by Jeremy Bai
But it was a critical moment, and there was no time to ponder the situation.
As the black blur that was Geng Long descended, Bao reached out and grabbed the Wind Saber. Ripples of power coursed through her meridians, causing her to gasp. The Phoenix Crown began to shake, creating vibrations that perfectly matched the ripples of power. Within the blink of an eye, the Phoenix Crown and the Wind Saber connected to each other, using her body as a channel of communication.
Although the connection itself was beyond Bao’s control, she could sense that somehow the Wind Saber was tugging at the phoenix demon sealed inside of the crown, causing it to let out a miserable, enraged shriek.
“Shut up, you oversized chicken,” Bao growled through gritted teeth.
There was power stored inside of the Wind Saber, but with the addition of the essence of the phoenix demon, that power began to expand exponentially. Bao’s hand began to tremble, and then her entire arm.
The energy seemed to be growing at an exponential rate and was rapidly reaching a point where it couldn’t be contained. Bao quickly realized that if she didn’t release that energy, it would almost certainly harm her, and it could potentially kill her.
***
Meanwhile, Kun-Peng was locked in a vicious struggle with three flood dragons. The flood dragons were no match for the enormous bird in terms of raw strength, but they clearly had the advantage in terms of mobility and speed. Kun-Peng was like a sovereign of the sky and was not the type of creature built for close-quarters combat.
The bird had its beak latched on to the neck of one of the flood dragons and was just about to rip its head off when another of the flood dragons bit onto the base of its wing.
Releasing the first flood dragon, Kun-Peng jerked the second flood dragon away, then lashed at it with enormous curved talons.
That was when the third flood dragon head-butted Kun-Peng on the back, sending it staggering forward.
Of course, considering the enormous size of the beasts, their battle caused the ground to shake and sent intense rumbling sounds out in all directions.
Thankfully, the flood dragons’ black liquid attack didn’t seem to be something that could be used again in a short period of time, for none of the flood dragons had unleashed that attack a second time.
As Kun-Peng and the three flood dragons fought back and forth, Sun Mai and the profound masters continued to hold their own against the lone flood dragon. In their battle, they were the ones who lacked strength but had the advantage in mobility and speed.
With one powerful martial arts technique after another, they slashed and battered the flood dragon, simultaneously using their qinggong to avoid the deadly attacks being leveled against them. So far, not a single one of the profound masters had been seriously injured.
***
Geng Long was only two meters away from Bao this point. There was no time for lengthy planning or strategizing, and she knew she couldn’t simply attempt to block Geng Long’s technique. She had to unleash an attack of her own.
She did her best to focus the terrifying energy buildup and then swung the Wind Saber out in front of her. White and blue light erupted out to meet the pitch black of Geng Long’s attack, and when the two forces met, a deafening droning sound filled the air, a sound like a thousand boulders being shattered by lightning.
Geng Long’s eyes went wide, and his mouth twisted into a snarl. And yet that snarl quickly vanished as he realized that he was being pushed backward.
The white and blue light erupting from the Wind Saber shone brighter and brighter as it shoved Geng Long and his bone sword away from Bao, slowly at first, but then faster and faster.
Moments before, the bone sword had defended against and eventually destroyed the Rage Holocaust. However, against the combined might of the Phoenix Crown and the Wind Saber, it was like a dried branch trying to stop a rolling boulder.
The droning sound continued to increase in pitch, and the white and blue light grew brighter, until it was like a sun shining on a battlefield.
Within moments, the beam of light erupting from the Wind Saber was so large it was about to envelop Geng Long. It was to his shock that cracks began to spread out on the surface of his bone sword.
A moment later, the sword began to shatter, starting at the tip, working down the blade to the spot where his two hands held the base of the weapon. Next, his suit of bone armor began to split apart and fall off. Then, when there was nothing left to stave off the deadly white and blue energy, Geng Long found his skin melting.
An enraged, terrified scream of pain and disbelief escaped his lips as his muscles were reduced to ash, and then his bones were incinerated.
And the energy of the Wind Saber was still not fully unleashed.
Geng Long was reduced to nothing more than a shadow, which then disappeared into the sunlike light of Bao’s attack. She turned her head to the left.
There, Kun-Peng was in the middle of fighting two flood dragons. Moments before, the gargantuan bird had finally managed to rip the head off of one of the flood dragons, which it tossed into the waters of the bay. There, the decapitated corpse transformed into countless motes of black light that faded away into nothing.
The other two flood dragons had both received injuries of some sort. One of them had a gash on its back that almost cut through its entire body. The other had one of its legs ripped off.
However, Kun-Peng was also in bad condition, with numerous wounds that bled scintillating green blood. One of the flood dragons had latched its jaws onto the bird’s right wing, while the other circled around through the air, apparently intent on attacking Kun-Peng from behind.
As the second flood dragon prepared to do just that, a beam of white and blue light slashed through the air like a whip toward it. Before it could react, the light slammed into the flood dragon, incinerating half of its body in the blink of an eye.
Only then did the light finally fade away.
Bao sagged in place, lowering the Wind Saber until the tip rested on the ground in front of her. Sweat was dripping down her face, and her entire body was trembling.
