Lian Xue struck first.
A devastating kick, wreathed in blazing Fire Qi, tore through the air toward Fang Lee's chest. Her form blurred, her speed monstrous.
Fang Lee barely had time to react. Instinct screamed as he willed his floating swords into motion—three golden blades aligned defensively, glowing with tempered Qi.
CRACK!
Her foot smashed into the Qi-forged weapons. The impact sent tremors through his arm, rattling his bones as the very air quivered. Leaves from a nearby open window were ripped from their branches, scattering like falling embers.
But Lian Xue was relentless.
The recoil only fueled her momentum. Twisting mid-air, she spun like a phantom, unleashing a second kick that carved through space with razor precision.
Swish!
Fang Lee barely pivoted in time, the strike grazing his cheek, a thin line of searing pain blooming on his skin.
She's even faster than before.
A flicker of something dangerous passed through his emerald eyes.
With a flick of his wrist, his floating swords shot forward, three streaks of gold tearing through the air—each blade aimed at a vital point.
But she was already moving.
Her feet barely kissed the ground as she twisted away, her crimson hanfu whipping like a raging inferno.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
The first strike she deflected with a bracer-clad arm, the force of impact ringing like a bell. The second she turned aside with a precise palm strike, her hands shimmering with molten Qi. The third—
Slash!
A thin line of crimson blossomed across her shoulder.
She didn't flinch.
Instead—she smirked.
Before Fang Lee could react, she lunged, closing the distance in an instant.
Her palm shot forward—
BANG!
A shockwave of Qi erupted as her strike connected with his hastily raised guard. Fang Lee skidded backward, his feet carving deep trenches into the wooden floor.
His swords flared back to life—
But Lian Xue was already above him.
"Too slow!"
She dropped like a falling star, leg descending in a brutal axe kick toward his skull.
Fang Lee's smirk widened.
"Tch."
At the last moment, his Qi surged—BOOM!—a blast of force exploded outward.
The wooden floor beneath them splintered as he redirected the impact, his body vanishing in a blur.
Lian Xue's eyes widened—just as his sword whistled through the air, aiming for her exposed flank.
But instead of dodging—
She caught the blade.
For a heartbeat, the world stood still.
Blood dripped down her fingers, the keen edge of his sword pressed against her palm—yet she held it firm.
The edge bit into her palm, crimson droplets slipping down steel. Yet her gaze locked onto his, unwavering and dark with defiance.
"I win."
Then—
Brilliance erupted.
Her abdomen flared with an intense glow, the searing light consuming the entire chamber in an instant. The once dimly lit room was now bathed in a furious golden-red radiance, casting dancing shadows against the shattered walls.
The air thickened—the temperature skyrocketed. A tidal wave of pure Fire Qi exploded outward, scorching the wooden floor beneath her, setting the very air a blaze.
—
Lian Xue's stomach pulsed with a golden-red glow, heat radiating from her like the core of a volcano. My heart dropped as I sensed it—Fire Qi, but laced with something more sinister. Poison. Not just any poison, but a refined, lethal essence intertwined with her very being.
A sickening realization gripped me.
If I had taken the other hole…
I almost shuddered. That violent, corrosive Qi she was releasing—it would have poured straight into my body, flooding my meridians the moment I tore through her hymen. A perfect ambush. My cultivation would have been crippled, my body left in ruins.
This bitch was trying to destroy me!!!
Before I could act, a searing wave of Fire Qi erupted from her core, a raging inferno that twisted the air and scorched the wooden floor beneath her. The temperature spiked violently.
With a sharp breath, I summoned my golden Qi swords, their brilliance flaring as I raised them in defense.
Crack!
The flames collided against my blades, and in less than a second, the searing heat began corrupting them.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
One by one, my swords fractured and shattered.
A deep, primal fear clawed at my chest.
Not the kind of fear I had faced as Fang Lee—not the fear of death, which he had spat in the face of countless times. As he had long grown accustomed to that, abusing his heavenly physique to rise from the ashes after every self-inflicted destruction.
No—this was different.
This wasn't the certainty of death. This was the terror of something far worse.
A fate where I wouldn't return stronger. Where I wouldn't return at all.
Move! Run! Escape!
