The scorching heat radiating from the hovering old woman baked the crushed white stones of the arena and caused the surrounding air to shimmer with intense distortion. Eldora Thorne projected the oppressive and ancient aura of an Origin Awakening expert. Her presence alone cracked the remaining stone benches in the lower tiers and forced the nearest spectators to flee toward the higher levels of the coliseum. She glared down at the black robed youth standing over her bleeding daughter and her withered face twisted into a mask of murderous intent.
Li Yu looked up at the descending ancestor but he did not feel any surprise regarding her sudden arrival. He instinctively knew the deep vileness of the Thorne faction was not limited to the people that were sitting on the viewing platform today. The stench of their heavy karma permeated the entire city and indicated a deeper root of corruption hiding in the shadows away from the arena. He had kept his arsenal ready for this exact escalation.
Seeing such a formidable opponent entering the fray, Li Yu turned his head slightly and issued a swift command.
"Borum. Faen," Li Yu called out with a calm but undeniable authority. "Take my cousins away from the ring and secure a safe distance. This fight will leave the boundaries of the stage very soon."
The towering earth elemental and the agile deer kin woman did not hesitate to obey his orders. Borum stomped his heavy foot and raised a curved wall of hardened rock to shield the Zhan disciples from the radiating heat. Faen summoned a strong current of wind to lift the three young men and carry them swiftly toward the highest and safest edge of the spectator stands.
As if the command was given to others as well, everyone began to run away. This had escalated well beyond a trail by combat and the weaker cultivators did not want to be collateral damage. The top members of the Astor Clan stayed as they were strong enough to at least protect themselves behind the arrays here.
Zhan Feng, Zhan Ren and Zhan Lei landed near the reinforced stadium exits and kept their eyes glued to the center of the ruined arena. They all held their tokens firmly in their hands and kept their thumbs hovering over the fragile surface.
They stood ready to crush the emergency beacons the very instant things looked remotely bad for Li Yu. They were not going to risk the life of anyone in their clan over a local dispute but they also wanted to witness the true depths of his martial prowess. He had his own token and didn’t break it, meaning he had at least some confidence in this.
Once his companions were secured far away from the epicenter of the impending clash, Li Yu focused his attention back on the descending ancestor. Li Yu intentionally kept the larger one meter pieces of his orbiting arsenal resting firmly on the ground to conserve his energy reserves for the prolonged battle, he did not need them here. He only activated the smaller quarter meter weapons.
Thirty distinct pieces of heavy iron lifted into the air. The ten spiked balls, the ten four sided spinning discs and the ten smooth javelins vibrated with lethal energy. They snapped into fixed orbital tracks around his Abyssal Black armor and accelerated to a staggering speed. The flying metal quickly formed a devastating hurricane around him as the blunt weapons blurred into a solid wall of iron that produced a deafening grinding noise resembling a colossal millstone crushing solid rock.
Eldora Thorne landed upon the ruined stage and sneered at the spinning metal defense. She tapped into her fire laws and thrust her withered hands forward. A twin headed dog erupted from her burning aura but the martial spirit did not remain a mere ethereal projection.
It quickly gathered the ambient energy of the world and her own to take on a dense physical form. The beast stood as tall as a house and possessed fur made of crackling crimson flames. It bared two sets of molten fangs and charged alongside the old woman.
Li Yu did not retreat from the blistering assault, his body had been tempered within the ember pool and his own natal flame gave him a natural resistance to fire. Even if he didn’t have that, his physique was already monstrous and together with his two armors, he was confident he could take some of it head on. He pushed his armored boots off the cracked stones and charged directly into the inferno.
He used his orbiting weapons as brutal blunt tools to smash into the Tribulation ancestor and her fiery companion, keeping them off balance whenever they came close. He knew that physical martial spirits shared a deep spiritual link with their summoner. If he could break the form of the twin headed dog using force, the old woman would suffer a severe internal backlash.
The fiery beast lunged forward and attempted to bite down on Li Yu from the side. Before the molten fangs could reach his outer armor, a heavy iron spiked ball traveling at high velocity crashed directly into the lower jaw of the left head. The resulting impact produced a sickening crunch of shattering spiritual bone.
Eldora gasped and stumbled mid step as a sharp pain echoed through her own jaw, surprised that he had enough power in his weapon to hurt her.
While his orbiting weapons flew around him to form a grinding shield, all of his swords went off in every direction to attack wherever they could find an opening. Only Silent Bastion stayed by his side and hovered near his right shoulder to provide dedicated protection against targeted strikes.
