Chapter 129: The Path to Long-Awaited Freedom (Part 1)

The moment the columns of dust rose around them, the three cultivators stopped and braced themselves to attack. Each of them prepared their own technique, ready to strike together as a group on the signal.

"Kh-! Ka-AH!!" Suddenly the woman spat out blood mixed with small scraps of tissue. "N-no! My SWORDS!! I can't feel them anymore! KHA-!!" Pressing a hand to her mouth, trying to stop herself from coughing, she took several steps back.

"Pull yourselves together! Don't stop! All together!! Palm of Providence!" The leader of the group, the one who looked like a pirate, activated his technique, thrusting both palms forward and launching a projection of them, instantly growing to several dozen meters wide and tall, tearing at tremendous speed into the cloud of dust and dirt, destroying everything in their path.

"Judgment Day Strike!" The man in the bandana swung his spear, sending a wave of Fire energy after the palms, one that dried out and shattered the ground into cracked glass wherever it passed overhead.

….

Having only just stopped the now-melted, twisted swords with his own body, An suddenly felt two more attacks bearing down on him. His attention locked especially on the energy-wrapped palms. The sheer density of the energy inside them was enough to make him start shaking.

In one sharp motion, he turned his body sideways and, leaping into the air, curled into a fetal position, wrapping his arms and legs around his dantian and head. He understood perfectly well that in the brief window he had before the inevitable, this was his only option.

The instant he left the ground and curled up, An felt his left arm flatten, the flesh splitting open, and under the pressure from the incoming palms, every bone in his left arm simply scattered to dust, the arm itself along with it.

"A-aAH!! Gha-A!" Like a slab of meat, screaming, he was hurled backward, the energy-wrapped palms still pressing down on him, trying to drive him into the ground.

Because most of the energy inside the attack had gone into destroying his now-missing left arm, An managed to channel his Qi into the palms themselves, trying to destroy them from the inside, creating conflict within their Qi and disrupting their structure and integrity.

THUD!

"AGH!" Finally slamming into the ground, several of his bones cracked at the same instant as the internal structure of the energy palms.

"Kha-aA!!" In one fast motion, An tore both palms apart right at the epicenter of the Qi conflict, where the structure had grown weakest.

"Haaa... Haaa..." Greedily drawing in Qi from everywhere around him, neutral Qi from his surroundings, and whatever was left of the palms themselves, though only the portion that no longer carried any signature. He worked to restore his dantian's reserves, speeding up the filtering process inside the Cycle Symbol.

"Bastards!!" Thrusting his right hand forward, Qi concentrated into a single point no bigger than a pea, he met the second attack, the one sent by the bandana cultivator, with a scream.

The instant the two energies collided, everything drowned in a metallic screech loud enough to burst An's eardrums at any moment.

Holding the attack back within that concentrated pea of energy in his palm, he strained with everything he had to redirect it, shifting its direction just slightly.

With every passing moment, he found himself pressed harder and harder into the ground under the enormous pressure. He could feel the bones in his legs grinding against each other, his muscles on the verge of bursting. 'Come on! COME ON!! Work!! DAMN IT!!'

Swoosh!

Finally withstanding the force of the attack, An managed to shift its direction.

"Khaa... Haaa..." Continuously absorbing Qi, he lowered his right hand, dozens of small holes punched clean through it, already closing over within a few of his breaths. 'I-I can't regrow my arm right now, i-it'll take too much time and st-strength!'

….

Once the dust and dirt settled, the three of them finally saw the results of their attack.

Inside a massive crater: missing an arm, the left side of his face torn away down to the skull, countless holes punched clean through his body, and still several melted, twisted swords lodged in various places.

Watching the small holes on their target's body close up before their very eyes, the bandana cultivator couldn't help but marvel. "My third cousin was right! With vitality like his! He'll make the perfect vessel for the plan!"

The man who looked like a pirate, though surprised by An's regeneration, refused to let his guard down or get distracted. "Young Master Ridegold! This isn't over yet! We can't afford to underestimate him!"

'Besides... this kid managed to leave the Sacred Land at the Foundation Establishment realm... that's already a problem.' Never taking his eyes off the target, the pirate-like man refused to relax.

