Myriad Rivers to the Sea

Chapter 1059: Not Defeated Yet

Zhan Chen hovered high above the royal palace and casually deflected a sweeping wave of fire sent by Ancestor Aethon. He then glanced toward the northeast just in time to see the blinding beam of violet fire strike his younger cousin. Zhan Chen watched the black robed youth plummet from the sky and crash into the earth below. Dirt and shattered rock erupted into the air as a deep crater formed upon impact. Despite the violent scene, Zhan Chen did not look worried in the slightest for his cousin. He offered a light chuckle while swatting away another volley of flaming spears.

'Pain will only make him stronger for next time,' Zhan Chen thought while sidestepping a concentrated pillar of heat. 'It is actually a bit good to see him getting beaten around today. The path of cultivation is paved with hardship and taking a few heavy hits builds character and refines the flesh.'

He then turned his attention back to the Solaria ancestor. Zhan Chen continued toying with the old man by deflecting attacks with minimal effort and returning casual strikes that only bruised the ancestor rather than killing him outright. Exactly what he was waiting for was still to be seen but he definitely had no intentions of helping out Li Yu. In fact, he looked forward to spreading a few juicy stories about him being beaten down by a flaming bird once he got back.

Down in the smoking crater, the ruined earth shifted and broken rocks tumbled away. Li Yu flew up from the devastation and hovered in the air with a heavy breath. His dark outer armor was still intact but the surface was scorched. It would take a lot more than that to actually damage the armor itself. However, just because the armor was intact, doesn’t mean that Li Yu did not get hurt. The force of the attack had to go somewhere and while the armor helped, Li Yu still had to bear a good amount of that force.

He wiped a thin trail of blood from his chin and assessed his internal injuries. The double layer of protective armor he wore had helped blunt the physical force of the beam along with Silent Bastion taking a large portion of the force upon its wide blade. Even with those premium defenses, it was still a powerful attack.

The beam carried the ignited life force of thousands of fire elementals and the resulting damage showed. His chest ached with a dull throb and his lungs burned as he drew in the crisp air which was now significantly hotter than before. The flaming crow had been increasing the ambient temperature of this place since it was formed..

However, Li Yu refused to stay down while he was hurt. He channeled his Qi and reached out with his mind to pull his scattered weapons from every direction across the battlefield. The sixty pieces from his orbiting arsenal flew back to his side and resumed their violent orbit. He became the churning hurricane of steel once again.

'That attack was too strong, I can’t let something like that hit me again.' Li Yu thought while tightening his grip on the shaft of his glaive. 'Time to die!'

He pushed his speed to the limit and charged directly back at the towering violet crow as his swords and steel followed him. Li Yu tapped into his Koi Soul once again and gathered a dense pool of soul energy. He let out another Death's Roar that rippled across the sky in invisible gray waves as he charged. The shockwave of soul power washed over the Ashen Stone Clan members once more.

The elementals were already severely weakened from burning their life force to fuel the previous beam attack and the constant exertion of maintaining the flaming crow. They had little mental defenses left to resist the crushing ethereal pressure of the powerful soul attack. The attack shattered their fragile minds and killed triple the amount of people compared to the first roar that Li Yu had done.

Bodies rained from the sky as their internal flames extinguished and their physical forms fell apart. At the same time, the orbiting swords tore through the failing sections of their technique with ruthless efficiency. Pale Extinction and Firmament's End racked up hundreds of kills as they swam through the fiery interior and slaughtered the remaining elementals holding the formation together.

Patriarch Malphas saw his clan falling apart and realized his ancestral technique was on the verge of collapsing. They had staked a large portion of their strength on a sure kill that did not do what was intended but then a look of malice crossed his avian face. The clan leader formed a rapid series of seals with his talons and wings and activated a forbidden technique. He forcefully withdrew the remaining life force from every single surviving member of his clan.

The elementals shrieked in agony as their core energy was violently ripped from their bodies to feed the patriarch. Red tethers of life force snapped through the air and flowed directly into Malphas. Li Yu watched the brutal sacrifice unfold and finally understood why the karma radiating from the crow leader was so dark and putrid. The man was willing to do anything to secure his own survival and victory. He would build his power and strength on the corpses of his own people without a second thought.

