Chapter 89: Clash with Situ Li II

Chapter 89: Clash with Situ Li II

Lothe’s [Void Spear] drove toward Situ Li’s ribs from the left!

Seana’s [Blood Moon Sword] cleaved toward his neck from the right!

BOOOOOOM!!

Qing Lian’s emerald eyes went wide. Simultaneous pincer?!

Situ Li’s arrogant sneer finally cracked into panic. He violently crossed his wrists.

WHOOSH!

The twin crescent blades snapped back to his center, interlocking into an impenetrable steel ’X’ just inches from his skin!

CLANGGGGGGGG!!

The resulting detonation sent Lothe skidding backward, his arms throbbing with dull pain. Seana was pushed back several meters, her breath catching as the concussive force rattled her meridians.

Situ Li remained standing in place.

Not a single scratch marred his grey robes.

Qing Lian slowly lowered her silver fan, her eyes devoid of mockery, replaced entirely by cold disbelief.

Foundation Establishment juniors had just forced a Nascent Soul Cultivator to assume a full defensive stance. If these news reach thier master, such a thing was an unforgivable disgrace!

Situ Li lowered his weapons. His eyes burned with murderous fury.

"Not bad," he hissed, his voice trembling with humiliated rage. "You’ve had your fun, children."

BOOOOOOM!!

A terrifying, suffocating Nascent Soul spiritual domain erupted from his body! The trees within fifty meters groaned and shattered under the raw atmospheric pressure. The ground beneath their boots fractured like dry clay.

Lothe’s expression became dead serious.

We can’t win.

He didn’t need [Inspect] to state the obvious. The gap between Foundation Establishment and Nascent Soul was too immense. They could deflect his techniques through precision and spatial arts, but if this lunatic unleashed his true domain, they would be obliterated in seconds.

Lothe met Seana’s eyes.

She met his.

No words were spoken. Their battle instincts, honed through blood and survival, reached an instantaneous consensus:

Flee.

From that exact second, the tempo of the fight inverted.

Lothe and Seana ceased attempting offensive strikes. They danced.

Left. Right. Retreating in sweeping, calculated arcs.

Situ Li’s crescent blades roared through the trees like scythes of death, gouging the earth, pulverizing boulders, and chasing them relentlessly.

CLANG! BOOM! SHING!

The forest flashed with bursts of violent violet and crimson light. Every strike was parried at the absolute razor’s edge of survival.

Lothe deliberately bounded toward specific clearing markers.

Seana trailed close behind, her sword strikes drawing the trajectory of the crescent blades toward exact coordinates.

Neither Situ Li nor Qing Lian noticed that with every step, the two humans were herding Situ Li toward a singular patch of barren earth.

Finally, Situ Li snapped.

CLANG.

He recalled the crescent blades to his sides, planting his boots firmly on the dirt.

"Enough running!" his voice roared through the canopy, dripping with absolute malice. "Kneel and accept your deaths!"

Silence returned to the torn clearing.

Lothe and Seana stood ten paces away, side by side.

Lothe looked at Seana. She looked back at him.

And then—they both smiled.

Situ Li’s brow furrowed. An inexplicable, freezing chill crawled up his spine.

A premonition of death?! From two mortals?!

"What are you—"

Before he could finish, Lothe slipped his left arm around Seana’s waist, pulling her flush against his chest.

Void Qi flared violently around them.

Lothe raised his right hand, his fingers snapping with crisp arrogance.

"Too late, idiot."

HUMMMMMMMMM!!

The ground beneath Situ Li’s boots exploded into blinding, violet radiance!

One rune. Five runes. Twenty runes!

In the blink of an eye, an intricate, multi-layered Array illuminated the clearing floor!

Situ Li’s eyes bulged in horror. "What is this?!"

The formation locked onto his meridians with terrifying suction!

QI-LOCKING ARRAY!

Heavy, ethereal purple chains forged from pure Void Qi erupted from the ground, wrapping around Situ Li’s limbs and pinning his core in place!

Panicked, Situ Li swung one of his crescent blades down to sever the runic matrix.

The moment the blade struck the array lines—

SHIIIIING!!

Dozens of razor-sharp, translucent Spatial Blades detonated from the formation floor!

"WHAT?!"

