Chapter 346: True fire
Dominic’s ribs cracked. The union of the Demonic Art and the Metal Hand granted Liam enough power to overcome the branching expert’s innate defenses, albeit only barely.
The main benefit of that successful blow wasn’t in the injury it inflicted. Honestly, Liam was inclined to believe that Dominic’s body and his life were two distinct elements at that point.
Yet, the hook did destabilize Dominic, even slightly lifting him from the ground, creating an opportunity Liam didn’t hesitate to exploit.
Injuries might not kill, but what they forced Dominic’s Qi to do could. Liam forsook any notion of inflicting additional delay blows. He didn’t even care if he came out on top of those exchanges. He would consider it a win as long as his opponent used his energy.
Liam punched again, uncaring of what he would achieve without the Lightning Step’s speed. He thrust his bleeding knuckles at the right side of Dominic’s chest, hitting it heavily.
Nevertheless, time flowed differently for a branching expert, or rather, cultivators at that level abided by paces that Liam couldn’t match.
Liam’s second punch had been almost instantaneous, wasting no time at all, perfectly following the previous one, but the black veins returned before his bleeding knuckles could land.
Liam hadn’t held back anything. He couldn’t while the Demonic Art was raging. He had attacked without any concern for his structural limits, summoning more strength than his body could endure, and a cracking noise resounded at that second clash with the immovable stone.
It was unclear what broke. A sharp pain spread, and the entirety of Liam’s hand went numb. This time, Dominic’s Qi even did something to prevent the pushback, turning his entire figure into an unfaltering monolith.
But pain couldn’t stop Liam. It wasn’t even a factor he registered. The punch failed, but the knuckles were still connected, and Dominic’s feet had yet to return to the ground.
Piercing those black veins looked impossible at Liam’s current level. At least, he would probably need the union of the Lightning Step, the Primal Urge, and the Metal Hand even to attempt that.
There was no time to accumulate momentum, and the punch had already failed, so Liam just hissed at Dominic’s face, a Hatred-fueled beam of mental energy shooting from his gaze.
Liam felt the backlash before he could see the effects on Dominic. A sharp ring cut through his brain again, threatening to split it into multiple pieces. His nose and eyes leaked more blood, and the world in his vision twisted, alongside his other senses.
The hyper-clarity failed for the first time. Actually, it didn’t. Liam kept feeling everything with immense intensity. His sensory receptors were simply in disarray, unable to perceive the world properly.
One of the aspects that had been a cornerstone of Liam’s being for the entirety of his life just vanished. The second use of the rank 2 Aura damaged him in ways he couldn’t ignore, leaving him among images, sounds, noises, and sensations that made no sense.
But even that confusion didn’t matter. Liam’s entire being had a singular purpose, which a hiss that defied his physical senses embodied.
’Kill!’ The Ancestral Snake’s ancient, deep voice flooded Liam’s messed-up mind as he swung his right arm down. He knew it was already on his target, so he unleashed all the strength he could muster.
Dominic had no technique to defend against that insidious mental attack. The debilitating blow hit his mind and made him lose control of his defensive martial art, as well as of his Qi.
The push slammed Dominic to the ground, carving a human-shaped hole in it, its edges surrounded by cracks. He spat blood, both from his mouth and the gory hole on his chest. It was at that point that he felt it.
The two activations of the black veins, the clap, and the damage Dominic had suffered and defended against had tipped the scales more. He sensed the weakening now. His life was slipping away, his Qi unable to stop the process anymore.
Time was running out earlier than Dominic had predicted, and things worsened even further. Right after the crash, Liam breathed deeply, blowing pitch-black smoke everywhere.
Liam’s brain was still in disarray. He couldn’t differentiate left from right, so he used the Poisonous Breath. Being precise was impossible, so he would turn the area into a dead zone.
Some black gas reached Dominic, seeping into him. He could feel more of his Qi disappearing to deal with that, so he just lost it.
Those half-assed measures were what had put Dominic in that situation, so he would stop relying on them.
"Enough!" Dominic cried, slamming his hands on the ground, which reacted to the Qi he sent into it.
