Chapter 152: Beaten Black and Blue

Chapter 153: Beaten Black and Blue

The Siphoning Array roared, consuming everything in its path.

Lothe stood at the edge of the formation, his hands steady, his eyes locked on the glowing runes. He could feel the sheer volume of energy being stripped from Qing Lian’s meridians and funneled directly into the subterranean conduits below.

The Core above them pulsed with a desperate, frantic rhythm.

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.

It was starving. It didn’t care about faction loyalty, ancient masters, or who ruled the palace. It only cared about raw, concentrated fuel. And right now, the densest pool of Qi in the room belonged entirely to the Veyra Commander.

Qing Lian struggled against the gravitational pull of the array, her emerald Qi violently tearing at the edges of the light. "You insolent native dog!" she shrieked, snapping her silver fan open.

Dozens of spectral green serpents erupted around her, lunging toward the formation. But the moment they touched the runic boundary, they dissolved into raw, formless streams of energy, swallowed whole by the trap.

Lothe’s vision swam. Maintaining a high-tier array of this magnitude required a staggering amount of mental focus and Soul Energy. His meridians burned, and a thin line of blood trickled from his nostril.

Just a little longer, Lothe thought, his teeth clenched tight.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, a movement caught his attention.

Jules.

Or rather, the ancient entity inhabiting his flesh. He had been watching the extraction process with an amused, detached smile the entire time.

"I really admire you, Array Master," the Being murmured, his voice rattling the stones. "To discover such a loop... and manipulate it so cleanly."

Lothe’s pupils narrowed.

"It shows how dangerous you are," the Being continued, stepping forward. "But you forgot one fundamental truth."

He raised a single hand, his crimson eyes glowing with ancient light. "This palace... is much deeper than you think."

A wave of suffocating, black-tinged Qi rippled outward from his palm, flooding into the walls, the conduits, and the runic circuits.

"The formations, the walls, the conduits, the Core..." The Being smiled, an expression almost affectionate. "Everything was refined straight out of my own bones."

Lothe’s face drained of color. Shit.

The Being’s hands moved in a blur of complex, forgotten seals. Black lightning gathered at his fingertips, and with a sharp, casual flick, he redirected the terrifying energy straight into the center of the Siphoning Array.

"Take it back."

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The black energy slammed into the runic matrix. For one single heartbeat, the array held.

Then—

CRAAAAAAAACK!

The entire formation fractured. Crimson-gold light exploded into a million shards as the array shattered under its creator’s will.

The kinetic backlash was immediate.

Qing Lian was hurled backward like a broken doll, smashing violently into the stone wall.

CRASH!

Lothe was caught in the shockwave. The explosion spun him through the air, but his tactical reflexes didn’t fail. He twisted his body, caught the momentum, and triggered a rapid escape.

[Void Step!]

WHOOSH!

A spatial anchor formed beneath him, and he reappeared ten meters away, landing smoothly on his boots.

He raised his head.

Qing Lian was already climbing out of the crater in the wall. Her silver fan hung loosely from her fingers, her emerald robes were shredded, and a thin line of blood ran down her chin.

Her playful arrogance was entirely gone. Her eyes were pools of pure, murderous intent.

"You..." her voice dropped into a terrifying, dead silence. "You dared to siphon my Qi."

She took a step forward.

And then, her true power unleashed.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The entire Core chamber groaned. The stone floor beneath them buckled.

The spiritual pressure rolling off Qing Lian wasn’t Core Formation—it was heavier, denser, and infinitely more profound. It carried the crushing weight of a soul that had broken past mortal limitations and touched the spiritual heavens.

Professor Sy gasped, his knees buckling. "Nascent Soul..."

Nyren’s breath hitched, and Adrian’s floating metallic spheres rattled uncontrollably under the sudden gravity.

Lothe stared at her, his heart skipping a beat. She was suppressing her cultivation the entire time.

Qing Lian raised her silver fan, the metal glowing with blinding, sovereign light. "You have been fighting the restrained version of me."

Her slitted eyes locked onto his. "Now... I’ll show you the real difference."

FWOOSH!

Emerald Qi exploded outward. Qing Lian vanished from sight.

Lothe’s [Spatial Perception] screamed a warning.

Behind him!

He spun around, his Void Spear flashing into a defensive wall.

CLANG!

The spear collided with the silver fan. The resulting shockwave tore across the room.

BOOOOOOM!

Lothe’s arms went numb, the kinetic force driving his boots deep into the stone. Qing Lian twisted her wrist with effortless grace, sliding the edge of her fan toward his throat.

Lothe bent backward in a desperate dodge, a thin line of red appearing across his skin as the blade grazed his neck.

He retaliated instantly.

[Void Spear Art — First Form: Rift Thrust!]

SHING!

A piercing black spearhead lunged toward her abdomen. Qing Lian shifted half an inch to the left, letting the spear pass by her shoulder before driving her palm into his ribs.

BOOM!

Lothe was thrown across the room, twisting in midair to trigger a [Void Step] just before crashing into a pillar.

He reappeared, but Qing Lian was already waiting for him.

CLANG! Fan and spear.

CLANG! Fan and spear.

The speed of their exchange became a blur of black spatial blades and blinding emerald arcs. Every time Lothe tried to create distance, Qing Lian closed the gap with absolute, suffocating dominion.

[Void Spear Art — Second Form: Spatial Drill!]

A black spatial blade erupted from his spear, slashing toward her head.

Qing Lian didn’t even blink. She raised her silver fan, meeting the spatial blade head-on.

BOOM!

The emerald Qi crushed the spatial edge into nothingness.

Lothe’s breathing turned ragged. He knew he couldn’t win a war of attrition against a Nascent Soul expert. But as the fight wore on, a cold, calculated gleam appeared in his purple eyes.

He wasn’t trying to overpower her. He was waiting for the Core’s next pulse.

THUMP.

The Being on the other hand ignored them both.

He walked past the combatants as if they were ghosts, stopping directly before the colossal silver-black Heart.

His expression softened into a strange, cold nostalgia.

"Even this..." he whispered, raising two fingers toward the pulsating organ, "...belongs to me."

He pressed his fingers against his own forehead. A tiny wisp of deep, abyssal black Qi peeled away from his mind, drifting forward like a living shadow until it sank deep into the silver-black Core.

Silence fell over the room for one heartbeat. Two heartbeat.

Then—

THUMP!

The Heart detonated with a thunderous pulse.

CRAAAAACK!

A web of bright silver-black fractures split the surface of the organ. Instead of releasing energy outward, the Core inverted its polarity.

A tidal wave of primordial energy rushed backward, slamming directly into the Being’s chest!

BOOOOOOM!

The force shook the foundations of the mountain. Black Qi flooded through Jules’s meridians, and a blinding crown of crimson light wrapped around his frame.

The Ancient Palace began to die.

KRRRRRRRRR—

The Being threw his head back and laughed—a sound that echoed with apocalyptic thunder across every sector of the ruins:

"Hahahahahahahahaha!"

"Ang Lie really is a schemer," the Being sneered, his crimson eyes blazing with unbridled malice. "To wake me fully... he needed an enormous amount of Origin fragments."

His smile stretched wider, reaching a terrifying, inhuman width.

"And what better place to harvest them... than the modern civilization that swallowed them?"

BOOOOOOOOOOM!

The silver-black Heart shattered completely, sending a trillion glowing fragments screaming into the atmosphere.​