I Shall Steal the Heavens 257 Chapter 256: The Dark Sage

I couldn't help but shudder at the sight of the approaching Dark Sage. Sha Chen had landed in the swamp with a tremendous splash, and there wasn't much left of the marsh except huge puddles of tainted water and damp soil.

The ground had split and exploded upon Sha Chen's landing, his violent qi throwing up a vicious hurricane that sent debris of soil, weeds, aquatic plants, and even swamp creatures flying into the air, as if suspended in a tornado. His red cape billowed above him, his white hair swaying gently despite the forceful pressure of his qi destroying his surroundings.

Just his mere presence was enough to destroy the surroundings. What a monster.

My eyes widened as I saw the scattered debris and suspended soil, cold shivers running down my spine as my mind attempted to digest the monstrous sight. His qi pressure was so overwhelming that I actually momentarily blacked out on my feet for a moment.

"Ah…ah…"

Perspiration was pouring down Tong Xue's face as he stared at Sha Chen, his complexion as pale as a ghost. He was shivering violently, almost on the verge of collapse. Tears began to well up in his eyes.

"Go," I told him, my voice almost a whisper. That snapped Tong Xue out of his horrified stupor and he turned to look at me blankly.

"Go," I repeated, my voice a little louder this time.

"But…" Tong Xue's voice was feebler than mine, if that was possible. "How are we going to escape that monster?"

"I'll hold him off for as long as I can." I tried to maintain a steady voice. "You should leave. Now. Run from here as fast as you can."

"You can't hold him off! You can't fight him on your own!"

"GO!" I yelled, unable to suppress the emotion, rage and fear in my voice this time. "Or we'll both die!"

"I can't leave you to die on your own!"

"Just go!" I snapped. "You have the samples with you! Take them to Lian Rou and have her concot the antidotes! Save Yi Ding Si and Song Ting Yu! Don't die for nothing! I'll hold this old man off for as long as I can!"

Tong Xue realized that I was right. Wiping his eyes, he unsteadily rose to his feet, turned around and bounded away, escaping at high speed.

"Tsk…there he goes." The Dark Sage shook his head as he watched Tong Xue leave, but made no movement to chase me. He turned and grinned at me. "So you think you can hold me off?"

I shrugged. "I can try."

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Sha Chen burst out laughing. "I like your spirit, young man, if nothing else. Very well! Do your best to buy your friend some time!"

He cracked his knuckles, and then cocked his head from side to side, as if warming himself up and loosening his stiff muscles.

"I know I'm getting old. It's been a while since I've fought. Hmm…let's see…"

He grinned, and then swung his arm almost casually.

"!"

A powerful surge of qi blasted at me, and I was barely able to block it by crossing both of my swords. The ground on either side of me were split open like ripe fruit, the sharp qi pressure from Sha Chen's flippant strike tearing the soft earth apart and carving a pair of ravines.

"Ugh…!"

Despite blocking the blow with my swords, I found myself slipping backward. Soil and dirt flew past me in thick clods, as if being slung forward by a hurricane. Blinking, I saw the corpses of the Black Venom Cultists being flayed apart by the sharp qi.

This old man…he doesn't care about his comrades?!

Well, they were already dead, to be fair, but I didn't think he would go as far as to desecrate the bodies of his subordinates. Dead or not, they still served under him as part of his Black Venom Cult, didn't they?

Even so, I found myself shocked by the ruthlessness of the Dark Sage.

Flap!

At the corner of my eye, I saw movement, preceded by a great, flapping red cloak. In just a second, Sha Chen had closed the distance between us in a single bound.

"You should keep your eye on your opponent," he advised me sarcastically, his qi bursting out of him in monstrous fashion and almost intimidating me to immobility.

Gritting my teeth, I raised both my swords to parry his palm strike. His attack collided with my crossed blades with tremendous impact, sending tremors reverberating throughout my throbbing arms. To my astonishment, the colossal force behind his palm strike smacked both my swords aside with barely any effort on his part.

"What the…?!"

Sha Chen grinned.

The next thing I knew, Sha Chen's palm slammed into my chest. My ribcage shrieked as if it was shattered, and a huge impression of his hand was left on my chest, a deep dent that almost crushed my heart with brute force.

"Gah!"

