The grove erupted in chaos.
Twenty cultivators—each a storm of Qi and intent fueled defiance—unleashed their power into the golden clearing. The once-serene grove became a furnace of light and fury as martial arts, and elemental techniques collided with the monstrous heart of the Vine Plight Lord.
Flame roared first. A pair of fire adepts from the Scarlet Crust Continent spun twin orbs of wind fire Qi that seared through the outer vines, burning them to soot. For a heartbeat, the creature recoiled—but then, green shoots shot forward, bursting from the earth. The flames only made it angrier.
Wind cultivators took to the air, slicing downward with crescent blades of compressed Qi that shattered trunks and peeled bark from the beast's hide. Beneath them, Bedrock Calvin slammed his palms into the soil, sending rippling shockwaves through the ground. Each impact tore roots from the earth, hurling them skyward in gouts of dirt and green ichor.
From the eastern edge, Ken Renzo of Cloud Continent vanished into mist, reappearing in bursts of lightning to carve deep lines into the Vine Lord's flesh. The cuts sizzled with ozone—but every wound healed as fast as it formed, tendrils fusing together with sickening elasticity.
Seymour, invoked a very unusual technique, he transformed into a sphere of water, a moment later liquid spears shot out of the sphere and skewered the creature's limbs, pinning several in place for precious seconds. "It's feeding off the islands vital essence!" he shouted. "Every root in the ground belongs to it!"
I could feel it too—the way the soil itself pulsed with demonic Qi, the very air thick with corrupted life energy. For every vine they severed, two more rose to replace it.
A cultivator from the Frost Blossom Continent unleashed an arctic domain, coating half the grove in shimmering ice. The Vine Lord howled, the sound rippling through their chests. Yet even that brilliance couldn't hold. Cracks spidered through the frost as the creature's inner heat forced the cold away, and then—explosively—it shed the ice in a storm of emerald shards.
One vine, thick as a tree trunk, whipped through the air, catching a cultivator mid-flight and snapping him like a twig. Another wrapped around a trio of warriors, dragging them screaming into the earth where the roots pulsed hungrily. The soil drank.
Prince Edward rallied a cluster of survivors, summoning radiant sigils that burned like suns. "Focus on the central trunk!" he bellowed. "Everything else is a distraction!"
Calvin gritted his teeth. "If we can't burn it, and we can't cut it, then what do we hit it with?"
My eyes narrowed, tracking the rhythm of regeneration—the flicker of Qi flow beneath the chaos. I saw it, faint but real: a pulse deeper than the roots, a hidden heart feeding the monster's rebirth. "The heart," I murmured. "We gotta uproot this thing like a bad weed, or we die feeding it."
As if sensing my intent, the Vine Plight Lord screamed again, every vine on the island convulsing toward me!
The air itself seemed to darken—
and the battle entered its second stage.
The battlefield went still for half a heartbeat. The Vine Blight Lord's shadow loomed over the grove like the skeleton of a god—its vines writhing, its massive trunk pulsing with vile green life. The air itself was thick with demonic spores, glowing faintly in the twilight haze.
I floated amid the chaos, every sense burning. The cries of the wounded blurred into the background; his heartbeat was a steady drum. My spiritual sea surged as Felicity's laughter rang from his dantian like crystal chimes cracking under strain.
"I was wondering when you were going to introduce me to the boys."
My grin was all teeth. "Felicity—bring the Frost Burn Black Flag and start waving it."
The air shattered.
Silver light bled from my chest, coalescing into tendrils of living mercury that whirled like ribbons through the mist. The tendrils struck the ground in thunderous pulses, carving sigils into the earth—sigils older than the sects, older than the continents themselves. Then, from their center, Felicity erupted.
She appeared with a smile, her behemoth exo armor gleaming with an oil-slick sheen, antennae crackling with Prodigious Qi. At her hip was the whispering thorn blood frost rapier.
Cultivators nearby froze—not from the cold, but from awe. "What—what is that?" gasped one of the Cloud disciples.
"Spirit construct? No… she's alive," whispered another.
"It's-it's a silver bug-girl?!?" Stammered one cultivator.
Felicity didn't answer. She lifted the black standard from the ether—a banner folded with Ash's own Qi and intent. With powerful sweeps Felicity began to wave the black origami flag of death.
A pulse rang out.
The Frost Burn Domain ignited.
