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Arc 8: Chapter 13

  Bianca’s attempts to pn and strategize were interrupted as Li Wusu focused her attention on her and threw attack after attack against her. Most were easily blocked with her defensive skill, but she still had to dodge and run around to prevent the majority of the damage from hitting her.

  So, she had to settle on a course of action, and execute it, all while hoping that Li Wusu hadn’t foreseen it already and didn’t have pns to counter it. Thus, she was trying to employ skills and abilities she hadn’t demonstrated in full prior to their arrival on the ship. Specifically, she had one very particur pn in mind, and thus she was waiting for the perfect opportunity to execute it.

  Despite not having a particur list of conditions for when to do so, she knew all too well that if she made any mistakes, she wouldn’t get a second chance. So, she waited, and watched.

  ‘It looks like there’s nothing that can be done in order to perceive which way the ship is facing… so if I’m able to affect the ndscape around us, I would need to expose an opening in the entire perimeter… Ugh, why can’t the objective of a fight just be to fuck someone silly with my dick?’ Bianca got distracted for the briefest of moments and was nearly spped in the face with an enormous golden spike that flew straight from the palm of Li Wusu’s hand.

  She instinctively struck back and hit the spike with all of the crimson she could muster, her sheer might allowing her to repel it, although without any of that energy continuing onward, the ship captain got to reposition easily.

  ‘Alright, fuck it, I should go for it…’ Bianca stopped for a moment and shut her eyes, focusing on her mind, her inner self, ‘While I don’t know for sure if that Demon Queen identity is spawned from the Demonic Tyrant, I do know what makes her so strong. I must drop the endless questioning of what I do, the worry that I’ll mess up… drop the empathy of the modern world, abandon caution…’

  When her eyes opened, her whole aura underwent a change. For her, it felt as though a hand took hers and led her forth, whereas to the others…

  Huang Su couldn’t miss the sudden surge of killing intent from the far side of the battlefield. She’d been keeping most of the memory entities distracted with an endless barrage of fmes, slowly but surely whittling down their numbers, but the ndscape had remained entirely unbreakable no matter what she did.

  Thus, she hadn’t expected such a change, nor its source.

  “Bianca…” the Sect Master muttered to herself, feeling her chest tighten with worry, ‘Please don’t lose yourself.’

  “You dumb bitch, haven’t you rampaged around enough?” Bianca’s tone sounding nothing like before, not to herself and likely not to Li Wusu, “I don’t know what kind of kink you’ve got to collect everyone’s memories like that, but you overstepped your bounds when you tried it on me.”

  “Well, I see the Demon Queen is out. Fascinating,” the ship captain sounded honestly intrigued, but mockery crept into her tone soon after, “Tell me, what exactly do you think you can do? I already know about the Weave, it won’t be enough to disrupt my Aggregate Fragment skill. Your ruthlessness is commendable, but it’s far from enough to let you skip two realms of strength. Even at your strongest, your attacks will be limited to the fourth realm, and I can handle those without issue.”

  “But what about your memory entities? Those constructs are based on people, and those people don’t belong up here, do they? People, should you still be on this ship?!” Bianca shouted, making Li Wusu turn for a moment.

  Of course, none of the memory entities did anything, and so she began to turn back, only to freeze mid-way. Her eyes widened as she realised what just happened.

  “Naturally, that was bullshit, but this ship… is very interesting.”

  A great anchor fell from the skies, crashing onto the deck of the ship, an endlessly intricate and complex arrangement of golden strands forming into Li Wusu’s pnar anchor. It spread the mysterious metallic aura across the entire battlefield, and surrounded the captain in a mysterious light, but what was most obvious was the anger in her eyes as she gred at Bianca.

  “You DARE to command my Dawntreader? Your folly has no ends, Demon Queen!”

  Indeed, in the moment that the ship captain was distracted, Bianca combined her own accumuted experience with controlling spiritual perception with the keenness of the Weave of the Senses, and the impeccable control of the Demonic Tyrant, and sent threads of her spiritual perception into the ship.

  Somewhere in there was an array that controlled the vessel, and in all likelihood, it wasn’t tailored to be used exclusively by her. Therefore, all she needed was an opportunity to grasp control over it for just a moment, and now that she had it, she didn’t hesitate to use it. There was a faint thread of energy connecting the ship to the ndscape around them, so she severed it.

  At once, the stable nds around them blurred, and parts of them faded entirely, revealing golden strands that made up their core. More importantly, through them, Bianca was able to see the outside, and locate the distant shore.

