Chapter 648 - Storm of the Abyss (XXI) (Patreon)

Long Tian belched a mouthful of blood as he felt a dagger made entirely out of Qi twist against his right kidney. At the same time, he felt a hand pull him by the collar of his robes and toss him backwards a couple of yards. He landed roughly, the impact rattling throughout his bones as he yelped.

It was over.

They were barely holding on, and it looked like Yuhan'er, even if she could defeat her opponent, couldn't do so quickly. One by one, they were falling--there were about thirty Elders of their Sect alone at the start, and now there were just three. No, two.

The man who threw him back, Elder Nian, had just been killed by a spear through his throat. He gargled for a moment, his body stiffening before turning soft like jelly and limping to the ground. A life, a legendary life of fearlessness and conquest, it ended... just like that.

He was just about to use the last resort to try and send Yuhan'er out when the whole hall came to a standstill. On the far end of it, a new group arrived. Seeing as how they weren't cloaked, Long Tian's heart sparked with hope--someone had actually managed to break through! And if they were able to do so... they were probably strong!

However, as he inspected the newcomers a bit more, that hope turned into despair, his expression a practical mirror to everyone else's.

They were mostly children, the oldest among them being perhaps a few hundred years old and in the Inner World Realm. Rather than coming here, they should have ran or at least hid, so that there may be witnesses to this ghoulish thing to recount what happened.

Yuhan'er must have felt the same as her voice rather suddenly exploded, "What are you doing?!! Run! Get out! Try to find someone to help!"

Alas, they neither ran nor got out. Rather, one of the older men in the group seemed to have said something, whereupon a heap of those children vanished, rushing over towards them. Words got caught up inside Long Tian's throat; such bravery... courage... selflessness to aid others in a pit of despair despite knowing they were weak.

He didn't want these children to suffer and die, and yet felt helpless to stop it.

The first to reach them was a young woman, perhaps having just begun her second decade of living. She was wearing simple, ashen-gray robes, her long, twilight-black hair unfurling against her movements. She stepped in front of them all, tall and stalwart.

She was about to die, and yet didn't. Instead, she grabbed weapons with her bare hands, used them to kill a few cloaked figures, and then shattered them with her fingers.

Silence descended upon the hall, silence that was difficult to fully process. By now, others started arriving, and a song began that Long Tian would not forget until the day he died.

A young boy who was no older than fifteen or sixteen came from the left, surging through the air, and drew the sword from his scabbard. The explosion of Qi was so violent that Long Tian was pushed back despite only being impacted by a small aftershock. The brunt was coalesced into an array of light that dithered forward and spewed forth a tsunami of energy. It splintered into thousands, the stable environment collapsing under its might.

Literal hundreds of cloaked figures were disemboweled, beheaded, or delimbed in the span of a second, and a few dozen more were buried under an avelanche of stone and debris that was kicked up by the impact. The boy was still midflight, sliding sideways, and landed expertly on his feet, by which point the sword was back in the scabbard.

In the meantime, arrays of light surged toward the sky and curved toward him as well as those still alive next to him--the light was emerald and warm and its currents burned through his body like a tidal wave. The aches, the gaping holes that he was struggling to close up and stop from bleeding, the broken bones, the organs that he had consciously ceased the function of... it was like pouring oil on a dying flame.

It roared, his body replenished in a burst of vigor that felt almost fake.

To his shock, however, it wasn't Qi--it was Mana. Elusive, intangible energy that no cultivator had ever managed to grasp, no matter how talented.

He seldom had the time to process any of it before his gaze was drawn away by yet another newcomer. A young girl, perhaps the boy's age, donning gauntlets that seemed like they'd weigh her down. And yet, she arrived like a storm, in perfect control of herself; while hundreds of cloaked figures were killed by the young boy, that didn't matter.

Long Tian himself had killed well over a thousand of them--they kept coming, as if resurrected from the dead. Dozens surrounded her, arrays of fire, lightning, and ice bursting forth in the forms of flying bolts, or spearheaded icicles emerging from underneath her, or literal boulders of energy. An all-consuming deluge of death... and she stood firmly, welcoming it.

The girl tapped back with her heel, dodging nimbly the icicles rushing out from underneath her; at the same time, she spun, extending one of her fists, and slammed the gauntlet into one of those icicles, shattering it into a thousand pieces, most of which were sent hurtling forward at a speed that even Long Tian struggled to keep up with.

Whenever they came in contact with a cloaked figure, the latter was immediately killed, no exception. In the meantime, the girl continued to bob and weave between the onslaught of attacks, punching out with her fists and sending invisible arrays of energy that each, unequivocally, ended a life.

To his horror, however, that wasn't all--he heard a shout, and a few follow-up commands. It was odd, however, as the voice was young. When he found the source, it was a boy who was barely older than ten, standing atop of a boulder of debris, issuing commands to others while also nimbly deflecting a dozen or so cloaked figures with a strange weapon. Unlike any of the other kids, he wasn't particularly flashy and eye-catching.

Rather, he was methodical.

So methodical, in fact, that Long Tian was terrified--it was as if he was watching Sect Master herself fight, just bereft of her realm. Every decision was near-perfect, every stroke of his weapon aimed at precisely where it needed to be, every command given to others a preamble to a deeper one. It was as if he were a painter, the other kids were his brushes, and the battlefield were his canvas.

"Are you alright?" a gentle voice broke through the cacophony of battle sounds, prompting Long Tian to look to his left where a young man clad in green robes stood. There was a sheen of light covering him, though it may have just been Long Tian's imagination. "Here," the young man crouched and handed him a bottle of pills. "They are extremely high-grade and should help. My word just stabilized you for a bit, but if you don't take the pills, you'll still be in mortal danger once the word's effects wear off. Stay in the back," he added. "Try to recover as much as possible. We'll need you all to fight that man in the center."

And off he went to join the others while Long Tian absentmindedly dispersed the healing pills--they were of quite high quality. In fact, they rivaled some of the more treasured ones within the Sect that were the 'emergency-use only' sort. And yet, the boy just... handed them out.

Taking a bite out of one, he let the rushing Qi seep into every bit of himself as he began focusing on recovery. The boy was right--though they were miracle workers in more ways than one, the man Yuhan'er was fighting... even with all of them, it might still be impossible.

Nonetheless, they had to try. There was no other way.