Chapter 824

What a terrifyingly skilled sorcerer.

Kaecilius had always considered himself exceptionally powerful. After all, he had personally brought down the Ancient One. That achievement had done wonders for his confidence.

But after exchanging a single move with Lily Grant, he understood one thing immediately.

This woman was dangerous.

She had to be one of the finest martial sorcerers currently serving at Kamar-Taj.

And if his opponent was Kaecilius, Lily had no intention of holding back.

Her spear flickered.

A glint of steel appeared first. Then the spear itself came like a striking dragon.

Her Six Harmonies Spear technique was broad and powerful rather than intricate. It lacked the elaborate combinations of her other styles, but every movement carried tremendous force.

Thrust to the brow.

Thrust to the heart.

Thrust to the navel.

A rising strike toward the groin.

A sweep at the knee.

A jab toward the foot.

A strike to the shoulder.

The spearhead seemed to cover every angle at once, forcing Kaecilius to block, deflect, and retreat almost continuously.

The technique was brutal.

Anyone caught by even one clean strike would be lucky to walk away alive.

Lily, however, wielded it with effortless confidence.

This was the kind of fight she liked.

There were no rules here.

No referee.

No points.

No padded arena.

Just two people trying to kill each other.

Traditional martial arts and modern combat sports had never been quite the same thing. One had been forged for survival; the other had been refined for competition.

Even old-fashioned martial contests had rules. Fighters signed death waivers before stepping into the ring.

Modern competition had gone even further.

No eye gouging.

No throat strikes.

No attacks to the back of the head.

No knee stomps.

No groin strikes.

At that point, Lily thought, you might as well tie one fighter’s hands behind his back and call it fair.

Take away all the techniques designed to end a fight quickly, and eventually people stopped teaching them. Then people stopped learning them.

Over generations, much of traditional martial arts had been reduced to beautiful movements with little practical application.

And the people making a living from it had adapted.

They started selling secret techniques, mystical breathing methods, impossible promises of superhuman strength.

Those required very little actual work.

A confident voice, a convincing performance, and a willingness to lie could take you surprisingly far.

Scammers and charlatans flourished.

Then other people made a living exposing the scammers.

A whole industry emerged around the decline of practical martial arts.

Everyone got paid.

Nobody had much reason to care about the old principles anymore.

Once society decided that killing your opponent was unacceptable, the decline of true martial arts had been inevitable.

Lily, meanwhile, looked delighted.

A wild smile spread across her face.

Her cheeks were flushed with excitement.

"This is more like it."

She drove the spear forward.

"Today I’ll show you what unrestricted combat really looks like!"

Kaecilius jerked his head aside.

The spearhead missed his brow by inches.

It passed so close to his ear that the whistle of the air left his ears ringing. The tassel beneath the spearhead whipped across his cheek hard enough to raise a line of blood.

Kaecilius retreated and wiped the blood away.

"What terrifying magic."

His eyes narrowed.

"Of every sorcerer I’ve ever fought, excluding the Ancient One, I would call you the strongest."

Then he smiled.

"But!"

His smile became vicious.

"Even the Ancient One died by my hand. What chance do you think you have against me?"

He wasn’t boasting.

He was trying to break her concentration.

If she feared the man who had killed the Sorcerer Supreme, even for an instant, he could exploit that hesitation.

"Is that so?"

Lily tilted her head.

"The Ancient One really is dead?"

"She is. I killed her myself."

Kaecilius spread his arms slightly.

"You are standing before the man who defeated the greatest sorcerer on Earth."

"I see."

Lily withdrew her spear.

Then she reached into her pocket.

Kaecilius watched in confusion as she pulled out a white handkerchief and tied it around her forehead.

"When someone has been your teacher for a day, they’re your teacher for life."

She tightened the knot.

"The Ancient One taught me. She was my master."

Her eyes hardened.

"So naturally, I have a duty to avenge her."

She lowered her spear.

Her killing intent rose sharply.

"Today, this isn’t merely a fight to the death."

"It is a battle to honor her memory."

Kaecilius stared.

That had gone rather differently than he’d expected.

He’d wanted to frighten her.