As blood spurted from my mouth, the entire ground behind erupted, a maelstrom of qi blowing a gargantuan tunnel through the marsh and scattering more clods of clay, mud and soil into the air.

I swayed on my feet for a second. Just a second…

…and then I was sent hurtling off my feet, both my swords flying from my hands. As I crashed through the dried-up swamp, my helplessly hurtling body actually created a sonic boom. The force from Sha Chen's simple palm strike was so great that it actually hurled me away at supersonic speeds!

"Kuh…!"

My breath had completely been knocked out of my lungs. Blood was spurting from my mouth, creating a red trail as I was sent crashing hundreds of meters away. Okay, that probably was an exaggeration, but not by much. It was probably almost two hundred meters before I slammed into the ground, leaving a crater.

Sha Chen slowly lowered his arms, his eyes seeming to blaze demonically.

BOOM! KABOOM!

I finally skidded to a stop in the middle of the crater I had created inadvertently, my breathing ragged and my mind almost blacked out. I probably passed out, but the red-hot agony and scorching sensation in my chest brought me back to full consciousness. I didn't even have the strength left to sit up, coughing out blood uncontrollably and gasping desperately for air.

Sha Chen straightened up and curled his fingers, flexing them as if testing them. Then he lowered both hands to his sides and watched my pathetic figure crawling in the dirt. Clods of soil and mud continued to rain around him, having been violently churned up and thrown into the air, and only now they were being brought back down by gravity.

"…"

The Dark Sage's hand twitched, his fingers flexing instinctively again. With a scowl, Sha Chen glanced at his hand.

Pssh…

Smoke was rising from a scalded patch in his palm. The old martial artist studied that slight injury curiously, a strange feeling scrabbling at the back of his mind.

"Qi Reversal?" he murmured under his breath, his voice filled with wonder and surprise. "In that instant?"

Clenching his fingers into a fist, he raised his eyes from his hand to glare at my prone figure. Well, I was no longer prone. I was slowly struggling to my feet. for some reason, Sha Chen didn't finish me off while I was down, and was just watching.

Typical villain, thinking that it was over, or that he could easily kill me whenever he wanted. He was going to regret that.

Clenching my teeth, I stood up and corrected my stance. Forcing my Heaven and Earth qi to flow around my body, I attempted to mitigate the damage I had suffered from the Dark Sage's single blow. Funnily eough, he didn't seem to have used poison earlier.

Did he think a single strike was sufficient to kill me, even without poison? Whatever the case, it was a moot point, since I was immune to poison, but it still grated on my nerves that I was being underestimated.

Then again, I was so much weaker than him that it wasn't even funny.

He has every right to look down on me, I realized. Compared to him, I was but an ant. A mere mortal fighting against a god from the old Martial Arts Alliance.

I was completely and hopelessly outmatched.

Even so, I defiantly held my ground. Spitting out a clump of blood, I wiped my mouth and raised my head to glare at Sha Chen.

Damn it… I thought. I had expected this, but he's much stronger than I imagined. Much, much stronger…

The martial arts world was a vast place. No matter who you were, there would always be a mountain higher.

"Hmph…got a taste of reality, didn't you?" Sha Chen grinned in amusement as he watched me. "But still ready to fight? I guess I'm impressed. I didn't think there were still people with backbone in the Martial Arts Alliance."

"I'm not from the Martial Arts Alliance," I replied.

"Oh? You aren't? Then why are you here?" Sha Chen raised a bushy, white eyebrow.

"To find an antidote. You poisoned a friend of mine."

"A friend…ha ha ha ha ha ha!" Sha Chen suddenly burst out laughing, as if he realized something. "Are you referring to that young lady from the Song family? She really is quite the witch, bewitching all the young men around her to do her dirty work. You are aware that she is from the Martial Arts Alliance, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but she isn't the only one your sect poisoned. I have another friend who's poisoned as well." I doubted Sha Chen would know who Yi Ding Si was, so I didn't bother to mention his name. "Not to mention countless victims."

"Victims?" Sha Chen snorted. "You call yourselves victims? You want to play the victim card?"

"Dude, are you unaware of what your sect has been doing? Abducting innocent villagers, capturing them to conduct inhuman experiments…killing people just to test out your poisons and toxins. What victim card are you accusing me of playing?"

"And who do you think forced us into this?"

"…huh?"

