Li Lian’s limp arm regained motion, taking out another chain, she wielded both again as she continued to attack from above. The attacks now were fiercer, rciless, unrestrained. Not even Xiao Fang could remain still.
His body flickered.
Moving at top speeds, Xiao Fang deflected anything he couldn’t dodge, but he was very quickly pushed to his limits.
...
The sounds of battle echoed across the valley, so loud and violent that even a group of disciples several kiloters away—on their way back to the sect—could hear them.
"Was that... thunder?" one asked, frowning.
"No, it’s too rhythmic. That’s a fight."
Curious, the group changed course and began heading toward the source of the noise. Before long, the distant silhouette of the arena ca into view, but they stopped dead in their tracks.
The ground beneath their feet trembled violently.
Whatever was happening over there, it wasn’t sothing they could casually approach.
"What the hell is going on over there?" one muttered.
Suddenly—
Boom!
A powerful shockwave swept across the landscape, throwing them backward like leaves in a storm. A few of them cried out in surprise as they scrambled to their feet.
"Incredible..." one whispered, eyes wide with disbelief.
"Who could be fighting over there?!"
"Don’t go any closer," another warned. "We need to report this to an Elder imdiately."
Just then, a second shockwave hit—Even stronger than the first.
They braced themselves, hair and robes whipping wildly in the wind. When they looked back at the arena, the structure seed to sway unnaturally, dust and light erupting from its core.
But that shouldn’t have been possible.
Everyone knew the arena was reinforced with Qi—strong enough to withstand attacks from even Profound Realm cultivators. And yet... it looked as if it could collapse at any mont. There was only one explanation.
"It can’t be..." soone whispered, voice shaking.
"Divine Realm. Those are Divine Realm cultivators fighting in there!"
They all stiffened.
It was said that when two peak Divine Realm cultivators fought, they could alter the very landscape around them. Everyone knew, should you ever encounter such a fight, there was only one thing they should do... run.
"Let’s go! It’s not safe here!" soone shouted.
The group turned to flee, but one girl glanced back and froze.
High above the arena, a blazing figure hovered in the air. From their distance, it looked like a burning cot. But she saw it. The flas. The silhouette.
"Wait..." her voice trembled. "Isn’t that—?"
Her eyes widened.
"That’s—That’s Li Lian!"
...
anwhile on the stage—or what was left of it—Xiao Fang’s swordsman’s instincts scread at him as he watched Li Lian ascend even higher up into the sky. However, his instincts didn’t tell him to dodge, nor to block, not even which direction to flee. Every direction felt like death. But how was that possible?
His brows furrowed. ’Is this entire arena her domain now?’
He wasn’t smiling anymore, because for the first ti his instincts were warning him about sothing impossible.
Then he heard it, the words that confird his worries.
"You know... I felt bad for you, but you just brought this upon yourself!" Li Lian said.
Xiao Fang felt a chill as he broke out into cold sweat. He recalled those words, it was the sa words she told him before she—
Xiao Fang didn’t hesitate anymore. He imdiately took out his sword—lightning bursting from his blade as it humd with power.
He wasn’t going to take any chances.
High above, Li Lian saw it, Xiao Fang had drawn his sword.
A devilish grin curled across her lips. She felt as if she had finally won his acknowledgnt. But it was too late for him. What ca next was inevitable.
The erald earring dangling from her ear pulsed with light. Then, like sparks spilling from a divine forge, countless tiny orbs of white fla began to manifest in the air around her.
[ Exploding Stars ]
First a dozen.
Then a hundred.
Then a thousand.
And more kept coming.
Xiao Fang tried to count them, but there were far too many.
The night sky lit up like it was midday, a constellation of death hovering over the arena.
Each one—small, silent, and perfectly controlled—carried the destructive force to wound a Divine Realm cultivator.
Xiao Fang’s eyes sharpened. His body tensed. And his thoughts fired quickly with ideas, but it was no use.
’That damned technique,’ he cursed inwardly.
The one thing he couldn’t block. It made sense now, the feeling he got earlier, as if sothing inevitable was coming, sothing he couldn’t avoid.
The truth was, during the tournant, Li Lian had been the only one unafraid to face Chu Piao head-on. Because she understood how Divine Swordsn fought, and how to defeat them.
Even in the Divine Sword sect, the disciples there referred to her as a fire demon.
"Any last words, my unfaithful husband?" she grinned from ear to ear.
"You crazy b—!"
Li Lian didn’t wait to let him finish. She imdiately cracked her flaming chains down at him, and the sky ca down with it.
The force of a thousand phoenixes fell. A divine strike, followed by the rain of a thousand [ Exploding Stars ].
"DIE!!!" she roared.
The entire arena glowed white-hot. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. Only one move left—
Xiao Fang’s eyes widened.
BOOM!!!
...
The earth trembled violently as a deafening explosion tore through the night. The young disciples, still fleeing back to the sect, looked back just in ti to see the entire arena flattened in a blinding flash of destruction.
The shockwave that followed slamd into them like a hamr, knocking them off their feet and scraping them across the dirt. So cried out in pain—minor injuries at best, but the terror in their eyes was real.
Whoever had been at the center of that blast...
Surely, they thought, no one could’ve survived that.
Not even ashes.
"Li Lian... is way too strong."
.
.
.
A few kiloters away from the ruined arena, Xiao Fang walked in silence.
His clothes were scorched and tattered, clinging to him in burned strips, and in his arms—
Li Lian, unconscious, lay cradled against his chest. Her breathing was soft and steady, as if she were only sleeping.
Xiao Fang let out a long sigh.
"If I hadn’t acted when I did... she would’ve seriously hurt herself," he muttered, shaking his head.
He looked down at her soot-streaked face, her hair ssy and singed at the ends.
Even in her current state, there was a peacefulness to her expression, as though the chaos monts earlier had never happened.
"This girl really needs to learn so restraint," he said under his breath.
Turning his attention inward, Xiao Fang glanced into his soul sea—
There, the pitiful image of his Cannibal Abnormal Beast drifted in a half-dissolved state.
He had summoned it to hurl him toward Li Lian using [ Javelin ]. Xiao Fang barely escaped the blast radius with her in his arms—but the Cannibal Abnormal Beast wasn’t nearly as lucky.
’It’ll be a while before I can summon it again...’ Xiao Fang frowned.
His gaze returned to the sleeping girl in his arms.
"What am I going to do with you, huh..." he murmured with a soft exhale.
Despite everything, his fingers gently brushed a lock of hair from her face.
Even now—after being nearly incinerated by her—he couldn’t help but smile.
She really was impossible.
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