Blue-black fire erupted outward in concentric waves, each ring freezing the air and burning it at once. Frost spread like veins of glass along the jungle floor, creeping up the vines that reached for Ash and the other cultivators. The vines caught fire—not red or orange, but blue, burning in silence as shards of ice hissed from their surfaces.
The Vine Blight Lord shrieked, its entire mass convulsing as the frost flame raced up its body. Its emerald sap boiled, its bark split open in steaming gashes.
My hair whipped around me in the updraft of colliding energies—heat and cold fusing into something paradoxically still. I drew Qi through every meridian, "Your regeneration's impressive," I said, stepping forward, voice low but carrying across the chaos. "Let's see how fast you grow back after being burned and frozen at the same time."
The ground quaked as the Vine Blight Lord struck back. Its charred vines lashed out, spewing thorns the size of daggers, each one whistling through the air with lethal precision.
I scattered my dantian exploding in a swarm of silver blood fly's, the barrage of thorns harmlessly passing through the gaps. I reconverged across the battlefield.
"Felicity, don't stop waving the flag! Keep the burn constant!"
"Already on it, Captain," she sang, antennae glowing as she twirled the banner in wide, sweeping arcs. Each pass of the flag deepened the frost flame's hold, turning the battlefield into a burning glacier.
The Vine Blight Lord's bellowed deepened into something like panic. Its vines slammed against the frozen soil, shattering upon impact; every time it regenerated, the flames reignited, consuming it anew.
My eyes narrowed. "Now it's my turn." The air warped around me as I directed power — gravity itself seemed to bend toward my right arm. The glowing azure spire crab shell sigil pulsed in kinetic waves between my shoulder blades, veins of spiraling light racing down through my crystal blue armor as I focused intent into the Spiral Tyrant's core.
The Vine Plight Lord reared back, a chorus of rustling screams erupting from its countless writhing vines. Each tendril lashed out like a whip, trying to ensnare him before the blow could land, but Felicity's frost-flame flag shimmered — another wave of frost burn bloomed outward, burning the vines as they froze to brittle.
My fist roared downward.
"SPIRAL TYRANT FIST!"
A spectral spiral crab shell — the size of a fortress gate — erupted from around my arm, spiraling with an unholy mix of Eon Qi and tidal pressure. I struck the earth like a meteor, drilling deep through the tangled root-flesh of the Vine Blight Lord. The impact sent concentric waves of energy pulsing through the jungle, trees bending away from the shockwave as if bowing.
The colossal plant creature enveloped in frost flame wailed — its heart root impaled, torn, and spinning apart as frost fire raced along its network of vines. The ground trembled as its regenerative pulses began to slow, then stutter.
All around, the other cultivators stared — some shielding their faces from the heatless light, others frozen, unable to comprehend what they were seeing. Prince Edward muttered, half in disbelief, "He… he drilled through its core?"
I rose from the crater, steam curling from my sleek crystal armor that ran along my ribs and collar bones, my breath glowing with Qi condensation. The Vine Blight Lord convulsed behind me, its massive body collapsing into blue-tinged embers.
I straightened slowly, the steam of dissipating Qi curling from my shoulders like smoke off cooling metal. My feet sank into the blackened roots, still faintly aglow with frost flame. I gave a sharp whistle — two short notes that cut through the air like a command word.
Felicity burst into argent light. Her armored frame shattered into a thousand slivers, each piece dissolving into radiant motes that streaked through the air like silver comets.
In the next heartbeat I scattered my dantian, instantly I transformed into a cloud of silver blood flies, an unforeseen enhancement of co-cultivation. My Silver blood fly swarm pulsed through the air as my dantian — or inner spiritual lake — scattered and reformed rapidly, leaving glowing crimson and silver after-images. The technique was breathtaking and unorthodox.
When I coalesced again, I was standing at the base of one of the golden trees — calm, centered, as if I'd merely stepped through a doorway instead of traversed half the battlefield as pure energy.
The gathered cultivators stood dumbfounded, still panting from their own battles. A murmur rippled through them.
"What manner of movement skill was that?" someone gasped.
"Did he just...scatter his dantian?"
"And that thing — that silver bug girl! Was that a spirit?"
Even Prince Edward, looked uncertain. He probed the air with his spiritual senses, but the space where Felicity had been now felt empty — as though she'd been devoured by his spiritual core. I cracked a grin, brushing a streak of soot from my cheek. "Trade secret. But if you're curious," I said, voice low and amused, "You might be able to find your own if you float down a river of cursed blood."
A nervous laugh escaped one of the prodigies — more out of disbelief than humor. The jungle's golden canopy rippled with reflected light from the burning Vine Lord remains, but the awe was tangible, almost reverent.
