Jun's laughter echoed in the shattered hollow, a sound of pure, cruel confidence. "Every move you make is written in the air before you even think it. Your struggle is a performance for my amusement." His eyes lingered on Li Fen, gleaming with vile promise. "I especially look forward to yours. I wonder what song a will as sharp as yours will make when it finally learns to beg."
Li Fen shuddered, a full-body tremor of revulsion, but her chin stayed up. Her will, a blade of cold steel, did not bend. Next to her, Gen pushed himself up from the tree's base, blood streaking from his nose down to his chin.
"Gen, are you—" Liang started, rushing to his side.
Gen shoved his hand away, a raw, angry gesture. "I'm fine." His voice was a gravelly rasp. He straightened, his body groaning in protest, but his golden light flickered and held. He cracked his neck, ignoring the fresh wave of pain.
"You need to be careful," Li Fen said, her voice tight with a fear she rarely showed. "Your body is a temple. The Eternal Body foundation is precious. You can't just let it be a target for every blow."
"My father never wavered!" Gen roared, the words torn from him, fueled by pain and a deep, personal fury. "His body followed his will! If mine can't, I'll force it to! I'll make it follow!"
Jun's smirk widened. "Admirable. Delusional, but admirable." He moved.
This time, he didn't wait. He shot forward, a blur enhanced by **Jingdao**, but the air around his arms shimmered with **Shidow**. As he closed on Gen, he didn't summon a new construct. He used **Zhidow** to create a new, smaller Diamond Cobra that materialized already coiled around his forearm, its fangs gleaming with manipulated, condensed energy.
Gen, arrogant and furious, met the charge head-on. A titanic, reinforced fist aimed to shatter Jun's approach.
Jun spun inside the blow. His palm, sheathed in dense air, slapped against Gen's torso, not to hurt, but to stick. The cobra around his arm struck like a living whip, its fangs snapping onto Gen's shoulder. They didn't pierce the dense Eternal Body, but the impact—a concussive blast of **Shidow**-force delivered at point-blank range—made Gen's entire arm go numb, his perfect structure wavering for a critical second.
Jun's foot, reinforced to the hardness of ironwood, pistoned into Gen's chest.
***CRUNCH.***
The sound was of ribs bending under immense pressure. Gen was launched backward again, a golden comet crashing through the thicket of Li Fen's roots, tearing a ragged trench in the earth before sliding to a stop.
Liang tried to summon the Kalash, his hands shaking. But Jun, lethally clever, kept shifting his position, always keeping Li Fen or the dazed Gen between himself and Liang. He used them as living shields.
Liang's hands faltered. The fear was etched onto his face—a terror not of Jun, but of harming his friends. The hesitation was a physical weight, freezing him.
Jun's eyes gleamed. *Perfect. The anchor fears his own chain.*
Li Fen, seeing Gen fall, acted. She thrust her hands down. The surrounding roots and vines twisted, hardening into sharp, spear-like points that shot up from the ground in a deadly volley, piercing the air where Jun stood a moment before, leaving deep, wet holes in the earth.
Jun was a ghost. He dropped into a fluid dive under the spears, rolled, and came up not where she expected, but right in front of Liang. Li Fen gasped, reinforcing her own body for a blow that never came.
Jun's true target had always been the hesitating one.
Before Liang could react, the arm coiled with the light-cobra shot out. The construct didn't bite this time. It *uncoiled* and *struck*, a whip of solidified energy that wrapped around Liang's chest and constricted with a sickening *squeeze*. The air left Liang's lungs in a choked cry. The Kalash flickered and died. His eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut, unmoving.
"LIANG!" Gen's scream was raw.
"What have you done?" Li Fen demanded, her voice shaking with horror.
Jun stood over Liang's still form, a serene smile on his face. "It's over." He raised a hand toward the massive, real Diamond Cobra still holding the unconscious girl. With a sharp command of **Shidow**, he snapped its attention away.
The colossal beast uncoiled from its first victim and moved with terrifying speed. Li Fen tried to leap back, but a flick of its tail, guided by Jun's will, swept her legs out from under her. As she fell, its maw, large enough to swallow her head, darted down. She threw up an arm, reinforcing it.
