Chapter 1323: Two Casual Stomps: World Transcendent’s Real Power!

Hundreds of shards battered him almost simultaneously, followed by hundreds more. They struck too quickly for individual impacts to remain separate. Fists, stones and slabs seemed to be hammering every inch of him at once, some fragments exploding into powder against his skin while heavier pieces carried enough force to knock his limbs aside and violently twist his body through the air.

The sensation became monstrous.

It felt like being trapped inside a blizzard where every snowflake had been replaced by stone and every stone had been fired hard enough to pulp an ordinary body. Ice debris hammered his face, ribs, spine and thighs from every direction. Jagged pieces scraped across skin that refused to split, leaving angry red trails where another cultivator would have been opened from shoulder to waist, while the heavier fragments drove their momentum straight through that same unbroken flesh and into everything beneath it.

His muscles absorbed what they could.

His bones received the rest.

Every collision travelled through him with a deep, ugly violence, rattling joints, bruising flesh beneath the skin and making his skeleton feel as though the entire abyss had decided to beat him with its broken pieces.

Phei clenched his jaw as another slab struck his back.

"Gods!"

The Dragon Lady had it worse.

Her body presented an enormous target to everything the stomps had ripped from the cavern.

Countless ice shards struck her scales in glittering bursts. Most shattered immediately, though the largest fragments struck with enough power to crack the outer edges of several scales and tear through the softer places where they overlapped. Her left wing caught an entire rain of crystalline debris, and Phei felt her pain through their Soul Bond before he even saw streaks of dark blood appearing across the pale membrane.

She roared.

The sound disappeared beneath the destruction before their bodies broke through a second wall.

This one was thicker.

The Dragon Lady entered first, smashing through several meters of ancient blue ice before hitting buried black stone beneath it. The stone cracked beneath her back, failed to stop her and exploded outward as their momentum carried them deeper.

Phei followed through the same opening.

A broken stone slab struck him across the forehead.

His head snapped backward.

There was no blood but his vision flashed white.

Then the entire broken wall seemed to chase them.

Tons of ice, stone and glittering crystal collapsed into the path behind them, accelerated by the same force still carrying their bodies through the abyss. Phei briefly caught sight of the Dragon Lady tumbling ahead with one wing twisted awkwardly against her side before the falling debris swallowed both of them again.

His True Void Sense spread desperately.

The surrounding hollows were still crushed by the presence of the two beings.

The pressure had travelled with the shockwave.

Phei could sense Void everywhere beyond it, distant and tantalizing, yet the region surrounding him had become too heavily pressed together for his movement to properly form. Every attempt to enter a hollow failed before it began.

That frightened him more than the impacts.

He had become so accustomed to True Void Steps that part of his battle instinct now treated movement through the Void as something guaranteed. Distance could always be abandoned and a bad position could always be escaped while an incoming attack could always be avoided if he recognized it early enough.

One casual stomp had taken that certainty away.

Phei crossed both arms before his face as another storm of ice reached him.

Fragments hammered his forearms until each impact became difficult to distinguish from the next. Some shattered against his skin. Others struck, bounced away and disappeared into the swirling debris. One enormous spear-shaped shard hit his stomach tip-first with enough force to fold him around it, yet the hardened skin remained unbroken before the crystalline weapon snapped into dozens of pieces.

Phei coughed as the impact crushed air from his lungs.

"Okay..."

Another piece struck his mouth.

His head jerked sideways.

The irritation that entered his expression might have been funny under different circumstances.

"Okay, that fucking hurt."

Ahead, the Dragon Lady crashed through another frozen shelf.

This time her right wing caught badly; her roar became agonized.

His expression changed immediately. "Little sister!"

He forced his body around inside the storm and kicked off an approaching slab of ice, using the impact to alter his direction. The movement bought him only a little control, but enough to send him toward her enormous spinning body.

A shower of shards struck his back while he reached forward.

His fingers touched one scale.

Phei grabbed it.

The Dragon Lady’s tumbling momentum nearly ripped his shoulder from its socket, but he refused to release her: "I’ve got you!"

Her enormous body slammed sideways into another wall.

Phei went with her.

Everything disappeared beneath blue-white destruction.

The impact drove him hard against the Dragon Lady’s side, and for several seconds the two travelled through solid ice together while the wall continuously collapsed around them. Huge fragments scraped along Phei’s body, the harder edges unable to pierce his skin but still battering him until his bones began aching beneath the accumulated impacts.

The Dragon Lady’s scales had started breaking.

Several remained intact despite the punishment, yet the softer connections between them had opened beneath repeated collisions. Thin streams of Dragon blood floated through the debris around Phei before freezing into crimson crystals.

That sight killed the remainder of his amusement.

The shockwave finally weakened.

Their bodies emerged from the far side of the frozen formation and entered another vast portion of the cavern, dragging a cloud of powdered ice, stone and shattered crystal behind them. The Dragon Lady fell first, unable to properly spread her damaged wing in time.

Her enormous body struck the ground.

The abyss shook again.

She bounced once.

Then slid for hundreds of meters, tearing an immense trench through the ancient floor while Phei remained clinging to one of her scales.

He struck the ground beside her halfway through the slide.

His back carved through frost and shattered crystal before his body finally slowed, yet debris continued raining around them long after their momentum died. Great chunks of ice crashed into the newly formed trench, smaller shards hissed through the air and powdered frost rolled over everything in a dense frozen cloud.

Phei remained still for several breaths.

His ears rang, his muscles hurt almost everywhere despite his unbroken skin, and several bones carried the deep ache of having absorbed impacts his flesh had been strong enough to stop but not erase.

His fingers were still wrapped around the Dragon Lady’s scale.

She breathed beside him; hard, angry and hurting.

Phei slowly raised his head.

Through the cloud of falling frost, he could barely see the path they had travelled.

It was obscene.

They had been thrown through walls of ancient ice, black stone, crystal formations and entire shelves of the abyss until the route behind them resembled a tunnel created by some enormous siege weapon.

Far beyond that devastation, the World Transcendent still stood where it had been.

Its foot remained upon the ground.

It had not followed with another attack.

The bastard had simply stomped once and watched them disappear.

Phei stared at it.

His earlier calculation about Lust Reality suddenly felt far less clever.

Beside him, the Dragon Lady forced one foreleg beneath herself.

Phei immediately looked toward her. Blood ran between several broken scales along her shoulder, while the membrane of one wing carried multiple tears from the storm of ice. Her body shook with rage as she tried rising anyway.

Phei tightened his grip upon her scale. "Hey."

She growled.

"I know."

Another growl rolled through her.

Phei slowly pushed himself onto one knee while ice continued falling around them.

"I want to kill him too."

His eyes returned toward the World Transcendent in the distance.

The second beast had not even moved and the Zone Lord remained deeper below.

Phei exhaled slowly: he looked at the kilometer after kilometer of ruined cavern between them and the creature responsible.

Two casual stomps.

That was all the bastard had used.

Phei rubbed the bloodless bruise forming along his jaw and felt a grim smile trying to appear despite everything.

"Little sister..."

The Dragon Lady’s icy eye turned toward him.

Phei’s smile weakened when he saw how badly her wing had been torn, and whatever joke he had intended quietly changed into something much more serious.

"I think we might have underestimated these fuckers so fucking listen to me next time and do not be impulsive!"