I wasn't sure I heard Sha Chen correctly. He was behaving as if the Black Venom Cult were the victims here, and that they were completely justified in commiting those atrocities.

"If we didn't ensure the lethality of our poisons, do you think we stand a chance against the Martial Arts Alliance?" Sha Chen growled. "You claim that you're not from the Martial Arts Alliance, yet you're a friends with the daughter of one of the Alliance Chiefs. Are you seriously telling me you're unaware of the Martial Arts Alliance's constant attacks on us? They're always seeking to exterminate the Black Venom Cult, drive us deeper underground." He paused, his eyes hard. "It's not as if we want to make new poisons, but you forced our hands. Every year, you come up with new antidotes against our poisons, and when you assault us, you kill so many of our members. We have no choice but to come up with new strains in order to overcome your antidotes and stand a chance against the Martial Arts Alliance!"

…so this led to a vicious cycle. The Martial Arts Alliance frequently sent forces to eradicate the Black Venom Cult, who in turn had to develop new poisons to counter them and their antidotes, and to do so, they had to abduct human victims to experiment and test their new toxins on, which eventually led to the Martial Arts Alliance posting yet another request to exterminate them when villagers reported abductions and raids from the Black Venom Cult.

"Are you saying we should just stand still and let the Martial Arts Alliance kill us?" Sha Chen snarled. "Fucking Martial Arts Alliance. They're a bunch of hypocrites. They label us demonic sects, but in truth they are no better than us. No, they are worse! Devilish snakes, putting on a façade of righteousness and justice, yet stabbing us in the dark and committing genocide in the name of so-called 'justice.'" He scoffed. "You probably are too young to know about this, but I used to be part of the old Martial Arts Alliance. They used me, praised me when I killed their enemies, but after we won the first war against the demonic sects, what did they do?"

His sneer deepened further, and his furious qi ravaged his surroundings, destroying the muddy soil around him.
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"They tossed me aside. They were afraid of me, you see. After I had done my job and fulfilled my role as the butcher of demons, they suddenly declared the use of poison dishonorable and despicable. They labeled me as demonic, expelled me from the Martial Arts Alliance, and even hunted me down! To kill me! After all I had done for them! Because they were afraid of my strength, because they hated my poison techniques! Those selfish, hypocritical bastards!"

I found myself nodding in total agreement.

"You're right. The Martial Arts Alliance are the true evil here. Hypocritical bastards who play around in lies and deception. They tried to invade and massacre my sect, but when they failed, they cut off the subordinate sects they ordered to attack us and claimed those sects had gone rogue, leaving them out to hang dry while they escaped punishment."

"So you're also a victim of the Martial Arts Alliance. Just like my subordinates." Sha Chen glanced at the corpses behind me, his eyes unreadable. "I created the Black Venom Cult as a refuge…for all those martial artists pursued unfairly by the Martial Arts Alliance. People viewed as despicable and dishonorable just because they used poison techniques…they condemned and persecuted us all because we use poison, you see. During the war, they allowed us in because we were useful, and it was the most efficient way to kill their enemies…but once the war is over, they quickly cut us off like a canker sore, because they were afraid of us. I pulled all the persecuted together, because there is strength in numbers, to resist the Alliance's hypocritical and ridiculous persecution. We allowed the weak in, those weak who had been exiled and expelled from their clans or sects because of their so-called lack of talent. To make up for their lack of talent, they learned poison techniques to compensate for the difference in skill. After all, what use is talent or being a genius if you still get killed by a single hit from a poison technique?"

Then Sha Chen burst out laughing.

"Of course…that must be why they were so desperate to wipe us out. They're so afraid of us! Our poison techniques allowed us to disrupt the order! It rendered the hierarchy based on talent and strength useless! What use is being the strongest if you die from a single poison hit? What use is talent? They were so worried that we would turn that structure upside down with oour poison techniques that they were determined to wipe us out!"

"…that certainly sounds right."

From what I knew of the Martial Arts Alliance, that sounded exactly like their modus operandi. Eliminate everything that could be a threat to them. Even though Nine-Tailed Fox Sect was peacefully minding our own business and focusing on forging and selling Spirit Armaments, they were so terrified of our burgeoning wealth and the growing strength of Blood Blades that they sent ten to thirteen sects to invade us.

Righteousness? Justice? Don't make me laugh!