Pale Extinction darted from the sky like a falling star while Gilded Calamity swept low across the ground to target the ancestor's ankles. Whispering Frost danced through the blazing heat and left trails of freezing mist to help suppress the fire while Cataclysm sought to tear through any defensive barriers she raised. Resolve and Duty provided heavy sweeping support to constantly harass her flanks.
Eldora roared in frustration and unspooled her own chosen weapon. A long whip covered in sharp metallic barbs appeared in her hands and burst into intense blue flames. She snapped her wrist and sent the burning whip cracking toward the youth standing in the center of the hurricane.
The barbed whip struck the outer perimeter of the orbiting weapons and a shower of brilliant orange sparks illuminated the arena. The flexible weapon had a very tough time breaking through the dense wall of flying iron, together with the different swords impeding her attack. Every time the whip tried to wrap around a spinning disc, the extreme rotational force violently deflected the burning leather, only to be met with one of his swords attacking at a difficult angle.
Li Yu was not just using his vast Qi reserves and his physical strength to dominate the exchange. He actively weaved insidious soul attacks into the chaotic rhythm of the battle.While Eldora swung her burning whip to deflect the incoming strikes from Whispering Frost and Firmament's End, Li Yu gathered his mental energy and launched an invisible spike of soul force directly into her mind from his Koi Soul.
The old woman flinched violently as the mental javelin struck her consciousness. Her vision blurred for a fraction of a second and her grip on the barbed whip faltered. She was thoroughly stunned that his soul strength could be so monstrous and over power her own. He was only at the Karma Severing realm yet his mental foundation felt as wide and deep as an ancient ocean.
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‘This kid is a freak! How is his soul so strong? How does he have all these crazy weapons?! How is his Qi so dense and bountiful? This fighting style, he can’t keep this up forever! I just need to endure and outlast him!’ She thought to herself as the battle raged on.
Li Yu capitalized on her momentary lapse in concentration as he stepped through a gap in his own spinning hurricane and swung his heavy glaive in a brutal horizontal arc.
Eldora barely managed to raise her whip in time to block the incoming polearm. The curved blade of the glaive crashed into the burning leather and the force sent the old woman skidding backward across the dirt where another sword was waiting for her.
She caught her balance after deflecting that sword away as well and looked at her trembling hands. From frantically blocking his erratic flying swords to suffering the blunt force of his orbiting weapons and enduring the sudden agony of his invisible soul attacks, she was being pushed back across the entire arena.
Taking on the head on swings of his heavy glaive was another terrifying layer to the fight. Every time their weapons clashed, the physical weight of his strikes rattled her internal organs and disrupted her flow of Qi. She could not find a single opening to launch a proper counterattack as he was constantly the offensive..
"How is this possible?!" Eldora shouted while wiping a trickle of blood from her nose. "You are merely a junior!"
High up in the spectator stands, the three Zhan disciples watched the moniker of the Calamity truly come to life. They saw the intricate and nearly flawless coordination of his brutal combat arts. He was a singular force of destruction weaving metal, Qi, most likely soul and heavy impacts into a tapestry of violence. The young men finally understood why their clan members that had seen him fight spoke of him in such a way. Facing such an opponent such as this in a duel of life and death seemed like an unsolvable puzzle.
The battle dragged on and the two combatants long abandoned the designated arena stage. They fought across the entire stadium while shattering stone pillars and melting the surrounding walls with their stray attacks.
Despite his overwhelming advantage in the exchange of blows, Li Yu could tell his energy reserves were starting to suffer greatly. As Eldora had correctly deduced, she could outlast him. While he was keeping her on the defensive and she could barely attack him, none of his attacks were able to land any true lasting damage that could turn the tides for him.
The weight of sustaining the thirty orbiting iron weapons, commanding independent flying swords, fueling his Qi attacks and soul attacks was draining him completely. He knew fighting an Origin Awakening expert in a war of attrition using only his own power was an unsustainable tactic. However, he had to keep going and couldn’t stop. If he gave her any time to breathe, it would be too much for him to bear. This style relied on nearly pure offense and if that offense died, so would he.
He decided to utilize the unique partnership he had forged within the Primal Howl Realm, it was time to call for help. Li Yu stepped back from a sweeping strike of the barbed whip and channeled a dense surge of spatial energy and tore open a glowing portal directly into his Koi Sanctuary.
The remaining spectators watched in confusion as a colossal object fell from the glowing rift.
