Chương 124: A Mockery of Death, II

Wu Hao raced forward, trying to reach Mu Jun to at least kill him too, but Huifei still hadn't moved. For the first time, it seemed like she'd finally reached her limit of what she could tolerate, had finally reached a point where she'd frozen entirely. But he'd been wrong to call it an explosion. All of the qi that had gathered around the monstrous thing had started pushing inwards, concentrating and pushing, carving new paths through the thing's body as they went. And they grew more and more, and grew darker.

Shadows grew so thick along the dead thing's body that it was as if fingers of pure darkness crawled along its flesh, all congregating towards its core. It had only taken an instant after the order before the thing's core twisted in on itself, and then all of that extremely concentrated power concentrated even further inwards as if it had passed some sort of invisible barrier, ripping the thing's flesh to shreds. It'd do much the same to anyone else caught within it.

A pillar of pure darkness blasted upwards, hungrily devouring even the feeble light in the room. Its presence was like nothing Wu Hao had ever felt before - deadened, in its very essence, and immense. This was a blow worthy of a first-grade martial artist. From the pillar an initial wave of dark pulsed through the room, its impact like a hammer blow.

Floorboards cracked with loud groans but the weight of the darkness smothered even that noise, and it swelled and grew even more when it touched on the arrays carved into the floor and devoured the pieces of the corpse, carrying them back to the main pillar like eddies on the shore. Wu Hao reached Mu Jun, but the older man spun and kicked him back with surprising speed, though without being able to really injure him. There was something odd about his movements, Wu Hao thought, unable to place exactly what.

The kick had pushed Wu Hao back, though, and the sheer mass of the cold behind him forced his attention there. Too late to run now, he thought. Fuck. He cast a glance at Mu Jun, the man staring transfixed at the pillar with the expression of a devout worshipper seeing new evidence of their god's favor. That level of devoutness looked wrong on a face like Mu Jun's, though. An aloof expression would suit him better, but he didn't seem capable of it.

Staring at the wave of shadows build and crest in front of him, Wu Hao had a moment of deja vu. He had been in this situation before, had felt this creeping despair run up his spine as he stared certain death in its face. He'd had a saber then, though, and a technique that could cut through it. The spear that he now wielded nearly clattered from frozen, stunned fingers and his mind kept returning to that one thought. If he'd had a saber - he could get one in his next life...

And then Huifei shot forward, her sword sweeping a brilliant blue arc through the shadows. It didn't cut through - nothing could cut through that wave of misery and resentment, but she gave it a try. All of her qi was wrapped up in that single, resplendent slash meant to ward off the shadows. It was clear that it wouldn't work, though.

"Run," she whispered, biting down on her lips to keep in the grunt of exertion. Several hairpins smacked against the wave of shadows, courtesy of Hanzi, but they disappeared into that deep darkness without leaving a single trace. Even the sound of their whistling through the air had gone. Then Hanzi rushed forward, trading in her hairpins for her own sword. It was wooden but made of a light sort of wood, her cloud-like qi clinging to its every pore as the wooden sword was suffused with light.

She slashed out as well, but her slash only reached part of the wave and it grew to fuse together the parts that she'd cut. Brilliant lights flared, one after the other, as the pendants on the girl's necks shone with hidden arrays that had been carved deeply, carrying enough qi to power a hundred of Wu Hao's techniques. A shield appeared covering both girls, both pendants shattering under the force of the repeated hammer blows of the pillar blasting out repeated pulses of that heavy, bizarre shadowy qi.

The pendants might have been life-saving treasures, Wu Hao thought. If there had been time to feel jealous he might have been. But the resistance caused Mu Jun to focus on breaking their shields first. He gestured, gibbered and grinned, directing the pulses of power like he was playing an invisible zither, concentrating on the two girls as their faces paled. Wu Hao only had to throw his hands up to block the backwashes of power that struck him almost absently.

It still felt like he was hit with a heavy punch every time the black current lashed against him. No matter how much had been spent on the pendants, though, their strength didn't quite measure up against the power of repeated blasts of darkness. Cracks appeared on the shields after a few seconds more as the tide slammed against it, and Wu Hao had the bizarre impression that it was almost like a hand out of darkness, reaching out to squeeze out the light in its midst.

Mu Jun laughed that ugly laugh, and this time his insanity wasn't something he'd put on. He had to act, but how? His spear had been swallowed up, so - His eyes landed on the giant spear that the Array Doll had used. Now that he thought about it just a few seconds more.... Ripping his last knife from his belt he scrabbled forwards on hands and feet towards the giant spear, allowing the shadows to smash into his face. He felt every single one, felt the wrenching in his neck.

Tomorrow his body would be a patchwork of bruises, cuts, and worse. But then there'd have to be a tomorrow first. He reached the spear and began to saw through its wooden handle, finally ripping it up slightly, wheezing at the weight, and then finally just breaking off the last part of it with a kick. He rose to his full height and clenched the makeshift saber in his hands. Jagged thorns and twists of the wood dug into his skin, but he ignored all of that.

Wu Hao hadn't held a saber since he'd last used the Sky-Severing Saber. Shivers ran up his spine. Thoughts blank, Wu Hao felt all of his qi rise to the surface of his skin, racing like currents down to his arms and then his hands, prickling every single nerve as it went. It picked up speed as if it felt urgency and Wu Hao could only watch, feeling like someone else had taken over his body and was now guiding him. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road.