It seemed that I had found an unexpected kindred spirit in Sha Chen. The Dark Sage and his Black Venom Cult, like me and my Nine-Tailed Fox Sect were similarly victims of the Martial Arts Alliance. Perhaps he would be a strong ally in my eventual vengeance against the Martial Arts Alliance.

Yeah, I hadn't given up on destroying the Martial Arts Alliance and taking revenge on those bastards for attacking the Nine-Tailed Fox Sect. I was going to find out who gave the order, and wiped them out. For all those who had died in the invasion…Tang Qi Hong. Shen Cha. Elder Cheng Ping. And many more of my Blood Blades comrades.

"We should work together," I suggested, raising both hands in surrender. "We have an enemy in common. I don't know about you, but I intend to destroy the Martial Arts Alliance. If you're willing to help me…"

"Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

I stopped when Sha Chen burst out laughing, not understanding what was so funny. The Dark Sage glowered at me.

"You want me to help you?"

"Uh…yeah?"

"Deluded!"

An aggressive wave of qi washed over me, causing my legs to buckle. Even though I could feel a tremendous pressure from an ocean of qi weighing down on me, I refused to fall. Gritting my teeth, I fought to stay in an upright posture.

"You killed my subordinates, you wiped out my Black Venom Cult, and you still have the cheek to offer an alliance?"

Sha Chen was roaring in fury now.

"Hey, they tried to kill me first," I pointed out reasonably. "And they were murdering innocent villagers and civilians. You think I'm going to just stand there and let your subordinates kill me?"

"…I'll concede that point, but the fact that you killed them does not change. I cannot simply forgive someone who killed my subordinates and work with him. Moreover…" his qi pressure amplified, and I almost toppled over. My feet were certainly sinking into the softening ground, which was breaking up under the immense qi pressure. "You're just a greenhorn brat who's still wet behind your ears. You are not worthy of being my ally."

Sadly, he was probably right about that. I was being overwhelmed by his qi pressure alone. The guy had no need of me to help him fight the Martial Arts Alliance. To him, I was nothing more than ant, an insect that lacked any ability to sway the battle in his favor.

"You want me to accept your proposal of alliance?" Sha Chen raised his arm in a threatening manner. "Prove that you're worthy then. Let me test how strong you are."

Whoosh…

The ground around Sha Chen caved in under his feet, turning into a crater. A hurricane of qi whipped up around him. To my qi sense, it was as if the sun had been completely blotted out, consumed by an overwhelming darkness.

"…"

I could see furious wisps of qi blazing from him, wreathing him in an inferno-like image. The guy resembled a demon. Tensing, I unconsciously took a steo back as the inferno of qi spread out from him to consume the entire space. The overpowering qi seemed to expand outward almost limitlessly, curling around me and suffocating me.

This old man…he's on par with Master…no, even greater!? I've never seen anyone with such intense qi and aggressive spirit before!

A bead of cold perspiration rolled down my cheek as I froze from irrepressible fear. Every instinct in my body was screaming for me to run away. That if I continued to stand there like an idiot, I would definitely die.

"..."

Sha Chen also seemed to regard me as an idiot. He stared at me, his expression almost serene, despite his white hair whipping about in the hurricane of qi that blew around him.

"What are you waiting for?" there was no trace of impatience in his tone. It sounded as if he was mocking me.

And then…in a split second, everything changed.

"Are you perhaps waiting for me to make the first move?"

His face twisted into a demonic visage, and the ground around him cracked, the hurricane of qi intensifying from his rage.

Raising his hand, he swung it in my direction, unleashing yet another ferocious blast of qi that arced toward me, razing the already devastated ground. I couldn't use my damaged Snow Aegis, and my swords were lying some distance away.

"Damn it!"

I dove to the side and grabbed Azure Lotus Sword, which was the one lying closer to me. Despite my attempts to evade, the arcing qi blast actually switched its trajectory, curling toward me with a vengeance. I barely managed to get to my feet in time to parry the blow.

Bam!

I was almost overwhelmed by the blast of qi. Gritting my teeth, I cleaved the tremendous qi blast into two. The grayish-white qi of destruction was split into twin waves that separated on either side of me and continued to devastate the wasteland.