***SNAP-CRUNCH!***
The fangs didn't pierce, but the impact shattered the bones in her forearm. The cobra whipped its head, lifting her off the ground and slamming her back down like a ragdoll. She lay still, gasping, her arm bent at a wrong angle.
Gen tried to charge, but Jun was already dancing away, using **Shidow** to glide across the broken terrain, always just out of reach, letting the environment and Gen's own rage do the work. Gen's attacks were wild, powerful blows that cratered the earth and shattered stone, but they hit only air and dirt.
Gen's vision swam with red. Frustration, anger, and a crushing sense of helplessness boiled inside him. In that storm, a memory flashed—Yun in the arena. *Precision. Not power. Closing the distance.* He couldn't match Jun's manipulation. He had to get inside it.
He stopped chasing. He planted his feet, took a deep, shuddering breath, and released everything.
All his **Jingdao**, every shred of the Eternal Body's power, poured into his legs. The golden light didn't flare; it imploded, becoming so dense it looked like liquid metal. The ground beneath him *sagged*, forming a shallow bowl of compressed earth.
Then he was gone.
Not a run. A *launch*. A sonic boom of flesh and will. The air tore itself apart with a thunderclap. He was a golden streak, a meteor fired at point-blank range. He crossed the distance in the space between Jun's heartbeats.
Jun's eyes widened in genuine shock. He had no time for finesse. He reinforced his arms with desperate **Jingdao** and crossed them over his chest.
***WHUMPF!***
Gen didn't punch. He *tackled*. The impact wasn't a clash; it was a collision of a mountain and a fortress. The sound was a deep, bone-shaking thud that echoed off the real mountains. They hit the ground together, skidding, tearing a twenty-foot furrow through rock and root.
Jun, pinned underneath, panicked. He hammered his reinforced fists onto Gen's back. *THUD. THUD. THUD.* The blows landed with sickening force, any one enough to shatter a boulder. Gen's body shuddered with each impact, but he didn't let go. He wrapped his arms around Jun's torso and *squeezed*, pouring every ounce of his waning strength into a crushing bear hug. Jun's ribs creaked audibly.
"Give up!" Jun snarled, blood now trickling from his own nose from the sheer, concussive force of the tackle. "It's over! They're done!"
"NEVER!" Gen roared into his ear, and squeezed harder.
Jun hit him again, and again. His own knuckles split open, bleeding. He couldn't focus enough to weave **Shidow** or **Zhidow**; all his energy was going into reinforcing his own breaking body and trying to pummel the madman crushing him.
Liang, on the ground, stirred. His world was pain and darkness, but one thought burned through: *Finish it.* Through blurred vision, he saw the tangled, struggling mass of Gen and Jun. He pushed himself up onto one elbow. With a final, whispering breath, he summoned the **Kalash** one last time. It appeared, cracked and flickering, before him.
Li Fen, her body screaming, saw it too. With her good hand, she clawed at the earth. A single, thick root, the last of her manipulated forest, slithered across the ground. It didn't attack. It wrapped around Gen and Jun both, a final, binding vine, pinning them tighter together in their brutal embrace.
Jun's eyes, wide with panic, met Liang's across the hollow. He saw the Kalash. He saw the gathering, unstable, *living* white light within it—a sound like a tearing reality beginning to whine.
"No—!" Jun gasped, hitting Gen's back frantically.
The white lightning erupted from the Kalash.
It did not crackle. It *screamed*. A sound that didn't belong to the forest, or the mountain, or any mortal world. It was the sound of pure negation given voice.
It crossed the space in a line of blinding, silent fury.
And then it *exploded*.
The world turned white and soundless. A sphere of annihilating light consumed the two tangled figures, the vine, and the ground beneath them. The shockwave that followed was physical, a horizontal wall of force that flattened the remaining thicket, stripped the bark from trees in a perfect ring, and hurled Liang and Li Fen back like leaves. The very mountain seemed to flinch. Stones were vaporized. Where the hollow's center had been, there was now a shallow, glass-smooth crater, steaming in the sudden, ringing silence.