Trees.
Loads and loads of trees.
Nothing but an endless, suffocating barrage of wood and leaves.
Except this ti, I was flying through them. Not voluntarily, of course. The wind summoned by Aunt Hua was simply that overwhelmingly strong, a localized hurricane designed to treat human bodies like autumn leaves.
And the trees? They were equally unforgiving. I knew this as a verifiable fact because I kept forcefully smashing through exactly three distinct, massive trunks before gravity finally took pity on .
I collapsed onto the forest floor, my lungs completely empty, genuinely praying for so stray bolt of lightning to strike dead rather than force to endure one more passing second of this imnse physical pain.
It took a full five minutes before my brain could successfully command my limbs to move. With a groan that sounded more animal than human, I finally pushed myself up from the dirt and took in my surroundings.
We were entirely scattered. Not a single one of my friends was in sight.
Aunt Hua had clearly decided to play the oldest, most reliable tactic in the book: divide and conquer.
Honestly, it would have been a profoundly great plan if it didn’t involve the Ninth High Being himself. You would need to hoard the combined, astronomical luck of the entire world to conquer that guy.
The forest around seed awfully quiet. No rustling leaves, no snapping twigs. She could have shown up from the shadows at any given second to finish the job, but I actively decided not to get too tense about it, because my logic was simple.
There were only two ways this scenario could have played out. Since it had already been a good few minutes of lying in the dirt and I had not yet been bothered by her murderous presence, she had either gone after Longwei first, which would be incredibly lucky for the rest of us, or she went after my friends first.
Which, obviously, isn’t so lucky for us at all.
Either way, she wasn’t currently focusing on .
So, gritting my teeth against the throbbing pain in my ribs, I began to wander around the forest, calling out into the void, looking for my friends in the hope that we were, in fact, lucky.
Far off in the distance, entirely unbeknownst to at the ti, destiny had already rolled its dice. Unfortunately for her, Qinyue was the person willed by fate to face Aunt Hua first.
She had been flung into the forest just like . But, apparently, she had managed to land with actual finesse, landing gracefully on her feet like a seasoned acrobat.
I’m just going to pause and let you know that I absolutely could have done that too.
The only reason I didn’t was that the higher cognitive functions of my brain were much too busy working in overdrive, trying to co up with the next best tactical step for our group, leaving no processing power for the basic physical functions of my body to react to the whole "flying into a tree" situation.
It truly ain’t easy being the esteed leader of a tough group. Oh, what a heavy and thankless burden it is.
Aunt Hua simply floated there, levitating just a few feet away and slightly above her. The older woman looked down with a smirk and condescending pity.
Qinyue didn’t wait for an invitation. She charged forward, as the air around her instantly warped from the sudden and intense heat as her palms ignited with furious flas.
She closed the distance in a heartbeat, throwing a single, beautifully clean punch squarely into the older woman’s face.
Aunt Hua plumted to the forest floor like a stone. Qinyue landed softly right beside her.
For a brief mont, Qinyue’s trained reflexes caused her to take a cautious step back, bracing herself for the inevitable counterattack. But Aunt Hua was just... lying there. Completely motionless.
Though Qinyue was deeply suspicious for a brief second, she eventually stepped closer and lightly tapped Aunt Hua’s body with the toe of her boot.
No response.
She then snapped her head left and right, her eyes scanning the dark woods to see if there were any other hidden threats lurking in the brush to deal with. But there was nothing. Nothing but silence.
"Huh?" Qinyue whispered. "That was-"
"Too easy?" a chilling voice whispered directly behind her ear.
Thanks to her quick reaction ti, Qinyue was able to narrowly dodge the lethal incoming attack from Aunt Hua by throwing her entire body forward in a desperate jump.
She spun around to see Aunt Hua’s "fake" body, the one she had supposedly just knocked out, dissolve and disappear from the ground like vapor, while the real Aunt Hua was still very much alive, floating in the air.
"Tch," Aunt Hua sighed, shaking her head as if dealing with a disappointing child. "I shouldn’t have gotten overconfident. Should’ve just swatted you away."
"You still have the chance," Qinyue fired back, refusing to be intimidated. She ignited her flas once again, the fire burning hotter and brighter this ti. Having learned her lesson, she didn’t want to risk getting close to the illusionist.
Instead, she thrust her hands forward, sending a massive and rippling wave of compressed flas hurtling towards Aunt Hua like a pair of enormous snakes.
Aunt Hua didn’t even flinch. She simply floated straight through the inferno, parting the roaring flas as effortlessly as a stone slipping through calm water.
Before Qinyue’s eyes could even track the movent, Aunt Hua closed the gap in the literal blink of an eye.
Before Qinyue could raise a defense, before she could even summon a spark to protect herself, Aunt Hua thrust her plain, un-weaponized palm forward. The strike was so fast and so impossibly precise, that it stabbed directly into Qinyue’s abdon.
Aunt Hua ripped her hand back out, spilling a horrific portion of Qinyue’s guts onto the forest floor.
Qinyue’s eyes went wide with shock. The flas on her hands died instantly. She fell to the dirt with the fight completely drained from her.
The next victims, located a little deeper into the jungle, were Jian and Liangyu.
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