"Huff…huff…"

Panting, I struggled to stand, my arms trembling violently from attempting to parry the blow. I tightened my grip on Azure Lotus Sword, the Spirit Weapon almost falling from my shaking hands. I realized that my whole body was in fact shuddering from the immense impact, and my fingers and hands were scorched from the blast even though I had sliced it apart with my sword.

"Cough!"

Again, some blood leaked from my mouth.

Swoosh!

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to assess the slight damage I took from the blow. Sha Chen had swooped behind me, striking fearsomely from my blind spot. Moving at supersonic speeds, Sha Chen burst to the fore at the front of a series of sonic booms, his red cloak billowing behind him. Almost a blur, half-shrouded by his monstrous qi, and half-invisible from his speed, he lashed out.

I almost didn't see his attack. Despite whirling around to keep my eyes on him, I ended up relying more on my Heavenly Flow and Earthly Steps to track his movements and reacted based on what I read from the flow of his qi.

That was fine. That was exactly what Heavenly Flow and Earthly Steps were designed for. For me to combat an opponent much stronger than me – to read the flow of his qi, and react accordingly, to halt his attacks before he could fully execute them.

The problem was that Sha Chen was on a level where he could completely overwhelm my reactions with brute force and sheer speed.

Even so, I was able to parry his strike, my right hand snaking out to deflect his arm strike. Then I slashed down with the Azure Lotus Sword that I was clutching with that same hand, hoping to cut off my opponent's arm.

"!"

Wham!

Sha Chen anticipated my move, and before I could fully bring my Azure Lotus Sword down, he swung his hand and unleashed a violent surge of qi that blasted me off my feet and sent me skidding several meters back. The ground crumbled beneath the combined weight of Sha Chen's attacks and my momentum.

Bending down, I stabbed my sword into the ground and gripped the hilt with both hands to arrest my backward slide. Skidding to a stop, I coughed and glanced up.

"Ugh…"

But Sha Chen didn't even give me any time to rest. He was already flying toward me like a hawk, ready to tear my throat out with his claws…no, fingers.

Bam!

Raising my Azure Lotus Sword, I parried his palm strike as best as I could, but I felt my right arm cracking, almost dislocating at the shoulder. Bloody hell…if I was unarmed, parrying that strike bare-handed would have shattered all the bones in my right arm.

"Argh…"

Even so, it was still quite the painful experience. Gritting my teeth, I slashed at the suspended Sha Chen in a vicious counterattack with the intention of eviscerating him.

However, the old man ducked with a grace and speed that belied his advanced age and dropped to the ground, diving out of the path of my sword. While I was still clumsily correcting my stance after that missed swing, Sha Chen kicked off the ground and lunged at me from below, while my guard was still down.

Spreading his fingers, he glared at me scornfully before striking out with a powerful punch. With my sword still raised stupidly in the air after that failed swing, I could only respond by bring my right elbow and left arm down to deflect his punch.

Boom!

Despite my best efforts, the powerful blow sent me flying high into the air. The immense impact almost shuddered my sword out of my grip. While I hurtled through the air, I tightened my grip on my sword and mustered whatever qi I could into my body. Spinning in midair to lessen the effects of the powerful blow, I flipped myself right side up to land on my feet with a crash.

What a formidable opponent…

Huffing, I turned around, getting ready to face my enemy once again. My body was still trembling from the fierce blows, but I was using Heaven and Earth Formula to replenish my qi and strengthen my constitution.

Slowly, but surely, I was getting used to the Dark Sage's attacks.

DooM.

Drawing as much natural qi from the environment, I desperately gathered it to my dantian and began purifying as much qi as I could. Against an opponent of this caliber, who possessed more qi than I did, I would need to achieve purer qi to even stand a chance of surviving against him.

"...!"

Sha Chen narrowed his eyes when he realized what I was doing. I spun around, half-expecting him to attack, but he was just glaring at me in disbelief.

"..."

I blinked, wondering what he was so surprised about. Why wasn't he closing in to deliver the finishing blow and just standing there, scowling at me?

"Huh?" Sha Chen growled, cocking his head to the side. Veins bulged in his temple from fury. "Are you…attempting to purify your qi in the middle of a battle?"

"Uh…yeah?"

I was breathing heavily and almost dropped into a crouch, but I defiantly held up my Azure Lotus Sword, preparing for another attack. What? Was my technique that strange?