The Spatial Blades tore through the air from every direction! Situ Li swung his crescent blades in a desperate frenzy.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

He deflected three. He deflected ten. But there were hundreds!

Worse, the blades carried an ancient, alien energy—the exact structural properties of the Convergence and Compression runes Lothe had deciphered in the trial!

What kind of cursed array is this?! Situ Li’s mind screamed. Where did he find the time to place this?!

Then, horrifying realization struck him like lightning.

The retreats. The erratic dodging. The deliberate parries.

The entire battle had been an elaborate stage, set solely to lure him into this exact runic trap!

"YOU BASTARDS—!"

WHOOSH!

Lothe’s [Void Step] engaged. With Seana secured in his arms, the two vanished into thin air, their aura completely erased from the forest.

Situ Li screamed in blind fury. "STOP!!"

There was no reply. Only the screeching array tearing into his flesh.

Watching from the side, Qing Lian’s expression warped from shock into cold fury.

They played him like a fiddle!

She had severely underestimated them especially the one who created the array—the boy.

Seeing dozens of spatial blades converging on Situ Li’s exposed throat, Qing Lian stepped in. Her emerald silk robes fluttered as she thrust her palm forward, unleashing a tidal wave of poisonous green Qi!

"Break!" she barked.

BOOOOOOM!!

The emerald energy slammed into the formation.

Yet the moment her Qi made contact, Qing Lian’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.

"Wait—no!"

HUM!

A hidden Rune flared at the array’s core.

Instead of shattering the formation, the array swallowed Qing Lian’s high-tier Nascent Soul Qi whole! Through the internal Compression and Refinement circuits, it converted her own energy into fuel!

BOOOOOOOOOOM!!

The trap erupted with double the destructive force!

Situ Li turned white as a corpse. "COMMANDER, NO—!"

The reinforced Spatial Blades multiplied exponentially!

SHING! SHING! SHING!

They shredded through his defensive Qi, slicing his grey robes to ribbons!

Blood sprayed across the clearing. A spatial blade gouged a deep trench into his shoulder; another pierced clean through his left thigh; three more carved across his chest!

"Hmph!" Qing Lian snorted, clapping her hands together.

BOOM!

An emerald energy dome materialized around herself and the thirty members of the Emerald Venom Corps. The violent shockwave still threw the squad backward, several disciples crying out as they tumbled into the dirt.

Even Qing Lian was forced three paces back, the wind knocked out of her.

She stared at the self-sustaining formation in utter disbelief.

It absorbed my Qi... and weaponized it against me!

What ancient monster created this array architecture?!

Inside the meat grinder, Situ Li was screaming, his crescent blades barely keeping the spatial blades from taking his head.

Qing Lian’s face twisted into pure, murderous rage.

She had been made a fool of. By a mortal. A human insect!

"Destroy, you wretched construct!"

Her ornate silver fan flew from her grasp, soaring high into the sky.

WHOOSH!

Qing Lian formed three blinding hand seals.

CLANG!

The silver fan split into two identical twin fans, spinning around each other at supersonic speed, condensing a blinding sphere of toxic emerald light!

"Scatter!"

SHIIIIING!!

A torrential rain of thousands of toxic emerald needles plummeted from the sky like a localized storm!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The relentless barrage overwhelmed the array’s intake capacity. Runes cracked. Spatial blades dissolved. The overloaded formation groaned under the sheer brute-force bombardment.

CRAAAACK!!

The array finally shattered into fading violet dust.

THUD.

Situ Li collapsed onto one knee, coughing up mouthfuls of dark blood, his robes soaked crimson, his breath coming in ragged wheezes.

Qing Lian beckoned with her finger. The twin silver fans merged back into one, landing gracefully in her pale hand.

She flicked a small jade medicine bottle toward Situ Li.

"Consume the pill. Heal your wounds," she commanded, her voice chilled to absolute zero.

Situ Li caught the bottle with trembling, bloody fingers. "Disciple... apologizes for his failure..."

Qing Lian slowly unfolded her silver fan, her gaze piercing into the distant forest where Lothe and Seana had vanished.

Her black eyes burned with an icy, promise of slaughter.

"Save your apologies," she murmured coldly. "We have the Ancient Palace to seize. Let the ants run for now."

She snapped the fan shut with a sharp CLACK.

"When the blood offering is complete... I will skin that boy alive with my own hands."​