Chapter 501: A Flicker of a Greater World

A needle through the neck would have been lethal for most cultivators, but Xir Xan Khan proved tougher than most. The strength he gained from the immortality elixir wasn't any kind of transcendent perfection, it was more like an unnatural extension of his life. He drew on a large part of it, burning away the power permanently to wrench away from her and close the hole in his neck.

Her next needle went through his eye.

Omilaena danced around him, enacting her anger by tearing him apart piece by piece. When he overextended with that coiling black menace of his, she blew a cloud of poison around it, and in his current state he was unable to dodge. The more he burned his life, the more his body deteriorated. His precious jade skin began to turn dark and decay, one arm hung limply, and his eyes went dull.

Yet he still kept fighting. If he hadn't been such an asshole to Zin Nim, Omilaena would have been impressed by his sheer will to keep living. But she didn't let up in the slightest, mercilessly pressing her advantage as he died, over and over and over.

When at last his soul vanished, Omilaena was panting for breath. Even with her advantage, it had taken more of her stamina than she had expected to finish him off. Now that he was dead, however, that left them free to move together and things were looking up.

That was the moment when the cloud giant appeared over the city and Omilaena realized that their plan hadn't succeeded yet.

Apparently Zae Clen Ban was capable of the same trick, drawing on so much power that it began eroding his soul. But he had been a true immortal before he took the elixir, so he could suffer the drain and keep going. As more and more power concentrated into the giant form, his secondary immortal power was weakening, but that loss wasn't going to matter compared to the sheer amount of destructive force he was bringing down on the city.

For once, she had absolutely no ideas for plans. The most she could do was escape the center of the impact, get behind the largest shield she could find, and hope it didn't annihilate her anyway.

As the apocalyptic palm rumbled down toward the city, making the heavens tremble, a beam of dark smoke erupted from one of the higher towers. It exploded with such fury that the earth shook and the beam crossed the distance in an instant, meeting the palm directly. For several seconds the two raged, then they burst apart.

In the aftermath, the very sky seemed broken: the brilliant white giant had been scattered into light clouds, which intermixed with dark smoke. Wails went up throughout the city as the people wondered if this was the end of the world.

Omilaena had no such thoughts, she just began leaping toward the source of the beam. She knew it had come from Kai, but she had absolutely no idea how. When she arrived, what she saw left her speechless.

.

..

.

Every time she reached another puppet, Zae Zin Nim destroyed it with a single palm strike. Jackal Thirteen tried to attack her with various types of threads, but if they got through her wind aura they burned up in the Coldfire Corona. Though his puppets could deploy physical force greater than his own, her Pure Yin Shroud made her even stronger and she dismantled his forces one after another.

He really was weaker than Omilaena, now that she got a good look at his soul. The only reason he had given her wife trouble was that his puppets were so well-suited to resisting poison. Now that he was fighting an opponent better matched to him, he no longer looked so confident.

If he had been willing to stay and fight to the death, he might have actually troubled her for longer and drained more of her strength. But in the end, the mercenary realized that he was outmatched and planned to flee, raising a talisman to begin a teleportation.

Zae Zin Nim leapt for him immediately, and he was prepared for that: a puppet of Feida jerked into her path. But if he believed that a familiar face would slow her down, he was sorely mistaken. Zae Zin Nim grabbed the puppet's arm when it tried to attack and swung the entire body, using the man's own puppet as a club against him. The blow knocked the talisman from his hands and he staggered.

And then she was in range. He raised his hands and threads, ready to deflect her martial arts, but she didn't use any fancy techniques: she just slammed her fist into his neck.

It was enough. He crumpled and the rest of his puppets fell after him.

Just as Zae Zin Nim was about to feel satisfaction, the incredible true power of her father's technique made the air tremble, then she gaped as she felt Kai somehow equal it. Yet in the aftermath, she couldn't feel either of them... what had happened?

Since she could roughly calculate Kai's location from the trajectory of the beam, Zae Zin Nim flew to find him. Once she got into the air, there was no question about the location.

A section of the city was simply... dead. There was destruction everywhere, between all the cultivators and the falling pieces of the ship, but this was utterly different. In a large circle of the city, walls had been reduced to rubble and plants shriveled up. Every single drop of qi was gone... not only that, as she got closer she realized there was no chakra or mana, either. The level of energy throughout the entire region seemed to have dropped, but the circle was even emptier than Deadwaste.

And there, at the center, lay Kai.

He was back in his human form, without any monstrous traits, all his clothing annihilated except for the Beggar King's Robes that lay limp around his waist. She didn't see any injuries, but he seemed almost as devoid of energy as the space around them.

Zae Zin Nim instinctively started to move toward him, hesitating only when she saw someone else in the corner of her vision. But it was just Omilaena - the two of them were the only ones who would go toward the source of all that destruction.

As soon as they arrived, Zae Zin Nim touched his stomach, feeling that his dantian was intact, and Omilaena checked his pulse. He was still alive, but where normally his massive chest made his breaths obvious, he was breathing so shallowly that he'd looked almost dead at first.

"What was that?" Zae Zin Nim asked.

"I'm not sure, but I think it was just... too much." Omilaena gestured around to the drained region. "Not just for him, too much for the world to handle. We'd better not count on him doing that again."

"Would it be something like how monsters leave areas drained?"

"That's a great idea to consider later, but we have a bigger problem now: do you think that took out your father?"

"I..." Zae Zin Nim wanted to believe he was gone, but he had been shielded within his cloud giant and draining his very longevity. Instead of answering, she rose and looked out, searching for familiar qi just the way his followers had once searched for hers.