Instead, he’d apparently given her a reason to fight harder.

He barely had time to process that before the spearhead was already in front of his face again.

"Enough!"

Kaecilius crossed his twin blades.

The spear slammed against them.

He twisted his wrists and drove both arms upward.

Crack!

The spearhead snapped clean off.

The weapon was beautifully made, but it was still an ordinary weapon.

It couldn’t withstand the enchanted blades in Kaecilius’s hands.

Lily didn’t stop.

She kept thrusting.

The broken shaft stabbed toward him.

No spearhead?

So what?

Did he really think she needed one?

Kaecilius’s instincts screamed at him.

The speed and force behind that bare wooden shaft were still lethal.

He retreated rapidly, cutting at the weapon again and again.

Piece by piece, the shaft disappeared beneath his blades.

At last, only a short section remained in Lily’s hands.

And by then, she was standing directly in front of him.

Kaecilius’s eyes brightened.

The spear had kept him at a distance.

His own blades were shorter, which had forced him onto the defensive.

Now the spear was gone.

She was within his range.

The advantage had shifted.

Or so he thought.

Lily casually threw the remaining piece of wood aside.

Both hands went behind her back.

Kaecilius knocked the shaft away and raised his twin blades.

He brought them down.

Two flashes of steel shot toward him.

A sharp metallic shriek filled the air.

Kaecilius’s eyes widened.

Lily was holding two short swords.

She had intercepted his strike.

Or, more accurately, he’d intercepted hers.

"Ha!"

Lily snapped both blades upward, knocking his weapons apart.

Kaecilius’s guard opened.

Lily stepped inside.

Her twin blades became a storm.

One strike.

Two.

Three.

She targeted every opening she could find.

Kaecilius barely managed to defend himself before one blade tore across his shoulder.

He sprang backward.

"What kind of magic is that?"

His expression changed.

"Twin Victory Blades?"

"You’re a descendant of Master William Grant?"

"Exactly."

Lily raised one blade before her chest.

"Master William Grant was my ancestor."

She frowned.

"And for the last time, could you stop calling my martial arts magic?"

Something wasn’t right.

Kaecilius glanced at the wound on his shoulder.

If she really was William Grant’s descendant and had inherited his teachings, then her skill made sense.

But there was a problem.

She shouldn’t be this strong.

Not yet.

William Grant’s legacy should have produced someone like this decades from now, not in a woman who looked barely past twenty.

Even if William Grant himself had somehow returned from the dead, he shouldn’t have reached this level at her age.

And there was more.

Her strength.

Her speed.

Her stamina.

None of them resembled those of an ordinary sorcerer.

They had been fighting for quite some time.

She had started with a heavy spear.

Then she’d switched to twin blades.

Yet she wasn’t breathing hard.

Not even slightly.

Kaecilius stared.

A thought surfaced.

A legendary technique.

Something said to belong to the Eastern mystical traditions. A secret within a secret, mentioned only in obscure magical texts.

A form of magic that didn’t draw its power from the surrounding world.

Instead, it existed within the body.

"Internal energy."

Lily smiled.

"You’ve got good instincts."

She casually rested one sword across her shoulder.

"It isn’t quite as impressive as you think. I just happen to have some."

Kaecilius’s stomach tightened.

So the rumors were true.

Internal energy was fundamentally different from conventional sorcery.

Normal magic drew upon power in the surrounding world and shaped it through a sorcerer’s will.

Internal energy was stored inside the body itself, flowing through the body’s channels.

It could enhance strength.

Speed.

Defense.

Perception.

Recovery.

Almost everything.

And according to legend, it could even be channeled into weapons, allowing an ordinary blade to strike with the force of an enchanted artifact.

That explained everything.

Her weapons had clearly been well made, but they were still ordinary objects.

His enchanted blades should have shattered them during their first exchange.

Instead, the spear had survived for far longer than it should have.

She must have been reinforcing the weapons with internal energy.

Kaecilius had never imagined that she had actually mastered such a technique.

Even the Ancient One hadn’t possessed it.

He couldn’t allow the battle to continue like this.

If ordinary combat wouldn’t defeat her, he would use something beyond ordinary combat.

Kaecilius lowered his body.