Krag the Supreme Exalt dropped onto the ruined battlefield with a thunderous crash that shook the foundation of the entire city. The giant oyster shell stood as tall as a nine story pagoda and looked like a jagged mountain of dark rock covered in ancient algae. The beast did not open its shell to reveal its nine heads and it did not launch any attacks. It simply settled at the bottom of the crater in the arena and remained perfectly still like a grand monument.
Only Li Yu knew exactly why he had summoned the giant shell to the battlefield. Everyone else thought he had taken out another weapon and left it on the ground to be used for later.
A thick invisible tether of refined Qi formed between the Koi martial spirit swimming inside and the Supreme Exalt resting on the dirt. Krag acted as a towering passive battery and began flooding Li Yu's meridians with an ocean of fresh energy.
The sudden influx of power washed away any lingering fatigue in his muscles, core and body. His aura flared brighter than before and the thirty orbiting weapons spun even faster, producing a high pitched screech that hurt the ears of everyone listening.
Eldora and the others were stunned, how did he suddenly recover and get stronger after summoning that rock? The common thought was that he was using some kind of desperate blood essence burning technique to sustain himself. Eldora also thought it could be the rock and took a swing at it with her whip but it didn’t leave any marks at all.
The battle resumed with renewed ferocity but the shifting dynamics were obvious to the seasoned cultivators watching from above. The fight dragged on for several more minutes but the Qi radiating from the black robed youth seemed somehow endless. With the passive support of the ancient beast and the fact that he was only using the smaller pieces of his arsenal to conserve output, his stamina became truly infinite, at least until Krag’s reserves were dry as well.
As Li Yu kept attacking and looking fresh, Eldora Thorne began to slow down. Her burning whip lost its intense heat and her twin headed dog flickered with instability as her own reserves ran dry and the damage from all the attacks began to add up. The relentless pressure of the hurricane slowly ground her defenses into dust.
Li Yu saw the opening he had been waiting to exploit and directed his flying swords to execute the final sequence.
He launched a heavy soul spike that caused Eldora to clutch her temples in agony, it had been attacked too many times now. While she was blinded by the mental pain, Pale Extinction traced a lethal arc near the ground. The bone sword sliced cleanly through her defenses and took off her right leg just above the knee.
Eldora screamed as she collapsed onto the dirt. Before she could cast a healing art to staunch the bleeding, Gilded Calamity descended from the sky like a golden thunderbolt and cleanly severed her left arm at the shoulder.
The old woman writhed in the dust while her burning whip fell uselessly to the ground. Her martial spirit shattered into a cloud of fading sparks as several more spiked balls smashed into it. Its destruction made her concentration break entirely as the backlash infected more damage to her.
Cataclysm did not grant her a moment to breathe, the jagged silver blade flew in a wide flanking maneuver and impaled her from the back, driving straight through her stomach and pinning her to the crushed stones.
Li Yu gathered his still dense and vibrant Qi and formed another three Abyssal Javelins made of dark energy. He hurled the glowing spears downward and pierced through her remaining limbs to ensure she could not move or cast any desperate arts.
Eldora Thorne coughed up a mouthful of dark blood and could barely look up at the figure clad in Black armor. The pride of the Origin Awakening ancestor had been thoroughly broken by the relentless onslaught.
"Please," Eldora begged while tears streamed down her weathered face. "Have mercy. I yield the match. The Thorne clan surrenders."
Li Yu looked down at the vile woman and felt the heavy rot of her karma swirling around her broken form. He knew leaving such a weed alive would only invite future poison into the world. He felt no desire to show mercy to those who only asked for it after their fangs were broken.
As he raised the long polearm into the bright afternoon sun, Li Yu reflected on his own performance. He knew he could have ended things much faster if he had utilized his resonated five souls to attack with overwhelming spiritual pressure.
However, he wanted to use this opportunity to test out his newly forged orbiting weapons and his expanded Nexus Mind to see how they would truly fare in a prolonged battle against a superior realm expert. The results were highly satisfactory but not perfect.
This style was too draining on him and he had the advantage in weaponry. It was fair to say that half this battle was won through his wealth and the benefits that his background had brought him. That didn’t diminish the victory to Li Yu though, winning is winning and he would use the tools given to him on his path.
‘I need to acquire even better tools to make fighting even easier if possible!’ Li Yu thought to himself before his thoughts returned to the present.
The curved blade of the glaive caught the sunlight for a brief moment before descending in a swift and brutal arc. Li Yu swung his weapon and severed the head of the Origin Awakening ancestor, ending her life, her soul and silencing her pleas for good.