With the forced life withdrawal complete, Malphas became the only living being left inside the avatar. The forbidden technique allowed him to manage the construct entirely on his own now but the physical size of the crow changed drastically. The towering beast shrank down from its imposing height and became much more dense. The violet flames turned dark and heavy as they wrapped tightly around the clan leader to form a thick suit of living flame armor.

Li Yu and Malphas crashed together in the sky and began trading direct blows. Li Yu swung his glaive with crushing physical strength and aimed for the head of the crow. Malphas met the strikes with his condensed talons and beak. Sparks rained down on the forest below as the two warriors clashed in a blur of motion. As Li Yu swung his primary weapon, his orbiting swords came in from all sides to help him attack the blind spots of his enemy. The hurricane of steel chipped away at the dense violet armor protecting the patriarch while Malphas retaliated with sweeping claw strikes and waves of flames that tested the limits of Li Yu's battered defenses.

The dark flames shifting across the forehead of the crow suddenly parted and a glowing third eye opened wide. The eye locked onto Li Yu and unleashed a second blinding beam of concentrated fire at point blank range in an instant. Li Yu had no time to bring Silent Bastion around to block the sudden assault and could only rely on his armor and Qi defenses to soften the blow. The beam struck him squarely in the chest and blasted him out of the sky with his orbiting arsenal flying off in every which direction once again. He slammed into the ground and somehow ended back in the exact same crater that he had made before, deepening the existing crater with a deafening boom.

Malphas did not wait for the youth to recover his footing, unlike before he didn’t have the confidence that the wild youth was dead. He had just used his hidden third eye to score a devastatingly piercing attack but he had noticed that the armor was not punched through, like the other times he had used it.

The clan leader utilized a devious flame technique that gathered all the ambient heat in the surrounding area, the very same heat that the flaming crow had been increasing. The air turned freezing cold as he created a large ball of violet fire high in the sky. Malphas compressed the chaotic energy with his talons and made the sphere smaller and smaller until it was the size of a mortal fist.

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The condensed ball of heat pulsed with terrifying destructive power that threatened to end any life it touched. Zhan Chen himself glanced over at the attack, looked like he was making some mental calculations and then went back to his own business. Malpahs then launched the glowing orb directly into the smoking crater after Li Yu, it was long to describe but the attack had come out within a few short seconds after Li Yu smashed into the ground.

Down in the ruined dirt, Li Yu sensed the descending threat. He did his best to ignore the burning pain in his ribs and activated his spatial arts. He void stepped just as the condensed fireball detonated against the bedrock. The explosion vaporized a large section of the earth and sent a violent shockwave rolling across the entire battlefield as well as a massive pillar of flame shooting into the sky where the orb had hit the ground.

Li Yu appeared high in the air directly behind the dense violet crow. He was truly furious with this damn bird that had made him suffer so much twice already. His body was hurting, his mind ringing and pain he hadn’t felt in a long time was spreading all over his body. It was at this moment that his five souls began to resonate with his hatred, his anger. It first began with his Human Soul, which acted as the center and catalyst.

Then the Koi Soul, Whale Soul, Muddy and finally the Fisherman Soul began to resonate with his Human Soul in shared hatred. Their killing intent exploded from within, resonating with Li Yu’s own killing intent that had erupted from him as he appeared behind the crow. The killing intent merged together and almost formed a physical projection of a god-like figure behind Li Yu with eyes glowing black and red.

Li Yu instantly swung with his glaive with every ounce of his being and unlike before where his blade would bounce off the living armor or leave scattered flames, the glaive went right through severed one of the flaming wings from the body of the patriarch.

The power sustaining the Malpahs’s techniques was finally running out of steam, together with Li Yu’s own soul resonance had changed the dynamic of the fight. As the severed wing drifted through the air, the orange natal flame resting in Li Yu flared to life once more. The greedy flame absorbed the violet wing in an instant and digested the rich essence to fuel its own growth.

Before Malphas could turn around to retaliate against the ambush that had actually worked, Li Yu launched a direct soul strike into the mind of the clan leader. The five soul resonant mental attack completely fractured Malphas’s consciousness and caused the dense flames protecting his body to waver and thin out.

Li Yu directed his swords which he had regained control of to strike the vulnerable openings. The swords impaled the patriarch from multiple angles before he could even react to what was happening. Whispering Frost sliced off a talon while Resolve punched a hole directly through the remaining wing. Cataclysm tore a gaping hole right through the center of his chest and shattered his remaining power.