His hand reached toward the ground.

The moment his palm touched the surface, space itself would bend.

Dormammu’s power would tear her apart.

But Lily had no intention of giving him the chance.

She advanced like a charging bear, her steps heavy and deliberate.

Kaecilius’s fingers hadn’t even touched the ground when her blade was already at his hairline.

"Damn it!"

He rolled.

The blade cut through empty air.

His prepared spell collapsed with his concentration.

Lily looked down at him.

"You were going to use that spell, weren’t you?"

Her smile was mocking.

"That’s strange."

"If the Ancient One wanted to use that kind of magic, she only needed to think about it."

"She didn’t need all that preparation."

Her expression darkened.

"So..."

"You’re nowhere near her level."

The smile vanished.

Her face became vicious.

"What kind of cowardly trick did you use to kill her?"

Kaecilius exploded.

"Don’t you dare!"

He could tolerate insults.

He could tolerate doubt.

But no one would question the fact that he had defeated the Ancient One.

He charged.

His rage poured into every strike.

Lily crossed her blades.

The impact shattered both swords.

Kaecilius’s attack continued.

Lily’s eyes widened.

The next blow would take her head off.

She dropped her stance.

Her hand disappeared beneath her coat.

Then she moved.

Too fast to follow.

Kaecilius’s twin blades vanished.

A strange sound rang through the street.

Long.

Clear.

Almost musical.

Even several gang members fighting farther away stopped and turned toward the sound.

Crack.

Kaecilius looked down.

The Sling Rings on both his hands had split apart.

They fell to the ground in two broken pieces.

Only then did he realize what Lily was holding.

A barber’s straight razor.

"You can’t put a price on a perfect sound."

Lily examined the ruined razor.

"This is one of Master Tian’s techniques."

She tossed the useless blade aside.

"Now for my specialty."

She raised her fists.

"Close-quarters combat."

She stepped forward.

Her right palm shot toward Kaecilius’s temple.

He raised an arm to block.

Her left palm followed immediately.

He barely intercepted that strike as well.

But Lily used the contact to redirect his arm downward.

His left side opened.

"Ha!"

Her elbow slammed into his head.

"Three Points of the Underworld!"

Several gang members had stopped fighting to watch.

Three of them had completely abandoned the battle and were now staring at Lily and Kaecilius.

Judging from their clothes and bearing, they were clearly senior members of the organization.

One broad-shouldered man whistled.

"The boss is using that technique?"

He shook his head.

"That means the other guy is seriously dangerous."

A dark-skinned, handsome man beside him grinned.

"Duke, remember how you used to complain that the boss couldn’t be both the organization’s leader and its champion?"

He jerked his chin toward Lily.

"You still think you could handle being the champion?"

Duke snorted.

"Jimmy, give it a rest."

He rubbed his chin.

"Carrying the leadership staff while serving as the organization’s top fighter still isn’t proper procedure."

"Forget the procedure."

Another man waved impatiently.

"Look! She’s changed techniques again."

Lily and Kaecilius were now fighting at point-blank range.

Her hands moved so quickly that they were becoming little more than blurs.

"Fly."

Duke slapped the man beside him on the shoulder.

"She’s using Pigua Palm."

"Once you’ve mastered Eight Extremes Fist and Pigua Palm, you’re already terrifying."

"But she’s mixed in the explosive force generation of Thunder Hands."

He shook his head.

"That poor bastard is finished."

"Thunder Hands?"

Fly blinked.

"Isn’t the boss from the Eight Extremes school? How does she know that?"

"You don’t know the boss very well."

Jimmy grinned.

"She started challenging other schools when she was twelve."

"Do you have any idea how many martial artists in Hong Kong she beat half to death?"

"One of them was Master Cole."

"He claimed to have come from an ancient southern monastery and was famous for his lightning-fast hands. Supposedly, he could snatch coins from boiling oil without burning his fingers."

"And the boss still beat him badly enough to put him in the hospital."

"She even took his manual."

Fly looked baffled.

"Why would she want his manual?"

"She said she wanted to combine the strengths of a hundred schools and create her own ultimate style."

Jimmy hesitated.

"But personally..."