My instincts roared at me. But I stood frozen, my mind racing, searching for an answer.
"There has to be a counter to this… right?"
But even as I thought that, I could feel it—Lian Xue's poison had already seeped into my body. My golden Qi swords, the very manifestation of my cultivation, now carried a sinister red sheen, tainted and weakened. The fresh swords I conjured shattered even faster than the ones before.
I had seconds left.
I clenched my fists, about to activate Flowing River Steps, a Foundation Establishment movement technique that I hadn't fully mastered. I could try to flee—
But then, something in me whispered a bitter truth.
There was no escape.
Tsk.
I clicked my tongue.
If I couldn't run—
I'd devour it.
"You leave me no choice, then."
I exhaled sharply.
Breath of the Verdant Lotus.
My breathing shifted. Controlled, erratic yet precise. My chest rose and fell in sync with my Qi, forcing it into an unnatural rhythm.
A surge of jade-green energy erupted from my dantian, forming an invisible barrier around me.
Then, I opened my meridians.
Lian Xue's wild, searing Fire Qi rushed into me, like a raging inferno seeking to consume everything in its path. It burned through my veins, tearing into my flesh, searing my bones. The poison spread mercilessly, corroding my body from the inside out.
I gritted my teeth.
Even as agony wracked my being, I forced the invading Qi deeper, pushing it into my dantian.
Inside me, my Qi twisted violently.
My dantian fractured, splitting apart. One side remained an emerald green, but the other turned into a corrupted, venomous red. The two forces coiled together, forming a spiraling yin-yang within me—unstable, trembling, on the verge of complete collapse.
Hiss. Hiss.
My pain sharpened.
My dantian wanted to tear itself apart, rejecting the foreign energy that threatened to consume it.
But hesitation meant defeat.
And I had no intention of losing here.
I clenched my fists and forced my remaining Qi outward, switching out of my Qi Refinement Realm breathing technique and activating a Foundation Realm breathing technique.
I would not let her Qi destroy me.
I would reforge myself with it.
Shine~ Swiss!
"Shattered Dantian!"
I roared as I activated my ultimate, one-time Foundation Establishment technique.
A reckless, suicidal method.
A technique designed to annihilate one's dantian completely—only to absorb all the Qi in the surroundings and rebuild it anew.
Crack! Crack!
The first fractures formed.
Two pieces. Four. Eight.
Then—fifty.
And then—
BOOOOM!!! (x 2)
Two explosions sounded out, one rushing out from inside me and the other form Lian Xue, as I felt a heat like no other tearing through my flesh as well as my own Qi ripping out from my dantian.
—
"I win."
The words left my lips, calm and certain. Yet as they hung in the air, a strange hollowness settled in my chest.
Was this truly victory?
Then—
Brilliance erupted.
A searing golden-red glow flared from my abdomen, consuming the chamber in an instant. Shadows writhed against the shattered walls, twisting wildly under the furious radiance. The very air trembled, thickening with unbearable heat.
Then—BOOM!
A tidal wave of Fire Qi burst from me, igniting everything in its path. The wooden floor beneath me disintegrated, reduced to nothing but glowing embers. The oxygen itself caught flame, turning the room into a suffocating, molten hell.
Across from me, Fang Lee stood frozen. His green eyes darted, scanning, analyzing, searching for a weakness that didn't exist.
A mistake.
There was no escaping this.
Tsk.
He seemed to realize it, clicking his tongue in irritation.
'Breath of the Verdant Lotus.'
His breathing shifted—erratic, then controlled. A pulse of jade-green Qi flared to life, wrapping around him like an invisible barrier. He was trying to refine my Qi, to take it in and twist it into his own.
How foolish.
'It's over. Just give up.'
That's what I wanted to tell him. That there was no hope. That this Fire Qi had been accumulating within me for years, that the poison entwined with it was meant to ruin anyone I wanted to ruin from the inside out.
And yet…
Why did I hesitate?
Why did my heart tighten when I saw him standing there, still defiant?
No. It didn't matter.
I closed my eyes, surrendering to my own devastation.
BOOOOM!!!
The world detonated.
A blinding inferno swallowed everything—the walls, the ceiling, the air itself. The sheer force of it crushed my lungs, turning my own breath into an agonized gasp.