Malphas let out a reactive gurgling screech as his body fell apart but his mind and body were broken and shattered. Li Yu stepped forward and swung his glaive once more in a smooth horizontal arc. He cleaved the clan leader in half, not letting his body go down in just a single piece.

His killing intent, hatred and anger were still boiling over and he didn’t even want his body to be intact, even though he was already dead. The dense violet flames fueling the patriarch shattered into a million sparks while the natal flame inside Li Yu took it all in. The fire devoured the remains of the Tribulation expert and digested the vast amount of thermal energy to strengthen itself.

Zhan Chen had been watching since Li Yu’s killing intent exploded and was for the first time during this battle stunned. He couldn’t believe that his younger cousin could have that level of killing intent, it didn’t make any sense for someone of his age. If someone were to have told him that, he wouldn’t have believed it until he saw it with his own eyes like he did today.

‘What kind of killing intent was that? What was that massive spike in power as well? It’s like they are two different people…’ Zhan Chen thought to himself.

Li Yu floated in the sky while running ragged from the intense combat and the spike in power that he experienced from his five Nascent Soul resonating. His soul power was completely drained in those few short moments which made him feel even more fatigued.

He pulled a handful of healing pills from his storage ring and tossed them into his mouth. The medicinal energy flowed through his veins and began repairing his damaged tissues, restoring Qi and aiding his mind. His body hurt in nearly every single place now but the pain was mainly focused on his chest since he had taken two direct hits there.

Even with the physical and mental injuries dragging him down, his Qi reserves remained quite stable. Krag sat on the ground far below and continuously pulsed fresh energy up to his master. The deep reserves of the beast had kept the sixty weapons floating smoothly around Li Yu and ensured his meridians did not run dry during the battle and after it.

The entire Ashen Stone Clan that had come to attack the capital was now wiped out. Not a single fire elemental survived the brutal conflict but some of their ships were still floating there. Li Yu directed a wave of Qi across the battlefield and swept up all their storage rings, making sure he wasn’t leaving this place empty handed.

Thousands of spatial rings flew through the air in a glittering river and vanished into his own storage space. If his body and mind weren’t hurting as much, he would have gone to figure out a way to take those ships of theirs too but with his current condition and the overall state of the battle he would save it for later.

Li Yu looked toward the northern horizon and saw the Crest Spine Sect still holding their position. Sect Master Korren and his dragon kin had not made a single move to join the fight after witnessing the slaughter. Neither taking advantage of him or retreating from this place. Li Yu decided he was not going to go after them if they stayed out of this conflict.

He shifted his gaze back to the center of the capital to check on the primary battlefield. Li Yu saw that Zhan Chen was still pushing the ancestor back and wasn’t injured or breaking a sweat at all. Zhan Chen clearly was not going all out but he still had the Solaria ancestor injured and struggling to maintain his defensive arrays. Aethon was bleeding heavily from his mouth and his glowing aura flickered with deep exhaustion.

Zhan Chen suddenly changed his attitude and demeanor completely. The relaxed smile vanished from his face and his eyes turned cold and serious. He pulled his right arm back and punched through the empty air ferociously at the ancestor. The physical force of the strike shattered the remaining defensive formations and blasted a hole directly through the chest of Ancestor Aethon in an instant.

The old man froze in place and looked down at his ruined heart with wide eyes as his eyes began to glaze over. Not only was there a hole in his body but Zhan Chen had also destroyed his soul. Zhan Chen proved with a single strike that he could have ended the fight at any time of his own choosing. The Sovereign let the lifeless body of the ancestor fall toward the ruined courtyard below with not much of a reaction.

A roaring laughter echoed from the deep center of the capital at this time. The sound carried a dense pressure that pushed the clouds away and rattled the ruined city gates. A moment later, an old grandma looking woman emerged from the depths of the royal palace. She stepped into the sky and continued roaring with laughter while looking at the dead ancestor resting in the rubble with no sadness at all

"It seems the old cannot even rest peacefully in this kingdom," the woman said with a raspy voice that echoed for miles across the sky. "If they have come here to die, then they can die."

Li Yu felt the crushing pressure radiating from the old woman and narrowed his eyes. The real mastermind behind the Solaria Kingdom was finally here and she had waited until now to reveal herself. Matriarch Olenna floated above the palace and her aura eclipsed everyone else on the battlefield. She was an ancient expert resting firmly at the Creation Lord level and was the true mastermind and power house behind the Solaris Kingdom.