Chapter 111: Fight

Deep down, she felt like this was a marriage ceremony.

It was weird seeing the man whom she knew so well by now being obsessed with her daughters, but it was also nice.

She guided softly: "Release the Beast Chakra deep within you. Don’t shape it, don’t control it. Just let it rise. Then let each of them absorb half." She paused, tilting her head. "The rest will complete naturally. It’s a twin thing."

Kian nodded.

The girls became serious as well.

From up stairs, Su Chen watched curiously. He was not afraid that Kian would finish the ritual and defeat him, in fact, he was curious.

Kian closed his eyes and turned inward, past the familiar hum of Qi and the silk-thread presence of his women, down to the place beneath his dantian where something ancient and warm had been waiting.

This was something he awakened once he reached Eighth Stage.

He stopped holding it back. The pressure rose, hot and bright, spilling from his chest into the air around him. An indigo light strip bled from his skin like energy, then thickened, coiling around Mia and Jia.

When he opened his eyes, twin streams of indigo Qi were already unspooling from his chest, stretching toward the sisters.

Mia gasped as the first thread touched her sternum. Her body arched, hair lifting in a sudden wind.

Jia made a choked sound on his other side, eyes brightening to white for an instant. The steps went still.

No one this down the steps dared to interrupt.

This moment belonged to Kian, Jia, and Mia alone.

Time passed.

The indigo light thinned and broke.

The threads fell away from the girls like cut strings, dissolving into nothing.

Mia and Jia opened their eyes and looked down at themselves, then at each other.

Jia flexed her fingers. "Hm, was that it? I don’t feel anything."

Kian didn’t interrupt them, just caressing each of their faces.

Mia touched her chest where the Qi had touched. "Same. I thought there would be stars, or maybe pain or something. But it just felt... warm."

Kian wiped a thumb over her cheek. "That’s because you’re not inside me yet. Try turning into wisps and stepping in. Maybe that would work?"

Jia frowned. "How?"

"Just want it," Kian said. "I’d say."

The sisters exchanged a look, then closed their eyes.

Kian felt anticipation.

Instantly, their outlines blurred. A breath later, they turned to smoke—Mia a soft green, Jia a pale gold—and vanished into Kian’s chest like two quick breaths.

Kian’s back arched. Heat bloomed under his ribs, warm and bright.

"Hahaahahha!!!"

Two familiar presences settled into the space within himself that filled his soul, in some way he did not understand.

Jia’s voice came from inside, small and surprised. "This... is not bad."

"Wow," Mia echoed. "It’s so warm in here. It’s awesome!."

"Stop sniffing, idiot," Jia said.

"Don’t annoy me girl, get lost this is my room," Mia shot back.

Their laughter echoed through his meridians.

Feimei watched with a knowing smile as Kian looked at his two hands, and Kian laughed, feeling the two of them move inside him like twin flames.

"Comfortable?" he asked.

"Very," both replied.

Mia took a deep breath. "Wow, Kian, this feels better than a nap. Maybe I’d spend all my time here."

"What’s it like in there?"

Jia said: "There is an actual empty space here, but we can think of anything and it appears. Like I thought of a mountain and a mountain appeared, and Mia thought of a room and she got a room. It’s awesome."

"That’s nice to know, you two can spend your time in that space then."

"Yeah, I will make a good home here."

Kian stretched.

[Ding!]

[You have succesfully become an 8th Stage Cultivator]

’Eighth Stage is nothing, the true powerhouse is the ninth stage,’ he thought.

Kian grinned up at Su Chen and found the man already staring back, gaze flat and cold as a frozen lake. For a long moment they held that look, two predators measuring how much blood waited between them.

Kian didn’t move from the base of the steps. The question spun behind his eyes.

Su Chen had watched him absorb Jia and Mia into his chest, finish the Beast Chakra, and step fully into the Eighth Stage. And the bastard had done nothing.

Not a twitch.

That wasn’t arrogance alone.

That was a message: I can kill you at your peak. There is no reason to rush.

Kian had to agree this motherfucker was badass.

His grin flattened into something harder.

He started walking up, one slow step at a time, and let the thought of Stage Nine fill his mind.

Stage Nine was true transcendence. It was the stage where a cultivator fused their beast companion’s Qi with their own to create beast fusion Qi—an energy greater than either part alone.

