Chapter 146: Lady Jade Serpent Cruelty

Chapter 147: Lady Jade Serpent’s Cruelty

The battlefield was locked in a dead, suffocating freeze.

Lady Jade Serpent stood thirty paces beyond the defensive line, her high-collared emerald robes rustling softly in the tainted breeze. She looked almost fragile amid the mountain of rotting dire-wolf carcasses.

Almost.

Her translucent emerald eyes remained fixed on Roan Blackwood, tracking the faint, exhausted tremor in his fingers.

"So..." A faint, poisonous smile curved her lips. "How many more of those pathetic worms can you pry out before your precious core runs dry?"

Roan’s expression remained carved from dark granite, but his knuckles slowly tightened around the hilt-seal of the Aegis of the Unbroken.

General Vaelric stepped up, the superheated white Qi of his [Kinetic Command] flaring along his greaves. "Lock shields! Raise your spiritual wards!"

Lady Jade Serpent tilted her head, looking at the general as if amused by an insect attempting to build a dam against a tsunami.

"Prepare?"

A soft, mocking chuckle escaped her throat.

"You’ve already finished your preparations, little soldiers."

Her gaze drifted lazily toward the infected men thrashing in the mud behind the frontline.

"You simply haven’t realized that everything you’ve cultivated... everything you’ve hoarded..." Her smile thinned into an executioner’s edge. "...belongs to me now."

She lifted a single pale, manicured index finger.

HUMMMMM—!

A bead of pure emerald fire ignited above her fingertip. It didn’t burn with heat; it burned with ancient, concentrated toxicity.

With a languid flick of her wrist, the bead vanished into thin air.

The next microsecond—

BOOOOOOM!

A suffocating shockwave of emerald Qi detonated across the trench!

It did not target the Four Family Heads. It did not test the golden barrier. Instead, the toxic wave plunged directly into the eight infected soldiers writhing in the mud!

Their bodies violently seized.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Swollen black veins burst through their skin like tangled thorns. Their meridians were forcibly torn open, widening to three times their natural diameter as the foreign emerald energy flooded their foundations.

BOOM!

One infected conscript’s aura violently spiked from an unrefined, early-stage awakened to the equivalent of an elite squad commander!

Then another!

Then a third!

Estelle Argon’s wind-sheathed sleeves fluttered wildly, her silver eyes widening in horror. "She’s forcing the parasites to consume their life-force to artificially refine their cultivation!"

Lemo Drackar’s silver lightning hissed violently against his breastplate. "She isn’t commanding them. She’s using their living bodies as biological furnaces!"

Lady Jade Serpent smiled, resting her chin on her palm. "How clever of you to notice."

The transformed soldiers threw their heads back. Their irises had vanished entirely, replaced by solid, oily voids. Thick black scales coated their jaws and throats, and a suffocating bloodlust washed over the phalanx.

Then, they moved.

SHUU—!

The lead infected soldier vanished into a blur of raw kinetic speed.

Vaelric’s pupils contracted to pinpricks. "Too fast!"

BOOM!

The corrupted host materialized directly above the phalanx, descending with both hands clasped into a massive, scale-covered warhammer!

A colossal, pitch-black palm imprint slammed into the apex of the defensive dome!

KRAAAANG!

The white kinetic barrier shrieked under the impact, spiderweb fractures spreading across the dome.

Vaelric slammed his iron boots into the mud, his hands flashing through an emergency command Mudra:

"White Mountain Formation!"

WHOOM!

The subterranean leyline beneath the soldiers expanded in a blinding flash of white fire.

Two hundred surviving soldiers circulated their Spiritual Qi in perfect, agonizing synchronicity. Their spiritual pressure didn’t rise individually—it pooled into Vaelric’s central matrix, flowing through their shared meridians like a raging river.

Their breathing locked.

Their pulses synchronized.

The fractures across the barrier instantly sealed as two hundred minds reinforced the wall as a single, living organism.

Lemo Drackar stepped past the phalanx’s flank, his tolerance shattered.

KRRRZZZT!

Brilliant arcs of silver lightning coiled around his blade, screaming like a nest of disturbed hornets.

"Lightning Severing Art!"

He drew his steel in a blinding horizontal sweep!

SHIIIIING!

A crescent of jagged silver lightning, thirty meters wide, cleaved through the air, striking three charging infected soldiers dead-center!

The impact blasted them backward through the mud, their chests torn open and charred black. Yet, before their boots even stopped skidding, the writhing parasites inside their ribs hissed, greedily drinking the ambient miasma from the air.

SPLAT-CRACK.

