The array rumbled like a growling beast, its vibrations crawling through the earth and up my spine. The elders tilted their heads upward, their eyes narrowing as the sky within the do shifted.
Above us, the clouds seethed and writhed; every coil of vapor beca alive with threads of blazing light. Bolts of raw energy twisted and slithered through them like serpents, and then gathered, forming clouds made of violet electricity.
When infused with Yin Qi, the lightning turned purple. If I had done this under the sun, drawing on Yang Qi, the bolts would’ve been red instead.
I’d been studying Yin and Yang lately. Experinting with Ye An’s body had shifted my understanding of Qi, and this was the refined version of my Lightning Array.
Five bolts of purple lightning split the sky, raining down at terrifying speed. The elders scattered, instinctively widening the gap between them so that if one fell, the others wouldn’t be dragged into the blast.
But my gaze fixed on the Flutter Elder. His movents lagged compared to the others, and he wouldn’t be able to dodge forever. A sha. Of all of them, his elent intrigued most. He and the Sound Elder. I had barely seen what either could do.
Still, defeating them wasn’t the hard part. The real challenge was stopping them from escaping.
The Bone Elder couldn’t evade so easily in his skeletal armor. A jagged bolt hamred into him head-on, the night splitting open with blinding fury. Bone plating shattered like brittle glass. He staggered, smoke curling from the seams of his armor. A second bolt struck before he could recover, searing his body black, leaving him smoldering and crackling like burnt at on a fire.
The others didn’t even glance at him, the array’s relentless chase kept them too busy, lightning snapping at their heels with every desperate step.
Then, to my astonishnt, the Flutter Elder stopped running.
He raised his hands, fingers weaving with steady focus. When a bolt descended on him, he caught it, like seizing wet cloth, trying to grab it. Space itself seed to fold around his grip.
The lightning writhed, trembling violently, rippling like a banner whipped by storm winds. With a sharp twist, he swung it as if it were his weapon alone, and hurled it straight at .
Holy shit, I thought, eyes widening despite myself. Now that’s badass.
But the triumph was short-lived. The stolen lightning shivered mid-flight, bending unnaturally. Still tethered to my breath and bound by the array’s rules, it curled back on the Flutter Elder as though mocking him.
Then, a violent ripple of Qi flared behind . I spun just in ti to see an enormous skeletal form clawing its way from the void. Its torso lood three ters high, arms like pale pillars, its grinning skull leering down. Before I could react, its bony arms clamped shut around , pulling into a suffocating embrace that reeked of rot.
A gray barrier pulsed into existence, pressing tight against my skin. The air thickened, syrup-slow, each movent dragging like my body had been drowned in lead. My limbs resisted my will, sluggish, unresponsive as if ti itself had been shackled inside the gray barrier.
“For soone your age, your mastery of arrays is enough to make jealous,” ca a muffled rasp.
The giant skeleton’s spine cracked open, splitting wetly. From the hollow cord, the Bone Elder forced himself out like a parasite birthing from its host. His body slid forward with a grotesque contortion, sunken eyes ringed with black, skin stretched tight as parchnt. He looked less like a man and more like a corpse that had learned how to sneer.
Even in exhaustion, that sneer carried venom.
“But,” he drawled, voice echoing through the barrier, “I’m sowhat of an Array Conjurer myself.”
I raised my hand, shaping it into a finger pistol. My voice was calm, almost bored.
“Bang.”
For a heartbeat, silence. Then the space on his chest twisted inward, warping violently until a black void the size of a fist yawned open. The Bone Elder convulsed, coughing blood as his ribs buckled inward under the collapse.
His substitution tricks were crude compared to mine, his was a Foundation-level dabbling in spatial arts. Mine, by contrast, were Sky Grade. That was a difference that could not be closed, I knew that better than anyone else.
“Another Sky Grade technique?” he wheezed, barely able to form the words.
This was what I hated about cultivators. Once they learned a technique, they used it as written, never daring to reshape or twist it further.
Yes, there were exceptions, but most were like this. Like learning to throw a punch and never once considering an uppercut, a jab, or a hook.
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A crippling way of thought.
Still, I understood. To them, it was better to spend ti cultivating or training their bodies. Because no matter how clever a trick was, the chance of a Foundation Establishnt beating a Core Formation was as close to zero as possible.
In that way, it was like comparing a man and a bear. No matter how good the man could punch, he was fucked in that situation. Overwhelming raw power won.
The black hole writhed, twisting tighter until its pull beca irresistible. A violent suction tore through the air, yanking at everything nearby. The Bone Elder’s chest caved with a sickening crunch; bones snapped as the leftover armor splintered like brittle wood.
