Destiny in Cinders

Two days had passed since An Jing used the OverSight sword case to kill the white-robed scribe. In that time, he didn't flee as quickly as he could. Rather, he made pauses in between to survey the nearby terrain to find the most ideal route.

He wasn't foolish enough to make his way into a village. The cult was sure to detect him when a foreign youth suddenly showed up among the small number of villagers deep in the mountains. The villages could also be filled with cultist sympathizers, considering how much they benefited from being under the cult's rule.

He didn't return to Skysource right away either as he simply wasn't in that much danger. This way, he could also mask the three-day cooldown of using the Grandvoid Pathway from the cult just in case they could detect his presence somehow.

He remained in the surrounding area as an extra precaution to see if the cult still had other methods they could use to track him down. As he expected, some people had caught up with him, and he was ready to deal with them.

He gradually slowed down his steps and paid attention to the dense forest around him as well as the really obvious cliff up ahead. He was not far from a massive canyon that was a few times larger than Direlife Canyon, with the top of the cliff being around a thousand meters from the canyon's lowest depths. Down at the cleft was a rapidly flowing stream, while the cliffs on both sides were completely devoid of plants. No normal person could survive a fall like that.

Choosing to fight at the canyon was the height of irrationality and no different from suicide. But An Jing had more than enough room to maneuver thanks to his ability to cross worlds. Thus, he chose the top of the cliff intentionally to wait for the cultists.

Except, the one that caught up wasn't a cultist, but a heavenly fiend. An Jing could feel the sense of oddity and aberration growing stronger and stronger when he stopped. It felt like a sword was hanging right over his head, spreading axiety across his entire body.

Soon, a humanoid figure in crimson armor stepped out of the shadow of the woods, metal cleats leaving trails of black smoke with each step. Is that a Crimsonguard? No, that thing doesn't feel human!

An Jing could have never known that the weird humanoid was some kind of fiendspawn. Yvelbane, however, screamed with a great sense of urgency. "An Jing, this is a heavenly fiend! The subfiend of the greater heavenly fiend from Direlife Canyon!"

"Hahaha... Found you..." The subfiend had finally located its target. Even though it didn't know how it managed to escape the fiendseal formation, it managed to track down An Jing using the faintest of energy traces he had left in his wake.

The void in the crimson helmet seemed to laugh. Black smoke poured out of every crevice in the armor, inflating the body of the fiend more and more. The armor gradually morphed into black and red scales, layering on top of the fiend's body.

In almost an instant, the fiend shed its human form, turning into a humanoid with the head of a stag. It had oddly shaped horns and was covered in both scales and feathers. Despite having hooves, it somehow still had monstrously sharp claws!

Its wings were hybrids of bat and bird wings, both leathery and feathery and raised high up. From wing tip to hoof, the massive fiend stood around four stories tall, more massive than most wild beasts. Only the feys in the deep mountains could compare with something like this!

"Fiends can shapeshift and take many forms," Yvelbane said sternly. "This vilespawn fiend possesses no definite shape. It is nothing but rotting flesh-clay waiting to be shaped. The stag head, snake scales and bird feathers that you see are synthesized from the creatures that it has consumed! Be extremely careful. Even though subfiends aren't that mighty, they are physically powerful. Using this world's standards, it's probably as tough as martialists of the Clearing Realm!"

"There's no point in fighting then! Let's run!" An Jing started to move his legs the moment the fiend began to expand. The only reason he waited earlier was to test out the fiend's power, but hearing it from Yvelbane was enough to convince him of the gap in their strength. He charged straight toward where he had planned to go without hesitation.

The vilespawn fiend saw what was happening and let out a loud roar that caused a black gale to appear, ruffling through the sharp pine leaves around it and sucking them into the twister, conjuring up a storm of leaf blades. Thousands of sharp arrow-like leaves shot toward An Jing, marking the path that the vilespawn fiend would use to chase him down.

An Jing didn't turn back. The Ninelands spirit-qi crucible hanging from his waist glowed icy blue. At the same time, his bulletproof mantle also began to glow slightly. Thousands of pine leaves crashed into the mantle, raining down a powerful barrage that caused the mantle's shields to shake and rapidly heat up. However, it held up without being broken through.

Instead, the momentum from the attack propelled An Jing forward even faster like he was about to take off from a runway. Then, he leaped from the cliff! Mid air, however, he spit out a mouthful of blood. Though the mantle's defenses weren't pierced, the sheer blunt force from the strike had injured his lungs. The vilespawn fiend's brute force had exceeded the limits of what the mantle could take, disrupting An Jing's aura channeling and resulting in internal injuries. Even then, he bit down on his teeth and sped up. That heavenly fiend doesn't want me dead, only captured! Falling into its hands would be a fate far worse than death!

The range of the pine-needle attack was really large to prevent An Jing from evading to the side. However, it was meant to maim but not kill him, which was why it hadn't pierced through the mantle.

Even so, that was the most the artifact could take. The spirit-qi crucible's capacity went from sixty to twelve percent from powering the mantle's shields. An Jing was certain that the vilespawn fiend only needed another strike to cause the core of the bulletproof mantle to overheat and melt down moments he got turned into a pincushion.

The vilespawn fiend seemed shocked at the outcome as well, having not expected a child of the River Aura Stage to possess such a powerful defensive artifact. But it snapped out of it inhumanly quickly, roaring as it heaved its massive body ahead to give chase, desperately trying to stop An Jing from escaping into the embrace of death.

Yet, before it caught up, it watched An Jing stop right at the edge of the cliff before he turned around and took out an odd artifact that sent threatening chills down its figurative spine.