Please report it. But there was only him. He suddenly realized that he barely understood what "he" was. Instinct hurried him along. Wu Hao's hands drew back, dragging the makeshift saber with it, and then, every muscle straining as if he was trying to drag his saber through thick mud, he moved. He didn't whisper anything, let out any sort of sound, but his qi clicked together.

It was as if he existed in a plane of pure black and white - the black in front of him, the sparks of white small in number but bright, and his own the brightest yet. And then he cut, the tip of the spear slashing at nothing in particular with movements he'd never practiced but which seemed as familiar as breathing. Where the edge of the makeshift saber cut, there nothingness followed.

It was as if with the single stroke of a pen he had erased everything that had stood between him and his target, all the darkness ripped away as if he'd just cut through cloth with a pair of scissors and the rest of the world hiding behind it had vanished.

The shadows were blasted back into the nothingness they'd come from, vanishing into fragments and splinters like the roof above them, which simply ceased to exist as a single thing from one moment to the next, leaving the room entirely exposed to the uncaring sky above. Then the roof collapsed and with it the silence died.

Heavy wood, brick, plaster and so much more crashed down into the room, sending dust flying everywhere, so much so that Wu Hao had to restrain himself from breathing too much for fear of choking on the dust explosion. It took almost a full minute for the smoke to clear, and occasionally there were still the odd clatters as the other parts of the roof also came crashing down. There were shouts in the distance that he couldn't pay attention to. Huifei and Hanzi, huddling together, were revealed once more.

They had a few scratches, a few dark blotches of qi onto their white uniforms, but otherwise they seemed not to have any injuries worth worrying about. Mu Jun simply stared.

"What did you just do?" he whispered.

"What was that? Was that a -" He swallowed his words, but Hanzi said it anyway.

"That was a Heaven-tier technique," she said quietly, then clapped her hands in front of her mouth. Mu Jun's face flickered with emotions, from fear to jealousy to greed and rage. It was those last two that dominated, though.

"Give it to me," he said, voice growing not only louder but shriller as he spoke, then roared that same phrase: "Give it to me! I'll make you into a work of art!" He scrabbled forward, howling a wordless battle-cry with his fingers extended as if he was going to use a claw attack. Before he could reach, though, someone appeared in front of him in a whisper of rapid movement and caught him by the throat.

He stopped abruptly, his own movement choking him into the unbending, iron-strong arm of the girl who had caught him, and simply dangled, his legs kicking urgently as he tried to wrench himself free. She was, Wu Hao thought distantly, beautiful. Neat brown hair done up into elegant braids, fair skin and phoenix eyes, and with glasses perched on top of her dot nose. Her wrists, exposed by the sleeve of the long martial arts robe that she wore, were thin and pale. She looked about in her middle twenties.

There was a sword on her hip that she hadn't drawn, and despite the fact that the craftsmanship on the sheath looked exquisite, it was hard to imagine a girl like her doing something so crass as actually wielding it. There was a generally peaceable impression to her, Wu Hao thought. Her qi smelled of flowers and gave the impression of a lazy afternoon spent reading books. But she was also a monster.

The sheer size of her qi and the power she brought to bear was immense - at the very least it was a match for Father, and Wu Hao didn't know which of them he'd have given the better chance to.

"Senior Sister!" Hanzi cried out, the relief clear from her voice.

"Stay there," their senior sister said. Her voice might have lilted musically if it didn't sound cold at the moment, and she didn't take her eyes of Mu Jun. Her qi blazed into action for a tenth of a second and then she wrenched the crown off of Mu Jun's head, throwing it to the floor. Mu Jun screamed as the thing was quite literally ripped from his face, leaving bright red marks all along his skull where it had burrowed into his flesh.

Bright red marks that began to drip with blood, pinprick wounds though they were. It appeared that the crown had literally fed on Mu Jun, the thorns that had grown from it having literally grown into his skin.

"Mu Jun," the senior sister of the Emei Sect spoke.

"You have violated the precepts of the Martial Arts Alliance, to wit: disrespecting the dead, murder of martial artists in an unsanctioned bout, and interfering with the investigation of the Martial Arts Alliance." The man in question barely paid attention, though. The moment she'd knocked the crown off his head he went completely limp, like the soul had been struck out of his body. His tongue slipped out of his mouth and his eyes rolled up into the back of his head.

Whatever else was said to him, he didn't respond. Or even seem capable of responding. She didn't shake him, but from her qi a note of confusion was clear. It was clear she didn't quite understand, but then a sort of professionalism took over and she procured heavy iron shackles out of seeming nowhere, inscribed with dozens if not hundreds of separate arrays. She shoved them over Mu Jun's wrists and twisted, some sort of lock system taking hold with a click. Wu Hao experienced all this distantly.

He paid only half of his attention, but the other half was still occupied with what had just happened. He stared down at the spear's tip, which cracked and broke and fell apart. Thin shards of metal and wood still clung to his fingers, stinging deeply, and Wu Hao couldn't feel any of it. Unable to utter another word he felt the last of his qi vanish, and then he slowly began to topple backwards into grateful unconsciousness.

Not again, he had the time to think, and then there was an impression of softness and the scent of flowers before he dropped away entirely.