Chapter 1406: Kidnapping a Progenitor 101!

A/N:Warning guys! This arc is going to be a bit long as we bring upon retribution upon Marcus but I wouldn’t advise you to skip any Chapter as each one would bring us closer to the awakening of something. I used "something" because I don’t like to ruin this for you although I already did giving you this note.

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Unlike his senses and perception, which could swallow and encompass an absurd amount of the world around him at once, True Void Steps still possessed a distance limit.

Admittedly, that limit had become so useless to even think about after its evolution that Phei almost never noticed it in ordinary situations. If he needed to cross a battlefield, slip through a formation, appear behind an enemy or move anywhere within the ridiculous distances his fights normally demanded, the restriction might as well not exist.

For genuine long-distance travel, however, there were easier answers.

Phei could simply open a portal and step through space, or, if he had nowhere urgent to be, he could fly and enjoy the still-novel pleasure of looking down at the world while gravity sulked somewhere beneath him.

Tonight was different because kidnapping Marcus directly from the Heavenchild estate required something far more delicate than raw distance.

Phei had already felt the powerful existences scattered throughout the estate, some hidden inside ancient structures and others resting behind formations dense enough to turn his True Void Sense hazy whenever he pushed too deeply toward them.

Several were strong enough that barging inside through an obvious portal would have been the supernatural equivalent of kicking down the front door while ringing the bell and politely announcing that he had arrived to steal one of their family members.

Phei doubted any of them could move quickly enough to catch him before his portal closed, but speed was only part of the problem:

Portals disturbed space; and that disturbance lingered, however briefly, and powerful cultivators could feel space being forced open in places it had been perfectly stable a heartbeat earlier.

Marcus needed only enough warning to scream or even activate some family treasure or send one desperate spiritual signal with his soul in distress before half the Heavenchild estate came crashing down around Phei’s head.

True Void Steps solved that beautifully because there was almost nothing for anyone else to notice.

Phei did not tear open an obvious road through space and physically cross it the way his portals did. He surrendered his position to the Void, vanished into the hollow beneath ordinary distance and emerged elsewhere before reality had properly finished noticing he had stopped occupying the first location.

Against most enemies, that was already terrifying.

Tonight, however, he needed more than terrifying speed.

He needed the kind of speed faster than light:

Why? Subtlety meant Marcus Heavenchild vanishing between one heartbeat and the next while every dangerous old bastard surrounding him continued believing he was safely inside the estate.

That part had worked perfectly.

The problem began afterward.

The Heavenchild estate and the place Eira had chosen deep within the Endless Forest lay far beyond what Phei could comfortably cross through one uninterrupted leap of his True Void Step, especially while carrying another living person through the Void with him.

So Phei had improvised, and Marcus was about to discover that Phei’s improvisation had become considerably less healthy for other people during the year he spent in the Primordial Frozen Zone.

Far above Hell’s Paradise Island, so high that its glittering cities had become clusters of distant light and the mountains below were reduced to dark shapes beneath the cloudless night, the Void opened with barely a whisper. Phei stepped out carrying Marcus without laying so much as two fingers upon his shirt. A Black-white essence also wrapped tightly around the Heavenchild heir’s body, holding him beside Phei in the freezing upper air for barely an instant before Phei loosened his control and allowed gravity to remember Marcus existed.

Marcus dropped!

His consciousness returned violently in that very second as freezing wind struck him from every direction. There was no gentle transition from the private room inside his family’s estate to the impossible emptiness surrounding him now. One moment his body remembered walls, furniture, warmth and safety, and the next he was plummeting through several kilometers of black sky while the air screamed around his ears with enough force to tear breath from his lungs.

Hell’s Paradise Island stretched impossibly far beneath him, its roads and cities reduced to glowing threads, while the dark ocean surrounding it made the island appear like something suspended alone inside an enormous abyss.

Confusion seized Marcus before fear had enough time to arrive.

His eyes moved wildly through the darkness, his body twisted instinctively as he tried to understand why the floor beneath his feet had been replaced by empty night, and then he saw Phei floating several meters above him.

Recognition had barely begun crossing his face when Phei—

His foot slammed into Marcus right in the chest in midair wth a speed of light.

Phei used nowhere near his full strength.