Something brewed below the surface. At first, it was nothing more than a faint tremor, but then a second arrived, and then a third. Ten turned into a hundred, then a thousand, then they became incalculable.
The area above the tremors was affected, too. The air froze, the smoke stopped blowing, and even Liam himself felt all his functions coming to a halt, suppressed by whatever was building up underground.
The process barely took a second to complete, and the world exploded afterward.
An eruption of soil and shockwaves rose toward the sky. Several square meters of that barren surface and the ground below burst out chaotically, the energy that kept their very fabric together weaponized by Dominic’s Qi.
Liam realized that a rank 3 martial art had hit him only when he was high in the sky, trapped in that ruinous eruption. The soil and rocks weren’t a problem, but his skin was broken all over. His front was more blood than intact flesh, and the shockwaves were far from over.
Luckily, the damage had also snapped Liam out of what the rank 2 Aura had caused. Pain won over confusion, stabilizing his mind, which immediately recognized one simple fact, two actually.
That eruption wasn’t a martial art. It was a spell that played into the nature of Dominic’s core. He probably had an earth dantian or something involving vibrations.
The second realization was more obvious. Liam was certain that his body would fall apart if he kept taking that eruption head-on.
Liam hissed, and his whole body tensed as a vibrating membrane enveloped him. Shockwaves landed on the Qi Repulsion, applying enough pressure to risk extinguishing it on the spot.
But the shockwaves weren’t homogeneous. They were no single attack with a straightforward direction, and Liam had no foothold.
While the Qi Repulsion persisted, the shockwaves flung Liam left and right. At times, they brought him deeper into the eruption, but most were exploding outward, so he left its boundaries before his defensive technique could crumble.
Liam found himself a few dozen meters in the sky, falling diagonally, with no idea of how to soften his landing, but that turned out not to be a problem since an even greater issue solved it.
Dominic instantly appeared before Liam and brought him down with him. Liam crashed and thrashed, but nothing could stop Dominic from dragging him through the wasteland, stopping only when he slammed him on a tilted trunk.
Liam hissed between his teeth, blood having long since stained their whiteness. His face was a mess of torn skin, but the Qi Repulsion still covered him, albeit having grown thin, clearly on the verge of vanishing.
Dominic wasn’t too well, either. His face had paled greatly, even too much. A hole stood on his left cheek, and black veins that didn’t belong to any defensive technique had risen through his neck.
Yet, despite being nothing more than a corpse, Dominic still had his hands around Liam’s neck, the Qi Repulsion being the only thing preventing him from crushing it.
Liam grabbed Dominic’s arm, but his limbs weren’t how he remembered them. They were more blood than intact flesh, and something was also wrong with his right wrist, his hand hanging limply from it.
Torn flesh aside, Liam’s left arm felt weak, still numb from the first exchange. He tried to stab Dominic’s skin, only for his fingers to fail to exert enough strength to go past his solid Qi.
Liam still opted for an awkward grip. He wrapped his right arm around Dominic’s, his left hand instead holding it properly, trying to help his defensive technique through his physical strength.
Nevertheless, Dominic wouldn’t budge, or rather, his feet dug into the ground, retreating, but keeping him on Liam long enough for his left arm to rise.
The second backlash from the rank 2 Aura had told Liam that he wouldn’t survive a third, not against a branching expert’s powerful mind. However, he had no other options until one appeared.
The world behind Dominic became red. A canvas of flames rose as two arms wrapped around his left shoulder, holding his limb still.
"Brother, that just won’t do," Lancelot’s voice resounded from the flames before his face also crossed them, peeking above Dominic’s shoulder, looking directly at Liam. "Where is your pride? Where is your excitement? Where is your true fire?"
Lancelot’s face was still littered with burns that had just begun healing. He was almost as pale as Dominic, having barely recovered enough to rejoin the battle.
Yet, Liam saw the message behind that sickish face, conveyed by that heated gaze, embodied by Lancelot’s flames. Liam had that, too, and he called upon it, hissing at the sky as his Qi turned black.
