Chapter 32: Crimson Flame Torrent

In the Endless Worlds, where freaks and oddballs were everywhere you looked, Finn was a cultivator—though his chosen technique was pretty niche and offbeat: the Fire Profound Divine Art.

The “Fire” in the name made its connection to flames pretty obvious.

Whenever he circulated the Fire Profound Divine Art and sent Profound Energy flowing through his eight extraordinary meridians, he could feel a surging tide of power wrapping around him, with scorching flames roaring to life inside his chest.

The embarrassing part was that, after endless research and practice, Finn had only managed to master two flame techniques so far.

The first let him coat his sword in fiercely burning flames. Once the blade ignited, the whole weapon would erupt in blazing red fire that roared like a bonfire.

Finn mostly used it as a torch. It worked great for lighting things up, but he had to watch out for flammable gas and never, ever try it near a gas station.

The second technique was far more practical. By channeling the vast Profound Energy throughout his body, he could blast a jet of superheated flames from his palm or the edge of his sword.

As a six-hundred-year-old chuuni at heart, Finn had named the move “Crimson Flame Torrent.” What could he say? Men never grow up.

These weren’t ordinary flames, either. They could melt metal and shatter ice in an instant. Anything they touched—even ten-thousand-year permafrost—would be reduced to nothing but ash at the slightest spark.

If Finn focused hard enough, he could launch the flames up to three hundred meters away. The range was ridiculous.

Some former teammates used to gripe that the move was basically just a flamethrower and that Finn was nothing more than an arsonist with top-tier defense.

But Finn believed that if he ever pushed the technique to its limit, he could easily blast a stream of several-hundred-million-degree flames out hundreds of thousands of meters. It would be the spitting image of a solar coronal mass ejection.

By then he’d be a walking, pissed-off sun—burn whoever got in his way, char the sky, scorch the earth, and turn the whole planet into one giant barbecue pit.

He’d even pack a few bottles of cumin, cooking oil, and black pepper. The ground would be his charcoal bed, the mountains his grill rack, and the white clouds and hurricanes his basting brush. He’d roast a couple of Godzillas, Behemoth, Kraken and Leviathans until they were crispy and fragrant. Just the thought made his mouth water.

…

Pulling his drifting thoughts back in, Finn continued up the stairs alone.

After ditching the two dead weights, the slaughter became effortless. He carved straight through two entire floors, leaving more than a dozen bodies behind.

The remaining Demon Gang members took one look at him and immediately jumped out windows or scrambled down drainpipes, fleeing in blind panic. Faced with these guys who were already scared witless, Finn couldn’t be bothered to chase them.

As he stepped onto the rusted metal staircase, a lean figure suddenly flashed into view right in front of him.

The man was wrapped head to toe in a red robe, somewhere in his forties or fifties, with graying temples and eyes sharp as a hawk’s.

“Sinner, are you prepared to descend into hell?” the red-robed man demanded harshly, trying to crush Finn with pure pressure.

“Nope,” Finn answered honestly.

After cutting down so many enemies on the way up, Finn could already tell the difference between Demon Gang members and Radiant Path cultists.

Guys like this—red robes, constantly droning on about “Holy Radiance,” “judgment,” “hell,” and “repentance”—were one hundred percent Radiant Path.

Finn was sure he’d already put down several priest-level figures on the way up. Why the hell Radiant Path priests were hanging around Demon Gang headquarters was definitely something to chew on.

The red-robed man gave a cold snort. “A faithless coward like you, with nothing to anchor your spirit… You may look strong, but you’re really no bigger than a crawling insect…”

“Why the hell are you talking so much?” Finn cut him off mid-rant, raised his hand, and unloaded a burst of bullets straight into the man’s face.

The rounds punched clean through his features, rippling like they’d hit water before vanishing without a trace.

“Illusion?” Finn frowned. He caught the sound of rushing wind behind him and whipped around, opening fire again.

Another phantom of the red-robed man was already lunging at him. The bullets sank into its skin, but the figure didn’t so much as flinch—no wounds, no holes, nothing.

A third red-robed man appeared beside the doorway. He traced the Radiant Path symbol across his chest, lips curling with a hint of mocking pity.

“Poor child. You do not believe in Holy Radiance, so Holy Radiance offers you no shelter. A fleeting desire has blinded your eyes, and you cannot even see through these simple illusions…”

Finn dropped the rifle, drew his gleaming longsword in a smooth motion, and leaped forward in one bound, slashing the man clean in half.

The blade cut straight into the body—only to stir a few faint ripples. Another illusion.

The fourth illusion materialized directly above Finn’s head. It gazed down at him with pity and intoned,

“Holy Radiance has issued a divine decree: when he returns, he will rear the faithful up from the poisoned dust where they rot, and those who still walk in His glow shall be lifted together into the pure radiance.…”

“Where is your real body?” Finn asked, thrusting his sword straight upward. The blade ran clean through the red-robed figure overhead—still an illusion.

Finn spun in a quick circle. He’d spotted the pattern: whenever one illusion spoke, the others went completely still and silent. That meant the one speaking and moving was the only one that might be connected to the real body.

The figure above him abruptly shut its mouth. At the same instant the very first illusion drew a handgun and opened fire. “Heretic who rejects Holy Radiance, enter hell and repent!”

Seven or eight glowing blue bullets streaked through the air in bright arcs, all of them Relic Marrow Bullets, aimed straight for Finn’s eyes.

Finn charged headlong into the barrage. Sparks burst across his face as the rounds hammered him, but he never slowed. He drove his sword forward in a single powerful thrust, stabbing the red-robed man through the throat.

The blade sank in as if it had pierced water. The heavy strike met nothing solid—no resistance, no impact. In that blink of an eye, the presence behind this figure had vanished, leaving only an illusion in its place.

Watching Finn flail around, swinging his sword and firing in every direction with zero results, the fifth illusion appeared beside the window and burst out laughing.

“You ignorant fool. Look at how ridiculous you are, swinging and shooting at nothing. I barely used a scrap of divine power, and I already have you running in circles like a little mouse.”

Finn scooped up his assault rifle, twisted at the waist, and pulled the trigger. Bullets sprayed out in a wide fan, hammering all three red-robed figures at once.

The attack was swift and brutal, but it still accomplished nothing. The bullets tore straight through the illusions and hammered the walls in a clattering storm.

The red-robed man stood atop a wooden table, looking down at Finn with even sharper mockery in his voice.

“You only saw the second layer, while you thought I was still stuck on the first. You figured you were already on the third layer, but in reality… I’m on the fifth. Hahahaha!”

“All these layers… What, are you a layer cake?” Finn’s temper flared. His eyes sharpened like a hawk’s as he lowered his longsword and began circulating Profound Energy through his body.

One of the red-robed figures jumped down from the table and stepped closer, sneering. “You’re nothing but a pitiful wretch without faith. Don’t you understand? With Holy Radiance comes support, help, and purpose…”

Finn drove his sword through the man’s chest—another illusion, just as expected. But his wrist didn’t stop. The blade swept out in a perfect full-moon arc, and blazing flames exploded from the edge!

“Crimson Flame Torrent!”

In an instant, raging fire flooded the entire room like a supercharged flamethrower blasting in every direction.

“AH!”

A piercing scream cut through the inferno, but Finn couldn’t pinpoint the direction.

Half a minute later the flames died down. Finn glanced at the corner and saw a charred corpse curled up on the floor. The red-robed man must have tried to dodge the blaze, but it hadn’t been enough.

With that annoying little interruption taken care of, Finn continued up the stairs. He’d held back the power of the flames just now; otherwise half the building would have been burned to ash.