บท 313: The fifth step and the final defence.
The first person to notice the change was undoubtedly Song Zhao. There was a subtle shift in the air, the faint scent of horrors beyond description. But perhaps the worst of all was the terrible silence that descended, it felt as if he couldn't even hear his own heartbeats. That silence was the end of all things, the soft whimper as the last flicker of existence faded into the night.
A flash of light lit up the darkened sky, but the sound didn't even register in Song Zhao's mind, or perhaps he truly wasn't able to hear sounds any longer, he couldn't really tell. But he knew that things had become more dangerous than ever before, his body tensing up as his expression hardened.
The dirty brown flames that rose up all around him retracted at once, sinking into his flesh and blood. The blood that had turned his eyes crimson and even formed fangs in his mouth started to bubble and steam, his skin rapidly becoming darker, small patches falling off and revealing blotches of bubbling blood beneath.
His aura quickly started to rise again, the ever-present storm around the city no longer able to get within two kilometres of him, pushed away by a domain of intense heat filled with the stench of blood. But this newfound rise in strength clearly didn't come easily, small trembles running through his body as traces of pain flashed through his pupils.
But his eyebrows suddenly quivered as he finished his preparation, his body lunging to the side with a swift motion. A spear shot past him from behind, just barely missing his shoulder as it dug through the earth. Song Zhao didn't need to follow the spear with his gaze to know where it was heading, grasping his almost broken sabre as he pursued the spear.
Liang Chen caught the spear as it returned to him, spinning it to direct the tip towards the incoming Song Zhao. His expression was as hard as Song Zhao's, now that the Void had come out it meant that the battle had reached its final stage, there was no longer anything else to pull out, nor was there any room for error.
"Yumao, keep them safe however you feel like, just keep them alive."
He sent one last message to Yumao, allowing him to act however he saw fit. He wouldn't have any room left to think about the disciples or how to keep them safe, with the stage this fight had reached then it was fully possible that some of their attacks would have such a range that it might implicate the entire city.
Once the message was sent out, there was no longer any room for another word, Song Zhao had reached him and was already bringing his sabre down. The intense heat radiating from his body bore down on Liang Chen, even his own blood feeling like it was boiling, pricking his entire body with pain.
Liang Chen tilted his spear upwards and stabbed out, the storm around him moving in accordance with his desires. The intense wind picked up into a tornado, gathering up all the rain and concentrating it around Liang Chen and Song Zhao. The rain evaporated due to the heat, but that also served to lessen the heat and ease the burden on Liang Chen.
The two weapons came in contact with each other, Song Zhao suddenly feeling as if his arm had been swallowed by a mire, it felt as if every order he sent to his arm took ten times as long to reach as it would normally. He saw Liang Chen's elbow snap under the force behind his descending sabre, but his elbow healed a lot faster than Song Zhao was able to move his arm at the moment.
As such, before Song Zhao could follow up his attack or capitalize on Liang Chen's broken elbow, the wound was repaired and the spear swept out sideways. The weapon reached him much faster than Song Zhao expected, did it move faster than he realized or had his mind just slowed down to that extent? There was no answer to his question, the weapon slamming into his waist and erupting with both lightning and that horrible silence that Song Zhao had noticed earlier.
He didn't need to think, he acted instantly on pure instinct, an instinct that solely sought to keep him alive. The brown flames he had absorbed into his own body exploded, tearing open his waist and blasting him away before the energy that burst out of Liang Chen's spear could reach him. Intense pain wracked his body as blood quickly bubbled out to cover the torn open area, but he was completely convinced that this outcome was better than bearing the full brunt of that attack.
Liang Chen turned his head to follow Song Zhao, a slightly wet sensation on his face catching him off-guard. To his surprise, tears were streaming down his face. He couldn't even really remember when he last cried, but now tears were pouring out from his eyes, a heavy sorrow enveloping his heart without him noticing.