He lowered his voice.

"I think she just likes collecting things."

"What do you mean?"

"One time I played mahjong with her."

Jimmy’s expression became haunted.

"By the end, her tiles were stacked high enough to qualify as architecture."

Fly and Duke stared at him.

"You played mahjong with the boss?"

They looked genuinely horrified.

The boss had plenty of virtues.

Her gambling ethics were not among them.

It wasn’t that she refused to pay her debts.

She simply cheated.

Without restraint.

After one particularly memorable game, they had counted the tiles afterward and discovered that the set somehow contained thirty blank tiles.

Thirty.

That was how absurdly strong her fingers were.

Jimmy shrugged.

"It’s just gambling. You lose a little money, everyone has fun."

He puffed out his chest.

"Besides, look where I am now."

"Me?"

He tapped his white fan.

"I went from being a nobody to holding a senior position in just a few years."

He smiled smugly.

"Why do you think that happened?"

Fly and Duke looked at him.

The answer came to both of them simultaneously.

"Shameless."

"Corrupt."

"Flattery."

"Bribery."

Jimmy’s smile froze.

"Very funny."

Before they could continue, Kaecilius screamed.

"AAAGH!"

He had finally managed to catch both of Lily’s wrists.

For an instant, he thought he’d stopped her.

Then Lily twisted.

She seized his left wrist.

Green light erupted around her hand.

Kaecilius’s eyes widened.

The blood in his arm seemed to reverse.

His skin tightened.

The muscles beneath it began to wither.

"What..."

His face went pale.

"This..."

Could it be?

That infamous forbidden technique described in that ancient magical text, The River of Laughter and Arrogance?

The Star-Draining Technique?

No.

Not quite.

But the comparison wasn’t entirely wrong.

Lily’s internal energy was infused with fel energy.

And energy had to come from somewhere.

Under ordinary circumstances, she could replenish it through food, especially meat.

But during a prolonged battle?

That wasn’t practical.

So she had another method.

She could take it from someone else.

Fighting Lily was like fighting someone with a health bar.

Every time she landed a blow, she could steal a portion of her opponent’s vitality and use it to replenish herself.

And if she deliberately amplified that effect...

This was the result.

Kaecilius gritted his teeth.

This couldn’t continue.

He had to use the same trick again.

He tore his other hand free and drove his fist into Lily’s abdomen.

"Gah!"

Lily doubled over.

Then her expression became murderous.

She trapped his arm beneath her armpit.

Her elbow hammered into his chest.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

His chest caved inward.

Lily released him.

Both hands moved.

One clawed across his face.

The other slammed down onto the crown of his head.

"Mighty Tiger Climbs the Mountain!"

Kaecilius went limp.

He collapsed face-first onto the ground.

Silence.

Lily exhaled.

"That should do it."

She looked down at him.

"So that’s what my bargain-bin master was worth."

She shook her head.

"I didn’t waste all those years after all."

The Ancient One’s teachings had given her strength she could never have reached through ordinary training alone.

Then—

BOOM!

The ground shook beneath her feet.

Lily’s expression changed.

The pavement rolled like a wave.

The earth surged upward.

A massive hand of stone and debris erupted from below and hurled her into the air.

Before she could recover, the enormous hand seized her and slammed her into the wall.

The wall collapsed around her.

At last.

The final obstacle was gone.

Kaecilius slowly pushed himself upright.

Blood ran down his face.

He had used the same trick that had allowed him to kill the Ancient One.

Hurt himself.

Expose an opening.

Convince his opponent that he was finished.

Then wait.

Wait for that single moment of carelessness.

And strike.

He had finally completed the spell.

Space itself began to distort.

Everything was about to end.

And everything was about to begin.

Kaecilius raised his uninjured hand high.

Then he slammed his palm into the ground.

The air rippled.

Space surged outward like a tidal wave.

The Hong Kong Sanctum trembled beneath the force.

Its walls buckled.

Its foundations cracked.

Then the entire structure began to collapse.

The sorcerers inside fled in every direction, scrambling from the crumbling Sanctum like frightened rabbits.

And as the Hong Kong Sanctum finally gave way—

the sky began to change.