Destiny in Cinders

The black shoulder pad had shattered, exposing the flesh underneath. Yet there was neither crimson tissue or blood, only a jet-black expanse infested with writhing roots and soft shoots. The roots and shoots grew rapidly, weaving and regenerating.

Despite resembling something out of a nightmare, they radiated incredibly potent vitality. The Fengdu soldier was decked out in spirit artifacts of the North Yin tradition and wielded gloom qi. Who could have guessed that his core cultivation technique was the Greenwood Flourish Wither Mantra?

This was clearly a secret technique—an arcanum. The ethereal threads of life and death transformed into a fist of raw power aimed at An Jing. Still shaking off the aftereffects of the ghostly shade's intrusion, the soldier moved with some stiffness. However, his punch launched with the explosive force of a projectile, triggering a massive gust of wind that swept the entire passage clean.

Between his high-level Qi Refinement foundation and the raw might of his spirit-artifact armor, seizing a mere ant in the early stages of Qi Refinement would be effortless. The Fengdu soldier had never considered the possibility of failure.

But in a heartbeat, An Jing shoved the martial cultivator back with a powerful kick and suddenly demonstrated a level of agility far beyond a low-level Qi Refinement cultivator, vaulting into the air to evade the strike. The soldier's punch missed its mark and slammed into the floor. Rock fragments were flung upwards as the ground buckled and cracks spread in every direction. Had the attack landed, it would have pierced through an armored vehicle.

"What?" The soldier faltered.

Meanwhile, An Jing, fueled by the stimulant pill and swift talisman, erupted with Evenstar lethal qi. He scaled along the wall, launching himself into the air. Before even attempting to rescue the martial cultivator, An Jing had anticipated and prepared for every potential outcome.

The stimulant pill he had taken had fully dissolved. It was incredibly powerful, overdrawing one's vitality for a brief burst of qi essence. A geyser of qi essence erupted, tearing through An Jing's body. As the scalding inner qi essence flooded his face, it manifested as crimson streaks, igniting a primal urge to roar.

However, An Jing clamped his jaw shut, steadying his aura as he coiled for a lethal strike. His fist had broken the metalwood puppet before, but he now felt capable of shattering it entirely. With the swift talisman boosting his speed and reflexes, he gave his all.

As An Jing took to the air, his muscles contracted, coiled, and exploded with power. Combining Ailment Swordfinger with his boiling vigor, he channeled two bursts of Evenstar lethal qi into a dual-fisted strike aimed straight for the most vulnerable part of the Fengdu armor: the knees. His fists, gleaming like solid white metal, slammed into the armor with a resonant clang that thundered through the passage.

In a flash, the Fengdu soldier's leg whipped out with brute force, hurling An Jing backward through the air. The armor was a fortress of steel; a mere Qi Refinement strike stood no chance of breaching it. Even with his spirit qi refined to a lethal point and supercharged by the stimulant pill, An Jing's strike failed to compromise its structural integrity.

Thanks to frantically shielding himself with his spirit qi, the bulletproof mantle and the jade armor pendant, he managed to keep his ribs from shattering under the force of the blow. Though it had spared him the worst, the pendant was now cracked and overloaded, rendering it temporarily unusable. However, An Jing never expected a single attack to end the fight.

"You little brat... urgh..." Watching An Jing flip back to his feet, the soldier, hampered by the ghost cultivator's intrusion, missed his chance to dodge but still lunged in pursuit. But twin explosions erupted from beneath his boots, rattling his frame. When he tried to step forward, his legs wouldn't budge.

An Jing's attack had yielded results. While the spirit armor held firm, its operational mechanisms were warped and its joints hopelessly jammed. With Ailment Swordfinger penetrating his joints, the Fengdu soldier's legs went numb and his every movement became sluggish. To make matters worse, An Jing tossed two defensive thunder beads at his feet. The explosions that resulted wrecked the leg joints.

"Nothing but cheap tricks!" He was a well-trained soldier through and through. If he couldn't take a prisoner in whole, he was perfectly willing to settle for a maimed one. He whipped out a spirit-beam gun from his side, his gaze instantly locking onto An Jing as he leveled the muzzle at its target.

No matter how fast he moved, there was no outrunning a locked-on tracker. With a lightning-fast pull of the trigger, a spirit beam erupted, screaming toward An Jing's right leg just as he scrambled to his feet. But he wasn't fighting alone. The second the soldier aimed at him, Yvelbane barked a command, "Jump left!"

At that exact moment, a chill raced down An Jing's spine. The swift talisman sharpened his mind and reflexes to a razor's edge. As soon as the instruction reached him, An Jing was already mid-leap to the left.

A white-hot beam screamed past his leg, leaving an angry red tear in the fabric of his mantle. If that beam had hit flesh, he would have been reduced to ash in an instant. A fraction of an inch closer and his leg would have shattered. He would be crippled like the martial cultivator before him. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

An Jing stared down the Fengdu soldier, his focus so absolute that there was no room for fear or lingering dread. Caught in a kill-or-be-killed struggle, his mind became unnervingly calm and lucid.

That ghost cultivator really did a number on him. His spirit-artifact armor is weakening and the connection to his soul was disrupted. This soldier has definitely slowed down. That shoulder injury is killing his strength and form. He didn't even sprout those roots to snag me like he did with the ghost cultivator. I must get closer! I can't dodge them all!

As soon as this thought crossed his mind, An Jing landed and bolted straight for the soldier. He was well aware that dodging a single shot wouldn't save him. Spirit-beam guns could fire in a rapid, relentless stream.

In typical human oversight, the Fengdu soldier never expected An Jing to predict and dodge his shot. That surprise cost him his chance at a rapid-fire follow-up. It took a full breath just to channel his spirit qi and find the trigger again. That one breath was the thin line between life and death.

"Right!" Yvelbane prompted. Its response time and ability to track spirit qi put everyone else to shame, making it easy to see exactly where the shots were headed. Without hesitation, An Jing channeled his spirit qi into a sharp veer to the right, evading the six-shot volley from the soldier.

"What?!" Firing the shots in a double-triangle pattern should have covered An Jing's potential range of evasion. The soldier couldn't fathom how someone with such weak spirit qi dodged his rapid-fire barrage.

However, he understood that the world was full of surprises. No matter how impossible it seemed, the fact that his opponent had managed to dodge was set in stone. Rather than freezing in shock, he needed to keep firing. Suddenly, his expression shifted as he glanced toward his left, which he had completely overlooked.

The frantic rhythm of footsteps sounded before culminating in one massive roar. Wrapped in the sharp odor of coal and rust, a figure exploded from the shadows, unleashing a surge of spirit energy toward the soldier, who had no time to react.

Earthmire Embers, fueled by the combustion of his own life, erupted with fury. Under the weight of its overwhelming, oppressive power, even the air itself detonated. The martial cultivator reappeared in peak condition, his face flushed. The chthonic poison was now completely purged.

He unleashed a one-armed punch that hit like a string of explosions, kicking up a violent shockwave. The strike dwarfed An Jing's power by a hundredfold, pulverizing the soldier's knee plates instantly. The martial cultivator rode the recoil, flipping through the air to evade the soldier's furious counterattack.

"Go!" He didn't look back as he roared. "The ancient treasure is in your hands now. Take it to the badlands!"