Cheng Shi stood rooted. Qin Xin went flying.
Defying all expectations, the massive, powerful Qin Xin couldn't last a single exchange against Cheng Shi. The Hero of Today's punch caved in the Mirror Person's armor and sent him tumbling like a rag doll.
Qin Xin's face was pure shock. He felt the trendous force radiating from Cheng Shi's arm, looked at that withered-wood limb of Decay, and with a tightening of his eyes — spat a mouthful of blood.
"Corruption, Decay, dark powers...
Fine. Good. You really have no taboos."
Cheng Shi hadn't expected his opponent to crumble so quickly. He stared at his own hand in bewildernt, then at the direction Qin Xin had crashed, and — without a shred of sympathy — scoffed: "That's it?"
For a warrior, this was the ultimate taunt. Yet Qin Xin's fury didn't escalate. Instead, a "fiery" smile crept across his lips.
He saw it now — Cheng Shi wanted this fight too. No excuses, no justification. An all-out, no-holds-barred brawl. It just so happened he wanted exactly the sa thing.
He'd been suppressed for too long. In that hopeless world, he'd been careful at every turn, cautious every second — spending every mont pouring his heart and soul into keeping the flickering, guttering fla alive. The despair of pressing forward without hope had nearly driven him mad. And now he decided: he needed to go mad — just once. In a world not his own, against a Cheng Shi who wasn't quite a friend, in a battle that had nothing to do with mory!
And so, Qin Xin ignited — with real fire.
The blood he'd just spat transford mid-air into sparks that cascaded back onto his hair and brows. The instant those embers touched skin and follicle, a roaring conflagration — like kindling exploding into fla — immolated Qin Xin's entire body.
A howling blaze erupted from nothing. Heat waves rolled outward in tidal surges. From within that near-blinding inferno, a longbow traced with crimson veins erged first — and then a figure in armor, gleaming as if freshly forged, appeared before them all.
Reborn from fire!
Qin Xin materialized. The roaring flas gradually compressed against his body but never extinguished. Countless tongues of fire curled back to the crown of his head, dyeing his hair and eyebrows the searing color of fla.
No — that wasn't the color of fla. It was fla — real, living fire, on the edge of dying but burning still!
That was true fire!
And beyond that, countless crimson, jagged fracture lines crawled from Qin Xin's neck up to his jaw. Under the mingled glow of fire and blood, this "reborn" Torchbearer slowly raised a giant bow nearly as tall as himself — and aid it at Cheng Shi.
Seeing this, Cheng Shi's pupils contracted violently. His heart pounded.
Just as he'd suspected!
This founding Torchbearer was no mory warrior — no Mirror Person at all. He was a War hunter — a Hawk Eye Scout who'd fooled who-knows-how-many people!
"Good! Good! Good!"
In that mont, Cheng Shi felt no fear — only genuine exhilaration and a battle fervor as blazing as fire. He didn't know if Qin Xin's War aura was affecting him. He only knew: today, this fight had to happen. Otherwise, he might never get another chance like this in a lifeti.
So the Hero of Today curled his lip, raised a beckoning finger toward Qin Xin from across the distance, and introduced himself:
"Cheng Shi. Fate Weaver."
"..."
Who would believe that?
But what did it matter?
Qin Xin raised and drew his bow. The sheer pressure of the drawn giant bow alone was enough to throw Cheng Shi's heartbeat into disarray.
His voice was frigid. His eyes burned with scorching heat.
"Qin Xin. Hawk Eye Scout!"
The instant the words fell, an arrow wreathed in War's flas shrieked forth, grazing Cheng Shi's neck and embedding behind him. The mont the fire-arrow hit the ground, a dense wall of fla erupted outward, trapping all three combatants inside.
Yes — three. Including the "spectating" Extinguisher.
Honestly, Wu Cun felt a twinge of genuine fear. She wasn't affected by War's fervor, and she had zero excitent about joining a duel between monsters. She recognized clearly: neither of these two was soone she could survive a head-on fight against.
Whether it was Qin Xin — who'd gone from Mirror Person to Hawk Eye Scout — or Cheng Shi — who'd gone from Fate Weaver to... mummy?
Why did they both keep transforming?
"..."
At any rate, this level of brute force was not suited for a mage.
But to her dismay, there was no way out. The fla wall severed space itself, locking all three of them inside like prisoners in a cage.
And at that mont, Qin Xin and Cheng Shi both shot her a sidelong glance and said — one cold, one hot — in perfectly synchronized warning:
"Don't move. Move and you die."
The next second, a rain of dice clattered down and the giant bow was drawn to full moon once more.
Whoosh—
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh—
The blazing fire-arrow left the string, but it wasn't the only light in the arena. The fla walls themselves — as if foot soldiers responding to a marshal's signal — erupted skyward at the instant the arrow flew, rolling like storm clouds before crashing down like a deluge of burning rain on Cheng Shi's position.
Cold steel had yet to arrive, but the heat ca first. The entire enclosed space was saturated with searing fervor.
Yet before the fire rain could scorch the ground to cinder, the Fate Weaver who'd been standing there had already vanished.
Cheng Shi moved. He knew he couldn't play long-range gas with a hunter, so the fight's first priority was closing the gap. A snap of his fingers swapped him to Qin Xin's flank. The instant the towering fra filled his vision, the lightning howling between his fingers blasted toward the Scout at point-blank range.
The Hero of Today didn't hold back in the slightest — opening with a kill shot. As lightning flashed, the Decayed arm was already winding up a devastating punch aid at Qin Xin's midsection.
In a flicker, Qin Xin took the hit and crumpled. But the next instant, the real Qin Xin appeared behind Cheng Shi, wielding his bow like a spear, sweeping it at the Fate Weaver's skull.
Fast — the hunter was too fast!
So fast Cheng Shi hadn't sensed a thing before a Reflection had been planted and the real Qin Xin had reappeared at his back. His gaze hardened. He threw himself forward without hesitation, and seeing no way to dodge, he glanced past Qin Xin's shoulder and snapped his fingers again.
But after this snap, Cheng Shi didn't actually teleport. Instead, while Qin Xin's eyes instinctively flicked backward for a fraction of a second, Cheng Shi ducked and used his Decayed arm to hard-block the sweeping bow strike — absorbing the cost of a shattered shoulder blade and a torn left chest — and grinned a savage, teeth-bared grin through the agony before launching upward off the ground and driving a fist straight at Qin Xin's exposed throat.
A feint east, strike west — courtesy of a clown!
Ha — even when the person before you is a Hero of Today, I'm sorry, but my soul is still a clown. A clown who follows Deceit.
So even mid-battle, I will seize every chance to take deception as far as it goes.
Lightning danced with fla. Civilization dissolved into Void.
Cheng Shi connected. The near-suicidal trade sent Qin Xin flying once more. But War never falls — in the instant Qin Xin was blasted away, the blood-red fracture lines on his nearly-wrenched neck swelled and pulsed. The blood spraying from him boiled before it left his body. A crimson glow swept across his eyes as he jolted awake from the montary blackout, drew his bow mid-flight, aid at Cheng Shi, and—
A sky full of fire-arrows, pouring down like rain!
The ground shook. Thunderous impacts, on and on.
In the blink of an eye, the Bone-Clinging Blaze scorched the earth inside the fla wall down a full ter.
Cheng Shi's eyes were wide with awe. Only constant teleportation kept him from being burned to ash. He knew he was trapped — and this was War's battlefield.
How to survive? Only blood, and fire!
Reviews
All reviews (0)