"You are either underestimating me…or you're an idiot who thinks that I'll just wait for you to purify your qi before attacking."

"You know I'm no match for you," I replied with a shrug. "So why wouldn't you wait for me to purify my qi? You're so powerful that you'll find more amusement in allowing me this little hope in thinking there's a possibility to defeat you, and then cruelly crushing it with raw power to prove me wrong."

Just like every arrogant villain out there. Always thinking there was nothing the poor protagonist could do to defeat him, and giving him the time and chance he needed to overturn the situation. I was gambling on the Dark Sage being the same kind of character.

After all, just look at his name. It was the typical villainous name, wasn't it? It made sense that he would act according to his role.

If I could just make use of that.

"Sure. I'll wait for you. It doesn't matter how pure your qi is, you'll never be able to defeat me. I'll teach you how the vast gulf between our strengths."

I knew it! I might just have a chance here!

"…did you really think I would say that?"

…huh?

Sha Chen narrowed his eyes at me, his expression dripping with scorn.

"Naïve fool. You think your opponents will wait for you to finish your technique in a real battlefield? I'll teach you reality."

Then maybe you should shut up and teach me through actions instead of talking so much. What was it with all these villains and their verbal diarrhea? They just loved to talk endlessly. Hell, wasn't Sha Chen rambling about his tragic past, being used and discarded by the Martial Arts Alliance, earlier? I mean, that did make him a more realistic character rather than the poor one-dimensional, nameless Black Venom Cultists I had been slaughtering this entire time. Still, that was a lot of show and not tell, but obviously the weakness of this first-person narrative was that I couldn't switch to Sha Chen's perspective and begin a long arc on his origins.

So I had to take his word for it and treat him like a true character. It was pretty refreshing, though. Most of the Black Venom Cultists (and other villains) I had met before, such as Darkon, were one-dimensional cardboard characters spouting bullshit about strength being the only thing that mattered and thus doing whatever they liked. You know, like the typial xianxia antagonists.

…therefore Sha Chen's tragic past seemed a bit more refreshing.

Unfortunately, right now he was an enemy who was trying to kill me.

Whoo…!

An inferno of incendiary qi blasted out from Sha Chen's body, incinerating his surroundings and engulfing the entire devastated marsh in a sea of fire. I watched in horror as the flames expanded rapidly from his body as the core, carving a scorched crater into the former swamp and rushing outward to swallow me.

"That's…Fire Breaker?!"

I recognized that technique from the Incendiary Ifrit Sect. Was Sha Chen from the Incendiary Ifrit Sect before he was expelled?

Sha Chen's flaming technique expanded rapidly, engulfing the entire swamp and reaching toward the trees and parts of the swamp that still weren't destroyed by our previous battles. Was the bastard intending to reshape the geological terrain of the Toxic Marsh?!

"Bloody hell, are you trying to destroy everything?!"

Stupid question. He obviously was.

I gave up on purifying my qi. Right now there was no place for me to escape. The expanding ring of fire was moving too rapidly for me to run away. Even with my advanced footwork techniques, it would catch up and overwhelm me before I could get to a safe distance.

Nope, I had to make my stand here.

Gripping my Azuure Lotus Sword with both hands, I faced down the rapidly expanding conflagration, perspiration pouring down my face from both the intense heat and the cold fear that gripped my heart at such a terrifying sight. Within the core of the colossal inferno, I caught sight of the Dark Sage, Sha Chen.

He had literally transformed into a demon. His figure was enveloped in flames, his silvery eyes shining even more brilliantly than the crimson and orange flames around him. It was as if he was the avatar of a fire god, having descended from the heavens to destroy the mortal world in apocalyptic fury.

What a horrifying sight…

However, I refused to falter. Gritting my teeth, I steeled my resolve and raised my sword. Even as the colossal conalgration advanced toward me, I gathered all my qi into my sword and swung it as forcefully as I could.

Heavenly Draconic Meteor Strike!

My azure blade screeched as it slammed into the surface of the expanding inferno. The flames continued to wash around me, but I succeeded in carving a small dent into the colossal conflagration. Yelling, I continued cleaving the small section of the inferno apart with all my might, trying my best to neutralize the hellish flames.

And then my vision vanished in an explosive blast that roared over me and engulfed my figure in superheated plasma.

Chapter end