And unfortunately, she found it. Some distance outside the city, there was a Brightwind ship that was helping him up. Whether it had teleported in afterward or laid in wait, there were multiple Earth Souls there, assisting her father. Even from such a distance, she could tell that they were feeding him pills, trying to restore him... and not running. Even if they'd tried to run, she couldn't allow that.

"This is bad," Zae Zin Nim said. She looked back and found her wife injecting something into Kai's veins. "How fast do you think we can get him back?"

"No idea, but throw me some of those medicinal pills. I think he needs whatever kind of energy we have."

They threw in qi, chakra, mana... even qi crystals left over from the Krysali. Kai's body absorbed it all and he seemed to grow stronger, stirring slightly, but didn't wake.

"I'll take care of him here," Omilaena said, "but you need to stop your father from recovering. We have to end this now, and we'll be behind you, but you need to hold them."

"Right."

Much as it hurt to leave her spouses, Zae Zin Nim threw herself into the air, flashing over the city toward the Brightwind ship. They were so close to severing the bonds that had imprisoned her to her past, she couldn't allow them to stretch further into her future.

But before she could arrive, she saw a surprising figure: the matriarch they had fought over the Verdant River sect. It seemed that she had survived Omilaena's poison... and now she was preparing one of her immense lightning attacks, targeting her and Kai.

Zae Zin Nim threw herself into its path and cloaked herself in the Coldfire Corona, just before the lightning hit. Her flames protected her, but she felt the immense power as it coursed around her. When she flew toward the matriarch, the other woman retreated in the air, even while preparing another burst of lightning. Damn it, there was no time for this.

"Go!" The male voice surprised her, and Zae Zin Nim looked down to the see the patriarch of the Deepriver sect standing atop a nearby building. He waved her on, then leapt at the matriarch.

She released her lightning prematurely in a long arc, but he absorbed it and resisted with pure Physique. He flew on, robes burning, and closed the distance, so the two of them began sparring.

Flying onward, Zae Zin Nim shook her head, surprised that Kai's tendencies had actually worked out in their favor. Unfortunately, while the matriarch was the strongest opponent to act, she was far from the only one. All over the city, cultivators who had been cowering due to the jade ship and the clash of titans in the sky now crept out to steal treasures or pursue vendettas before order was restored.

By moving at top speed, Zae Zin Nim was able to avoid most of the trouble in Floodisle City, but as she reached the edge of the island, she saw Brightwind cultivators move toward her. They had Earth Souls covered in sect treasures and Nascent Foundation stage cultivators in formations, so they could well slow her down, even at the cost of their lives. Behind them, she could see others still helping to restore her father.

When the first group attacked, Zae Zin Nim spun in between them, hurling qi bolts in all directions. She wasn't as skilled as Omilaena, but she had learned a few tricks from her wife. Once a group of Nascent Foundation cultivators had been enough to terrify her, using their power to drag her back to her father, but now she killed the entire squadron in seconds.

But those seconds slowed her down, and the Brightwind ship was starting to retreat over the lake, leaving Floodisle City...

And it was met by bursts of green mana. Zae Zin Nim gasped as she saw Inafay and Ivonailin burst out of the water, attacking wildly. She almost cried out for them to stop, that they were in too much danger... then she saw that they had changed.

There was no time to examine their souls thoroughly, not while she was still rushing forward, but Inafay had apparently broken through to D-rank Physique and Ivonailin had reached the Body Refinement stage. With those boosts to their power, combined with their superior mobility and unfamiliar skills, they were capable of threatening the Earth Souls and driving the ship to a halt.

If her father recovered, however... Zae Zin Nim pushed herself even harder, watching the distance between them shrinking and hoping-

She struck a wall of green qi and reeled back in pain. Six Earth Souls wearing Brightwind robes emerged from hiding, standing in a hexagonal formation that summoned a great wall of qi in her path. She recognized the Eastern Wind Formation and knew they could easily move the wall to intercept her, whether she tried to attack them directly or slip around it. This was a delaying tactic, and an effective one.

Her palm struck the wall and several of the Earth Souls coughed up blood, but the damage was spread across all of them. Zae Zin Nim struck a second time, then a third, searching her mind for some way to pierce the technique. But it was made to stop cultivators, to buy time in just such an occasion as this, so there was no easy solution.

Suddenly there was a cry of pain and one of the Earth Souls went limp. A long crystal and wood spear pierced his chest... Cragrila stood behind the man, briefly glancing at her before she turned her spear on the rest of the formation.

"You helped fight my battle," Cragrila called. "Go finish yours!"

Zae Zin Nim shattered the weakened wall and flew on, wondering how this could have happened. She had been a lone cultivator, eccentric at best and anathema at worst, so how did she have allies willing to fight for her? Allies who could stand up against the Brightwind sect, no less.

At last she reached the jade ship and struck out, sweeping a Coldfire Palm over the remaining cluster. But though many of the other cultivators died, she could feel that her father survived... he drifted back, surrounded by a sphere of wind. Hardly at full strength, but he had a Sky Soul's power and more immortality to burn.

Soon he would open his eyes and their duel would resume. Fatigued as she was, Zae Zin Nim wasn't confident in her victory, and her new allies couldn't help her in a fight like this. But instead of giving up, she reached into her spatial bracelet, searching for an answer...

(Cognosticon here. As mentioned at the beginning of the week, I now need to announce a one week hiatus. I honestly don't have enough chapters ready to schedule the four for next week and I feel I am about at my limit. Chapters should resume a little later this month and you will get the conclusion of this arc.)