Destiny in Cinders

An Jing rode Frostwhite Dart across the sky, no longer wielding his sword case. Instead, he was using the most common firearms in Skysource. Unlike typical machine guns, however, the gunpowder weapon he wielded was covered in complicated metallic-white patterns that stretched straight on without curving in the slightest even with the slight angular deviations. The patterns were arranged in a manner similar to circuits and gave off an ordered sense of beauty and it covered the entire body of the guns and even An Jing’s fingertips.

These Evenstar metal patterns were an additional enhancement that allowed him to imbue metal spirit qi into his weapons and use it for many different spells. While he could only use it a limited number of times, it was more than enough for a single battle. An Jing used Golden Blitz to imbue every bullet in the guns he wielded with the power of Trueblitz Pentaphase Infusion.

Since he mastered Trueblitz Pentaphase Infusion, his weapon mastery had reached the level of perfection. Were he using cheap alloy blades with that power, he could instantly disintegrate a number of them to unleash five bolts of weapon lightning at the same time. As for bullets, they were considered swords in a way. If an enhanced bullet was traveling at a high enough velocity, every single bullet could contain a minor burst of weapon lightning too.

It was too bad that even he wasn’t capable of enhancing the bullets’ speed to that degree. But once he told Huo Qing that idea, Huo Qing said that he had read about a similar method and immediately sketched out a few formation patterns for An Jing to enhance a few of his guns with. The warehouse in Hilltwixt was too small to test those guns out, but An Jing didn’t have to hold back in real combat against the cult!

Pure Evenstar lethal qi circulated through his bones and limbs, charging the rounds up to their maximum potential before they were unleashed. The concentrated power made An Jing and his hoverbike look like the sun that flew rapidly across the sky. Once the pure lethal qi was infused into each bullet, it reacted with the dormant spirit materials within it, catalyzing an explosive and potent reaction! The interaction of polar opposites like movement and stillness, yin and yang, created lightning!

Tens of gunshots and yet more thunderous booms rang out in a single moment. From down below, it looked as if a white sun had come barging out of the gloomy clouds in the sky to rain down lightning bolts all across the land! Nobody below was even remotely able to block the rain of lightning bolts. The cultists and hunters who had survived the initial blast from the sword case didn’t even have time to burrow into their shelters before the bullets pierced their bodies and the lightning bolts within fried them up.

”Did a thunder god just pop out of nowhere?!” Wu Qi had wanted to find out who in the world had attacked them moments before the lightning bombardment, but when the rock armor on his right arm was suddenly blasted to smithereens by a bolt of lightning, he immediately ordered his serpent mount to turn tail while he unleashed a storm of snow and sand to block the rest of the bolts. The cloud of debris in the air made it difficult for the lightning to strike true, but it was nothing but a parlor trick. The lightning bolts needed only to be slightly more intense to be able to pierce through the veil. Once the ice melted into water, it would make the lightning bolts even more potent!

Wu Qi was incredibly perplexed; he had seen all sorts of lightning arts before. One of his seniors who got picked to join True Martial Academy had a lightning art passed through his family that was capable of turning the qi within the internal organs into lightning and delivering a punch so devastating that it could set a tree alight. But even that senior needed to withdraw his power after three subsequent punches or risk hurting his internal organs. Yet, the barrage from earlier contained close to a hundred bolts of lightning, and it was still continuing!

I can’t keep going like this! I have to strike him down! He groaned and charged out of the dust cloud with the serpent and locked onto An Jing with Discerning Eyes. Within that short timeframe, more than ten bolts of lightning came falling, though Wu Qi blocked it head-on with his black-green wood lethal qi.

”Watch this!” His entire body appeared shriveled up, looking like mere skin draping over a bony frame. However, his eyes glowed bright like two full moons. He was much stronger than he used to be during his hunter days! Cultivating using Form Abandoned, to Truth Reverted had caused his flesh to wither, allowing him to comprehend the true essence of the Withered Body wonder in exchange. Having a withered exterior meant that his true lifeforce essence was hidden deep within. The wonder allowed him to amass that lifeforce for a situation where he would truly need it.

Dense lethal qi of green and black came flooding out of his orifices and spreading across his entire body. The wood-aspect lethal qi was a vitality poison of some sort, yet it worked well as a stimulant and allowed him to unleash far more power than he normally could!

Even his powerful beast got a boost from the lethal-qi poison. The semi-fiendfallen serpent thrashed around with a silent hiss, causing its scales to stand on its skin as it inhaled deeply. Right after that, the flow of qi itself seemed to take corporeal form. A powerful torrent of qi caused a semi-transparent tornado to form around the massive serpent that was more than twenty zhang in height.

The massive serpent was comparable to mountain-ruler feys in power to begin with and had been about to break through before it was captured by the True Fiend Cult. After being augmented and tamed, it was used to steer groups of beasts around during the beast tide. The serpent hadn’t simply inhaled; this was an ability called Dragon Devouring Qi. Wu Qi saw with Discerning Eyes that all strands of spirit qi around the site and the underground terrestrial veins that the serpent could make use of were being drawn into circulation within its body.

Then, it spat out a condensed, pitch-black core! It spun so quickly that it looked like a hazy source of light as it shot toward the source of the lightning, its trajectory completely unabated by the the many metal-qi-infused lightning bolts that struck it along the way!

An Jing furrowed his brow atop Frostwhite Dart. The power of the serpent’s core was filled with refined essence and fiend qi. While the quality of the energy itself was slightly inferior, it was even purer than the energy that Mo Li had extracted from the formation discs. He fired some ten shots at the core yet all of them scattered into nothing.

That being the case, An Jing resorted to his actual capabilities instead. He drew Ocean Domination and used it to unleash the weapon lightning strikes. The lightning-infused blade slash finally managed to stop the serpent’s revolving core. Yet, An Jing didn’t expect this foe to be much smarter than Mo Li had been.

The massive serpent became much more agile after spitting out its core, the true source of the fiend qi that the cult used to corrupt the serpent. The modified human brain within the serpent was only able to remain stable as long as the core wasn’t too close to it. With the core outside of the serpent’s body, the brain’s thoughts became even clearer.

Wu Qi, still on top of the serpent’s head, swallowed all kinds of pills and medication and used many enhancement talismans, transferring his power to the beast he was riding. People in this world weren’t foolish enough to hoard consumables. They were bought to be consumed, not collected, especially against foes of indeterminate ability. Wu Qi was certain, however, that An Jing was someone he needed to go all out against. Once the core began to fall toward the serpent, it swung its tail powerfully and struck the core, sending it flying toward An Jing at a speed much faster than before!

They even have a combo attack like that? Are heavenly fiends that smart? An Jing was quite taken aback. The vilespawn fiend he had fought before was powerful but rather unintelligent. Heavenly fiends didn’t have much intelligence before they reached the level of greater heavenly fiends. Fiendfallen feys were even less intelligent than usual. Yet, this massive fiendfallen serpent displayed a level of controlled refinement that was comparable to a human’s! The combination of a heavenly fiend’s power, a human’s intelligence and a fey’s body was quite a threat to reckon with.