’I wonder if having both of the twins as my beast companion changes something for me.’

With enough of the beast fusion qi or chakra, he could reconstruct his body from the marrow out, reshaping his body, his limits, his very nature.

His entire world would change!

Kian already had enough Qi to step into Stage 9, but he didn’t dare to do it now.

The process was slow and heated. It demanded safety, privacy, and uninterrupted Qi circulation while the body broke apart and rebuilt itself.

That was NOT something he could do on foreign stones, surrounded by enemies, with Su Chen staring down at him like he was already dead.

’I will do it later tonight,’ he thought. ’If he pushes too hard and it gets dangerous, the girls and I can just escape to the island.’

He stopped on the second step and looked up again.

Su Chen appeared behind Kian.

Kian’s face turned stiff as Su Chen placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You are too slow," Su Chen said.

Kian vanished and appeared on another step, staring down with disbelief.

"How are you so fast?!"

Kian was alarmed.

Was this what a Soul Lord was like?

Su Chen’s face was calm. "I do not want to spill blood today. I do not care about you, nor about your schemes against me. Get lost, and I will not kill you."

Kian frowned, then his eyes turned red.

"Do you think I am that easy to scare?"

"Sigh..."

This time, Kian saw Su Chen move.

A hand, in a blade shape, was blocked an inch away from Kian’s eyes with a hold.

Kian’s arm shook from the impact, but he didn’t move. Su Chen’s hand-blade had stopped a breath from his left eye, the pressure alone stinging like a hot needle.

Kian snapped his own hand up, caught Su Chen’s wrist, and drove a knee toward his liver.

Su Chen twisted free and met the knee with an open palm. The collision boomed. Dust and loose stones jumped off the step, and Kian slid back half a stride, bare feet carving two pale lines into the rock.

"You are faster now. Is it those eyes?" Su Chen said.

Then they moved.

Kian threw a straight right. Su Chen tilted his head, the fist brushing his jaw, and answered with three knife-hand strikes to the ribs, the throat, the temple.

Kian’s Iron Skin flared bronze-bright where the blows landed, and the last one cracked against his ear with a sound like a hammer on a shield.

Not a single wound!

"Impressive for a person from this backwater region." Su Chen moved for a punch, but shifted halfway into a kick.

He grunted and leaned into it, letting the hit fall and grabbing Su Chen’s collar and driving a headbutt into his nose. The impact sent a jolt up Kian’s skull.

"Fuck!"

This guy’s body was just as hard as his. How the hell?

Su Chen’s head snapped back, but he used the motion to hook his heel behind Kian’s ankle and drag him off balance.

They hit the step together, rolled once, and parted. Kian was already on his feet, wings flickering open for balance, hands raised. Su Chen rose slower, wiped a thin trail of blood from his nose, and smiled with too many teeth.

"Very good!"

Su Chen came again before Kian could fully set his stance.

This time, Su Chen’s hands were wrapped in a weird flame of black Qi.

Three quick strikes, then a fourth that turned into a feint—Kian threw up a forearm, felt the wind of the kill blow graze his jaw, and knew his Iron Skin would not save him from a direct hit now.

He let his knees buckle and, instead of retreating, activated Wind Step. His feet left the stone and found the vertical face of the bamboos around the step, his body angled over the crowd as he sprinted from bamboo to bamboo.

Below him, Su Chen blinked, then smiled wider. He kicked off the step and followed, climbing the air in clean, unhurried arcs.

"Running away?" he called, voice cold and close.

Kian didn’t answer. He threw a pair of Qi swords down at an angle, forcing Su Chen to twist mid-air. The first blade bit into the steps, spraying chips of stone.

The second Su Chen caught with his bare hand and crushed. Kian used the instant to run farther up, then kicked backward off the wall and flipped over Su Chen’s head, dropping toward the steps.

Inside him, Jia’s voice came sharp and warm. "Use us, idiot! We are your beast companions now—pull our Qi into your Wind Step."

Mia’s voice followed, softer. "Yeah, I feel like you are not using your Stronger Qi."

Inded.

Kian’s breath caught as he landed on the sixth step and felt twin threads of warmth ignite in his chest.

The Beast Chakra responded.

Green and gold light bled into his meridians, and his body turned light, faster than it had ever been. He moved again.