"Ha! He's finished! You're at mid-stage Foundation Establishment, you could handle him easily on your own... But out of respect for my third cousin, I'm here helping you! So..." Smirking, the bandana cultivator spun his spear, and was about to say something more when he heard a woman scream beside him.

"AAAH-AH!! Bastard! My swords! I carried them for over sixty years!! You're finished, you little pup!! Touch of Waves!" Mind clouded with rage over the loss of her artifacts, Sister Thirst activated a movement technique and appeared in front of An in an instant.

"Stop! No!!" Both of them lunged after her at once, completely thrown off. They hadn't expected this from her.

"You're finished! Little! Beast!!" The moment she reached An, she drove a short dagger straight into his heart.

Feeling the flesh tear and the wet squelch of it, she looked up, expecting to see despair and panic on his face, but found only mockery mixed with pain instead.

Wasting no time, An planted his feet against the ground and, with everything he had, drove his right hand, wrapped in Qi, straight into her stomach.

The defensive membrane from the artifact on her wrist didn't even slow his hand down, let alone stop it.

The instant she felt his fingers inside her stomach, she cried out in fear and tried to let go of the dagger and jump back, but it was already too late.

Punching through her stomach, An twisted his hand upward, through her organs and viscera, and closed his grip directly around her still-beating heart.

"N-no! NO!! P-PLEASE!!" Crying out for mercy, all she saw was a strange smile on his face, and the next instant, she felt a sharp, burning pain unlike anything she'd ever felt before.

"Ah! Aa-aah! Gh-AH!" Grabbing his right hand with both of hers, panic overtaking her completely, she only managed to dig her nails into him, scratching and cutting shallow marks into his skin, while blood and organs mixed with black mass poured out through the hole in her stomach, mixing together and turning to black rot the instant they touched.

In just a moment, all of her insides turned to rotten mush and spilled out onto the ground.

Yanking his hand out of her sharply, An channeled every bit of physical strength into his legs and threw himself backward, just an instant before the bandana cultivator's spear tip punched through the now-dead Sister Thirst's body.

Taking two more steps, An found himself a hundred meters from her body, right up against the wall of the barrier that formed the dome trapping him and the two remaining attackers.

….

"Hm? What is this filth?" Grabbing the woman's blackening body with one hand and yanking his spear free of her, the bandana cultivator looked at the black rot spilling onto the ground, already pooling and slowly consuming the earth around it, turning it into the same rotten mass.

"An... Both I, and Miss Mili, were wrong about you." Drawing level with the bandana cultivator, the second man looked at the body on the ground with sorrow in his eyes, and seeing what had happened to her, felt a genuine chill run through him. "I'll say it plainly! One way or another, you're going to lose today! Better to surrender while you still can! While there's still a chance to keep your life, and your dignity!"

"Heh, Captain Scar, I don't think he's got any chance left at all! He doesn't deserve one! Better to cut off all his limbs, leave just the head... after all, we only need him alive!" Toward the end, the bandana cultivator readjusted his grip on his spear and looked at An, and what he saw left him badly shaken.

Punching a hole through his own right side with his hand, An untied his beast pouch and stuffed it inside. Pressing his hand over the wound, he gave his regeneration the mental command, and the hole in his side closed up instantly.

Watching this, Captain Scar was just about to say something to his partner when the man beat him to it.

"Damn freak!! Great Solar Horizon!" Not bothering to properly coordinate with the captain, the bandana cultivator decided to attack on his own. He channeled his Qi into his spear, spun it in front of himself, and with a shout, drove it into the ground.

The whole ground shook instantly, and a massive wave of energy tore loose from the spear, ripping up the earth as it surged toward An.

….

Watching flaming bolts of lightning tear out of the ground, turning anything they touched into dust, An formed a Qi Spear out of Death Qi and reconstructed Yin Qi, the same way that ghost woman he'd once fought had done it.

The moment he held the spear in his hand, the temperature around him dropped by tens of degrees Celsius. Whatever vegetation had survived within a hundred-meter radius immediately began to wither and blacken.

"Ha-AA!!!" Throwing the Qi Spear straight into the path of the lightning tearing through the ground and closing in on him faster and faster, An leapt to the side and formed hundreds of Qi Blades, sending them straight ahead, where a massive energy Chain was already flying in to surround him. It was Captain Scar's attack, launched the instant he saw the opening.

