Chapter 466: Blackblood Deviation

(Cognosticon here. After leaving you on a cliffhanger last week, I promise this week basically resolves. Not the entire arc, but you won't be left with many cliffhangers.)

The raw power was raging within her body now and Zae Zin Nim felt as though she would explode. All of her spiritual power centers were filled to bursting, ready to overflow into some new form, but her physical body was out of balance.

Her spouses were risking their lives around her, Nymidria was tearing herself apart root by root, and she couldn't do it.

With the abilities and resources she had accumulated, she could purify herself in an instant... and she rejected that path. For all its alleged benefits, it would leave her slightly weaker in the very moment when she needed to be strong. Following that path would make her just like all the other cultivators who stood beneath her father, kowtowing to him, never able to measure up.

She needed to be something more.

The strain of maintaining that horrible balance for so long made Zae Zin Nim cough up a mouthful of blood. It spilled across the ground, unnaturally black, yet it didn't horrify her. No, she didn't want to purge the Blackblood Physique, but how could she absorb it without destroying herself?

Taking another slow breath, she attempted to let the power escape from her veins. In theory, according to everything she and Omilaena had explored, if the blood unified with her body, it would leave her strengthened overall. Yet as it spilled into her flesh, she could feel it was ruining her...

Or was it?

Zae Zin Nim left her cultivator's position and lay on her back, eyes closed. Letting the black blood spill into her body went against every technique she'd learned in the Pureflower sect. Her skin was perfect jade, but it couldn't hide such black blood forever. But what was she, an ornamental wife or a cultivator? Was she really going to turn aside from true power because of her complexion?

So she began to release her control, letting the power course through her. She didn't care what the others thought, in fact she would be glad if they stopped lusting after her. The only people who mattered were her spouses, and they would still care for her. They would fix her, if necessary.

Keeping her eyes closed, Zae Zin Nim embraced the absorption method wholeheartedly. Instead of just letting the power spill out from her veins, she felt it coursing through every artery, down into the smallest blood vessels of her body, feeding her flesh with the dark blood. The spiritual component flowed outward as well, blazing through her meridians. It coated them with darkness, ruining her purity in one sense, but also opening up new pathways.

At first she had interpreted the flood as pain, but when she let go, she realized that was wrong. It just pure intensity, only painful because she was trying to hold back. It was like a fusion of the most overwhelming sensations she had ever experienced, some combination of joy and cultivation and orgasm. All of it resonated deeply with her body, which transformed as if it had wanted to do this all along.

How long did it go on? She utterly lost track of time, she just eventually knew that she was lying on her back, at peace.

She didn't dare to look at herself or think about that. Instead she simply searched within her soul, and what she saw first horrified her.

<

E-0

>

E-0? She knew of cultivators who had ruined a Physique transformation or permanently crippled their development, but she didn't think it was possible to stay at the same stage. Yet her body felt whole and strong, and she forced down the panic, and gradually allowed herself to see her soul truly.

<

Name: Zae Zin Nim

Total Power: 1681

Cultivation: Earth Soul 62% (524)

*Heavenly Sash: Cultivation +10% (52)

Coldfire Corona: 32 (396)

Pure Yin Shroud: Spinel Rank (245)

True Blackblood Physique: E-0 (400)

Soul Level: 8 (64)

>

She was still baffled by how she had transitioned from E-9 to E-0, but the raw Power numbers didn't lie. She now saw "True Blackblood Physique", which offered her an insane 400 Power. It had absorbed the Blackblood Shadow, but the total was still higher than she would have normally held at D rank.

Finally she opened her eyes and sprang to her feet. When she examined her hands, she was horrified to see that her skin had turned an unnatural gray. She would have called it sickly, except that she felt more alive than she had ever been before. Her arms were the same gray... worse, her fingernails had turned black.

No, none of that mattered. Zae Zin Nim took up a combat stance and focused only on her strength.

Whatever she looked like, her flesh pulsed with untold strength. Her body had been reforged, the way she knew the strongest cultivators could accomplish, and she was now a partially spiritual being. Despite the fact that her meridians had been coated in darkness, the qi flowed through them much easier than before. When she tried to summon the strength of the Pure Yin Shroud, it seemed to emanate from every fiber of her being. Even the Coldfire Corona flowed to her palm more easily.

