Chapter 83: The Ethereal Storm

Velista’s jaw tightened, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides as a murderous glare locked onto the blue-haired woman.

"You miserable bitch..." Velista hissed, her voice dripping with venomous rage as she spat out the name. "Qing Su!"

High above the battlefield, Qing Su shifted her cold, unbothered gaze down toward Velista, her expression remaining completely stoic as the wind blew her violet dress against the sky.

"Who is that woman...?" Ren murmured under his breath, his dark eyes wide with unscripted astonishment as he took in her majestic, floating silhouette. Even amidst the dust and stench of spilled blood, the woman radiated an aura of pure, untouchable grace.

Beside them, the Titan Apex Aberrant threw back its colossal head, unleashing an infuriated roar as its second rock barrage was obliterated into harmless dust mid-air.

"GRAAAAAHHH! Dammit!" the titan screamed, its four eyes blazing with feral fury as it stomped its massive heel into the shattered granite beneath its feet.

Velista stood tall, letting out a sharp, cold laugh that echoed over the din of the battlefield. "Tsk! You absolute slut... I never thought you’d finally crawl out of hiding, Qing Su!"

Below her, thousands of Aethelgard warhorses thundered across the open plain, their hooves churning the soil into a cloud of dust. High above them, Qing Su hovered like an immortal divine, her index and middle fingers held together in a silent, static sword sign.

Seeing the massive tide of enemy cavalry closing in on her position, Velista snapped her boots against the earth. She raised her pale arms from her sides, sweeping them upward in a violent, crescent arc.

"Awaken, my Aberrants!" Velista commanded, her voice vibrating with dark magic.

The ground beneath the charging cavalry suddenly ruptured. Spreading across the entire expanse of the green field like a fast-acting poison, hundreds of glowing purple corruption spots bubbled up through the grass.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Explosions of dark violet light erupted from the earth as B-rank Aberrants—ghastly, two-meter-tall biological monstrosities with razor-sharp bone scythes, jagged mandibles, and chitinous armor—burst from the underground in droves. Within seconds, an entire legion of darkness arrayed itself across the plain, forming a dense, snarling wall of fangs and claws directly in the path of the Aethelgard vanguard. Monstrous shrieks and guttural hisses filled the air, a nightmare army rising to consume the charging knights.

Standing a few paces behind Velista, Ren gasped, dragging his battered body upward as he took in the sheer scale of the spatial summoning.

"Damn it... how did the situation spin out of control this fast?" Ren muttered, his chest heaving with ragged breaths as he clutched his fractured ribs.

The sight before him was the absolute embodiment of an apocalyptic war—humanity’s last elite vanguard riding headfirst into a sprawling horde of darkness, backed by an eighteen-meter biological titan that towered over the entire landscape like a fortress of death.

Just as the lead ranks of the Aethelgard cavalry were about to collide with the newly summoned Aberrants...

High in the sky, Qing Su’s eyes opened. With absolute, practiced fluidity, she flicked her two extended fingers to the left, then to the right, before thrusting her hand directly down toward the wall of monsters below.

What followed was a display of absolute, overwhelming destruction.

As a supreme master of the **Ethereal Ascension Realm**, Qing Su operated on a level that transcended standard elemental magic. Her cultivation allowed her to manipulate the planet’s raw, environmental Qi, converting the surrounding atmospheric energy into an endless blade domain.

CRACK-CRACK-BOOM!

The sky darkened instantly. Swirling storm clouds gathered above the battlefield as blue lightning arced across the firmament. The entire landscape trembled; mountains twenty leagues away groaned under the sudden spike in atmospheric pressure, and the earth beneath the armies cracked open as Qing Su released the full weight of her cultivation aura.

Thousands upon thousands of glowing blue broadswords materialized in the sky behind her, forming an infinite, radiant matrix of floating steel that blinded the soldiers below.

The Aethelgard knights watched in rapturous awe as Qing Su issued a silent mental command.

SWOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

Dozens of colossal, forty-foot divine broadswords rained down from the heavens like judgment spears, slamming into the center of the Aberrant ranks with apocalyptic force.