  Just in case anyone missed it, she thrust her sword forward, putting in little strength and maximizing the speed, and shot out a crimson ray right at the opening, which exploded between the golden strands.

  Li Wusu was already reciming control over the ship, her experienced and higher-realm spiritual perception allowing her to compete with Bianca’s own, even when led by the Demonic Tyrant. The one edge she had in this confrontation was the fact that her control – or rather, the Demonic Tyrant’s – was so precise that she could remain within the structure of the ship and its vital components even as the ship captain tried her best to flush her out.

  “Get out, already!” Li Wusu directed over a dozen memory entities to charge at Bianca, but they, too, were affected by the Dawntreader’s current conflicting command.

  And before they could do much to counter Bianca’s crimson energy, which she allowed to erupt all around her, the others closed in on their position. Huang Su, as the most powerful amongst them, didn’t hesitate to rush towards the opening in the terrain and flood it with fme, forcing it to remain open for them.

  “I think we’ll be departing the ship now. Thanks for being gullible, bitch!” Bianca excimed with glee as she used her movement skill to arrive beside Song Ming in an instant, picking her pet up and darting over to the opening.

  “Not so fast!” Li Wusu waved her hand, and dozens of golden entities suddenly melted into gold and soared into the air, congealing into a single mass that seemed to never exceed the size of a single entity’s golden mass.

  Together, they formed into a single figure that looked far clearer and more human than the rest – and an awful lot like Bianca.

  “I may not have seen your memories, but the others remember you well, Demon Queen. I can recreate your abilities regardless!” the ship captain procimed, and the figure before her slowly moved in an echo of Bianca’s own attacks.

  For a moment, the pressure and intensity of Bianca’s power seemed to appear around her, multiplied a hundred-fold thanks to being at the fifth realm. However, as her energy began to build, it suddenly fell into disarray. All of the crimson began to rampage, going out of control inside and outside of the golden entity, soon tearing into its body and shredding the entity apart, the power erupting all across the ship and managing to damage the hull, tearing apart pnks and boards with ease.

  “Quick, get out of here!” Bianca shouted as she resumed her rush to the opening, Song Ming still in her arms, whom she addressed as she lowered her voice so that only her pet would hear, “I feel like using you once we’re on nd, so be prepared. Still got the plug inside?”

  “Y-Yes, Mistress!” her pet responded after a moment, nuzzling up to her, “I love it when you’re so confident and strong, Mistress…”

  ‘… I can’t say I dislike it either…’

  Li Wusu stood on the ravaged deck as she watched Bianca’s group leap out of the opening within her ndscape, escaping into the water mere minutes from the shore.

  Unlike her earlier dispy, there wasn’t a hint of fury on her face, just a calm smile.

  “I couldn’t copy her skill at all… either a really mysterious archetype, or she’s an otherworldly demon. Either way, it was the right call to let them get away so easily,” her smile widened, “I can’t wait for the fruit to ripen… the harvest for my Nexus will be immense!”

  The sound of footsteps prompted her to pause, and wait for the person to arrive onto the deck of the ship. It was one of the many passengers on her Dawntreader, an older man, who seemed to have simply wandered up. He gasped when he saw the damage on the deck, however, and looked to the captain with questions pouring from his lips.

  “What happened here? Was the vessel attacked? Who would’ve dared to strike at the main vessel to cross the Heart Lake?”

  Li Wusu turned around, putting on an exhausted look, “It turns out I had Huang Su on board. She was offended by something I did and tried to kill me…”

  “W-What? Li Wusu… by the heavens, the Sect Master of the Phoenix Sect?”

  “Precisely… Hah, I had thought that Chang Shuang was strange, but to think that this was her true identity… Makes it all the stranger that she was following some third realm cultivator around like a loyal puppy.”

  “That Demon Queen? W-Wait, a woman that looked just like her was wanted by the eastern sects, could it be…”

  The ship captain took a deep breath and straightened her back, returning to her bolder persona as she shrugged, “They’ve gotten away, so it’s irrelevant now. Unless you’ve got something to say, stay below deck – I’ve got a ship to repair.”

  The man didn’t question her and practically ran back down, letting her drop the act once more.

  Li Wusu considered the day and grinned, countless future paths sprouting within her imagination.

  “And now that information is bound to spread… Show me how you will grow, Bianca. Become your best, be that as yourself or the Demon Queen, and then join my Nexus of Thoughts.”

  Hua Jun looked upon the scene and frowned. There were felled trees and marks of conflict in this open space, and although most signs of pnar energy had long faded, he could feel the trace of pure, undiluted hatred.

  “Exactly like her… Disciple, what had the Bzing Skies said?”

