoint the truth, and even origin of his weapon, but perhaps it wasn't anything to be surprised about.
"You speak the truth. I will need between half a second to a second to reform my weapon each time I melt it, it depends on the distance between us. I want to say that you also hold a Bloodwind code since you could pinpoint the origin of the weapon, but you haven't brought out your own so I believe that I may be wrong. Did you have one in the past possibly?"
Lao Ye didn't mind talking with Liang Chen, his voice would scatter through the mist to prevent him from pinpointing it so he didn't need to worry about being tracked. And it was just nice to talk to others who held beliefs similar to him, words were the best way to delve into someone's mind and motivation, even if the words spoken were unrelated.
"I did, but I lost it recently. But frankly, I would never be able to get past the Lord rank with it so I should have been searching for a new weapon anyway, it was starting to fall behind against my most recent opponents."
Lao Ye's pupils shrank slightly as Liang Chen spoke. He didn't sound like he was lying, Lao Ye actually believed that he was saying the truth. And that was the scary part. He would never be able to move past the Lord rank? Lao Ye had barely managed to acquire the exalted Emperor rank on the Bloodwind Multiverse list thanks to the bloodline he found within this cradle but even he found Liang Chen to be a daunting opponent. And yet he would never be able to move past the Lord rank?
There was no way the Bloodwind Code would consider him too weak or untalented to give him a higher rank so it had to be something else. Had he offended the Bloodwind Emperor perhaps? But if that was the case, then how come he was still alive, did he have someone equally strong protecting him?
Lao Ye's mind kept moving, never noticing that his thoughts were slipping despite the fact that he no longer had a headache. But this time that absent-mindedness would not aid him. No, this time it prevented him from seeing the tiny speck of steam rising from the tip of his reformed spear, that tiny drop of blood clinging to it.
But then Liang Chen's body blurred and Lao Ye snapped fully back to reality. His pupils shrank further, barely visible now. Liang Chen had arrived directly in front of him, brandishing that gleaming grey weapon.
He immediately raised his spear, but Liang Chen's foot stepped down on the spearhead, allowing the sharp edge to cut into his foot as he pressed it down. He twisted and bent the spearhead in a myriad of ways, but Liang Chen's foot kept following it no matter where it went, pressing it down each time.
He tried to jump back, but Liang Chen was like a maggot sticking to his bones, always right in front of him. By the time he came to terms with the fact that fleeing wouldn't work the incoming spear was practically already at his side. He looked at it with a somewhat bleak expression, he could instantly tell that none of his own defences would be able to block the attack when it was already this close.
"Ah, so in the end, you were correct, Senior Xingmei. Yours is a bloodline that can grant no rest or victory, only an earlier incineration."
He couldn't help but mutter quietly to himself. Those words he had heard when he acquired his bloodline, he had never paid much attention to them, but now it seemed like they would come true in the end. He drew in a sharp breath and touched upon the bloodline he had already activated, upon that pure water flowing in his veins.
And then he followed the connection inherent within the bloodline, traced it down to the place where he found it. Energy stirred within the ground as he tapped into it, a furious being buried all alone beneath them suddenly had its energy borrowed. The energy rose up, rushed to the surface like a dragon released from its shackles.
The energy sank into Lao Ye's body, moving along with the bloodline he had used to urge it up. The aura radiating from his body instantly shot upwards, but the effects of the energy were also immediately apparent. His skin started to flake away, floating upwards before turning to dust and vanishing, as if he was slowly being burnt to ash.
Purgatory, the energy that burned sin and punished cruelty, the energy buried beneath them. Now he tapped into its power thanks to the bloodline he had found inside it, now he grew stronger than ever before. But he also paid the price. Today would be his last day, even if he should win.
He and his sins would burn, his soul would be drawn into Purgatory to burn forever, he wouldn't even be able to be reincarnated, much less go to any afterlife. The Bloodwind Emperor may still be able to take him to Tartarus, but Lao Ye wasn't so arrogant that he thought that the Bloodwind Emperor had taken notice of him.
He reached out with his arm and grabbed the incoming spear, clenching his fist and shattering the weapon. It was more fragile than he thought, probably a result of being a construct made solely from elements. The skin on his arm started to flake faster, revealing bloody flesh that also started to flake away.
