Chapter 136: The Opening Petals

Chapter 137: The Opening Petals

Seana slowly drew her dark blade, letting the steel sing as it met the stagnant air. A faint, viscous crimson glow pooled along its razor-thin edge.

Jules’s corrupted gaze locked onto her silhouette. "You’ve been staring at me this entire time."

Behind her porcelain flower mask, Seana remained completely still.

"Do you have something to say?" Jules mocked.

"No," her voice drifted out, cold and level. "I have something to do."

Jules sneered. "And what’s that?"

Seana raised the point of her sword until it aligned with his throat. "Stop you."

Jules threw his head back and laughed, an unhinged, grating sound. "You? A masked stray think she can stop me?"

A flood of silver lightning erupted from his pores, crackling violently against the stone.

Beneath Seana’s boots, crimson Qi seeped outward, staining the basalt like fresh blood flowing across porcelain.

"I don’t think," she murmured, stepping forward. "I know."

Jules’s smile vanished. "Then die!"

BOOOOM!

He launched himself like an artillery shell.

Seana vanished from where she stood.

Jules’s lightning-coated fist detonated against empty air, sending a concussive shockwave through the floor. Before his pupils could even dilate in shock, a streak of blood-red steel hissed toward the side of his neck.

CLANG!

Jules barely wrenched his forearm up in time to block. Blinding sparks showered the stones.

Seana didn’t pause to contest his raw strength. Her wrist snapped in a fluid spiral, her blade sliding cleanly along his lightning barrier to bypass his guard.

Jules countered on pure reflex—a jagged bolt of lightning shot point-blank from his shoulder.

Seana leaned backward like a reed in a gale. The lethal bolt scraped past her mask, singing the air. In the same motion, she spun on the ball of her foot, driving the flat of her crimson blade straight into his ribs!

BOOM!

The kinetic blow threw Jules skidding across the air. He crashed heavily into the ancient platform beneath the hovering crystalline sphere.

THUMP.

The treasure pulsed immediately.

Thick streams of golden vitality poured into his meridians. Jules pulled himself upright, the bruising across his ribs knitting back together in seconds.

He stared at Seana, a manic grin stretching across his lips.

"Interesting," he purred, the lightning around his knuckles deepening into a bruised, necrotic hue. "I think I can finally use this power properly."

Seana’s eyes narrowed into slits behind the red mask. The Ancient Palace wasn’t just sustaining him; it was feeding him tailored combat fuel.

Across the shattered hall, Asher dragged himself up, his boots crunching on rubble. Fresh blood stained his shoulder, yet Myriad Forge hovered beside his ear, vibrating with cold vigilance.

He looked from Jules’s shifting aura to the pulsating crystalline sphere.

"It’s not just handing him power," Asher warned, his voice grave.

Seana didn’t turn, but her posture tightened.

"It’s rewriting him," Asher finished.

Jules raised an open palm toward the vault.

Above his hand, a massive sphere of unstable, black-silver lightning condensed, whining at an ear-splitting frequency.

The Argon sisters scrambled backward, Ambiel dragging Arvessa behind a collapsed pillar.

Jules stared up at the blackening orb in awe. He had no idea what primordial art he was channeling—he only knew it felt intoxicatingly natural.

On the perimeter walls, the ancient inscriptions flared into blinding light.

[INTEGRATION PROCESS — 31%]

The crystalline sphere spun at dizzying speed, humming in rhythm with Jules’s chest.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

Seana’s grip tightened on the hilt of the Blood Moon Sword.

FWOOSH!

Her Crimson Blood Qi surged, expanding outward in undulating waves. For the first time since stepping into these ruins, holding back was no longer an option.

Behind her back, the translucent silhouette of a crimson lotus materialized. Then another. Then a third, their ethereal petals drifting in the energy currents.

[Crimson Blood Sovereign Art]

The blood in her veins began to boil, circulating through an entirely new, unrecorded meridian circuit. The first form would never pierce the palace’s reinforced host.

Her blade rose slowly, bathing her crimson silk robes in deep, bloody luminescence.

Deep within her Soul Manor, an ancient insight began to crystallize:

[The Second Form.]

It had no name yet. But its lethal geometry was already blooming.

Across the chamber, Jules unleashed the black-silver lightning sphere.

Seana stepped forward to meet it.

BOOM!

The collision shattered the surrounding air. Crimson Qi and volatile lightning detonated in an expanding dome of destruction.

Seana slid backward across the stone, the friction scorching her soles as she drove the point of her sword into the floor to anchor her momentum.

Jules gave her no time to breathe.

SHING!

He blurred out of perception.

BOOM!

Jules materialized directly above her head, his palm descending like a falling thunderbolt!

Seana swept her blade overhead in a desperate parry.

CLANG!

The downward momentum drove her knee straight into the flagstones, fracturing the rock beneath her.

Jules looked down at her with dead, empty eyes. "Why are you resisting the inevitable?"

Seana’s gaze pierced through her mask like twin daggers. "Because you’re nothing more than a puppet on strings."

"Puppet?" Jules snarled. A thick strand of pure black lightning coiled around his bicep.

He didn’t even notice.

Seana did. So did Asher, whose knuckles whitened around Myriad Forge.

BOOM!

