Cultivation World - The Sky Above Crimson City
Xotl thrashed against the constricting embrace of Crimson the Lifedevourer, but for the first time in his ancient existence, his strength was insufficient.
The colossal plant-beast held him in a grip of thorny vines that were kilometers long, their barbs digging deep into his shadowy flesh. Where the thorns pierced, they didn't just tear; they rooted.
Xotl roared, unleashing a wave of shadow rot intended to wither the vines into dust, but the Lifedevourer simply outgrew the decay. For every meter of vine Xotl rotted, ten more meters surged forward, vibrant with the stolen life force of the kingdom's longevity.
"I AM ETERNAL!" Xotl bellowed, trying to dissolve his form into the shadow realm to slip through the plant's grasp.
But the Dao of Life radiated by the Peak Nascent Soul monster was a blinding beacon that seared the edges of the shadow dimension, sealing Xotl in the physical plane. He was pinned. He was being consumed.
The Shadow Realm
The Golden Core Avatar stared at the impossibility stretching out from Kira's heels. A shadow cast within the Shadow Realm—an anomaly that defied the fundamental laws of its existence.
The shadow moved independently, reaching for the Avatar.
Panic, primal and overwhelming, overrode the Avatar's combat logic. It could not fight something that broke its understanding of the Dao of shadow. It had to leave.
With a shriek that vibrated through the grey wasteland, the Avatar forcibly rejected the Shadow Realm. It ripped a hole back to the material plane, fleeing the anomaly with desperation.
The Arena Floor
The air above the arena fractured. Kira and the Avatar crashed into the ruins of the stadium.
The Avatar scrambled up, flesh and shadow pulsating. It paused, sensing the catastrophic plight of its main body nearby. The King was dying. The main consciousness was being devoured by the flower.
The survival imperative shifted instantly. The main body was lost. The Avatar was no longer just an extension; it was the lifeboat. It was Xotl now.
It looked across the arena. Lia stood there, staff in hand, the shadow leech protectively wrapped over her body.
If Xotl was to survive, he needed the artifact. He needed the power to rebuild.
The Avatar didn't roar. It didn't posture. It exploded into motion, a blur of Golden Core power streaking directly toward Lia with lethal intent.
Lia raised her staff, bracing for an impact she knew she couldn't survive.
But a figure in black flickered into existence between them.
Kira didn't dodge. She didn't use a technique to deflect. She planted her feet and crossed her shadow-daggers, catching the Avatar's descending claw with a bone-jarring impact.
The shockwave blew the rocks and air back in a twenty-meter circle.
Kira grunted, her boots sliding backward across the stone floor, carving grooves into the rock. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth beneath her mask.
"You're facing me, ugly," Kira hissed, her silver eyes burning.
She was a Golden Core Level 1 assassin. The Avatar was Level 4. The gap in raw power was significant—every blow the Avatar landed shook her to her core—but she held.
"Move!" the Avatar screeched, driving a knee into Kira's stomach.
Kira absorbed the blow with a layer of shadow armor, though she coughed blood. She twisted, her dagger slashing a deep line of leaking darkness across the Avatar's chest.
"I said no," Kira spat, forcing herself to stand upright despite her trembling legs.
The battle raged on, a blur of black on black. Varek joined the fray, his saber of light carving glowing arcs that forced the Avatar to recoil, while Lia's water serpents harried its flanks.
But they were losing. The Avatar was desperate, fighting with the hysterical strength as it's main body was being consumed. It landed a backhand that sent Varek skipping across the arena like a stone. It grabbed one of Lia's serpents and crushed it into mist.
Above them, the sky turned green as the Lifedevourer tore a massive chunk of shadow-flesh from the main Xotl body.
The Avatar felt the main consciousness fade. It was alone.
It looked at the encircling enemies. The Dragon Prince was pulling himself out of the rubble. The assassin refused to die. The sword boy was getting back up.
It couldn't win here. And it couldn't enter the shadow realm with that... thing attached to the assassin chasing it.
It had one option left.
The Avatar raised its hands, not to attack, but to tear at the air itself. It didn't use the clean slice of a spatial rift; it used brute force and a fragmented understanding of the void to rip a jagged, unstable wound in reality.
"You will not end me!" the Avatar howled.
It stepped into the tear. Not into the shadow realm, but into the Void—the cold, airless space between dimensions.
Lia watched it go. She saw the black form disappearing into the inky black of the nothingness.
She thought of the fear. The constant looking over her shoulder. The threat this creature posed to Varek and herself.
"No," Lia whispered. "You don't get to come back."
She didn't look at Varek. She didn't look at Kira.
She channeled every drop of Qi in her massive dantian into her legs.
"Lia, don't!" Varek screamed, realizing what she was doing.
Lia activated the Void Strider Steps.
She didn't step to the side. She stepped forward, directly into the closing rift.
The Void
Silence. Absolute, crushing silence.
Lia floated in an endless expanse of inky black nothingness. There was no up, no down, no air.
Ahead of her, she saw the Avatar. It was moving fast, swimming through the nothingness like a shark in deep water. It was faster here, its form rippling as it adapted to the lack of physics.
Lia pushed off against nothing, willing herself forward. The Void Strider technique burned through her Qi like a forest fire. Every second of existence here cost as much energy as a full battle.
But she could see him.
The Avatar looked back, its faceless head rippling with shock. It hadn't expected the prey to become the hunter.
"Come back here!" Lia screamed, though there was no air to carry the sound. She projected her will, her fury.
She drew on her reserves, pushing her speed. The distance closed.
But the Void was hungry.
