Chapter 620: Dopplegänger

With a flourish of her arm, energy spiked around Jingliu’s form as she used her Soul Essence to activate an Aspect Ability. Blue ether flowed from her side, coalescing a few feet away from her position.

Blade did not hesitate. Pushing off the ground, he streaked into a blur as he lunged at the point the energy was converging. The sword in his hand shattered into myriad shards as a red mist flowed between the scattered fragments.

Raising the Shard Sword, the crimson fog condensed back into place, forming a false blade of pure energy that replaced the broken steel. The sword crashed down with lethal accuracy, and Dan Heng managed to have the foresight to brace himself as he raised his arms—

A catastrophic impact crashed against the fabrics making up reality, the mere shockwaves from the point of contact forcing Dan Heng to take miniscule amounts of damage.

Whatever Blade had been trying to stop... there was no way it survived that attack, right?

’...The impact was stronger than last time.’

That was odd. The Shard Sword hadn’t been that powerful when Dan Heng had fought him...

A cloud of dust settled over the world, and after a moment, Jing Yuan sighed.

"He was just a moment too late. Jingliu had already accounted for the time it would take for her Dopplegänger to form. If Blade had been quicker, it would have been his victory, but now..."

A dry smile appeared on the scarred General’s mangled face.

As the cloud of debris cleared, Dan Heng’s eyes narrowed in confusion.

Blade was just standing there, sword perpetually raised — and restored back into its usual state — inches away from Jingliu’s face.

...No, not Jingliu.

Rather, it was a perfect recreation of her. A figure that blurred between a physical, crystalline body, and a metaphysical, ethereal one. It was an exact copy, clothed in the same dress, wearing the same face, carrying the same longsword...

But, not too far away, was the real flesh and blood Jingliu.

’A clone?’

Then, in a perplexing moment, Dan Heng could have sworn he saw red lines cross over Blade’s body. As soon as he noticed them, however, they disappeared.

The Stellaron Hunter, who had been frozen still for a long moment, suddenly breathed.

Jingliu breathed, too.

And with that breath, both her and her clone moved forth at breathtaking speeds — if Dan Heng was right about teleportation, then it wasn’t even speed that carried them. He didn’t see the travel from one point to another, but the disappearance and reappearance of a conceptual existence. A thought that refused to linger, but always returned with startling clarity.

Blade’s gaze was instantly cleared from any uncertainty, his sword meeting Jingliu’s with ferocious intensity, turning his body in a way so her Dopplegänger merely sheared away some flesh from his back.

That one moment, that small change to Blade’s stance...

Was all it took for this to turn from battle to slaughter.

Jingliu’s sword slid along Blade’s, escaping their lock as she crouched low. Peculiarly, her Dopplegänger followed, perfectly replicating her movements. Their mirrored swords lashed out at the exact same time.

They sliced through Blade’s torso like butter, shredding the Transcendent armor covering his form — that fortunately seemed capable of restitching itself, though, the cost to do so was unknown. A crimson ’X’ was precisely carved from abdomen to chest, in a time-frame so small that his blood didn’t even have the chance to escape his body.

With an elegant twirl, Jingliu and her clone spun around, one clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, before unleashing a devastating horizontal cleave that cleanly bisected Blade.

But Jingliu did not relent.

Before his body could fully separate into diced pieces, she and her copy moved again.

First, it was the arms. In a blur of motion, they separated them from the shoulders, and in a particularly petty act, swiftly shredded those arms into ribbons. Or... they would be ribbons, after the instant passed.

They went for the legs, next, extending the same courtesy. With a thrust, they pierced both lung sacs, ripping their swords out as if they were pulling the air with them. Then, decapitation. Jingliu’s sword bounced off that of her double.

The lower jaw was quickly separated from the rest of the head. The eyes were skewered, and, penetrating the skull, Blade would officially be brain-dead for the next few seconds after their flurry of attacks ended.

Finally, Jingliu and the Dopplegänger ended it with a vertical, downwards slash. Their swords cut at the same time, only a few centimeters from each other, so rather than splitting Blade into two halves—

Time resumed. All of it was witnessed by Jing Yuan alone, who was able to perceive instants. Dan Heng remained none the wiser...

Until what happened next.

Blade’s limbs exploded into minced meat and a bloody haze. His torso slid apart like a Jenga tower collapsing into pieces. Two streams of blood spurted out from his pectorals, and another pair from his eye sockets, the end of them on the back of his head.

His neck fell off his body. His jaw fell off his neck. And the rest of his skull fell off his jaw.

That same skull split into three segments. The left side, the right side, and a tiny strip of flesh, bone, and ravaged brain matter right down the middle of both.

Blade’s remains rested in a pool of his own blood.

Dan Heng blanched at the gruesome sight of gore and innards. What the Spell was that?!

Jingliu stepped back a few times, her clone replicating her motions with her. It continued to do so as she wiped her sword... of nothing.

There was not a single speck of blood on it. Nothing to prove that she had just partaken in this... overwhelming massacre.

Then, as if the world was undoing its mistake, Blade’s blood moved on its own. It reentered his dismembered corpse. That very same corpse reconnected through the moving threads of liquid life. His head was put back together, his torso reassembled, the minced specks of his limbs restoring...

Laying on the ground was Blade, no sign of carnage around him. He woke with a startled gasp, but quickly composed himself into stoic madness as he stood back on his feet. He glared at Jingliu for a moment, before turning to pick up his weapon, which laid discarded.

Dan Heng held his breath, waiting for them to move again. To kill each other once more.

Jingliu moved first—

...Her Dopplegänger dispersed back into her body as she shifted her blindfold around. Her longsword shattered into icy mist, receding into her palm.

"Of five, three must pay the price."

Her voice was like a cold bucket of water, bringing along with it a violent ringing in Dan Heng’s skull.

"Imbibitor Lunae, the chief culprit, chose to use the Transmutation Arcanum as a means of resurrection, begetting terrible transformation and great calamity in the process. He dishonored the name of the fallen."

A heartbeat.

"Yingxing, the accomplice, arrogant and oblivious, used the flesh of the Abundance Emanator to assist Imbibitor Lunae in his evil. He fell, becoming an immortal abomination."

A heart...

"As for Jingliu, the sinner... She succumbed to Mara, slaughtered her people, and abandoned her oath."

A heartBEAT—

"Dan Heng."

The call of his name forced him to release a shuddering breath, his mind pulled out of whatever depths it found itself in.

Jingliu was gazing directly at him.

"You can never escape the shadow of Imbibitor Lunae. He is your origin, and his sins will accompany you in your path forward until you meet your eventual doom."

Her words felt like a faint win brushing against his hair, so subtle that whether he noticed them or not, nothing would change.

Notice them he did.

She pointed herself to Blade.

"Blade... What a fitting name. In the remainder of your infinite life, you will experience only murder and your own death, all the while pleading for a place to rest. This is the only way you are able to relinquish Yingxing’s regrets."

Blade grunted, uncaring of her words as he sat on a slab of rubble, eyes closed and sword crossed over his lap.

Then, finally, she uttered:

"And I... will face the punishment of the Alliance and suffer an eternal punishment... before paying an even worse price..."

She grinned.

"Seems interesting, does it not?"