“Ahhhh–”
His scream shredded the night, then the void claid him. His flesh, bone, and Qi collapsed inward. The crushing gravity seized him whole, twisting and grinding his body until his cries echoed, distorted and fading into the spiraling maw of nothingness.
He was spaghettified and crushed into a ball in a split second, though the process was hidden from our eyes.
Was this why the Leaf Elder had laid out his escape plan? Had he hoped to catch off guard one last ti? I doubted he’d blurt things out for no reason… unless there was sothing more.
“Three dead, four more to go,” I said.
My attempt at intimidation fell flat again. They weren't distracted for even a split second.
While the others dodged and used techniques to stall the lightning hunting them, the Snake Elder sprinted toward with a sudden idea. I turned as the skeletal avatar that had hugged dissolved into motes of Qi, their glow scattering like dying fireflies.
The Snake Elder’s steps faltered for the briefest mont. A bead of sweat traced down his cheek in the moonlight as he clenched his jaw and forced himself forward.
“You shouldn’t be so nervous,” I said evenly, my voice cutting through the charged air. “Believing you can win matters far more than you think.”
Even in my previous life that had held true. Cultivation stage usually mattered most, but between soone who believed and soone who doubted, the forr won at least seven tis out of ten.
The Snake Elder drew a jagged, zig-zag blade from his storage ring, its crooked shape more outlandish ornant than practical weapon. He charged, teeth bared, warped steel glinting under the moon.
I answered without words. A jade dagger shimred into being in my hand, and with a single swing I cleaved the air.
Space itself split, and an ink-thin line ripped across reality, connecting to the elder’s neck.
I crouched low, steady, as his eyes bulged in dawning horror. A heartbeat later his head lifted free, spinning into the night while his body crumpled below.
“Four dead, three more to go,” I said calmly.
The Leaf Elder glared, eyes narrowing before flicking upward to the storm above.
I let a smile curl across my lips.
His eyes widened as realization struck.
“Hold your breaths!” he barked, urgency cracking his usual composure.
They obeyed instantly, clamping lips shut, Qi stirring as they braced.
But the lightning didn’t care. A bolt streaked down in a rciless line. The mont they dove aside, it ignored them, cleaving forward like an arrow loosed from Zeus.
They froze, wide-eyed at the afterimage burning in the night sky. The truth settled heavy: such a simple trick, yet they had wasted so much Qi trying to block what never aid for them. So of them had died because it opened up their guards.
“Bravo, you discovered it,” I said, clapping slowly. “Impressive, given the lack of hints. Congratulations on your intelligence.”
Lightning crackled overhead, another bolt already dropping toward .
“If this had been four or five months ago, you’d have rendered this barrier obsolete just by noticing that,” I explained calmly.
Then the Sound Elder moved. She clapped her hands, and the world itself seed to shiver. An invisible wave burst forth, impossible to sense and impossible to stop, yet the way the air rippled betrayed it. A tremor raced toward , like a blade of vibration cutting through the night.
Silencing arrays existed, yes, but they only severed sound. This was different. This was raw force, the crushing power of vibration itself. And I had nothing in my arsenal designed to stop it.
“Oh well,” I murmured, lips curling into a grin. “Guess I’ll just have to make one.”
Excitent bubbled despite the danger. For all their murderous intent, these elders had shown so many fascinating Foundation Techniques tonight. Adding another to the list thrilled .
The only sha was that they hadn’t demonstrated them on a training ground instead of a battlefield. Fights were tedious, and I could never focus properly on research while dodging death.
The Sound Elder’s clap rippled outward, and the world convulsed.
The invisible wave struck first at the earth, and stone split apart with a shriek, hairline fractures racing across the ground like a spider’s web. The air itself buckled, warping in jagged ripples that bent light unnaturally, as though reality were lting under heat. My bones vibrated in my chest, ribs rattling against one another like a cage ready to snap. Even the jade gauntlets around my fists trembled, their surface shivering under the pressure of sound made weapon.
It was force without form, destruction made intangible, sound itself wielded as a blade. I loved it.
My lips quirked. “Oh, that’s nasty.”
This wasn't even the attack hitting directly. If it did, I would probably die.
Already, my mind spun with possibilities. If sound were just vibration, then the key wasn’t to silence it, but to smother, to dampen the wave. To weave an array not that severed sound, but that absorbed its tremors and bled them harmlessly into the earth.
Lines of jade script flared to life at my feet, spreading in spirals, every glyph pulsing in ti with the oncoming wave. It would take a second to prepare what I had in mind.
“This is going to be fun,” I whispered, raising my hand as the vibrations closed in, warping the battlefield like the air above a hot stone.
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