Chapter 1326: Undying!

His Essence had become another irritation.

The two monsters had surely expected a Sky Sovereign fighting this far above his Realm to begin fading within minutes.

Instead, Phei had spent the better part of an hour bleeding power into the abyss.

Void-Ice had answered him in glacial tides. Primordial Blood had spread farther and farther across the battlefield until great portions of the cavern floor disappeared beneath dark-red rivers. The blood had never remained still either; as it crawled, gathered and contracted into thick ropes before flowering into weapons whenever Phei called upon it.

By then, the battlefield had begun resembling his bloodstream made external.

Crimson droplets had floated through the air in their thousands, each trembling faintly as though carrying its own heartbeat. Whenever Phei’s will shifted, entire clouds of them twisted together into spears. When those weapons shattered against the World Transcendents, the fragments liquefied before touching the ground and slithered back toward the rivers below.

The Void had moved among them like another living predator.

Black-white openings had bloomed silently between collapsing glaciers, their edges rippling like wounds reluctant to close. Some swallowed incoming attacks and spat them elsewhere. Others remained open only long enough for Phei to disappear before sealing behind him with a soft inward shudder.

For nearly an hour, Void-Ice, Blood and Void had haunted the abyss together.

Even the World Transcendent barrier had eventually begun carrying signs of that persistence.

The marks had been pitiful at first; a faint black fracture here, a shallow depression there, one place where the pale cultivation beneath the barrier flowed slightly slower after being struck hundreds of times.

Phei had memorized every one of them.

After that, he had become mercilessly annoying.

Every time the Dragon Lady forced the beasts to turn their attention to her, another Void-Blood spear struck the same scar. Whenever Phei returned after being hurled away, his sword crescent searched for the same weakened place. Primordial Blood gathered inside those blemishes and writhed against the barrier like parasites trying to burrow beneath skin, forcing World Transcendent cultivation to continuously pour into the damaged areas and purge it.

Little by little, the barrier had stopped looking perfect not only from attacks but their thinning essence and energy after fighting him for nearly an hour without holding back.

That alone seemed to have infuriated the monsters.

The Dragon Lady had suffered far more visibly.

Her enormous body had become a magnificent target for beings who knew exactly how to hurt her. By the middle of the hour, several crystalline ridges and her scales along her neck had already been cracked open. Whole scales were missing from one shoulder and large portions of her side, exposing dark flesh beneath her snow-white armor. Blood had seeped from those wounds in thick rivulets before freezing against her body, staining the brilliant scales beneath streaks of crimson crystal.

Her left wing had suffered terribly.

Long tears had split the membrane, several supporting bones had been badly bruised beneath the flesh, and one section now drooped whenever exhaustion overwhelmed the muscles holding it extended. One horn had cracked near the base as well, the fracture widening every time another impact travelled through her skull.

Phei had felt every piece of that misery through their Soul Bond.

Worse, the two World Transcendents had known exactly where she hurt most.

They had been there during her imprisonment and they remembered what they had been done to her: So throughout the hour, the larger beast had repeatedly attacked the places where ancient feeding wounds had once penetrated deepest beneath her scales. It ignored stronger portions of her body whenever an old weakness became exposed and drove claws, shoulders and crushing frost toward those injuries with the familiarity of something working from memory.

Every successful strike had sent pain surging across their Soul Bond.

Every one had made Phei more furious.

Whenever he managed to reach her, his hands immediately found her scales.

More than once, they had ended up buried together beneath collapsed frost, Phei crawling toward her shoulder while Healing Touch poured into the wounded flesh beneath his palm. At other times, True Void Steps returned him directly onto her back in the middle of combat, his fingers locking around a crystalline ridge and healing power flowed through his hand while he used his other hand and willing his three powers to buy them even if three seconds to heal her.

His own body was often still rebuilding beside hers.

Bruises had disappeared along Phei’s chest while torn flesh beneath the Dragon Lady’s scales slowly tightened under his touch. Blood vessels closed. Fresh bleeding weakened. Cracked places stabilized enough for her to keep moving.

Healing Touch had never been able to erase an entire beating within the few stolen seconds they received.

Phei had used every stolen second anyway.

At one point during that miserable hour, he had found her half buried beneath a collapsed glacial wall, one enormous foreleg trembling while she struggled to rise.

Phei had appeared beside her neck and pressed both hands against her.

"Come on, little sister. Up."

Her exhausted rumble had rolled through his arms.

When the leg shook again, his expression hardened and Healing Touch deepened while he battled singled handedly and pure will, literally.

"Easy. I’ve got you."

Her eye had turned toward him, filled with pain and enough rage to reassure him that she was still very much herself.

Phei had managed a tired smile. "If one of us gets to look pathetic after this, it’s me. I’ve got more experience."

The Dragon Lady released another low rumble.

Phei frowned. "That sounded far too much like agreement."

Even through the pain, her eye had almost seemed amused.

Then a distant roar rolled through the debris as one of the World Transcendents approached after breaking through his attacks. He touched her scale once more before rising. "I want them dead."

Then they had gone back into the slaughter.

The Dragon Lady’s hoard of cores had become one of the main reasons her battered body managed to keep answering that hatred.

She had thousands apart from the stronger ones he’d give her.

Nearly a year of hunting throughout the Primordial Frozen Zone had filled her hoard with cores taken from every kind of thrall and frozen beast they slaughtered, and among that immense collection now rested several far richer World Transcendent cores.

Whenever her Dragon Essence sank dangerously low, another hundreds of cores disappeared inside her and power would surge through her body like a second heartbeat. The scales along her neck brightened from within as blue-white brilliance returned beneath blood and frost, spreading through her wings, chest and limbs while exhausted muscles swelled with renewed strength.

Then his little sister would roar and throw herself back at the monsters abusing her.

The sight had been magnificent and miserable in equal measure.

Phei’s own Essence had stubbornly refused to dry up .

That created the great absurdity of the battle.

They had been losing horribly.

Every honest comparison between damage inflicted and damage received had been humiliating, yet Phei had still managed to leave several wounds worth remembering.

The Dragon Lady had torn open one shoulder, cracked portions of a barrier and once sunk her jaws into the larger beast deeply enough that frozen flesh came away between her teeth.

Those achievements had cost them oceans.