BOOM! BOOM!

The giant energy blades impaled the ground, creating localized shockwaves that flattened hundreds of monsters instantly. Simultaneously, an endless hail of tens of thousands of standard-sized ethereal blue swords shot through the air like supersonic rain! Each blade buzzed with a dense, high-frequency blue Qi aura, cutting through the sky in calculated, lethal flight paths.

The ethereal swords tore into the B-rank Aberrants with horrifying, satisfying precision.

SLASH! CHOP! STAB!

The execution was absolute. Every single two-meter Aberrant was targeted by no less than ten glowing swords at once. The flying blades danced through the air like living predators, dicing the monsters’ thick hide into neat, mangled shreds within microseconds. Bone scythes were snapped like twigs; limbs were severed, and before the beasts could even process the impact, glowing blue rapiers shot straight through their exposed core crystals, shattering their life sources into fine powder.

Gushing geysers of dark purple blood exploded across the battlefield, spraying over the grass like violent rain as thousands of Aberrants collapsed simultaneously, reduced to piles of minced, lifeless flesh.

The Aethelgard cavalry let out a thunderous, triumphant roar, their morale exploding into wild enthusiasm as they rode past the dismembered remains of the monster horde, completely untouched by the aerial strike.

"Forgive me for my late arrival," Qing Su murmured softly to the wind, her distant eyes sweeping over the dead Aethelgard soldiers who had fallen during the initial rock salvo. A subtle hint of silent remorse flickered deep within her gaze before vanishing back behind her cool facade.

Ren, standing near the edge of the clearing, stared at the aerial slaughter with his mouth agape.

His eyes darted from the floating blue-haired woman to the lingering energy trails cutting through the atmosphere. The sheer density of her aura was suffocating—it rattled his teeth and made the blood in his veins boil with kinetic resonance.

’That power... why does her energy structure feel so identical to Evelyn’s?’ Ren thought, his mind racing as he analyzed the residual Qi in the air.

’Wait... those movement patterns, that spatial manipulation... that’s not elemental magic at all. That’s a Cultivator’s domain!’

Back on Earth, during his past life as Elian the Architect, he had spent his rare moments of downtime reading Eastern fantasy novels. He knew the distinct hallmarks of a high-tier cultivation path.

Yet a deep, puzzling question immediately formed in his mind.

’If cultivators exist in this universe... why is this world dominated entirely by Elementists? Almost every Vanguard Hero and royal knight I’ve met relies on elemental magic or System attributes. Evelyn and this woman are the only ones using true Qi cultivation. Where are the rest of them? Were the original cultivation sects wiped out during the initial dark invasion?’

"GRAAAAAHHH!"

The Titan Apex Aberrant’s furious roar shattered his train of thought.

Seeing its newly summoned army reduced to minced meat in seconds, the titan’s four eyes burned with insane rage. It turned its massive head upward, locking its crimson glare directly onto Qing Su floating in the clouds.

The giant reached down, scooping up a massive, unbroken piece of granite from the coliseum ruins. It held the giant stone block in its palms, flexing its massive back muscles as it assumed a classic baseball pitcher’s stance.

"Die, you arrogant bitch!" the titan bellowed, its heavy voice shaking the ground as it hurled the massive granite block straight up into the sky at supersonic speeds!

The projectile tore through the air, causing a sonic boom that rattled the ears of the soldiers below.

Qing Su didn’t even flinch. As the giant boulder plummeted toward her face, she simply closed her eyes.

A wave of concentrated Qi erupted from her core. Without moving a muscle, she raised a single hand and pointed two fingers at the incoming stone.

BOOM!

The immense force of her atmospheric Qi pressure hit the supersonic boulder head-on. The giant rock didn’t just break—it instantly disintegrated into a massive cloud of fine, grey dust, cascading down over the battlefield like a soft fog.

Qing Su opened her eyes, her gaze as cold and sharp as ice as she stared down at the eighteen-meter monster. All around her, her remaining ethereal blades continued their relentless, automated execution of any stray Aberrants on the ground.

Ren’s eyes widened to the size of saucers.

