Chapter 1322: Battle at the Bottom of the Abyss

Then the World Transcendent’s body could remain as terrifying as it pleased while the soul responsible for controlling it enjoyed its new life somewhere else.

Phei liked that arrangement very much.

He had spent an entire year fighting the Zone Lord’s armies directly. He had frozen creatures, ripped others apart with Primordial Blood and discovered enough new ways to kill frozen monsters that a respectable sect would probably have demanded he write manuals.

He had earned the right to cheat.

Phei leaned slightly forward upon the Dragon Lady’s back while preparing to send the idea through their Soul Bond.

"Hey, little sister, don’t charge yet. I think I can..."

The Dragon Lady tensed beneath him.

Phei stopped.

Her wings snapped open.

The resulting blast struck the cavern with enough force to throw frost from the walls in vast sheets. Several smaller crystalline formations broke beneath the sudden pressure while ancient blue-white dust exploded into the air around them.

Phei’s white hair whipped backward.

"Wait."

Her enormous head lowered.

Dragon Essence surged through her body.

Phei could feel her fury clearly now so raw and immediate that the reason became obvious before she offered him anything resembling an explanation; these two were responsible for her imprisonment.

Whatever patience she had carried down through the abyss died the moment she came close enough to feel them properly.

"Oh, fuck."

Her claws sank into the frozen platform.

"Dragon Lady, I literally just came up with something clever. Do you understand how rare that is?"

The Dragon Lady inhaled; cold gathered inside her mouth, pulling surrounding frost and frozen essence toward her jaws until blue-white brilliance began shining between her fangs.

"Little sister, family members are supposed to communicate before charging at World fucking Transcendents!"

ROOOOOOOAAAAAARRRRR!!!!

The Dragon Lady roared:

The rambling of her roar travelled through her body before exploding throughout the cavern, shaking every scale beneath Phei and cracking huge formations across the walls. Vast slabs of ancient frost broke loose from the ceiling while avalanches began thundering across distant shelves.

Phei grabbed one crystalline ridge along her back.

"Wonderful. Communication has failed."

The Dragon Lady launched herself forward:

Her massive body exploded from the frozen platform with enough force to destroy the place where she had been standing. Both her wings hammered backward, producing a shockwave that shattered nearby crystal pillars and threw tons of frozen debris across the cavern while Phei was driven hard against the ridge behind him.

The two World Transcendents finally grew larger in his sight.

Yet neither attacked.

The one standing slightly ahead simply watched the charging Dragon approach.

Its body looked built from slabs of dark flesh layered beneath old frost, with limbs thick enough to resemble the lower trunks of ancient trees of the Endless Forest. Portions of crude armor sat across its shoulders and waist, though the strange material seemed less decorative than the restraint chains buried between them.

(IMAGE FOR BOTH BEASTS)

The creature’s face carried very little expression as the Dragon Lady rushed closer.

Phei’s instincts screamed.

Something was wrong.

"Dragon Lady, slow..."

The World Transcendent lifted one foot.

Phei’s voice died.

The creature raised its leg perhaps half a meter from the frozen ground; there was no elaborate preparation behind the motion, or swelling roar of cultivated power gathering around its body and no visible technique blooming beneath the sole before it casually brought its foot down.

The stomp made it feel as if the abyss had just jumped.

Phei felt the impact beneath the Dragon Lady before sound reached him.

An immense force travelled through the ancient ice and erupted outward in every direction, compressing the entire cavern so violently that the crystal light around them distorted. The frozen floor beneath the World Transcendent sank several meters in a single heartbeat, and then an expanding wall of crushing power tore through everything between them.

Phei’s eyes widened.

"Shit!"

The Dragon Lady’s wings beat desperately.

Too late.

The invisible wave struck them.

Her colossal body stopped in the middle of its charge so brutally that the force running through her seemed to turn against her all at once. The stomp struck the abyss beneath them, and the resulting pressure did not merely crash into the Dragon Lady. It seized her entire frame. Her chest compressed, her neck whipped backward and the immense muscles driving her forward locked beneath the impact before her momentum was reversed in a single horrifying instant.

Then both of them were launched.

The Dragon Lady weighed enough that Phei had watched glaciers fracture beneath careless landings, yet her enormous body was torn from the ground and hurled through the abyss as though something had kicked a loose stone.

The Dragon Lady’s full body in her current form could stretch across the cavern like a fallen mountain or a a twenty-story building laid on its side, with wings broad enough to cover several city blocks when fully spread, her torso alone broader than a city block and her wings vast enough to throw whole sections of the abyss into shadow.

Yet that casually stomps carried her like she was very convenient kid; her one wing folded beneath her with a sickening bend while the other snapped open too violently, fresh tears ripping through the membrane as the pressure twisted her sideways. Several crystalline ridges along her neck cracked at once, one already damaged horn splitting farther near its base, and the pain that tore through their Soul Bond hit Phei hard enough to make his vision flash white.

He did not even manage to hold on.

The scales beneath his hands vanished as he was ripped from her back, and for instants there was nothing except frozen air, broken crystal and the sensation of his organs trying to remain behind while the rest of him was thrown away. He smashed through one rising shelf of ancient ice, burst through another and struck a black stone ridge hard enough to erase most of it beneath the impact before continuing through the debris.

The Dragon Lady hit farther away.

Her enormous body struck the cavern wall shoulder-first.

The abyss shook.

Ice hundreds of meters above them split loose from the ceiling while the wall beneath her collapsed inward, burying half her body beneath an avalanche of shattered frost and stone. The impact travelled through the Soul Bond again, carrying the deep agony of bruised organs, torn wing flesh and bones screaming beneath scales that had survived things capable of flattening lesser beasts outright.

And all of that had come from a single stomp.

The World Transcendent stamped again.

The second stomp was smaller, almost casual compared with the first, yet the cavern floor still sank beneath its foot and a fresh wall of pressure ripped outward through the abyss. Phei had barely begun reaching for the Dragon Lady when it caught them both in midair, crushing the space between them and violently separating their bodies again.

Phei’s arm was thrown aside before his fingers could touch her, while the Dragon Lady’s already tumbling body lurched farther through the cavern beneath the renewed impact.

He tried True Void Steps instinctively.

But nothing opened.

Phei reached for the nearest hollow and felt his perception slam into pressure so dense that the surrounding space seemed crushed flat beneath it. The World Transcendent’s cultivation had flooded the cavern alongside the stomp, compressing the hollows Phei normally entered until there was barely anything left for True Void Steps to seize.

He tried again.

The Void refused him.

"Fuck!"

Phei twisted through the air and reached toward the Dragon Lady, but another layer of force struck before his fingers touched her.

The two were carried backward together.

The next wall arrived almost immediately.

The Dragon Lady was again smashed through it shoulder-first.

Ancient ice exploded around her body in an enormous blue-white cloud, the impact pulverizing entire layers of the cavern into a storm of shattered crystal, and Phei entered the debris a fraction later.

There was nowhere to move.

Huge fragments struck his chest, face, arms and legs before he could properly orient himself, while countless smaller shards flooded every gap between them. His tempered body stopped the sharpest pieces from punching through his skin, but that protection suddenly felt almost useless.

Being difficult to pierce did absolutely nothing about the weight behind the things striking him.

A block the size of a carriage smashed into his ribs.

Phei’s body folded around it from the impact before the entire mass burst apart against him, filling the air with another wave of fragments.

A second chunk slammed into his shoulder hard enough to wrench his upper body sideways.

Then the rest of the storm caught up to him: