Destiny in Cinders

An Jing didn't know when it happened, but a sword appeared within his hand. Merely raising it made him feel like he had been infused with power. He felt an urge to take a step forward to kill the people that made him feel so much hate, destroying everything and reducing everything to ash. That would feel so vindicating and true to his nature!

However, he stopped the instant before he took the step forward as he recalled a dream he had during his childhood of the sun that set the world aflame. He suddenly realized that all that was just an illusion. Even if he had given into his desires, nothing in this world would really change.

That didn't mean he wouldn't slay anything. He wanted to slay something, so he would, but his target wasn't these empty illusions, but rather... The inner demon!

Without hesitation, An Jing swung his sword at the hazy black fog. The light from the sword dispelled the smog around him in an instant. His arm traced an arc toward the other eight who were telepathically connected with him, devastating the inner demons within them and snapping them out of it!

"That's not enough!" An Jing never felt more clarity than he did at that moment. He turned to the whole formation and looked at the other children who were being influenced by the heavenly fiend. It was a sight that pained him truly. Unlike the ones who were unharmed thanks to An Jing's help, the others had suffered heavy injuries due to the heavenly fiend, even if some among them were lucky enough to awaken their lifearcs.

The ones in the learned phase that awakened their lifearc, Bai Qinghan included, numbered only two. Five others were dying from having their souls scattered. There were five in the tempted phase who had awakened their lifearcs, but seventeen had their heads burst or lungs explode, resulting in death. Four in the hateful phase awakened their lifearcs while nine were losing blood and rapidly progressing towards death.

So far, eleven had managed to awaken their lifearcs while thirty-one had been sacrificed to the Olden Heavenly Father. Though sixty-six remained alive, they had already been infested by fiends and stood no chance of awakening their lifearcs. Even so, An Jing couldn't bear seeing the people he knew perish horribly just like that.

"How dare you, heavenly fiend!" As he raged, he saw that the souls of some of his junior disciples tainted with blackness and heading toward the darkness. Unable to resist, he drew his sword and let out a war cry.

The sword struck swiftly, with An Jing pouring every bit of power into his waist, shoulders, arms, wrists, hands, into the hilt, channeling it through the guard, blade and tip! It was a strike that combined all the power of his soul and body, containing so much power that it looked like he had a helping hand from the divine!

His thrust caused the sword qi that leaked out of the depths where the formation lay to stir, forming into a glowing sword flash of pure rage and killing intent. It shot straight out from the ground and clashed into the core in the dark smog, shattering it instantly and dispelling the black miasma, causing the chains that bound the souls of the struggling children to scatter, releasing them from their illusory shackles.

"Odd..." the heavenly fiend's voice rang as the miasma scattered. "How art thou able to control this sword intent?"

"Scram!" An Jing snapped. Right as a cold thought was about to infest his soul and mind, the sword hilt within his sea of consciousness rumbled, sweeping it clean with pure sword intent. If there were any trace of inner demons left in An Jing, it could only be born from his own heart. The foreign heavenly fiend no longer had any way to bypass the protection of Yvelbane's sword soul.

"An Jing," Yvelbane said after feeling the push. "I need to suppress the remnants of the heavenly fiend in Direlife Canyon, so it'll take some time. You have to hold back those working for Direlife Manor and prevent them from noticing anything odd in Direlife Canyon."

The sword soul smirked. "Don't worry. I have seen through the true nature of this formation. Since they dared to combine the traces of power I left behind with the heavenly fiend's power to run this formation, I will let them have a taste of heavenly fiend blowback!"

"Got it." An Jing exhaled deeply and sheathed his sword as the fiendish smog around him scattered. Yvelbane's words also instilled in him information about how formations like the Imperial Sky Starslaying Grand Ritual worked, including some of the incantations and processes.

Thank you. I will not let them do as they please. His rage soon distilled into killing intent. He would protect himself and the other children's souls from being infested by the heavenly fiend.

At that moment, he suddenly felt a trembling in his soul, followed by an outpouring of heat from its depths that spread throughout his entire body. Then, he began to resonate with the heavens!

Outside the formation, the gigantic black hand of mist above trembled before slowly rising. Its palm and all five fingers were covered in many deep cuts that leaked sword qi. The hand seemed to have been forced back.

"What is going on? How could the heavenly fiend's hand be pushed back?!" The manor lord had organized more than thirty such rituals and had never seen anything like this. Soon, he saw something else that caused him to abandon all other thoughts. It was almost surprisingly delightful.

An Jing stood at the center of the altar, brow raised. A large crimson star hovered above him, blood-colored flames flowing across it. The flames formed a ring of fire behind his head before manifesting totems of capital enforcement. The scent of hot blood and metal wafted all over the place, filling the area with killing intent. It was as if blades and swords were swinging chaotically all over the place, carving arcane and bloody patterns into the rock. The black fiendish miasma wasn't able to approach those places at all and was instantly scattered and pushed away.

"Amazing!" The manor lord almost shouted "terrifying" at the never-before-seen lifearc. Still, he was going mad with delight to the point that he gripped his jade dagger so hard that his knuckles turned white. "Yet another miracle arc! A starruin one at that!"

He didn't seem to care about the dead children at all. As far as he was concerned, they should be honored that their vigor would be recycled. He couldn't care less apart from the fact that An Jing had just awakened a miracle arc. "Two miracle arcs! Our divine cult truly is blessed!"

Yet, once he let his joy wash over him, he seemed to find the exact lifearc hard to make out. "What kind of lifearc is that? Pyrestar blood lethal qi? Or the Evenstar? Don't tell me it's Pyrestar Warden?!"[1]

1. Evenstar here refers to Venus while Pyrestar refers to Mars. As the author uses classical Chinese planet names, we decided not to call them how we usually call them in English because those names are based on Roman deities. ☜