  Lei Kai Lian bowed and replied, although she couldn’t take her eyes off of the battlefield, “A disciple of theirs, Yu Suyu, reportedly encountered a group that was being led by a woman that closely matched Bianca’s description in terms of physical shape, but had differently coloured eyes, skin and hair. This led to her failing to identify the suspect until days ter.”

  “Hm… I’m not certain about that particur Bzing Skies disciple, but if she had indeed encountered Bianca on her patrol, then for the signs of combat to be here… would mean that she had arrived and then departed from her destination. The Phoenix Sect is their most likely destination, but…”

  He paused, his brows furrowing as he recalled how that sect had been retively quiet as of te, their Sect Master making no appearances in the past few weeks.

  She couldn’t have died, not without the killer being hunted down to the ends of the Pnar Continents. Therefore, something else had to have happened in order to prevent Huang Su from emerging into the public, or making any kind of proper statement. If she wasn’t at the sect anymore, then…

  ‘It would be absurd, but it could be that she has left the sect for whatever reason… and if this happened due to Bianca… could they be together?’ although it was quite the leap in logic, based on little evidence, Hua Jun couldn’t dismiss the notion outright.

  If she did, then the main question would be why she left, and what her goals now were that she couldn’t have arranged something with the sect to fill that vacancy. The circumstances would’ve had to be impromptu, like due to Bianca’s arrival, and her intention must not have been to be away for long, or else the conscientious Sect Master would never have abandoned her people like this.

  “Master, what are you thinking about? Do you still believe that demon is… is not a monster?”

  “… In this pce, the people sin were hired bandits, and most of them died quickly. If a cultivator was to become demonic over such a thing, then nearly everyone in the Eastern Continent would be tainted with demonic nature.”

  “You are too soft on her, Master. A killer, thief and someone that conspires with a known sver…”

  “To be instruments of Heaven’s will, we can hardly see things in such a simplified manner. Nevertheless, it is also true that I must not allow my feelings to get in the way of the truth – whatever that may be. Keep an eye out for any further traces of Bianca and her group, and assess any such trace in full. Understood?”

  Although his disciple was btantly dissatisfied, she kept it to herself and bowed, “Yes, understood.”

  In the depths of the nds marked by the Exarch, where the fming sigil burned away without ever stopping, a tall figure hovered slightly above the terrain. Dark brown cloth made up the robes and hood, as well wrappings around a pair of unseen hands.

  Beneath the hood, there was no face or head, no skull or bones – only the same fmes that controlled this domain. They formed a minor version of the sigil, an inverted triangle that contained a hexagon and upright triangle that both seemed to be part of the greater shape. The full version of the symbol burned behind the hood, that same shape but with two sets of three lines extending outwards, shorter ones starting just beside the corners of the rge triangle, and the far longer ones starting from the middle of the sides.

  Two circles, broken up into six fragments each by the lines, surrounded the triangle, altogether forming the Exarch’s Sigil, the core of the technique and archetype alike.

  At this particur moment, this being was only at the peak of Linked Channels, a mere sixth realm cultivator competing with an ancient dragon. Nevertheless, those that looked upon it never doubted its capabilities. How could they, when the minor sigil burned upon them all, a mark they accepted in exchange for safety and power.

  “I have given Long Shiyi enough time. It is time for war,” a deep, inhuman voice originated from the Exarch, spreading throughout its domain.

  All that heard the words bowed in complete obedience, and those at the borders of the Exarch’s nds saw the seemingly impossible. Despite being endless kilometres from the Exarch’s position, its energy still poured out from the sigil that marked the earth, the burnt ground spreading outwards.

  Everything in its path burned and withered away, leaving only charred, dead nd all the way up to the river that bordered Long Shiyi’s domain. On the other side, the defenders stationed there rose to full alert the moment they saw the encroaching wave, as well as the numerous banners marked by the Exarch’s fming sigil approaching.

  In her tent, Long Shiyi sighed as she looked southward.

  “To think I could’ve ended it all if I had accepted it sooner… before he became the Exarch, back when I could’ve ended his misery. Worse yet…” she raised a hand and released her energy, grimacing as she saw it, “Second stage, only… and at the worst timing, just as those sentient rags decre war…”

  It never got easier to see her power decay. Once upon a time, she was a mighty dragon in the seventh realm, proudly ruling her domain with ease, but over the years, her energy waned. The echoes of the linked channels and the oblivion halos still lingered within her dantian, taunting her with prowess long lost, but now even the fifth realm was beginning to slip from her.

  “No matter what… we will put up a fight. No matter what it takes.”

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