“Blood Charm! Sky Havoc!” Flaxseed hurled the charm. It exploded into a towering crimson beam that howled downward, tearing a ragged seam through space itself.
Quentin’s eyes widened. He spun around, frantically weaving black energy into a titanic shield covered in writhing runes of the void. The shield, carved with sinister runes, groaned under its own weight, exuding a chill that had the aura of burial soil.
Clang! The crimson beam struck the shield. Quentin staggered back, shattering white bones beneath his boots. “Well… Earthly Immortal Realm Level Nine? How did you suddenly achieve such a high cultivation level?”
He had seen Flaxseed back when was in Swordmaster City. At that time, Flaxseed had just stepped into Earthly Immortal Realm. At this moment, Flaxseed had suddenly advanced to Earthly Immortal Realm Level Nine.
Quentin could not know the truth, Flaxseed was a soul reincarnated. A single spark of spiritual sense returned, and power surged up to greet it.
“Thanks to you!” Flaxseed laughed. “My recovery is coming along beautifully!”
He pressed forward. Charms flew like summer rain, Freeze Charm froze the very air, another called Lightning Tribulation Charm, a third hurled boulders from nothingness, Boulder Charm. Quentin reeled beneath the relentless storm.
Jared joined the dance. The Dragonslayer Sword and charms moved as if born of the same rhythm, hemming Quentin in from opposite flanks until every escape line shrank to a finger’s breadth.
Jared’s blade flashed faster than thought, each thrust aimed for a fatal seam, flames searing Quentin’s demonic energy.
Flaxseed’s charms shifted, now a hammer blow, now a chain, forcing Quentin to guard left, right, above, never breathing.
Quentin, an Earthly Immortal Realm Level Nine, felt the battlefield tilting, inch by inch, toward inevitable defeat beneath the twin assault.
Golden fire washed over his black energy like a tidal wave, and crimson charm lights followed in its wake.
Under that two-fold assault, the black energy wrapped around Quentin peeled away in smoky strips. His robes shredded next, baring skin so withered it clung to bone. Black markings writhed across the pallid flesh, etching a face of horror no living man should wear.
“Curse you both!” Quentin bellowed, his voice cracking with something that sounded very much like fear. “Brats think you can toy with me? Fine, then we all perish together!”
The black energy around swelled in a sudden, violent surge. His body puffed outward like an overfilled wineskin, and every black marking on his flesh flared crimson.
In that heartbeat, Jared realized what came next, a cultivator of Earthly Immortal Realm Level Nine about to self-destruct. Such a blast could flatten all of Bloody Bones Gorge.
“Move!” Jared and Flaxseed shouted in the same breath. They threw themselves backward, feet skimming the fractured ground as movement techniques leaped into being.
A dome of pure golden light roared around Jared, bright as a newborn sun, while Flaxseed hurled sheet after sheet of Defense Charms until they stacked into a wall as thick as castle stone.
A thunderclap split the gorge.
The world turned white, then red, then black. Shockwaves hurled splintered bone through the air.
Corpses pinned to the cliff walls disintegrated into dust. Even the ancient palace at the gorge’s heart rocked on its foundations; the great crimson crystal in its crown gave a single, mournful cry and dulled to a sickly ember.
When the ash finally settled, Jared and Flaxseed dragged themselves upright, coats torn, faces streaked with grit.
Their barriers had spared them the worst of it, yet shallow cuts bled at elbows and brows, and both men were coated in soot and stray flecks of their own blood. Their cultivation, thankfully, remained steady and whole.
Flaxseed spat a mouthful of dirt. “That lunatic actually blew himself apart. Talk about playing for keeps!”
He wiped his sleeve across split lips and sneered at the blackened crater. Jared’s gaze shifted to the palace-half its roof gone, pillars leaning like drunkards. “We can’t linger… That blast from the self-destruct was loud enough to summon every cultivator nearby. We leave, now…”
Flaxseed nodded, frustration flickering in his eyes. “All this trouble, and I still didn’t find my family’s divine souls…”