Jules’s fingers suddenly flashed in a sequence of ancient hand seals.

One seal. Two. Three.

The movements were frighteningly fluid, displaying a level of high-tier martial precision Jules had never possessed.

CRACK!

Three colossal pillars of silver-black lightning erupted from the floor, lunging toward Seana like caged beasts!

SWISH!

Her body dissolved into a crimson phantom.

The first pillar missed. The second sheared her sleeve. She planted her boot directly against the surface of the third pillar, using the roaring electrical conduit as a springboard to launch herself into the air!

Her dark sword cleaved downward in a blinding crescent.

SHING!

Jules raised an armored arm to meet the blow.

CLANG!

They locked weapons in mid-air, suspended by the violent clash of opposing auras. Crimson mist fought black lightning in an agonizing standstill.

Then, Jules smiled.

His free hand snapped another seal.

BOOM!

The lightning beneath their feet detonated.

The blast threw Seana backward. She spun in mid-air, planting both boots firmly against a towering stone pillar.

THUD!

Without losing a fraction of momentum, she kicked off the stone, shooting forward like a guided arrow!

A freezing wave of sword intent swept across the battlefield.

Asher’s eyes widened. "Her sword intent... it’s...!"

The Blood Moon Sword hummed a deafening song. Behind Seana, the crimson lotus burned brighter.

Jules raised both hands, his fingers dancing through an increasingly complex sequence of ancient Mudras.

One. Three. Five. Seven.

The lightning around him stopped scattering. It gathered tightly, wrapping around his torso and limbs like a writhing, scaly dragon.

RUMBLE!

The Ancient Palace responded to his technique. Ancient golden inscriptions manifested across the basalt walls, rotating like cosmic gears.

The entire environment began to shift.

KRRRRR...

Massive stone pillars erupted from the floor. Hundreds of floating basalt platforms detached and hovered in the air, tethered by glowing leylines of raw Spiritual Qi.

The chamber had restructured itself into an ancient Grand Combat Arena.

Jules looked around, a trace of shock flickering through his madness. "What is this place...?"

A rhythmic pulse vibrated through the stones.

THUMP.

The dragon of lightning around Jules’s chest roared. The foreign power inside him smoothed out, submitting entirely to his thoughts.

He clenched his fists, intoxicated. "So this is what the ruins were keeping from us..."

Seana landed lightly on a floating platform opposite him, her voice cutting through the hum: "You fool."

Jules glared at her.

"You still don’t understand," Seana said, raising her blade. "The palace hasn’t gifted you anything."

Crimson energy coalesced around her blade like liquid rubies.

"It is simply excavating the darkest rot inside your soul and weaponizing it against us."

Jules’s face darkened into a monstrous scowl. "Enough of your lectures!"

He vanished.

BOOM!

Seana parried behind her back without looking.

CLANG!

Jules reappeared above.

CLANG!

Below!

CLANG!

Left! Right! Front! Flank!

Their silhouettes blurred across the floating platforms like streaks of crimson fire and dark lightning. Every collision sent shockwaves rippling through the leylines.

Jules’s hand seals flowed continuously between strikes: Palm. Seal. Step. Thrust. Seal. Detonation.

It was no longer an unrefined brawl between modern awakened youths. It had elevated into a lethal dance of ancient, forgotten martial arts.

Yet Seana’s swordplay was pure flowing water. Every deflection borrowed Jules’s kinetic force; every pivot of her waist bled his momentum into the surrounding air before returning it with interest.

SHING!

Her blade slipped past his guard, slicing a shallow red line across his shoulder.

Blood welled.

Jules touched the wound, his manic smile returning.

Beneath his skin, a spiderweb of black, corrupted veins pulsed once before fading back into his flesh.

Seana’s breath caught. He’s losing his humanity.

Jules stepped back, crossing his fingers into a grand, forbidden seal.

The ambient lightning across the entire arena suddenly died.

The air turned dead, suffocatingly still.

Jules raised his joined hands toward the ceiling.

Behind his back, nine colossal, ancient lightning glyphs materialized out of thin air, rotating in a halo of dark celestial authority.

One. Two. Three... Nine.

The palace’s wall inscriptions locked directly into the nine glyphs, funneling pure subterranean power into his circle.

RUMBLE!

The arena groaned under the weight. Jules looked down at Seana, his eyes completely swallowed by pitch-black darkness.

"Let’s see if your sword can cut a god," Jules whispered.

The nine glyphs aligned.

The gathered lightning roared—and this time, there was no silver left.

It was a colossal, writhing dragon of pure, abyssal black lightning.

BOOM!

The dark dragon descended, opening its maw to consume the platform whole!

Seana did not retreat. She did not raise a barrier.

Instead, she slowly lowered the tip of her sword until it kissed the stone beneath her feet.

Her Crimson Blood Qi surged through her meridians, synchronizing with the very marrow of her bones.

THUMP.

A heartbeat echoed from her chest, drowning out the roar of the descending dragon.

THUMP.

The phantom crimson lotus behind her crystallized into solid, glowing light.

THUMP.

The tightly bound petals began to unfurl, revealing the crimson core within.

Asher stared in breathless awe, his eyes reflecting the crimson bloom.

"She’s evolving her technique... in the face of death."​