Rising from the smoldering earth, a wall of demonic flames painted dozens of kilometers in a blasphemous green. Combusted timber and flesh from beasts too slow to flee thickened the air. Beneath the thick smoke that shrouded the sky, long shadows danced like gnarled, beckoning fingers.
No surviving beasts were foolish enough to answer its call. The chorus of crackling bones made sure of it. Instead, soaked in sweat, a question shattered their skulls. How could the Celestial Frost Matriarch let this vision of the realm’s end happen in the middle of her territory?
Not far, Yuehua Ji watched the earth weep as if its scars throbbed in remembrance of Andras’ puppet’s invasion fifty millennia ago. Blood trickled down her fists as her face contorted in a hideous grimace. This couldn’t happen—this wouldn’t happen under her watch.
Her qi swelled with burning hate. Artifacts older than what men’s memory could remember—all destroyed by that whelp. No, the demonic blade he wielded like a hammer, unaware that channelling this unholy power would corrupt him. And if he knew...
Her gaze sharpened as the law of ice solidified at her call. Nine hulking arms unfurled across the sky, frozen armguards and pauldrons defying the flames to melt them. A war dress of thin armored plates clung to a torso both graceful and monstrous.
Gas spewed from two pale lights tucked beneath the bars that formed the visor of a helmet lined with shimmering arched patterns—two eyes whispering of cold rivalling the mist of the netherworld.
"If he knows, his thirst for power will ruin us all. He must die today!"
With her spiritual idol gouging the ground like a deity trampling mortal lands, she bolted inside the cave.
The tremors reached Adam, who panted over his knees. Dishevelled hair stuck to his forehead as his face went ashen. Stalactites were already forming around him, and frost began to wrestle the cleaver’s fiery territory. Space was freezing, and with it, any prospect of survival.
’You fool!’ The cleaver whispered, its voice like grinding stones. ’You’ve burned our trump card. Even worse. If not for your weakness, I would have sundered the entire region up to the pathetic sect you’ve wasted years in.’
Clenching his jaw, Adam pushed on his knees, lunging to the side of the cave. ’Did I have another option? No? Shut up, then.’
In the same movement, he grabbed Yann’s frozen statue with one hand and tore space open with a broad wing. The air cracked like glass, frost devouring the edges and slithering toward the fist-sized hole he had opened. He swung again, with the cleaver this time, the opening widening in a cacophony of sizzles and vapor, but frost shrank it already.
Dread clawing at his throat, he shoved the statue in first, to which the cleaver rumbled. ’Drop that treacherous bastard and leave. He’s already dead!’
Adam didn’t answer with words, but with a grunt and dismissal of the cleaver. Then, he leapt through the shrinking hole, feeling glass shards scrape his skin, drawing gashes of frozen blood and patches dark like the void.
With a groan, he tumbled on his blessed land plain, his heart skipping a beat upon noticing that space didn’t shrink anymore. She was coming for him, Misha, and everyone he had sheltered. Thrusting his palm down, he somersaulted upright, and gripped the freezing rift, bringing their edges closer.
Each breath seared his lungs as, through it, he saw Yuehua Ji’s contorted face, and the spiritual idol’s nine blades cleaving at his position, hurling gales and icicles in a destructive rain he knew he couldn’t survive. The blessed land wouldn’t either.
’Faster!’ He strained his numb arms, his chattering leg digging a pit into the ground.
A Gangrenous dark layer spread on his skin from touching the frost, cells necrosing, death calling.
"RAAAAH!" With a roar from the depths of his soul, he forced his hands closer, spatial mana and qi rumbling like stars around them. Swelled veins burst, and muscles were shredded.
But the edges that had just begun to freeze cracked. With a final push, he slammed the rift close, banishing Yuehua Ji and her horrible idol hundreds of kilometer below him, where she couldn’t reach him.
A cold knot still churned in his gut, but the sight of his land—still intact, still his—made his heart falter. He wasn’t dead. Not yet. But neither was this over.
"The blessed land is enticing enough for her to hunt me down, and now that she saw the cleaver, even the edges of the world aren’t safe." His face grew somber, his gaze steeling. "No, there is a place—the only place she can’t intrude. The mage territory, the western archipelago..."
His voice dropped to a mutter. "But I don’t have any backup plan, just the written promise of a long-dead man." His fists trembled. "Don’t screw me over with an expired deal, Alistair, or I’ll hunt for your soul in the netherworld... If I still have one after that sadistic lunatic is done with me."
He grabbed Yann’s statue, then flickered, vanishing from the plain to reappear on the palace’s throne. His mana immediately surged through grooves carved on the ground, and the bastion’s magic circle flared to life.
The rumble of engines overwhelmed the land’s serene atmosphere, worrying its strongest residents.
The centipede, coiled in its poisonous cave, raised its head, frowning.
Seated in the city hall, William, who glared at Wei, dissatisfied by his origins, gasped when a tremor rocked his feet, while Wei tumbled to the ground. Misha, who was explaining the diagrams on the whiteboard, paused, an ill omen gripping her by the throat.
It hadn’t been half a day since Adam left, yet he was back and moving before even seeing her. Something bad must have happened—really bad.
As if to confirm her worries, another tremor almost ripped the ground away from her feet. She clutched the wall for support, her breath catching in her throat. The board, desk, and shelves flew around her, splintering against the walls along with the two less steady-footed men.
Horrified, she fought the trembling ground and lunged at the window, diving from the highest floor. With a graceful flip, she landed on the ground and rushed to the ground floor, where the children slept or played in the nursery.
She found them crying, most from shock. But some clutched bent limbs, while others bled from the impact with the walls, or because they fell from their cradles.
Jaw clenched, she knelt before them, natural life force coating her hands a lush green. She tried to whisper as she healed them, but her voice came out hoarse and slightly cracking. "I’m with you. Nothing will happen."
As the teary-eyed kids lunged into a trembling hug, she gazed toward the palace, biting her lip. "Who did you provoke..."
A voice thundered in answer instantly, mocking her reassuring words, the blessed land, and the world with terrifying casualness.
"Woah, he really turned the void emperor’s blessed land into a flying citadel. How did you do it?"
A tense silence lingered for a second before he continued, the casualness in his voice fading.
"Xueyin, The Crimson Blade, have asked you a question. Disable your barriers, and answer on your knees, then I’ll spare you..." Auburn hair fluttered around a man hovering on a scarlet sword, his lips curled into a vicious smirk. "As long as you can upgrade mine, that is."
Adam’s mind almost crumbled in horror.
A second dao ancestor had come for him.
AN: Oh shit... two dao ancestors at once...