Although Geng Long’s attack hadn’t even come close to touching her, she still felt as though she had been injured. Closing her eyes, she cast her senses inside of her, but she couldn’t find any internal injuries. And yet she somehow felt incomplete.
Suddenly, she recalled something Du Qian had mentioned decades ago. Every person has five souls inside of them. The cathartic method of drawing on qi has the potential to damage or even destroy those souls.
Bao took a deep breath. Now’s not the time to worry about souls.
Chapter 90: Revelations
Hui stood high up on the mountain, freezing wind buffeting her face and sending her robes and hair whipping about as she watched events playing out down below. The sight of enormous Kun-Peng rising up from the water was awe-inspiring. Although she had met Kun-Peng face to face in the Eastern Archipelagos, the creature had been in fish form, which she had only glimpsed in the depths of a murky subterranean lake.
To see the creature out in the open was breathtaking.
It was little surprise to Hui that the profound masters of the Dragon-Phoenix Sect leapt into the fray with the flood dragons. She could well remember the tales she had heard as a girl regarding the Defeat at Heart’s Ridge. During that battle, it hadn’t just been the profound masters who joined the fight. Even the weakest members of the sect put their lives on the line to defeat the monsters thrown at them by the Bone General. Although they had destroyed the flood dragons in the end, most of the heroes lost their lives in the process.
But this time, things were playing out very differently. Less than a minute after the initial fighting broke out, Kun-Peng had destroyed one of the flood dragons.
Moments later, a brilliant white and blue light filled the battlefield, and Hui’s eyes widened, then narrowed as the light grew uncomfortably bright, even from the great distance at which she observed it.
&n
bsp; “What is that?” she murmured. To her shock, the light curved through the air and slashed one of the flood dragons in two before winking out. That light was something that had not been mentioned in any of the stories Hui had heard.
“Something new? It seemed to contain the fluctuations of both the Wind Saber and the Phoenix Crown. Don’t tell me… someone is wielding the saber and the crown at the same time?”
In the history Hui knew, it wasn’t until the final confrontation with the Demon Emperor that the secret powers of the saber and crown had been revealed. According to the stories, after Sunan fell in battle, Bao picked up his Wind Saber and unleashed a devastating attack with it. However, by that point of the fight, even such a powerful attack did little good. The Demon Emperor was wounded, but he struck back with a vicious blow that killed Bao. Afterward, the Demon Emperor took control of the Wind Saber and the Phoenix Crown, which only strengthened his iron grip over Qi Xien and gave him another tool to expand his conquest throughout the continent.
In any case, Sunan and Bao definitely did not combine the power of the two objects in the Defeat of Heart’s Ridge.
“Things are already changing…”
With a second flood dragon already dead, the fight didn’t continue for much longer. Kun-Peng ripped the third dragon to shreds, and moments later, the profound masters finally battered the fourth one into oblivion.
What had once been a crushing, demoralizing, and bloody defeat had become a momentous victory.
Hui worked hard to suppress the smile from breaking out on her face. She failed, and it blossomed across her face.
“Time to send you away, Kun-Peng,” she murmured, raising the pipes to her lips.
***
After the final motes of black light that were the remains of the fourth flood dragon faded away, the profound masters looked around in both shock and triumph.
A moment later, Kun-Peng let out a piercing cry, then leapt into the air, wings sending a blast of air out in all directions. Perhaps it was because of the frenzy of events, or perhaps because of the sea breeze, but almost no one seemed to notice that, in accompaniment with Kun-Peng launching into the air, the faint sound of music was floating through the air. It was nothing like the triumphant, symphonic blast of noise that had summoned the creature, and in fact, it was only Sun Mai who noticed it.
As Kun-Peng flew high into the sky and then disappeared to the west, Sun Mai looked up toward the top of the mountain, his eyes glittering.
***
Although the Dragon-Phoenix Sect was far away at the bottom of the mountain, Hui was a profound master with keen eyesight, and she could just barely make out some of the figures down below.
After defeating the flood dragons and watching Kun-Peng fly away, the profound masters converged at the front of the sect, presumably to confer about what action to take next. Feeling more pleased than ever about how everything was playing out, Hui closed her eyes to meditate and restore some of the energy she had expended to power the Kun-Peng Pipes.
Time passed.
The wind blew.
After a while, just when Hui was about to rise to her feet and gather the few belongings in the cave to leave the mountain, she realized that she wasn’t alone anymore. Her eyes slowly opened, and she turned her head to find a man standing several paces to the side.
He wore long robes and had a clean-shaven head, and she knew who he was the instant she laid eyes on him.
“Sun Mai,” she said. “Excellent qinggong. I didn’t sense your approach at all.”
Sun Mai nodded politely. “May I ask your honored surname?”
Hui slowly rose to her feet, then clasped hands and bowed deeply. “Fan Hui of the Dragon-Phoenix Sect.”
Sun Mai’s eyes widened. “Fan…?”
Hui nodded. “Golden Dragon Division.”
Sun Mai looked a bit closer at her. “There’s something about your aura. Those fluctuations…”
“They are similar to the fluctuations from that chariot you rode into the past.”