"Ahhhhhhh—!"
A scream tore from my throat, a wretched sound that I barely recognized as my own.
Pain.
All-consuming. Unrelenting.
My body convulsed, my veins glowing molten red as the fire consumed me from the inside out. My flesh blistered and peeled, my limbs twisted under the sheer intensity of the eruption.
I was burning. I was dying.
This was… supposed to happen.
Wasn't it?
Then why—
Why did fear claw its way into my soul?
Why did I suddenly want to live?
Through the haze of agony, my lips moved, forming words I never meant to say.
"I-I don't want to die… Lee—save me…!"
The plea left me before I could stop it.
And in that instant—
Something answered.
A terrifying green radiance erupted around me, wrapping my failing body in an unyielding grasp. Powerful. Absolute.
My flames—my rampaging, uncontrollable Qi—were expelled from my body, ripped away by that verdant force.
Fang Lee's power.
It tore through the inferno I had created, parting the flames like an ancient decree. And then—
It shot into the heavens above, splitting the night sky.
But the jade radiance did not stop at merely expelling my flames.
It turned on me.
The very same energy that had swallowed my inferno now wrapped around my body, seeping into my skin, invading my meridians. At first, it was cold—an unnatural contrast to the blistering heat that had once been mine to command. But then—
Pain.
Not the burning agony of my own flames. No, this was something else. Something worse.
The jade Qi tore through me, unraveling my meridians like frayed silk, threading through my veins like creeping vines. My skin cracked—not from fire, but from something far more insidious. Thin, glowing fissures raced along my arms, my legs, my chest—spreading like a sickness, like I was being hollowed out from the inside.
This Qi—it wasn't just taking my power.
It was devouring me.
I gasped, staggering, but the jade light only intensified. My knees buckled. Every part of me was unraveling—skin, Qi, soul.
This wasn't salvation.
I still wasn't safe.
My heart pounded wildly, desperate, a frantic rhythm against the suffocating force crushing me from all sides. I reached out, clawing at the air, as if grasping at something—anything—that could stop this.
But there was nothing.
The jade light pulsed once—a final, merciless decree.
Then—
—
Within the blazing heart of the pine forest, where fire devoured the land like an insatiable beast, a spear of jade radiance tore through the inferno—a single, unyielding light against the chaos.
It did not merely resist the flames. It consumed them.
The night trembled as green and crimson clashed, two opposing forces locked in a violent struggle. The sheer impact of their collision sent ripples through the air, snapping branches, scattering embers, and warping the very fabric of Qi. The ground quaked beneath the force, the earth itself recoiling as if unable to withstand the power surging through the battlefield.
At the center of it all—
Fang Lee.
A cultivator once stagnant. Trapped beneath the weight of his own cultivation bottleneck.
But now—breaking through.
His body, half-burned, bloodied, and battered, became the battlefield. His charred flesh pulsed with unstable Qi, his meridians straining, twisting, fraying beneath the flood of raw energy tearing through his veins.
This pain—this suffering—it did not hinder him.
It forged him.
His dantian, once fractured, now reformed—stronger, deeper, pulsing with the refined power of Fire and Verdant Qi. It was not an explosion of dominance, not a divine reckoning.
It was his.
A Foundation Realm breakthrough, carved not from peace and meditation, but from the edge of life and death.
Not a triumph of control—a victory of defiance.
Rumble. FLASH!!!
The heavens answered.
The air crackled. Qi, once scattered, suddenly condensed— drawn toward the singularity that was Fang Lee. The sky above, choked with smoke, twisted violently as something ancient stirred.
FLASH!!!
A Heavenly Tribulation had arrived.
A force beyond human comprehension, beyond mortal will—a decree from the cosmos itself.
The first bolt fell.
A streak of silver lightning, impossibly fast, carved through the heavens like a celestial blade. The very air split apart in its wake, the ozone thick with the scent of destruction.
And then—impact.
The world detonated.
But Fang Lee did not take the blow.
A jade statue floated above him—pristine, unyielding. Draped in a flowing jade hanfu, its presence exuded an ancient, unfathomable power.
It was not merely a shield—it was the proof of his Ascension. His Foundation Establishment treasure.
And the woman who had forged his path—Lian Xue.