Her Qi was vanishing. 2000 qu... 1500 qu... 1000 qu....
The drain was exponential. Her vision began to tunnel.
The Avatar was just out of reach. It seemed to realize she was fading. It stopped fleeing and turned, a jagged mouth opening in a silent, mocking grin.
Then as everything went black she saw it's face turn into one of horror as everything faded.
Earth - Central Park
Takeshi stood amidst the ruins of the park bench he had destroyed, staring at his own hands. The skin shone with the luster of bronze and gold, veins pulsing with a vitality he had never felt before.
He clenched his fist. The air popped inside his grip.
He could feel. He could feel the gravel beneath his bare feet, the cool wind on his skin, the thrum of the Tribulation clouds above.
A laugh bubbled up from his chest—not the raspy wheeze of the invalid, but a deep, resonant rumble that sounded like tectonic plates shifting.
In his arms, Himari was limp, her brain starving for oxygen after Derek's chokehold. The vibration of Takeshi's laughter against her chest sent a shudder through her dazed system. She looked up, her vision swimming, and saw only the chiseled jawline of a golden god.
Her mouth hung slightly open, a small trail of drool leaking from the corner as her brain short-circuited. She forgot the pain in her throat. She forgot the assassin, the monsters, and the imminent death. She just stared, her mind stuck in a loop of pure, unadulterated fangirl awe.
"You're safe now," Takeshi said again, his voice vibrating in her bones.
He walked over to a surviving park bench, his movements fluid and powerful, a stark contrast to the wheelchair that lay in shrapnel on the hill. He set her down with a gentleness that belied the destruction he had just wrought.
Himari sat there, dazed, blinking slowly. Her throat clicked as she finally remembered to swallow. Then the air hit her lungs.
"Cough! Hack!"
She doubled over, blushing furiously as reality rushed back in. She wiped her mouth, staring at the back of the golden giant who had saved her.
"YOU!"
Derek Morrison pulled himself out of the crater Takeshi had punched him into. The Crimson Harvest formation pulsed violently beneath his feet, the red light growing brighter as it sucked more life force from the dying city to repair Derek's broken face.
"You think your a hero!" Derek screamed, his voice distorting into a demonic roar.
The red lines on Derek's skin flared. He charged.
Takeshi turned, his blue eyes burning with the calm of a man who had conquered his own soul. He didn't dodge. He ran to meet him.
They clashed in the center of the park with the force of two freight trains.
It wasn't a martial arts duel. It was a brawl.
Derek threw a wild haymaker wreathed in blood-Qi. Takeshi caught it on his forearm—the impact creating a shockwave that flattened the grass for twenty meters—and drove a piston-like jab into Derek's ribs.
CRACK.
Derek's Qi armor shattered. He staggered back, spitting blood.
Takeshi didn't let up. He moved with the joy of motion, unleashing twenty years of pent-up energy. Left hook. Right cross. An uppercut that lifted Derek off his feet.
It was a godlike body punishing a demonic counterfeit. Takeshi was faster, stronger, and driven by a will that had stitched a soul to flesh.
"Is that all?" Takeshi roared, ducking under a clumsy claw swipe and burying his fist in Derek's stomach.
Derek doubled over, vomiting blood.
Takeshi wound up his right arm. The muscles swelled, humming with golden light. He prepared an earth-blowing hook, a punch aimed to take Derek's head clean off his shoulders.
BOOM.
The sky tore open.
It wasn't Derek. It was the Heavens.
A bolt of white tribulation lightning, thick as a tree trunk, slammed into Takeshi's back.
It was judgment for the act of soul-stitching.
"ARGH!" Takeshi convulsed, his attack halted mid-swing. Flesh sizzled on his shoulder, the golden skin blackened by heavenly tribulation. His knees buckled.
Derek, eyes wide, saw the opening. He didn't question his luck.
"You fool!" Derek laughed, the sound wet and gurgling. He smashed a blood-reinforced fist into Takeshi's jaw while the giant was paralyzed by the lightning.
Takeshi stumbled back, shaking his head, trying to clear the static from his nerves.
"You think you can fight me when you have called Tribulation on yourself?" Derek sneered.
The clouds roared again. Another bolt struck.
ZZZ-CRACK.
Takeshi fell to one knee, smoke rising from his hair.
Derek stepped in. Thud. A fist to his face. Bam. A knee to the chest.
Every time the lightning struck, locking Takeshi's muscles in a spasm of divine agony, Derek landed a flurry of blows.
"The universe wants you dead!" Derek howled, raining punches down on Takeshi's guarding arms. "And I'm happy to help!"
The Sidelines
Riku wasn't watching the fight. She couldn't.
She was kneeling in the grass, her hands pressed against Tim's chest.
The wound from the void-rejection was hideous—a blackened tear across his skin—and the blood-sword gash was weeping freely.
"Tim, stay with me," Riku sobbed. "Come on, Grand Elder. You can't leave your disciples."
She closed her eyes, trying to access her qi. She knew she had barely any Qi, just the trickle she had managed to cultivate on Earth.
"Please," she whispered.
She visualized the energy in her dantian. It was a drop of water in a desert.
She pushed it. All of it.
She channeled her tiny reserve of Qi into her palms, pressing them over Tim's heart. It wasn't a healing technique—she didn't know any. It was just raw life force, a desperate attempt to jumpstart his fading rhythm.
"Don't you dare die," she hissed, tears dripping onto his face.
At that exact moment Varek saw Lia void step after Xotls avatar. Nooo both riku and varek screamed at the same time. The thought of losing him in both worlds was too much.