The charred flesh knitted back together with sickening speed, fibrous black tendons stitching the muscle closed in seconds.

Lemo’s jaw clenched, his eyes dark with disgust. "Disgusting vermin."

Estelle glided forward, her silken robes riding the rising updrafts. "Do not try to destroy their flesh! Restrict their spatial coordinates!"

Her slender fingers danced through nine complex seals.

"Ninefold Gale Prison!"

WHOOM!

Nine colossal tornadoes of pressurized Wind Qi erupted from the bedrock, encircling four of the charging husks. The gales didn’t simply blow outward—they rotated in alternating directions, compressing the atmospheric pressure within the eye of the storm until the sound barrier broke.

Trapped within the vacuum, the infected soldiers’ limbs were pinned by atmospheric weight, unable to take a single step forward.

"Roan, seal them!" Estelle shouted.

Roan Blackwood stepped up, his golden Metal Qi detonating off his frame like a furnace.

High above, the sheathed greatsword—the Aegis of the Unbroken—hummed with ancient, sovereign intent.

Roan locked his hands into a triple-point seal:

"Golden Sword Suppression!"

BOOOOOOM!

Nine massive, translucent golden pillars shaped like sheathed broadswords plummeted from the clouds, driving deep into the earth around Estelle’s wind prisons!

Interlocking golden chains snapped into existence between the pillars, forming a hexagonal suppression array that drove the thrashing hosts to their knees.

The parasites shrieked, their black tendrils writhing against the golden runes, unable to breach the metal intent.

Lady Jade Serpent watched the coordinated defense from atop her pile of corpses, her expression unruffled.

Slowly, she extended her right sleeve.

A single, emerald serpent slithered from the silk cuff. It was barely the thickness of a human finger, translucent as polished jade, yet the instant its scales met the open air—

The ambient atmospheric pressure in the valley plunged.

Lemo’s lightning flickered, his instincts flaring with alarm. "Roan! Watch the array!"

SHUU—!

The tiny jade serpent blurred out of existence, crossing two hundred meters in a fraction of a heartbeat!

It struck the central golden suppression pillar.

CRACK!

The massive, ten-ton pillar of condensed Metal Qi shattered into golden dust on contact!

Roan’s pupils contracted in disbelief. "A single strike pierced the focal point?!"

Lady Jade Serpent smiled lazily, flicking her wrist. "Your crude array carries seventeen structural flaws. Did you truly believe a hastily erected fence could hold back an ancient craft?"

Her slender fingers twitched.

The single jade serpent divided into nine identical phantoms mid-flight!

SHUU! SHUU! SHUU!

The serpents struck nine separate energetic nodes along the perimeter with microscopic, surgical precision!

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

The entire Golden Sword Suppression collapsed into harmless, drifting sparks. The imprisoned hosts broke free, roaring with renewed fury!

Roan didn’t hesitate. He bit into his thumb, smearing a line of fresh blood across his palms as he forced his exhausted dantian to roar:

"Golden Heaven Sword Formation!"

BOOOOOOM!

The sheathed greatsword in the sky erupted with blinding, celestial radiance!

Hundreds of radiant, golden sword-shadows materialized across the cloud layer, blanketing the sky in an iron canopy of lethal intent. Every blade pointed downward, aimed directly at Lady Jade Serpent.

Lady Jade Serpent looked up at the sky, her golden slit pupils widening with genuine, predatory amusement.

"Now," she purred softly, "that is slightly more respectable."

Roan brought his bloody palm down with crushing force:

"Fall!"

BOOOOOOM!

The heavens collapsed. Hundreds of multi-ton golden blades rained down in a synchronized, apocalyptic bombardment!

Lady Jade Serpent did not dodge. She did not raise a shield.

She took a single, elegant step forward into the mud.

"Emerald Serpent Domain."

WHOOM!

A suffocating, jade-green mist exploded from her frame, expanding in an outward ring that swallowed half the valley within seconds!

Within the toxic haze, the spectral silhouettes of gargantuan, primeval vipers slithered through the air, their scales grinding with the sound of tectonic plates.

The golden sword-shadows plunged into the emerald mist.

Then—they stalled.

The moment the blades entered the domain, their golden luster tarnished. A foul, acidic green rot ate through the edges of the metal intent, corroding the spiritual signatures down to the root!

Roan gasped, blood welling in his throat as the connection to his soul technique was poisoned. "She isn’t just shielding against the attacks... her domain is digesting the Qi within the techniques themselves!"

"Fall back!" Vaelric bellowed. "Nobody breathe the mist! The air itself is alive!"