That restraint was essential, because a genuine Sky Sovereign kick delivered by the body he had forged beneath Great Immortal essence and Primordial Winter; that force would have ended the Angel bastard with embarrassing efficiency.

Even so, the impact folded Marcus around Phei’s leg before hurling him sideways through the sky with enough force to detonate the surrounding air. A white ring burst outward from his body, the shockwave spreading through the upper atmosphere while Marcus became a tumbling blur beneath the stars.

His mouth opened instinctively.

Perhaps he intended to scream Phei’s name, perhaps call for help, perhaps activate some Heavenchild treasure, or maybe he simply wished to express a perfectly reasonable objection to waking several kilometers above the ground before being kicked through the night.

Phei never discovered which possibility had won; before the first sound escaped Marcus’s mouth, space directly in his path tore apart.

A vast portal opened—

Black-white Void-Ice curled around its edges in long frozen streams while darkness gathered inside its center so completely that even the stars vanished behind it. Marcus struck the opening at murderous speed and disappeared through before he could alter his trajectory.

The portal folded closed immediately afterward, swallowing every trace of its passage until the upper sky returned to its former stillness as though a screaming Heavenchild heir had never crossed it.

Several hundred kilometers away, deep enough inside the Endless Forest that civilization had become little more than an insult remembered by ancient trees, the darkness above the canopy split apart. Frost scattered across leaves kilometers below as spatial pressure briefly bent the upper branches, and then Marcus erupted from the portal with all the speed Phei’s kick had given him.

He struck the forest floor with a deafening BAAAM that rolled through the ancient woodland like sudden thunder.

Frozen soil erupted around him.

Thick roots tore from the earth, ancient stones burst into fragments and a violent crater opened beneath his body before his remaining momentum dragged him onward.

Marcus bounced once hard enough to throw another curtain of dirt and frost into the air, rolled uncontrollably through shattered undergrowth and slammed shoulder-first through the trunk of a smaller tree without slowing enough to matter. Splintered wood spun through the darkness before his back finally crashed against the base of an enormous ancient giant whose trunk was broad enough to resemble part of the landscape rather than something that had grown from it.

The impact bowed the tree visibly, shook centuries of frost from its branches and sent a deep groan traveling up through the canopy while Marcus crumpled among its exposed roots.

For a mortal, his physical resistance was terrifying, just like how Kyle had been too!

For several breaths he could do nothing except attempt to remember how lungs worked.

Pain had spread through so much of his body at once that individual injuries became difficult to separate, his shoulder burning where it had broken through the first tree while his spine throbbed from the final collision and something beneath his ribs protested every breath.

Blood gathered inside his mouth, warm and metallic against the freezing air, while his cultivation reacted sluggishly beneath the shock and tried to repair damage faster than new agony could reach his thoughts.

The darkness surrounding him felt wrong.

Endless Forest nights were already deep beneath the suffocating canopy, where colossal branches crossed high above and strangled most moonlight long before it touched the earth, but this darkness possessed something heavier.

Phei’s Void had swallowed what little silver should have slipped between the leaves, leaving ancient trunks rising around Marcus as immense black columns fading into nothing overhead. Void-Ice saturated the surrounding air until every breath entered his lungs with a sharp frozen ache, while thin ribbons of black-white mist drifted between roots and curled around trees without obeying the wind.

Shadows accumulated in spaces that should merely have been dark, gathering with enough depth that they seemed less like an absence of light and more like openings into something beneath the world waiting patiently for him to fall through.

Marcus forced his head upward.

He never saw Phei move but—

SLAAAAAPPPPP

The slap exploded across the left side of Marcus’s face with enough force to snap his head sideways and scatter frost from nearby branches. Several teeth broke free together, crimson droplets and white fragments spraying across the frozen earth while the flesh along his cheek swelled almost instantly.

The invisible blow crashed across the opposite side of Marcus’s face before the pain from the kick in the air and landing in the forest had even properly settled; the slap hurled him away from the ancient tree and sending his body rolling through the frost.

Marcus struck the ground hard enough to tumble twice before one knee finally caught beneath him. Blood flooded his mouth, broken teeth clicking somewhere behind his lips as he choked and spat crimson across the snow. His vision swam violently that the forest doubled around him before slowly returning to a single frozen world, and only then did he find Phei standing several paces away beneath the trees.