STNS: Chapter 519 (Patreon)

Wu Jian withheld his grimace and quickly set to work, analyzing the five magical beasts who had strode into their midst. There were five of them. All of them were at the Human Limit Realm, which meant they had a lower cultivation than him, Zhou Lihua, and Wu Meiying… but he and Wu Meiying were crippled and Zhou Lihua wasn’t much of a combatant anymore since she followed the Dao of Alchemy.

The first among them was a burly man with wild, golden hair that flowed like a lion’s mane. Molten gold eyes gleamed like the gaze of a predator. His thick, muscular body was covered in scars. Wu Jian could only tell that he was a lion type magical beast. He could not figure out what sort of techniques he used base on looks alone, but he hazarded a guess that this man was a purely physical fighter.

Wu Jian observed the next person. Lithe and graceful, this woman had a long neck and delicate features. Her silver-blue hair was cut short, and her eyes were a pale shade of the sky before a storm. He determined that she must use a type of wind-based cultivation method. What type of magical beast she was, however, he could not say.

The fiery-looking man beside her was muscular, with short, spiky red hair and sharp, piercing amber eyes. His body radiated heat like a furnace, giving away his cultivation method, and faint wisps of flame continuously flickered around him. His hair and eyes made it obvious that he was a tiger of some sort, one that used flames.

Just behind the man was another man. Lean and cloaked in black, this man had sharp features and heterochromatic eyes like Youmei--one yellow and the other blue. He moved silently. Wu Jian didn’t know what kind of method this man used to cultivate, but his style was obviously stealth based.

Last among this group was a strikingly pale man with long, white hair tied into a braid and piercing, hawk-like gray eyes. His movements were precise and calculated. He was obviously a bird of prey, though what type was unknown. Wu Jian wouldn’t be able to figure out what sort of attacks he used until they fought.

And he knew a fight was inevitable.

Zhou Lihua stood up and walked to stand between these magical beasts and Wu Jian and Wu Meiying. Her eyes were sharp.

“I suppose I don’t need to ask what you people are doing here,” she said. Her tone was casual, but Wu Jian could hear the tension in her voice.

“Heh, you’re not going to act like a scared little girl and ask ‘who are you? What do you want?’” asked the burly man, making his pitch higher and more girly in an approximation of Zhou Lihua’s. The mockery in his voice pissed Wu Jian off.

Zhou Lihua’s lips thinned into a straight line. “You already said what you want. There’s no need for me to ask.”

“Ha! Guess that’s true!” he barked.

Wu Jian quickly determined that this man was the leader. He had the highest cultivation among them, a peak Human Limit Realm magical beast. The others were a step below this man.

“Anyway, I’d love to keep chatting, but we have a quota to reach, and you two will do nicely to fill that quota.” The lion man glanced at Wu Jian, snorted when he saw the missing legs, then gestured toward the others. “Kill the man, but leave the women unharmed. You know our employer doesn’t like it when we damage the goods.”

“Yeah, yeah,” the tiger-like man with wispy flames wafting off him said as he and the others stepped forward. “You worry too much, bro. I know my jo--”

“Spatial Severing.”

Wu Jian knew better than to let these people hold the initiative. He did not want to give them control over the flow of combat, and by attacking now, while they were underestimating him due to his injuries. If he could take the initiative now, then he could force them to react rather than act. That would give them an advantage.

His attack was swift and brutal, as he gathered Qi into his left hand, sharpened it into a blade, and sent it hurtling forward. The attack was invisible. Someone would only be able to see the ripple in space his attack left if they were paying attention, and these people were not paying attention. His spatial blade sliced straight into the tiger man’s neck.

Spatial Severing was an attack that cut through space itself. The only way to defend against it was to create a layer of protective Qi. This man had not done anything of the sort, and so the attack sliced through his entire neck.

His body continued on as if he hadn’t realized what had happened. He took one step, then his head slowly peeled off his neck, hitting the ground and rolling across it as his body followed suit.

The others had yet to realize what had happened, and Wu Jian wouldn’t give them time to adjust. He aimed at the woman next. His Qi surged into his right index finger as he pointed it at her. A tiny black sphere formed near the tip.

“Black Hole.”

This woman had sharp instincts. She moved before he finished firing off his attack, but while she had avoided the killing blow he intended this to be, the black hole still caught her foot. It punched a hole straight through her flesh and bone. The woman screamed in both shock and pain as she fell to the floor.

That was enough to snap the others into action.

“Dammit! Kill that man!” the lion man roared.

“Like I’d let you!” Zhou Lihua shouted as her Qi surged. She summoned a pair of battle fans called zhànshàn and quickly swung them. “Heavenly Flame Wave!”

A broad wave of flames erupted from Zhou Lihua’s fans and rapidly spread out before her. These flames were ghostly white and almost seemed to scream in agony as they attempted to sweep over the group of magical beasts.

“Wind Cutter!”

The female magical beast had already recovered, and she sent razor-sharp wind blades out in rapid succession, so fast they struck the flames and canceled them out. She swung her arms quickly, until they were little more than a blur of motion.

But Zhou Lihua wasn’t finished. She leapt into the air, qi gathering on the tip of the fan in her left hand. A tiny white ball of flame appeared. It didn’t look like much, but Wu Jian could feel the intense concentration of qi in that tiny flame.