Helpless anger and despair were perhaps the best words to describe what he was feeling. A bird that had lost its wings, forced to hop along the ground in desperation as it gazed towards the sky that it once ruled, that was what he felt like right now. He hadn't been in contact with Song Zhao's weapon for long, but the heavy lamentation it bore still managed to affect him, it might actually overwhelm him if he was forced to feel it too many times.
He bit down on his tongue to force away those thoughts, any such distractions in a battle like this would lead to death. His gaze focused fully on Song Zhao, who was correcting his posture after having blasted himself away to safety. He straightened his spear to point at Song Zhao, the law of the void gushing out to accomplish his will.
Song Zhao's entire body stiffened as that silence assaulted him again, he knew that something awful was going to come next. And just as he expected, horror followed in the wake of that silence. The figure of Liang Chen suddenly appeared directly in front of him, merely a step away, the perfect range for his spear.
He hadn't ridden any lightning or charged over, he had simply appeared directly in front of him. There weren't even any ripples in the surrounding space, nor had he felt Liang Chen move through his domain, he simply appeared there, as if he had always been there.
His spear was already stabbing forwards, leaving a gash upon existence itself as it aimed for Song Zhao's heart. His body was still reeling from the pain, but he didn't hesitate to detonate another bit of flames from within himself, aiming to blast himself backwards while launching Liang Chen in the opposite direction. But that was when he saw the true horror of what Liang Chen had done.
He was indeed blasted backwards, his chest torn open and replaced by bubbling blood. But Liang Chen stuck to him like a maggot to a bone, remaining a constant one step away from him. He looked as if he couldn't stand stably, his robe torn apart and his flesh charred by the strong explosion, but he still stuck to Song Zhao, seemingly forced to follow along with him.
He hurriedly corrected his position and kicked off of the ground to launch himself to the side, but Liang Chen simply followed along with him, maintaining that pitiful distance between them. He had gotten a second to collect himself, parts of the surrounding storm descending to repair his charred flesh.
He looked as surprised as Song Zhao, but he still stomped the ground heavily and threw chunks of broken earth and stone into the air. The chunks froze in the air, Song Zhao slamming into them and coming to an abrupt halt as his charge was unable to break through the frozen time that held them in place.
"You...What have you done?!"
Song Zhao ignored the soft pain of slamming into the debris, it was nothing compared to the pain of his chest and waist after all. No, the main thing that occupied his mind right now was exactly what sort of strange thing Liang Chen had done to force that small distance upon them, to force that to become the norm. But Liang Chen didn't answer, his empty hand simply pushed forward, the surrounding air gathering in front of his palm, spinning continuously as it became a miniature grinder.
In truth, he really was as surprised as Song Zhao. He had used his law of the void, but he hadn't used it directly on Song Zhao. No, what he did was what he once did when he fought against Chen Dairong, the disciple of the Sealing God Empyrean. He had erased the distance between them using the law of the void, turning it into nothing so that he would teleport directly in front of his enemy.
But back then he had instantly killed Chen Dairong afterwards so he hadn't gotten to see the actual side-effects of using the void for something like that. The distance between them had been completely erased, but what exactly did something like that actually entail? Simple, there was no distance between them, that range Liang Chen had specified was now the normal distance that the two of them had, it had become a fact engraved upon existence itself.
If they wanted to put more distance between each other then one of three things would have to happen, one of them would have to die, one of them would have to unleash enough power to break through the energy that powered Liang Chen's law of the void, or someone with an equally tiered law would have to break it. Until that happened, the two would be forever stuck at a mere step away from each other.
Song Zhao's gaze lowered towards Liang Chen's incoming palm, his instincts screaming at him. But he decided that it was now or never, he had to take the chance or he might lose it forever. He allowed the hand to reach him, the churning wind getting unleashed within his abdomen.