He pushed out his arm again, not giving Liang Chen any time to react as he drove his fist into his chest. He was fast now, faster than he had ever been before. Purgatory ate his soul, but it gave him strength befitting of that act, a glimpse at the future he had forever buried with his acts. His domain crumbled, the mist vanishing since the overpowering energy coursing through him didn't match the domain, but that hardly mattered when compared to the strength he got.
He could feel Liang Chen's chest gave in, blood splattering the arm that sank slightly into his flesh. The blood hurt as it hit him, it felt like it both cut him, sizzled like acid, and crackled like lightning. But worse still were perhaps the parts that didn't hurt. A small hole had appeared on his arm, a drop of blood had simply taken a bit of his flesh and vanished as if they had never existed to begin with. He didn't know what caused it, he hadn't even felt a thing. It was unknown, it was... scary.
But even if being splashed by the blood hurt, he managed to push Liang Chen back, his body now ravaged by the same energy that burned Lao Ye. And indeed, he could see that Liang Chen's skin was also flaking, drifting away like ash upon the wind. But wherever a piece of him vanished, a new one quickly grew back.
Lao Ye almost felt like blinking dumbly. He could actually still regenerate? He had the bloodline of a Primordial Man, but even that wasn't enough to let him regenerate normally as Purgatory burnt him, at best it only bought him an additional 30 seconds.
"Haha, life really leads to some strange encounters if you live long enough. This is the power of Purgatory, Storm Lord. Right now I am stronger than ever before, strong enough to protect any monastery. But in about 45 seconds, I will fade from this world, just another soul that will burn forever. Come, show me if your wrath can withstand Purgatory, show me that you are worthy of trampling and inheriting all our wraths."
Laugh, that was the best thing Lao Ye could do in this situation. Really, what an outrageous thing that had come here, what outrageous wrath that had been born. Perhaps this really was a wrath that could take in Purgatory, perhaps this was a man that could actually follow through on his ambition. It was a nice dream, a beautiful dream of a future where the heavens actually did as children were told they did.
"Come, Storm Lord, let me drift away in that dream."
Lao Ye brandished his spear and glanced at it, the weapon creaking and groaning in his grasp. It seemed like even an Emperor-rank Bloodwind weapon had a hard time handling the energy of Purgatory. Lao Ye raised his gaze and placed it back on Liang Chen, but as he did so, his pupils started to tremble quietly, quivering uncontrollably.
Something had appeared in front of Liang Chen, a crack. It looked like a scar on reality, a tear in the world itself. He could feel ominous energy seep out from the crack, a grey and barren wasteland just barely visible beyond the crack. What was that? What sort of place was that? And above all, what was that bone-chilling energy that made even the violent energy of Purgatory tremble like a child?
"I was wondering how I'd hold up since the fifth was so much easier now, shall we find out?"
Liang Chen said something but Lao Ye didn't really understand what he meant, he wasn't even sure if he wanted to understand. But he would, in the end, he would understand whether he wanted to or not. The air suddenly got heavier, the earth sinking down in several places as if pillars had suddenly appeared there. The already ruined land within the mausoleum sank down as more and more of the invisible pillars seemed to appear, even the unbelievably sturdy walls trembling from the energy that was gathering in the air, gathering in Liang Chen.
Lao Ye wanted to move, but his feet felt like they were nailed to the ground, one of the invisible pillars seemed to have placed itself on top of him to hold him down. So he could only watch as Liang Chen reached out and grabbed the crack, actually grabbed hold of that tear in reality. And then he heard it, a soft mutter, as if not even Liang Chen was a bit unsure.
"Hmm, would Sixth Step Crushes Purgatory work?"
Before Lao Ye even got the chance to ponder the meaning of those words, all the energy that had gathered in the air retracted all at once. The invisible pillars vanished as one, the almost suffocating amount of energy sinking into Liang Chen and the crack he was holding.
The world cried. It groaned in pain and screamed, Lao Ye could hear it, feel it in his body. It was painful. It was as if the world was trying to share its pain with him, or perhaps it just wanted someone else to bear the pain while it cried. But in the end, it accomplished nothing.
That crack, the tear upon reality, shrank. It twisted and changed, releasing audible cracking sounds as it was altered, forced into a more appropriate shape. It was bent and broken, forced to obey the man who held it. And in the end, it was forced to land fully in his grasp, completely altered. What was once a tear upon reality had now become a weapon, a long spear with a dull grey tip, ominous energy constantly oozing from it and twisting the world around it.
"Here I come, Lao Ye, Purgatory."
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