This wasn't merely the Blackblood Physique that had been placed into her body by rivals in order to ruin her progress... this was her Blackblood Physique. She could tell that it wasn't finished growing, either: now that the power was no longer restrained to her blood vessels, no longer fighting against her pale flesh, it could strengthen itself further.

Zae Zin Nim began moving in a familiar training routine, marveling at the joy of moving her body. She wanted to test herself in every way, see her limits before she...

Then she heard her wife scream.

All at once she abandoned the internal joy, her mind returning fully to the battlefield. When she leapt, she shattered through the dome of roots and stone without even feeling it, flying high into the air on strength alone. As soon as she was out, she saw that the battle had changed.

Her father loomed overhead, embodied in the clouds... that could only be the Transcendent Brightwind Visage, the legendary full height of his power. His strength was higher than hers, but not that much higher, and he was gripping her wife in one hand.

When Zae Zin Nim tried to move, she slid through the air without thinking about it: the flight abilities that had been beyond her, that should have required a Sky Soul cultivation base, simply flowed from her body as if it ignored earthly laws. She shot through the air far faster than she had expected, almost so fast that she was unprepared, yet her combat instincts acted automatically.

She raised a hand and sliced through the heavenly arm, severing it into clouds.

As her father's enormous visage fell back in shock, Zae Zin Nim leapt to her wife and swept her up in her arms. Omilaena had been in great pain, but it seemed she only had a few bones broken at most.

The other woman stared at her in surprise, and Zae Zin Nim felt a moment of anxiety, then her wife leaned in to kiss her. That was all she needed... her tension and worry over what she had become bled away.

A kiss would not, however, stop her father. He had recovered from her arrival and his remaining cloud arm swept forward to swat them both. Zae Zin Nim shifted Omilaena and turned just enough to thrust a palm against the enormous hand that came toward her like a white wall.

Though the impact jarred her body and sent her hurtling downward, Zae Zin Nim was surprised to find herself uninjured. She landed on her feet, barely even needing to bend her knees to absorb the impact, and her arm was still strong. Overhead, her father stared at her in horror.

"What have you done to yourself?" he demanded. "You were my beautiful girl, and now..."

"I'm not yours anymore!" Zae Zin Nim shouted into the heavens, to him and to all the patriarchs who were watching the conflict in shock.

Instead of speaking further, Zae Clen Ban gathered himself again and the Transcendent Brightwind Visage began to reform. The clouds remained brilliantly white, but they crackled with his wrath like a storm. Somewhere within the clouds, her father was apoplectic. As soon as he regained his full offensive capacity, he would strike to kill, as she had seen so many times before.

"Use this." Omilaena slipped down to one knee, but on the way handed her a syringe. "You decided to absorb the blood fully, right? This is the best I can do to take that one notch further."

Since Zae Zin Nim was already far past caution, she injected herself immediately. She felt the surge of power, one that would once have burst her blood vessels, but now her body sang with it. As she saw the heavenly body overhead drawing back, she placed her hands together and drew on all her strength at once.

When the enormous palm thundered downward, Zae Zin Nim met it with a Coldfire Palm of equal size. The two forces crashed together, sending out shockwaves that destroyed both physical and spiritual foundations, knocking away all other cultivators. Her feet broke through the stone underneath her, but her body didn't give way and she let out a cry as she pushed back.

Even with her new strength and the temporary boost, she wasn't powerful enough to overwhelm a cultivator like her father. But the two palm techniques exploded against one another, raging until they evaporated and left an open sky.

The divine white form was faltering, one arm and shoulder gone. Zae Zin Nim still stood, panting for breath and staring upward. She wanted to keep fighting, to see if she could beat him, but she realized that Nymidria had already died and there would be more losses unless she acted strategically.

"Where's Kai?" she asked as she helped Omilaena to her feet.

"Teleported out," Omilaena said grimly. "We'll have to talk later, but for now, let's get the fuck out of here."

"Agreed." She willed her body to move and again flitted away.

Even at her speed, she couldn't escape the patriarchs so quickly. Patriarch Yul gave a wordless cry and hurled his presence toward her... and it swept over her body harmlessly. She didn't have a presence technique of her own to fight it, yet she seemed immune to the binding technique.

That moment allowed her to escape the perimeter, but she was far from free. She saw there were other cultivators dissolving into light to chase after her, and her father's visage was looming closer as it crossed the sky.

Zae Zin Nim stopped looking at any of them and focused everything on speed.