BOOOM!

The moment the two attacks collided, the Yin Qi immediately began fighting the lightning and fire, weakening and destabilizing them, while at the same time the Death Qi, like a battering ram, tore through and destroyed the weakened, chaotic Qi around it, neutralizing the bandana cultivator's attack completely.

Focusing all his Qi Blades onto a single point of the energy Chain, An realized he didn't have enough strength to break through it.

Channeling even more Qi, with a snap of his fingers, several thousand more Qi Blades appeared around him and immediately shot toward that same point on the Chain, where visible cracks had already started to form.

Realizing the Qi Blades still couldn't break through the Chain, he redirected his energy to his defensive membrane and activated millions of tiny points across it, each vibrating at its own frequency.

This move immediately placed an enormous strain on his mind. 'I-if this k-keeps up... I-I'm f-finished! I-! Please! Work!!'

Suddenly, An shifted the direction of his Qi Blades and began striking a different point on the Chain instead, barely noticeable, but shifting it slightly. And shifting himself toward the bandana cultivator at the same time.

….

"Haha! Looks like he's finished, Captain Scar! Judgment Day Strike!" Seeing An holding on by nothing but sheer will, the bandana cultivator gripped his spear with both hands and charged straight at him.

"No! Stop! Damn you all!!" Sensing something was off on instinct, Captain Scar tried to charge alongside him, but since he still had to maintain control over the energy Chain, his speed dropped drastically.

….

Continuing to shift slightly, keeping constant watch over the battlefield, the instant the bandana cultivator took a step toward him, An immediately detonated every one of his Qi Blades and charged straight into the epicenter of the explosion.

Still connected to the Chain, Captain Scar felt the link snap in the sector where the detonation had happened, and looking up, he saw An burst out of the explosion, deep wounds pouring blood everywhere. Seeing where An's eyes were fixed, the captain couldn't hold back and shouted, "Damn it! Watch out!!"

Having already unleashed his attack, the bandana cultivator lost his line of sight for a moment, blinded by the sheer buildup of Qi from his own released technique, and his spirit sense, too, went briefly blind in that same instant, overwhelmed by the saturation of energy signals around him.

"Huh?!" Suddenly he saw a Water-element Qi Spear fly straight into the ground right beneath the wave of his own attack, detonating and creating chaos within his own technique. A chill ran down his spine, sweat breaking out across his back, because right through the spot where both the spear's energy and his own attack had detonated together, his enemy burst out, completely ignoring the raging Qi tearing chunks of flesh from his own body and grinding them to dust.

"No! Scar! H-help! Ptooh! AGH!!" Before he could even finish crying out, he saw his enemy's hand vanish into his own chest.

….

"NOOO!! Young Master! Palm of Providence!" Severing his connection to the energy Chain, taking the backlash with it, Captain Scar sent his attack straight at An, trying to reach him in time and stop him from killing the bandana cultivator.

….

Yanking his hand out of the cultivator's chest sharply, An covered his head with it and raised his right leg, shielding the spot where his dantian was located.

CRASH!

The next instant, the palm slammed into him and drove him into the far wall of the barrier, several hundred meters away.

….

"A-AH! S-Scar!" Dropping to his knees, the bandana cultivator started clutching, in a panic, at the hole in the center of his chest, blood pouring out of it without stopping, mixed with small traces of black sludge.

"Hang on! Activate your Qi and force the rest of his energy out of your body!!" Appearing in front of him, the captain grabbed him by the shoulder and, pulling out two pills, forced one into his mouth and crushed the other, smearing it across the wound on his chest.

"I-I can't! Agh! Wh-what's happening t-to me! AH! Wh-why does it hurt so m-much!!" Already lying on the ground, the bandana cultivator had started convulsing, his whole body shaking violently, more and more black mass seeping through the rapidly closing wound.

"Damn it all!! Pull yourself together, you moron!! Or you're going to die right here!!" Pressing his palm over the wound, the captain activated his Qi and channeled it into Young Master Ridegold's body, trying to help him force out the still-raging Qi An had left behind. "Together! You hear me! TOGETHER!!"