And far above them, the golden trees rustled again — and all the cultivators paused when they heard something like a sigh of relief in the wind. The entire island seemed to inhale.
Far below the shimmer of the Mystic Turquoise ocean, the abyss glowed faintly with the turquoise scraps of the dead sea dragon's frozen carcass. The weight of the world pressed down here — miles of enchanted ocean, silence dense enough to smother thunder. Then, a deep vibration rolled through the trench like the groan of the planet itself.
Ka'rink'ka stirred. The Primordial's immense form unfurled from the darkness — black tentacles wider than ships, her body a colossus of abyssal flesh that pulsed like the heartbeat of a leviathan. Her single cyclopean eye opened, casting a beam of pale violet light across the seabed.
She raised a fist, and when it struck the floor, the world cracked. Sediment erupted in a cloud that could have buried mountains. Her roar vibrated through the water, shaking coral spires and toppling ancient wrecks that had rested undisturbed for centuries.
"The Vine Blight Lord… gone." Her voice was a low rumble, more pressure than sound. "My viceroy — slain by that boy and his silver hive-wife."
A pause. Then, her monstrous lips split into a grin, revealing teeth like bioluminescent towers.
"Impressive."
She slumped back against the trench wall, coils of tentacles lazily stirring currents the size of storms. Her attention split — half her mind here, in the deep, and half tethered through the vastness of the spirit seas to her avatar — the fragment of her essence currently locked in battle outside the Pillar of Heaven.
Above, the celestial conflict blazed across the far horizon — her avatar's shadow stalking the will of Mystic Central, a radiant guardian that she had witnessed months earlier playing her harp on her tropical island, it was then that her heart was set ablaze to attain her-Shakina. For Ka'rink'ka cultivated the wicked path of lust and temptation.
Ka'rink'ka let out an enormous burp that rippled through the abyssal plain, scattering spirit eels like frightened minnows. "That boy better be thankful he got on my good side with that snack," she muttered, flexing her claws. "Otherwise, I'd have plucked his soul like a pearl."
Her gaze turned upward — toward the distant glow of the surface and the island where Ash and Felicity stood.
"Keep dancing, little Eon Child," she said with a dark purr. "I'll be watching. And when the tides turn… I'll collect."
The water above her churned violently, a vortex spiraling from the depths to the stars, before she finally returned her focus on the war outside the Pillar of Heaven — her avatar roaring into the oncoming storm, contending against the wills of entire continents.
I didn't wait for the dust—or in this case, the frost-flame mist—to settle. I broke into a grin, muscles coiled with qi, and shouted over my shoulder, "Sayonara, suckers!" before launching myself into a dead sprint through the golden clearing. Golden leaves whipped past like the fluttering banners of conquered kings. My feet struck the loam in bursts of qi-propelled speed, each step cracking roots and flinging shards of blue frost behind me.
Behind him, a chorus of indignant shouts rose. "He's running back to the coast!" someone yelled. "He's leaving us?" another roared. But their words were swallowed by chaos as the survivors realized what he had spotted first—those shining golden trees were bearing fruit.
Seymour, ever the opportunist, blinked once, twice, then darted forward with a slick whip of water under his feet. "Not today, Ash!" he growled, jetting toward the nearest bough. The others caught on immediately—Prince Edward, still panting from the battle, let out an incredulous laugh. "He's escaping, but I'll be damned if he takes all the glory!"
Qi signatures flared like fireworks. Dozens of cultivators surged forward, waves of elemental energy cutting through the air—fire, wind, lightning, and spirit auras mingling into a dazzling maelstrom as twenty exhausted prodigies scrambled for the Star Fruit.
I didn't slow down. My focus narrowed to a single blazing thought: "get to the shore, finish the trial, leave this cursed island before anything else wakes up."
Branches tore at my arms, my breathing rhythmic and sharp as the wind. In the distance, the Mystic Turquoise coast glimmered under the sun. I could already taste the salt on the air.
Behind me, the island erupted in fresh pandemonium—Seymour snatched a Star fruit midair, Prince Edward wrestled another from a low branch, and the rest fought tooth and nail in a riot of divine energy and greed.
I laughed to myself as I leapt over a fallen log and hit the sand running. "head-start!" I muttered, looking out toward the endless blue. "I've got what I came for."
Then, with a deep inhale, I dove—back into the Mystic Turquoise Ocean, back toward the chariots and the next phase of destiny.