But he surrounded that wind with his brown flames and the bubbling blood, encapsulating it so that it couldn't properly explode and tear him apart from within as it was supposed to. His abdomen still expanded violently, his stomach exploding into a mess of blood and chunks, but that alone wasn't enough to kill a being as hardy as him.
That was what he had bet on, that his sturdy lifeforce would be able to keep going even after he suffered the wound. If it did then he would have gained the perfect opportunity for an attack, and it was an opportunity he wouldn't allow himself to miss.
His large sabre descended at the same time as Liang Chen's hand dug into his abdomen, roaring with dark brown flames and screaming of wrathful sorrow as it aimed for his head. Liang Chen's hair melted before the weapon even hit him, clinging to his scalp and scalding his skin. He couldn't even pull back his hand since it was stuck in Song Zhao's abdomen, and fleeing was borderline impossible due to what his law of the void had done to the distance between them.
The best he could do was kick off the ground and jump to the side while tilting his head away, wind surging upwards while the flow of time around the weapon started to twist unnaturally to eat away at the power contained in the weapon.
But in the end, even though Song Zhao was forced to follow along as Liang Chen moved, it was impossible to completely divert the weapon. It slid down past his head and dug into his shoulder, slicing through his body and even cutting one of his lungs in half, roasting his insides with the intense heat unleashed by the flames.
The weapon only stopped when it reached the last of his ribs, embedding itself in the bone and refusing to budge any further, preventing Song Zhao from slicing Liang Chen in twain. If he didn't count the attack he suffered from the weapon that was made using parts from an Origin Beast then this was the worst wound Liang Chen had ever suffered, if even a single circumstance was different then he may have just died there on the spot.
But right now, with the law of void coursing through him, as well as the ever-present storm fueling him, he was able to cling to life, his wounds even starting to heal slowly. But with how grievous this wound was, he knew that not even the storm he had summoned would be enough, it would definitely get completely sucked in and dissipate before it even finished fully healing the wound, it wasn't truly eternal after all. So the battle couldn't be dragged out further, it had to end right here and now. Liang Chen knew that better than anyone, squeezing out a few words between mouthfuls of blood as he slowly forced his body to step forward.
"You said you were the sorrow of the sky, didn't you? Then let me dedicate this to you and your wrath. Fifth Step Shatters the Sky."
The previously unnamed step, the step that had only recently been completed, Liang Chen unleashed it without hesitation. The world grew silent as his voice fell, the air turning heavy as power poured out from Liang Chen's body. The sky held the power for him, gathered it as he unleashed it all. And then it rushed back to him, descending upon the tip of his spear as he pushed it forward.
And the world was turned upside down as his spear marched forward, the sky groaned and the earth tore, unable to resist the power that leaked out. The city collapsed in a rain of debris as the earth gave way, a massive bolt of lightning connecting the earth and the sky as it tore across the land and devastated all of creation.
The clouds were shredded and vanished, a scar-like gorge was torn into the earth. The wrath of the storm seemed to have descended upon the land, the errant lightning escaping from the massive bolt charging the now clear blue skies with enough electricity that lightning descended despite the lack of any clouds.
When the dust settled, the only thing that remained of the city was the main headquarters of the Wyvern's Wrath sect, its defensive array shimmering weakly before the cracks that covered it caused it to collapse entirely. Only the pillar of earth beneath the sect remained tall within the crater, hundreds of small valleys spreading out from the crater, with one massive arcing valley stretching towards the distance.
Yumao had taken to the sky at full speed, solidified threads of darkness connecting the disciples to him so that he could drag them away before they were swallowed by the attack. This was the first time he had seen the fifth step in action, it was also the first time the disciples saw the true horror of their sect master, their storm lord. And what they saw was the power to change the world, to alter planets and landscapes as he saw fit, it was not power that belonged to a human.
But while they gulped breathlessly, Liang Chen's expression was a bit dim. The sheer eruption of power had broken through the energy that maintained his law of the void, separating him and Song Zhao. After all, that attack contained almost all his might magnified several times over, it was far stronger than an attack he launched to cross a bit of distance.