“Heavenly Flame Bloom!”

She launched the ball of flame in the center of the enemy formation. The moment it reached its destination, the ball erupted, engulfing both the woman and the man with white hair. Everything within the flames radius was consumed as the flames took the shape of a blossoming flower.

“Sky’s Grace!”

“Hawk Claw!”

While the attack had damaged both magical beasts, it had no killed them, for their agility allowed them to escape the worst of the flames. They were singed but still very much alive. The woman danced across the ground, then took to the sky, her movements so fast that she would have been imperceptible to anyone below the Deva Realm. The man, meanwhile, had condensed his qi into sharp, talons that extended from his hand and tried to attack Zhou Lihua with them.

Clang! Clangclangclang!

The sharp sound of combat rang out as zhànshàn met talon in several strikes so fast they were almost naked to the human eyes.

Zhou Lihua’s zhànshàn were structured with a blend of elegance and lethality. They featured a striking crimson hue that matched her dress, as if to symbolize her ties to fire. The gold accents running along the edge made them look ornamental. However, their spines were reinforced with a unique metal to make them combat effective, and when unfolded, they created a semi-circular arc with sharp edges.

She struck the bird magical beast with powerful and swift attacks, while also defending against his attacks. It soon became clear who had the upper hand. Zhou Lihua began to push her opponent back.

“Did you forget there are two of us?!” asked the woman, who came at Zhou Lihua from behind. “Wind Cutter.”

The woman launched her attack at Zhou Lihua from almost point blank. An attack of this caliber would have killed a lesser cultivator, but while Zhou Lihua might been more focused on alchemy, that did not mean she was helpless.

“Heavenly Flame Wave!”

Rather than swinging her fan out, she swung it up, creating a powerful wave of flames that rose between her and the woman. The powerful cutting blades struck the flames and fizzled out.

“Heavenly Flame Bloom!”

Zhou Lihua tapped the wall of flames, which condensed into a sphere and shot forward. It struck the woman in the chest. Flames erupted and her body was quickly engulfed. She screamed in pain as the ghostly flames damaged both her flesh and her soul.

“What did you do to Qīng Lán, you bitch?!” demanded the magical beast.

He lashed out at Zhou Lihua, who met his attacks with her own equally fierce defense.

“Why should I answer you?” she asked with a sneer.

“Bitch, you’re courting death!”

While Zhou Lihua fought against those two, Wu Jian confronted their leader, the lion magical beast, who seemed wholly unconcerned by the battle raging above them.

“I did not expect you to be so strong, injured as you are… I guess that’s a Deva Realm cultivator for you,” the man said.

It was not odd that this man could tell Wu Jian’s cultivation, though it was unlikely he could get a precise estimate--not that it mattered. Injured as he was.

“That’s an odd technique you have there,” the man continued.

He was referring to Wu Jian’s Spatial Drifting, the technique he had learned in order to move without legs. At the moment, Wu Jian was simply floating above the ground--or that was how it appeared. He had actually locked his coordinates to this space using his understanding of the Dao of Space.

“I have many esoteric techniques that you can scarcely fathom,” Wu Jian said with a shrug. “You and yours would be better off running, unless you’d prefer to end up like your friend.”

He glanced at the headless corpse.

The man laughed. “Nice bluff! But I can tell how injured you are, and you’re not the only one. That other girly of yours is in even worse condition than you. Can you defeat us while protecting her?”

“Shadow Bind!”

Wu Jian’s eyes flickered as he sensed an attack coming. The shadows underneath him quickly surged up. There were many of them, and they all rose above him and converged as though to engulf him in thick bonds.

“Nihility.”

After taking a deep breath, Wu Jian expelled the air from his lungs and phased out of space. His body was still visible. However, the shadow technique passed through him as though he wasn’t there.

“Spatial Lock.”

Wu Jian pointed at the ground beneath him and sent his qi into it, locking the entire ground in space, including everything touching it.

“Now, you won’t be able to move,” he said, sensing that his technique had captured the magical beast hidden within his shadow.

“Golden Armor!”

“Bear’s Grasp!”

Wu Jian barely had a second to perceive the attack as the burly leader of this ragtag group slammed into him with the force of a hurricane. With his body covered in a shimmering layer of golden energy, he tried to grab Wu Jian, who quickly dodged out of the way by manipulating the space around him.

“That’s not enough to defeat me! Titan Slam!”

The burly man slammed both hands into the ground, releasing a devastating shockwave that rushed over Wu Jian, who raised his hands.

“Spatial Lock!”

The shockwave that had been rushing forward stopped moving forward, though it quivered as though trying to escape. Wu Jian was breathing heavily by this point. If he didn’t have to use Spatial Drifting, he would have still had plenty of stamina, but his stamina was less than half of what it should have been thanks to his continuous use of that technique.

His foe stood up and grinned at him.

“You’re really quite strong. It’s a shame you’re so crippled. A shame indeed. You’d be a real challenge if you weren’t so injured.” The grin on his face grew as he looked behind Wu Jian. “You also might have been able to sense my friend over there.”

“What?!”

Wu Jian spun around to find the last member of their group, the man in black, holding Wu Meiying by the throat.

“Cease fighting at once, or I will kill this woman,” he said to both Wu Jian and Zhou Lihua.