’She pulverized a boulder that size with a simple point of her finger?!’ Ren analyzed frantically, his brow furrowing. ’No... she’s completely different from Evelyn. Her Qi control is absolute, fully stabilized, and infinitely more refined. Who in the world is she?’

A bitter realization struck him as he looked around at the devastated landscape. ’If humanity possesses monsters this strong... how did the world fall so far into ruin against Velista’s dark faction in the first place?’

High above, Qing Su began chanting a high-tier cultivation incantation under her breath.

She thrust both fingers down toward the titan’s chest.

WHOOSH—

The atmospheric Qi above the battlefield converged into a single, localized point. A monumental blue ethereal broadsword—stretching over eighty feet in length—materialized out of the storm clouds. Swirling around its massive blade were compressed elemental currents of lightning, fire, wind, water, earth, and flora—a complete elemental domain harmonized through supreme Qi cultivation.

Qing Su snapped her wrist down.

THUN-DER!

The monumental divine sword shot through the sky with terrifying velocity, driving itself straight into the titan’s massive, chitinous chest!

PUCK-BOOM!

The blade pierced deep into the monster’s thoracic armor, the elemental shockwave exploding outward from its spine. The eighteen-meter giant let out a blood-curdling shriek of agony that shook the surrounding hills, its massive knees buckling as it crashed onto both legs, dark purple blood pouring from the gaping wound in its chest.

"Wait... did she just solo an Apex Aberrant?!" Ren gasped, dragging himself to his feet as he stared at the kneeling giant in absolute disbelief.

Velista, however, stood nearby and threw her head back, bursting into a loud, mocking laugh.

"Magnificent, Qing Su! Absolutely magnificent!" Velista taunted, her voice carrying across the field. "To think that after hiding like a rat for hundreds of years, you can still put on such an entertaining show! But I think I’ve seen enough for today. Consider this a brief recess before I come back to tear your limbs off permanently."

Velista stepped backward. A massive, swirling violet spatial portal materialized behind her, humming with volatile dark energy.

Ren’s eyes snapped toward her. *She’s trying to escape!*

Ignoring the agonizing pain in his ribs, Ren lunged forward, raising his Void Sickle. "You’re not slipping away after starting this war, Velista!"

Velista paused, turning her head to give him a cold, sinister smile.

Before Ren’s blade could reach her, seven distinct figures stepped out from the swirling portal, lining up in front of Velista like an honor guard of shadow.

The group consisted of both men and women, all clad in matching, high-profile dark robes. The men wore tailored crimson-and-black martial attire with gold filigree trim, while the women wore sleek, off-the-shoulder dark gowns featuring white and crimson accents. Every single one of them radiated a dense, suffocating aura of pure dark divinity, their eyes glowing with malicious, cunning amusement as they locked their gazes onto Ren, before glancing up at Qing Su in the sky.

Ren froze mid-stride, his pupils contracting into pinpricks as he stared at the seven newcomers.

"Until the next apocalypse, little Commander," Velista purred, taking a step backward into the vortex alongside her dark court.

The seven operatives offered mock bows before vanishing into the swirling purple rift alongside Velista, the spatial rupture snapping shut a microsecond later, leaving behind only the faint smell of ozone and dark magic.

Ren stood frozen on the grassy plain, his breathing heavy as a cold sweat soaked his collar.

’Those seven people... are they the core executives of the Heretical Dark Faction...?’

"GRAAAAHHH!"

A violent, earth-shaking roar snapped him back to reality.

The Titan Apex Aberrant, still bleeding dark purple gore from its chest, wrapped its massive gauntlets around the hilt of the eighty-foot ethereal sword embedded in its lungs. With a sickening squelch and a spray of blood, the monster forced its arms back, violently ripping the divine blade out of its own chest and snapping the Qi construct in half with its bare hands!

CRACK!

The giant rose back to its full eighteen-meter height, its four crimson eyes burning with absolute, feral hatred as it stared down at the approaching Aethelgard cavalry and the floating cultivator above.

"I will tear every last one of you to pieces!" the titan roared, its guttural voice echoing across the plain like thunder as it braced its massive body for a final, catastrophic rampage.