But even so, he could feel that Song Zhao wasn't dead yet. His body was gone, reduced to almost nothing, but he could still feel his presence. And then he saw it, a single drop of blood that floated in the air, rushing towards the entrance of the sect. He could clearly feel Song Zhao's aura from that drop of blood, albeit extremely weakly.
The attack seemed to have launched him towards the sect, by the time Liang Chen noticed him he was already right in front of the gates. He flew into the midst of the two sect members that were sitting there, they had stopped fueling Song Zhao's Nine Wraths Lamentations so their eyes were now wide open in shock. But Song Zhao ignored their shock, his voice drifting out from the drop of blood.
"We've no choice, activate the Bloodline Array! We'll use it all if we have to, I need time to recuperate!"
The two disciples could only nod their heads like chickens, they knew that now wasn't the time to hesitate. They immediately acted, their human forms twisting as they shed their skin to reveal their true forms, a deer covered in steel barbs and a four-tailed cat with moose-like antlers of bone.
The two beasts pointed their maws at the ground and vomited out a great deal of blood that quickly started to spread out and form runes. Liang Chen could feel energy surge up from within the earthen pillar that supported the sect, blood rushing up from the ground and joining with the rapidly forming runes.
Light burst out from the runes, forming a transparent bubble around the entire headquarters of the sect. A bit of Liang Chen's poison had invaded the sect so he could see that the disciples that remained inside it shed their human forms as the bubble rose, their true Demonic beast bodies forced into the light.
The same was true for Song Zhao, the drop of blood he had become absorbing some of the blood that rose up from the ground. He quickly grew, turning into what seemed like a mass of blood imitating a tiger, eagle-like wings sprouting from his back while ram-like horns extended from his head. Had his true form always looked like this or had he taken in so much Demonic beast blood that even his true form had been distorted by it? He had regained a rather normal shape, but Song Zhao still seemed to breathe heavily, looking at Liang Chen from the other side of the barrier.
"You've really forced us to the brink, Storm Lord. This barrier is our final line of defence, the last bastion for the wyverns that lost their sky. It is fueled by all our gathered blood and rejects all humanity, only Demonic beasts may exist within it, we can't even maintain our human forms within it. To force us to hide within this turtle shell...you scare me, Storm Lord, given time you will surely become the end for this cradle."
Song Zhao's voice had become deeper, the sound of bubbles popping and hissing mixed in with the sound of it now that he had been forced into his true form. This was the final trump card for the Wyvern's Wrath sect, a barrier that only Demonic beasts could enter, anyone carrying even a drop of human blood would be rejected. But in truth, it was more of a turtle shell than a trump card, it would only ever be able to keep them safe, it couldn't defeat their enemies.
Liang Chen looked at the barrier in front of him, it had stopped only a few inches away from him so he would only have to reach out and he would be able to touch it. But he hesitated slightly. There was a truth he rarely thought about, one he rarely admitted. He had a human form, but was he really a human?
No, he couldn't really be called a human, he was a Sebettu. At least he used to be, his bloodline had evolved beyond that over the years. In the past, before he evolved it, his bloodline had the purity of a fourth-generation Sebettu, but what sort of blood had been mixed in over those generations? Was there human blood amidst it, or had it all been Demonic beasts?
Was his human form a result of human blood mixed with his, or was it just a result of his high-grade bloodline, similar to Lan Yun who had been born from the egg? He didn't know, he had never tried to find out, it had never really mattered to him. His blood belonged to the Sebettu, but he had been raised by humans so that was what he always considered himself. But now, now it was perhaps time to learn the truth, was there anything about him that was even human to begin with?
And so, he eventually stretched out his arm, waiting for the moment his palm would strike the barrier. But it never did, his hand passed right through the barrier, his skin and flesh melting away to reveal the truth hidden beneath his mask, the true form he had always thought about but never brought into the light of day.
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