Chapter 619: Malevolence

Blade rushed forth like a meteor of death, the earth splitting below his feet as it failed to withstand the calamitous force of his Transcendent might. Jing Yuan stood stoically despite the instantaneous shift from conversation to conflict, and Dan Heng’s pupils turned into pinpricks at the sudden outburst of violence.

He should have known this lunatic would try something!

Jingliu, the supposed target of Blade’s wrath, stood in utmost silence, chilling the very air around her. Not literally, of course, but rather... it was just the kind of presence she exuded. As if she was not apart of a world that functioned off heat. An outlier.

The metaphorical nature of this fact changed a moment later.

What felt like a drop in temperature quickly became such. Then—

She vanished.

And a shockwave struck Dan Heng with enough force to push him back, heels carving a path into Scalegorge Waterscape’s earth. His breath hitched at the sight before him.

There stood Jingliu, lips pursed upon her unreadable expression, eyes concealed by a blindfold marked by a crescent moon. Her ethereal features were marred by a beautiful splatter of crimson liquid on her cheek — blood. As Dan Heng’s gaze lowered, he followed the path of her bicep, leading to her bent elbow joint. Finally, his veridian eyes landed on the object clutched in her hand.

Dexterous fingers were folded around a glorious crystalline handle. The moonlight gracing the world from above reflected off of the glass-like longsword, casting it in an airy radiance.

That radiance was heretically stained by gore. Jingliu’s blade, which she had somehow cast into the world in moments so miniscule that Dan Heng hadn’t been able to witness its summoning, was buried in Blade’s chest, almost down to the hilt. The deadly weapon must have struck his heart, and managed to sever his spine as it pierced through his back.

Blade’s shattered sword was still mid-swing, his face frozen in an expression of gleeful agony and murderous delight as he gazed down upon Jingliu’s sublime figure.

She twisted her blade, then spoke in a cold tone:

"Very well. I will satisfy your bloodlust, then, Yingxing. For old times sake."

She ripped her blade out, cleanly slicing through his left pectoral with such precision that the cut would have been imperceivable if there wasn’t bloody rivers trickling down Blade’s torso.

As the Stellaron Hunter stumbled back, clutching his chest with a vicious glint in his eyes, she continued.

"But I will not kill you, for that is not within my means. And you will not kill me, for you lack the strength to do so."

With a graceful flicker of her weapon, an arc of blood painted a gruesome, yet elegant work of art upon the Waterscape.

Blade snarled as the Mara contained within him swiftly worked to stitch himself together. Unlike when Dan Heng had fought him, there wasn’t a surge of madness or malice... well, there was, but it was controlled and focused, restrained by Blade’s own Will, and perhaps something more.

The man grunted in acknowledgement. Then, with a roll of his shoulders, he stomped on the ground.

The sheer might of his step caused a seismic quake to course through the ground.

...Something else was traveling through the earth, as well.

A primal, malevolent force suddenly spread throughout Scalegorge Waterscape. Instinctively, Dan Heng drew a shuddering breath as his body locked up. What was this feeling, he did not know.

It was an Aspect Ability, however. Blade’s, naturally.

He couldn’t remember him using such a thing during their last battle. Now, however, each step Blade took as he approached Jingliu shook the very foundations of the world in a way that reminded Dan Heng of the massive form of the twelve-armed demon blacksmith, three faces resting atop its shoulders.

The Stellaron Hunter held his weapon — a sword made of dozens of shattered shards — out to his side, parallel to the ground he walked. Jingliu swayed her head from side-to-side, perhaps cracking it as she bounced on the balls of her feet.

The playful nature of her movements suddenly came to a halt, however.

Because she was no longer there.

In a prodigious surge of instinct, or perhaps a refusal to fall for the same trick twice, Blade managed to parry the executioner’s blade that threatened to sever his head from the rest of his body. The air split in twain—

And so did the pillar of stone a hundred meters away. The top half slid off the bottom half, crashing into the ground below before crumbling into rubble and dust.

Unperturbed, Jingliu’s blade glinted unnaturally... and in a span of time too small to measure, she was already upon Blade. The swordswoman’s pristine longsword crashed down against the shambled structure of Blade’s jian.

Again. Again. Again.

Their clash seemed to be unable to decide; was it a choir or a cacophony? Harmonious or disordered? Perfect or chaotic?

In the end, it had to be both.

Two blurs of movement zipped around Scalegorge Waterscape, engraving the land with sword scars as if to remind the world of what transpired on this earth. Flawless precision pushed to the pinnacle of absolution danced against the raving wrath of a vicious slaughter.

Blade was like a meteor of carnage, gruesome wounds littered all across his body as his clothes were beginning to be torn to shreds. His arm was removed, but had stitched itself back to his body.

Despite the pain, despite the agony, despite the torture and gore, he continued to laugh.

As if he was finally feeling alive.

Jingliu was like a flower floating in the wind, unmarred by the cruelties of the world. She saw no evil, her blade curving wherever it guided her. While Blade was like a savage, wildly swinging his scarred weapon with bestial intelligence, Jingliu was folding the principles of the blade over itself.

There was nothing unique about the way she thrust through Blade’s guard. Nothing spectacular about how she swung downward.

Despite the basic nature of it all, there was something so cold and utterly domineering about her movements. Blade himself would have died a hundred times over if he wasn’t Cursed by Mara.

Dan Heng couldn’t quite figure out her secrets. He felt like there was something he was missing. Instead, he pushed his concerns into two directions.

The first was to stay alive.

The second was to figure out their Aspects.

The former was self-explanatory. The latter, however, was a puzzle he needed to solve. After all, Blade wanted to kill him, and Jingliu could definitely kill Dan Heng. It was completely normal to figure out the best means to run away, should he need to.

...What? Did anyone expect Dan Heng to actually put up a decent fight?

But... he just didn’t quite get what they were doing. How subtle could their Aspect Abilities possibly be, for him to be unable to sense anything besides the presence washing over everything, courtesy of Blade? Dan Feng’s ghost wasn’t much help, but at least it was guiding him away from what was wrong.

Dan Heng knew of Blade’s Transcendent Ability. But which was this? As for Jingliu, was that literal teleportation he saw earlier, or was his perception too slow? Perhaps it was a speed-based Ability.

Jingliu twisted Blade’s jian to the side, spinning on her heel with finesse as she kicked out at his face, jamming her heel right in his eye and blasting him back. He bounced against stone and dirt and displaced grass, like a rock thrown across a lake. Dan Heng, for some odd reason, found himself pleased by the sight.

As he moved, the malevolent aura moved with him, and once the boundary crossed over Jingliu, Dan Heng thought he noticed the woman wipe a thin bead of sweat from her face.

She let out a soft exhale.

"You know what comes next."

Blade pushed himself up with his sword, eye reforming back into its socket. His violent glare pierced up at Jingliu for a few moments. Then...

His vision doubled.