Destiny in Cinders

As An Jing circulated the energy within him, a pure-white seal began to glow faintly. Evenstar Ivory Divine Seal didn't just improve his body's constitution and attributes, it also prevented the fiend's bloody meat minions from biting down on his body! Their bites went through his clothes but not his skin.

Thanks to An Jing's improved mental faculties, he was no longer affected by fiendnoise. He equipped his close-combat artifact with no difficulty at all. While spear artifacts from Skysource didn't have any unique features, they were durable and crafted well. They could also attack autonomously along with their user.

An Jing cut his palm open and used the lethal qi in his blood to form a large, bloody spearhead around the artifact he looted from Gunner. Taking a step ahead, he swung the blood-tipped lance, launching many bloody stakes toward the meat minions that came his way.

Any that managed to get close enough would surely be pierced by the spear in An Jing's hand before being eviscerated by the blood lethal qi, vaporizing like snowflakes in the hot sun.

An Jing had refined these martial skills using experiences from his current and previous lives. Even before he became a proper Aura martialist, his martial skill was already something that the instructors from the demonic cult praised and warily watched. Having become a true martialist and experienced many deathly battles, he was able to execute these moves even more fluidly than before. No normal martialist could possibly match up to him.

Even so, there were far too many meat minions. They managed to slow down An Jing as he tried to back away. It took only a few moments for the vilespawn fiend's deer form to rise and shriek before launching itself into the air in an attempt to crush An Jing's head with its hooves. There was no time for him to evade.

"Yvelbane!" he cried in his mind as he channeled more Evenstar lethal qi than ever before into his arms, spine and legs. He also reinforced his spear with Qiform Arsenal and Armorpierce Impetus to block the massive hoof!

The fiend's roars shook the village ruins and the mountains around it. Its full-force stomp was something that even peak Fortification martialists and even adepts had to avoid, let alone an Aura martialist.

If An Jing took the hit directly, he would be turned into meat paste. Fortunately, he was far from a normal Aura martialist. The Evenstar lethal qi in him surged. As long as he didn't run out of spirit qi, he was as tough as a Fortification martialist with an unimaginably tough body! Though it wasn't enough to overpower the vilespawn fiend, he was at least more sturdy than the ground beneath him!

The great stomp hammered An Jing into the ground beneath him. At the same time, a drone subunit traced an arc in the air, carrying a mysticsky lightning talisman! An Jing knew before he even left Skysource that his sword-soul mentor could pilot drones in his stead. The drones also gave Yvelbane the ability to directly affect the world around it. In other words, this was a sword-manipulation technique!

This opened up far too many tactics to him in a fight. One such tactic was to use An Jing to draw the enemy's attention while letting Yvelbane deliver the fatal blow when a chance opened up! Yvelbane could spot many openings in the vilespawn fiend's attack. When the fiend committed fully to the heavy stomp, it left its damaged left side open, exposing a path straight to its core!

Moments ago, An Jing had used a trace of Evenstar lethal qi to activate the mysticsky lightning talisman. All that took only a single instant. The powerful talisman from Skysource's Xuandu Group burned intensely with a dark-green glow, unleashing many arcs of lightning in the air that formed a revolving stormcloud. Thousands of bolts arced across the cloud and gathered at one spot before wildly expanding, forming something akin to the divine punishment of the high heavens.

The vilespawn fiend sensed the threat and subconsciously raised its foot in an attempt to evade, but it was too late. Lightning flashed within the stormcloud, illuminating everything with a dark-green glow as a massive bolt shot straight into the wound that the self-destruct drone had created earlier.

Lightning bolts flashed so much that it left a ghostly imprint in the line of vision of anyone that beheld it. The fiend qi and smoke around the village instantly scattered from the power of the lightning. Then, a thundering boom shook the mountains!

The power of lightning seared deeply into the central core of the vilespawn fiend, causing it to wobble unstably. Before it could shriek and lament its doom, the lightning spread so quickly that it instantly vaporized all its innards.

The vilespawn fiend's hooves, antlers, fur and scales began to fizzle and blur like static. Seconds later, it groaned soundlessly as its body collapsed into a pitch-black oily substance that boiled away into black vapor, rising into the sky.

As if it wanted to vent its anger at An Jing one last time, it sent a portion of the oily substance flying toward An Jing that contained so much fiend qi that the nearby trees and plants turned into ash from the slightest brush. Even as it died, it wanted to corrupt An Jing, the human that had defeated it!

He felt no fear, however. With half his body still planted firmly in the ground, he calmly took out the OverSight sword case, charged it up with power, and fired. A pure sword beam wiped out all of the substance mid-air and traced a straight line skyward. As if summoned by the beam, rainclouds began to form in the sky. Thunder rumbled as rain fell around the village, washing the pitch-black fiend qi in the air back to the ground before it could scatter far and wide.

"Void Embrace's fiend-qi purification process still exists... But why? Why isn't it able to clear away the thick fiend qi that's all over the place?" Yvelbane could tell that the vilespawn fiend had been reduced to its original form, causing all the fiend qi it had produced through consumption to scatter. That was all well and fine.

What really drew its notice was Void Embrace's purification process. It was a sign that the Heavenly Dao was still present and operated in some way. In other words, this was proof that Void Embrace hadn't truly fallen. Instead, the heavenly fiends were some foreign force. If that was the case, why, then, was the world's spirit qi so heavily polluted?

Unable to figure out the answer to this question, Yvelbane drew its attention back from the drone. The battle was finally over.