Destiny in Cinders

"Should you feel rage, should you learn of injustice, Unsheathe."

Turning the blade in hand into astral flames to illuminate the darkness... If I trust the sword in my hand, will I be able to slash open darkness and oblivion and bring light back to the universe? Even though it's a single flash of the sword, a mere astral ember?

An Jing appeared mid-air when he returned to Void Embrace and fell toward the large river across the cliff. Mid fall, he suddenly laughed. "I understand! I understand it now! Swords are meant to be unsheathed! They can only be unsheathed!"

Then, he fell into the water. If nothing went awry, he would dive deeper immediately and continue to follow the river down thousands of li away, hiding himself in the wilderness. Yet, he hadn't detected any hint of heavenly fiends yet. In fact, he could smell heavy blood and fire in the air.

"What in the world happened?" He turned himself around and leaped out of the water, reinforcing his arms with Evenstar lethal qi and grabbing onto the cliffside. His fingers glowed bright white as they dug into the rock, keeping him from falling back into the water.

Martialists climbed cliffs like normal people climbed stairs. In the span of a few breaths, An Jing quickly made his way back to where he first jumped off from, only to widen his eyes with surprise.

The mountainous forest where he faced off against the vilespawn fiend had been reduced to a wasteland. Nothing but the charred remains of trees could be seen. The ground itself was cracked and fractured. Many gaps led up to the cliff's edge, covered in ominous dark ash. Smoke seemed to waft out of the dense cracks on the ground.

An Jing made sure that nobody else was beside him and lowered himself to the ground to inspect the gray ashes and cracks. They looked like the burn traces of acid rain from Skysource. In other words, this place had been swept with some rather dense fiend qi.

At the corners of the burnt land were traces of bloody corpses that seemed to be corroded to the bone. Based on the clothing scrap, they seemed to be members of the Crimsonguard and the Heavenly Demon Cult.

"Did Grand Chen and the demonic cult fight the heavenly fiend together?" An Jing muttered. "Was the fiend really that powerful?"

It seemed that the demonic cult that tried to pursue him ran into the vilespawn fiend and the Crimsonguard. It would have taken place not long after he crossed into Skysource. The battle seemed to leave the vilespawn fiend in a badly injured state, but the demonic cult and Crimsonguard probably suffered many casualties too according to Yvelbane. Fiend qi was akin to the life force of heavenly fiends. The fact that so much of it spread around meant that the vilespawn fiend was hurt enough to leak quite a bit of it. Yet, it seemed to have won at the end of the day even though it was pushed to the brink of death.

"This isn't good news." An Jing's brow furrowed even tighter. Heavenly fiends were enemies of all life. "If the forces of Grand Chen and the demonic cult didn't manage to wipe out the heavenly fiend, things will get much worse once it recovers. Not only will I struggle to escape alive, disaster will befall the nearby settlements!"

At that moment, he noticed embers and smoke coming from the trees in the distance. "Wait, isn't this where... That's the direction of the village!"

He had passed by the village while he was escaping but didn't enter it. It was basically a minor settlement of the demonic cult, given that it was situated deep in the mountains. Though An Jing would circle around the village to avoid any foragers or hunters, the heavenly fiend would do the opposite. It was the prime location for it to recover from its injuries. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

It was no longer time to ponder. An Jing quietly took out his sword case and loaded it. He would kill the fiend while it was hurt! He needed to act as soon as possible. He needed to Unsheathe!

As quickly as he could, he made his way through the small mountain path, noticing even more traces of the intense battle that had happened earlier. Two airships had crashed into the forest and flattened many trees, even starting a fire that burned the surrounding area to ash. The heat and smoke from the fire still lingered in the air.

Shriveled and twisted corpses of cultists and soldiers were scattered around the path. They had sworn to prevent the heavenly fiend from entering the village even at the cost of their death. Despite the nature of the world's order, even the corrupt Grand Chen and demonic cult did something extraordinary once in a while. If they were narrow minded enough to let fiends run amok, there was no way they would've grown into big organized factions and simply remained insignificant local hegemons.

An Jing knew that if the forces had fought the vilespawn fiend from the safety of their airships, the fiend wouldn't have had the chance to kill that many people. He didn't stop and kept traveling along the quiet path. Perhaps nobody would tread upon this place in the future. Nobody would learn about what happened there, about how two groups of people who should have been at each other's throats fought on the same side against the same foe.

Along the way, he came across a survivor that he knew. It was the one-eyed instructor of the cult, Li. He only had one leg remaining and a chunk of his body seemed torn off, probably bitten off by something. There was fiend corruption near the cleanly cut wounds, as if someone had gone through them with a blade. The instructor clung to life just barely due to his impressive vitality.

"An Jing..." Light returned to his eye when he noticed a figure approach. Seeing the familiar youth, he felt delighted and smiled. "It is you... You didn't go far after all! Hehe... In either case... you should run... That vilespawn fiend... Ugh!"

His chest suddenly rose before he coughed out a pitch-black substance. It wasn't blood. Rather, it was a mysterious substance that resulted from his innards melting. Black-green ripples swept through his face, causing his muscles to tense up dangerously.

"It's fiend corruption. It's too late for him. He's nothing but scrap left behind after the vilespawn fiend was done consuming him. He will melt into liquid in an hour tops. His soul and essence have been completely corrupted and melted by fiend qi and absorbed into the heavenly fiend's body to be used as nutrients.

"This vilespawn fiend is quite intelligent! It actually left its victims for dead rather than killing them so that they will despair and create resentment which can accelerate its healing. If we don't get rid of the fiend soon, this land is doomed!"