Chapter 339: Qi
Fire took over the world, becoming the world itself.
The air burned as the leaves sizzled and disappeared. The branches took fire and turned into ash, and the trunks receded, charred holes eroding their texture.
The very ground crackled, the grass growing on it long gone as a scorched wasteland expanded. Fire conquered the world, molding it in its image.
It was unclear whether that was a spell. At times, even Lancelot struggled to see the difference. His unique element made that gap fluid, occasionally ignoring it completely.
Of course, Lancelot also had an abundant arsenal, on top of extensive battle training. The Secret Jade Sect had stopped at nothing to maximize his inborn potential.
Nevertheless, Lancelot was a whimsical creature. He might have mastered countless battle strategies, but his passion remained his main driving force, one that could create techniques from nothing, showing the limits of reason and wisdom.
That passion was also a curse. It forced Lancelot to live on a higher, more intense wavelength, making anything remotely ordinary boring, no matter how good it technically was.
But that didn’t apply to the current situation. The fire burning inside Lancelot had never been more intense. He had never once experienced such a scorching passion in his life, and, for the first time, the spark had come from someone else.
Because, as fickle as Lancelot was, he was far from dumb. Even he abided by some laws. His mindset might be broader than most, bordering on insanity even, but he had found someone more insane than him.
Lancelot would have never considered fighting a branching expert. That was an iron-clad rule at the very foundation of the cultivation world. Still, his sworn Brother had opened his mind, stirring his passion to new peaks, which he couldn’t help but unleash, both as a form of gratitude and to share that spark with the world itself.
That passion translated into a chaotic mass of fire that was nothing short of a peak rank 2 spell. It turned the world into a dead zone that belonged solely to Lancelot, but his opponent was beyond such trivial things.
The rooting stage might expose the world’s frailty, but the latter bent under the will of branching experts.
There was no spell, intricate martial art, or even basic technique. Something invisible but insurmountable pressed on the world of fire, squashing it down, turning that widespread sea into a thin fiery layer that flickered above the ground.
Dominic reappeared in the open, his face embodying the suffocating pressure that had fallen onto the area. His square jaw was clenched and tense, his many wrinkles wriggled, and his big blue eyes were wide, conveying bottomless anger.
Despite not a single one of Dominic’s white hairs having suffered from the attack, the latter had still happened. A rooting expert had actually dared to challenge him, and few things could be more insulting than that in the cultivation world.
But Lancelot wasn’t done. He had been raised through the knowledge of a Sect near the Inner Circles. He had studied the gap between cultivation stages in ways few could gain access to, so he knew that even his most scorching passion wouldn’t have sufficed.
That iron-clad rule wasn’t a mere custom. It resulted from empirical data, so Lancelot knew that anything but the best he had to offer would ensure his defeat.
Which was exactly why Lancelot had already raised his arms and joined his wrists, pointing his palms at Dominic. His hair was upside down, completely red, waving as if to replicate fire, brightening once he released an actual spell.
A heatwave backed by a concerning amount of Qi shot forward, creating an all-melting conical area that enveloped Dominic and his surroundings.
The flames still on the ground parted, showing that the soil itself had grown incandescent, shining with heat, molten fabric forming and expanding everywhere.
However, Dominic didn’t move. It would be unbecoming to do so. Defending against the attack of a mere rooting expert would validate its danger, declaring that it could hurt him.
Dominic would rather die than experience such shame. Mere breezes couldn’t bend mountains, so he wouldn’t bother to address the spell, which didn’t leave him defenseless.
The Qi provided a layer of defense, especially when it came to superior experts. Weaker energy and techniques would be less effective, unable to pierce that innate, stronger opposition.
The breakthrough’s revolutionary changes also grew more meaningful with each stage. The difference between foundation and rooting experts was vastly inferior compared to rooting and branching experts, starting from raw energy alone.
There was even the body to take into account. As a branching expert, Dominic’s flesh was nothing short of a rank 3 material, which his energy circulation continuously fueled.
So, when the heatwave arrived, it simply failed to touch Dominic, his mere presence creating a barrier no different than Liam’s Qi Repulsion. It was akin to a weight that Lancelot’s spell couldn’t defeat, as if it were a toothpick trying to drill a hole in metal.
But Lancelot wasn’t the average toothpick. The qualitative difference remained immense, but he had an almost unique upper threshold, too.
The heatwave didn’t stop. Lancelot fueled his spell with reckless abandon, his vast cultivation working overtime to give him full access to his deeper Qi reserves, which he aided through a time-defying chant.
"Higher, higher," Lancelot said, his voice a strangely loud whisper. "I defy through fire."
Lancelot’s hand took fire at that chant, and the temperature inside the conical heat zone abruptly spiked. His Qi reserves vanished at unfathomable speed, and smoke even rose from his palms. His very energy was hurting him, but that was a price he had to pay.
While Lancelot couldn’t forcefully increase his Qi’s quality, he could close the gap with quantity. Yet, his body couldn’t endure that immediate greater energy release, but caring about such limits would only make the current battle unwinnable.
Dominic had planned to stay still, but his battle sense prompted an instinctive reaction. His hand snapped up, attempting to push away or shield himself from the ethereal heatwave.
Nevertheless, Dominic’s palm grew hotter until it started to hurt. His eyes dried up as the world in his vision twisted due to the heat, culminating in an impossible feat.
The tips of Dominic’s hair and well-kept grey beard sizzled and receded under that heat. Charred holes even opened on his dark robe, the attack creating reddish blemishes on his skin.
A rooting expert’s spell was actually hurting Dominic, and anger overtook pride. His Qi spread through the ground, which released a single, violent tremor, freezing the entirety of the area.
The flames stopped flickering. Smoke froze mid-air. Even the heat condensed, squeezed to a pulp by that external force. Time seemed to have stopped flowing, but a cough still rose from Lancelot’s throat, carrying blood with it.
However, only a drop of blood managed to taint Lancelot’s lips before Dominic appeared in front of him, his burned right hand closing into a fist, delivering what looked like a simple uppercut.
"You’ll regret this," Dominic said as his punch hit Lancelot’s stomach, sending a tremor that cut through the air. Cracks opened on the ground due to the impact’s violence, while Lancelot shot upward, flung into the sky.
