Chapter 158

She wrapped her voice in Spirit energy and sent it straight into his mind, her tone level.

"There's a Demon race blood-contract imprint sitting in your body, I can smell it."

"You took a master?"

Orathis nodded slowly.

Liana huffed, sharp and cold, thoroughly displeased.

"You are a Heaven-Robbing Black Dragon, and you bowed your head to a filthy demon?"

"If this ever gets back to the Spirit Continent, whatever face I have left goes with it."

"What sort of man is he?"

Orathis's mind went racing.

Words for Soren came up by the dozen, overbearing, unfathomable, ruthless, a tyrant with an appetite.

He turned every one over and couldn't find the one that would give his sister the right picture.

In the end he settled for a weak smile.

"He's a good person."

"A good person?"

Liana's lip curled.

"And what kind of future do you build following a good person?"

Sis, I really can't get behind your logic there, does a man have to be an out-and-out villain before he's worth following?

Whatever, he let it drop, they were both a breath away from dying out here, arguing morals now would be a waste of whatever time they had left.

"I can feel it, he matters to you," Liana sent.

"In a moment."

"I'm going to blow my dantian."

"The blast will push those two back a good distance."

"You take the opening and get out of here."

"Do you understand me?"

Orathis nodded once.

Then he shook his head, and there was no give in it at all.

"Sis! If we die, we die together!"

"Get lost!"

"Men disgust me, it's instinct, you being my own brother doesn't make you an exception."

"The thought of dying next to a man makes my skin crawl."

Having cursed him out to her satisfaction, her voice dropped into something warmer, the tone she almost never used.

"Knowing you found yourself a decent place to belong is enough for me."

"Remember what I'm telling you. Hide yourself properly, keep your head down and live quietly."

"Those two are bound by treaty, they can't stay on Exalted Continent long."

"They won't have time to come hunting you."

"Oh, and one more thing."

"Don't you dare get any ideas about avenging me."

"I don't want your charity."

She got a great many parting words out in a very small window of time.

By then Kain had finished gathering himself and was already charging.

Liana's hand formed a seal, one-handed, fast.

Every inch of her snow-white skin erupted with blinding white Spirit radiance.

"Oh? You're going to self-destruct?"

"You really don't have a Two-Turn Spirit Ancestor in your eyes at all, do you?"

"Let's see which is faster, your detonation, or my hand."

Kain's voice came across the battlefield cold and amused, his movement outran what an eye could follow.

Half a heartbeat later he stood in front of her face.

And the easy victory he expected wasn't there, the smirk came off him and left something else behind.

"What is this?"

"Her dantian has already crystallized?"

"Impossible!"

"How did she get to that stage this fast?"

Crystallization of the dantian was the last irreversible step before a cultivator blew apart.

Under any normal reading of the art, even an Upper-Tier Ancestor needed several seconds of continuous compression to reach that point.

From the moment Liana's hand formed the seal to the moment Kain arrived, half a second hadn't passed.

She was a live explosive now, waiting on nothing but contact.

With no other option, Kain pushed off the ground and threw himself backward as hard as he could.

"Hahaha!"

"Beasts stay beasts."

"You break through to Upper-Tier Spirit Ancestor and your head still runs a step behind."

"Did you forget? I carry an Immemorial mutated bloodline."

We're finished, if she detonated here, they wouldn't just walk away from a treaty violation empty-handed, they would lose the only lead they had, and with it any chance of finding the Destiny Nether Pearls or the coordinates of the Nether Sea.

"Take the opening, get out of here!"

The words had barely left her lips when the space around her rippled in a way that made no sense.

Her whole frame jolted and she stood there, lost.

Then she understood what had happened, and it was worse than not understanding.

Her dantian, crystallized and past the point of return a heartbeat ago, had gone back to sitting quietly in her belly, stable, ordinary, exactly as it had been before.

What just happened?

A bead of cold sweat slid down her cheek and disappeared into her collar.

She had been over the edge, there was no undoing that, so why was her body in the exact condition it had been in before she started?

Boom!

Kain took the fraction of a second she spent stupefied and closed it, his hand clamped around her throat.

His free palm slammed against her abdomen and drove a seal into her, locking the dantian shut.

"Son of a bitch, what a dangerous woman."

"She nearly pulled it off, right in our faces."

"Brother Azel, that's your Innate Ancestor Technique we have to thank."

Kain looked up at Azel hovering in the air, and the envy in his eyes wasn't hidden well.

Azel brought his hands together in a slow clap.

It looked like applause for Liana's nerve, it sounded like something else entirely.

"I don't suppose you knew my Innate Ancestor Technique reverses the flow of time inside a bounded space."

"It only takes me back one second."

"In a fight between Ancestors, one second is usually enough to kill someone."

Liana's pupils shook.

She had no idea, through that entire battle in the clouds, she had never pushed either of them hard enough to make them show an Ancestor Technique.

A miscalculation, and a fatal one.

Orathis roared and forced a partial beast transformation, the single bloody half-wing left on his back beat once.

He threw himself at Kain, who still had his sister by the throat.

"Let go of my sister!"

Kain sneered, from start to finish he never lowered his eyes to look at the thing charging him.

Only his voice came out, indifferent.

"A bug should know it's a bug."

"You aren't even qualified to die by my hand."

Boom!

His boot came down, a gale erupted under it.