Chapter 348: Loss

Sage pushed towards the second line of the Jade Horde, even as he was shot from behind by the first line. Luckily, they were disrupted by the insects and only a few of them fired at him, but even so he had about a dozen bolts lodged between his scales. If it weren’t for the Life Nebula around the Inner World constantly supplying him with energy he would have passed out long ago. Instead, he pushed forward, charging towards the squads of troops that moved to surround him. At first he was only rushing towards twenty men, but by the time he reached them, other groups had rushed to assist and he found himself surrounded once again.

A hundred of the Jade Horde formed a shield wall around him, moving in time with him while more and more of them joined in. Only when the full hundred had formed up did the ones in front of him turn and lock their shields. He darted towards them and planted his feet for a moment, unleashing a vortex of screaming winds. Stormbreath and Divine Breath combining together to break apart the wall of shields. The first two rows of them fell down, but those behind quickly lifted their shields to take up the slack. Sage wasn’t going to let them stop him.

The dragon clamped his mouth shut and there was a wisp of smoke released from its nose. It climbed over the first row of the Jade Horde lying on their backs, and smashed into the nearby soldiers with a saber in its hand along with four blue tentacles. Then, before it hit the hastily forming second shield wall, white flames exploded outwards from it. Gouts of blinding bright fire shot out in every direction, launched from its back, shoulders, knees, elbows, palms, feet, and the tip of its tail. The fire clung to its spine and it spun around a few times, wielding its bladed tail like a flaming sword. The troops were cleaved in half and then the beast darted through a gap in the line.

The flames from the First Light were released into his mouth and fed into his third set of meridians, feeding into the Qi Nozzles placed along the body and amplified as they blasted out around him. Finally clear of the trap, he pushed on till he reached a hill. Twisting his flexible neck, he turned his head backward as he escaped, catching a look behind him.

In the sky, another titanic clash was happening. The huge Breach Hawk flew through the air, lifting its body to a vertical position and lifting its legs, aiming them towards Wu Chang like a battering ram. Sage could see blood spilling from them, some of the talons had been torn off. King had balled up his feet into ‘fists’ and aimed them towards Wu Chang. Wu Chang on the other hand was also bleeding from many large cuts. There was a large torn off talon lodged in one of his shoulders and his arm was hanging limp at his side. In his other hand, he held a large folding fan. It was the same style of simple folding fan that Sage had seen on Earth, except this one was three feet wide and made of extraordinary materials. Instead of decorative images, it was covered in array symbols. The fan, or leaf, portion was a shimmering rainbow colored textile, and the fan’s sticks, or ribs, were a light blue metal.

Wu Chang swung his fan and a gust of wind caught King’s half-stretched wings, knocking him aside so the two ‘fists’ missed him. The Breach Hawk passed by him, but was far from stopped. King wheeled around and dove towards Wu Chang with his beak extended. Wu Chang avoided the deadly beak, but was caught by the flap of King’s wing. The giant sand colored hawk swept its wings forward for just an instant and then returned them to its flying posture. Its flight path was only slightly interrupted, but the space warped and a blade of air sheared through it. The skillful application of its natural space talent combined with a technique passed down through many generations of ancestral memory. The wind blade caught Wu Chang on the leg. Wu Chang saw it coming too late to completely avoid it, only managing to divert it from his vital points.

He swung his fan and a wind blade was fired back at King. Each of their attacks were ‘wind blades’, invisible and slicing through things in their path, but they were formed in completely different methods. Sage watched the two attacks from afar and examined them carefully with his Spirit Sense. Two very similar attacks that were also very different, one formed with space and the other using wind completely. Sage saw a glimpse at the difference between the many laws of the world, but he didn’t have time to contemplate right now.

Wu Chang and King circled each other in the air. The giant hawk and Wu Chang fought for the high ground, climbing higher and higher. King wanted to be able to dive upon Wu Chang, but unfortunately for him, Wu Chang could climb faster than he could. On the other hand, Wu Chang kept trying to strafe side to side, keeping distance from King while also firing off attacks. The problem was King was far more maneuverable than Wu Chang using his huge wings to push the air and using Cosmic Traction to create channels through the air for him to ride upon. They were each restricted from their favorite tactics and the battle got extremely fierce.

There was another loud clash, King extended one of his remaining talons and dragged it across the fan as he flew by. He’d taken a punishing blast of wind to his chest, then pushed through and struck against Wu Chang’s weapon. The shimmering rainbow colored material was torn by the passing claw. It made a sound like ripping fabric, but it looked like torn sheet metal with sharp rigid edges, bent and roughly torn. Wu Chang’s follow up attacks were a bit weaker than before, but so were Kings. The two of them kept crashing together, their attacks weakening with every hit.

Wu Chang spun like a top, holding the fan out to the side as he pirouetted. The wind in the area was captured and harnessed, swirling around him and rapidly spinning into a vortex. In only a few seconds the wind had formed into a full sized tornado, drowning out their hearing with the loud noise. The savage winds forced the Jade Horde to pull back their lines in many places, not wanting to be damaged by the attack of their own leader.

King couldn’t just call himself ‘The King of the Sky’ without knowing how to deal with something like that. He could feel the air moving and he changed directions, circling around with the building tornado. Wu Chang first thought King was going to try and fly around in the opposite direction of the wind and then the two of them could compete directly, but he had no idea that the giant hawk would actually fly in the same direction as his tornado. Instead of fighting the airflow, he joined it, letting the fast moving air carry him along and accelerate him. He followed it around dozens of times before dropping one wing and skipping across the sky, barreling across the center of the tornado.

Wu Chang was in that center, the eye of the storm and he had to avoid the hawk when it swooped past him. King wasn’t using any more wind blades as the air was just too turbulent in the center of the tornado, but neither was Wu Chang attacking with the air either. He had devoted all his energy and concentration to maintaining the massive vortex. In order to get the tornado up to a speed and force that could damage a high level Core Formation Cultivator, it took an absurd amount of power. Wind was fast, unpredictable, and it was very powerful over a massive area, but it was quite dispersed and unfocused.

The two, Cultivator and Demonic Beast, struck each other over and over again. Then, as if they’d both agreed to it beforehand, the two of them charged towards one another with deadly determination. King rushed towards Wu Chang’s injured arm, but the man twisted to the side, avoiding a set of outstretched talons. He just wasn’t fast enough. King kicked the empty air, flapping his wings and flipping his body over backward, and striking out with his huge and razor sharp beak. The crystalline blue colored beak sank into Wu Chang’s shoulder, nearly severing the already injured arm.

Blood shot into the sky, pouring from King’s throat. The large folding fan in Wu Chang’s other hand snapped shut and its tip was driven into the bird. King’s beak was fixed on Wu Chang’s shoulder, making it impossible for him to dodge. Wu Chang couldn’t pull himself free of that vicious beak without giving up his arm, but neither could King do anything about the weapon stabbed into his neck. Each of the tines of the fan had an oddly shaped tip, like a tapered blade, which when the fan was folded up they twisted and formed together to create a single point. The huge bird’s body pressed down upon Wu Chang and forced him to the ground, smashing him to the dirt with a final loud boom.

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