“How?”
Hui took a deep breath. “Master Sun, considering that we are now talking to each other face to face, I think that attempting to hide the truth would be pointless. However, I must request that you keep the information I’m about to tell you strictly in confidence. Considering that you have traveled through the streams of time yourself, I’m sure you can understand why I’m… hesitant to disturb their flow.”
“The streams of time? So my speculations were not too far from the truth. You come from a different stream of time?”
Hui looked down at the Dragon-Phoenix Sect at the bottom of the mountain. “To be honest, I’m not completely sure. I believe that I come from this same stream, further down the flow.”
Sun Mai’s eyes flickered. “From the future.”
“Yes.”
“And you came… to change the past?”
“To change the past, and thus, change the future. In the future that I come from, the final assault on Yao Gong Palace was a complete failure. The Demon Emperor slaughtered… all of you. The Dragon-Phoenix Sect barely survived, and the Demon Emperor ruled the lands with an iron fist for a thousand years.”
Sun Mai looked at her quizzically, as if sensing there was more.
“The religion you created, Qi Zhao, died with you.”
“The Dragon-Phoenix Sect operated in secret in the centuries that followed the defeat, resisting the Demon Emperor where possible and attempting to help the common people. Eventually, an ancient artifact was recovered, a ruined chariot, the axle of which contained shocking power.”
Sun Mai wasn’t sure whether to chuckle or shake his head. “Du Qian’s chariot?”
“Exactly. The chariot was in complete disrepair, but the main source of its power, the wooden axle, contained the power of time, and it was reforged by an expert swordsmith into what came to be known as the Sword of Time. Of course, there are many other factors that led to the axle of the chariot becoming the Sword of Time, but they aren’t important.
“I was born around the time that the chariot was discovered, and I became the apprentice of the hero who had been chosen to use that sword to go back and fix the mistakes of the past. Sadly, in the very moment before the ritual was complete, my master was killed, and I took his place.”
“You’ve been guiding us all along, haven’t you?” Sun Mai said, his expression unreadable. “That was you back in Daolu, wasn’t it? In the temple of Supreme Judge Yu?”
“Yes, that was me. I was careless that night.”
“I even saw you years before that, didn’t I?”
Hui smiled. “I was especially careless in the early years. You see, most experts from my era believed that streams of time should only be altered indirectly. They were convinced if someone interfered too directly, it could lead to catastrophic results.”
Sun Mai nodded. “That much is true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
“That is why I always used the most indirect means at my disposal to try to influence the outcome of the fight with the Demon Emperor. Today was the first time in which I ever interceded with such a heavy hand.”
“Without Kun-Peng,” Sun Mai said, “the battle would have been a devastating loss. A massacre.”
“Close to that,” Hui replied. “It became a legend called the Defeat at Heart’s Ridge, and it prompted Sunan and Bao to lead a foolhardy assault on Yao Gong Palace. Interfering with the events at Heart’s Ridge was never part of the plan. However…” She looked off toward the distant horizon, the wind playing with her hair. “Perhaps it was a weakness on my part, but I just couldn’t bear to see so many heroes die.”
A thousand questions burned in Sun Mai’s head, but his heart was pounding in anxiety. Having traveled the streams of time, he knew that Hui was right to worry about how her interference could lead to disaster. In fact, the more he thought about the implications of what she was telling him, the more he wished to be out of her presence.
“I sh
ould leave,” he said. “But before I do, I have two final questions. First, could it be that another reason you are so hesitant to personally interfere is because of the blood which runs through your veins? That and your surname, Fan?”
Hui continued to look out at the sky for a long moment. “Yes.”
Sun Mai nodded. “Second question. Sunan’s dreams and Bao’s poetry. They came from you, correct?”
“Yes. The culmination of generations of rituals performed and enlightenment sought by the profound masters of the Dragon-Phoenix Sect in my era.”
“Over the years, we have discussed and analyzed the dreams and poetry at great length, but we are still not completely sure of the implications of every detail,” said Sun Mai. “Now that we have already met and talked with each other, perhaps you could spare a moment to clarify a few points.”
“Of course.”
Sun Mai and Hui were accompanied only by the cold winds as they quickly discussed a few aspects of the dreams and poetry. Finally, Sun Mai clasped his hands respectfully.
“Heroine Fan, it was truly a pleasure to meet you. I fear I can hardly comprehend the sacrifices you have made in your quest, and I will forever hold you in the highest esteem. Unless you object, I would like to record some of your story in my thirteenth scripture, a scripture that I will only allow the most qualified of profound masters to study.”
Hui thought for a short moment. “Very well, Master Sun. And now, you really should take your leave. Farewell.”
Sun Mai turned to head back down the mountain. In the last moment before he disappeared, Hui’s voice reached his ears.
“One more thing. Hidden in Vault #456 in the Heart’s Ridge Prison is a magical door. Someone like you should have no problem understanding how it operates…”
Sun Mai’s eyes widened in shock, and there was a whistling sound as an iron key flew toward him. Without looking back, he reached up and grabbed the key, then began to speed down the mountainside toward the beach, his robes rippling in the wind.