Chapter 14 #2
Soul Sight enhanced Storm Swan Kung Fu (further modified by Golden Realms & White Crane) has successfully bested Rank 4 Poison Waters Kung Fu!
Your opponent’s Rank 3 Quickness FAILS to counter the wrath of the storm!
Storm Swan Kung Fu has crested Rank 3!
The speed cultivator’s sneer became a look of stunned disbelief when he found himself cartwheeling through the air in the instant it took Alex to trap Water’s currents in whirlwind eddies and propel the element through the howling winds of his fury, the tumbling cultivator crashing in a stunned heap at the far side of the warehouse for just long enough to gaze at Alex with something surprisingly close to fear.
All the more so, when Alex took another deep breath, flashing his glaring opponent a shit-eating grin, no longer feeling that debilitating pressure in his diaphragm at all.
Biochemical Mastery has achieved 100% immunity over 4 additional Qi-based toxins!
You may now generate these toxins at will. (Note. Temporary penalties from mineral depletion may ensue.)
“No, No!” Mongoose hissed as an ugly red glow began to come over both his body and blades.
“I have achieved the fourth circle in a master’s art!
There’s no way you could match me! I have scored your flesh a dozen times, infected you with so much poison that you should be on the ground, squeezing your own swelling throat!
There is no way you could counter an art I have used to poison the blood and rip open the bodies of countless upstarts like yourself who thought themselves better than me! ”
And that was when Alex truly sensed his peril, eyes locking onto his target as he lowered his balance and turned every iota of his focus back onto the foe before him, feeling ever more attuned to the howling storms of his life, the currents of his soul, and the bitter flow of his enemy’s arts as he was forced to accept, much to his dismay, that their duel had just begun.
So why was he smiling so fiercely?
Soul Sight made it clear that his opponent had just lit the fires of his soul at both ends.
The wild storm of bitter hate before him had just ballooned in both ferocity and peril.
Even if it was doomed to snuff itself out, should it fail to take out Alex in time.
One way or another, one of them was going to fall over in death before this night was through.
Mongoose saw something in Alex’s eyes. A wariness, a caution, that filled him with manic glee. “Yes, yes, you sense it! Don’t you, you foul abomination? Sense that your death is inevitable. Sense that I will strike you with such quickness and ferocity…”
Alex’s instincts screamed, leveraging his fangtian ji in long guard an instant before his opponent seemed to appear right before his eyes, twin daos shrieking through the air, lashing out with a blistering series of crosscuts that would have sliced open both sides of Alex’s throat, had he not shifted his weapon in time with the storm’s currents, keeping his foe at bay for the precious split second between life and death.
“I will tear out your throat!” Mongoose roared just as Alex managed to leverage himself away once more, desperately pivoting his fangtian ji to counter another half-dozen flickering mirror image assaults, his old master’s White Crane arts incorporating so well with wind and the howling storm that it was the only reason Alex wasn’t spewing far more blood from a ripped jugular and pierced heart than he could possibly hope to regenerate before his foe finished him off for good.
As it stood…
You have suffered three additional slashes to your left forearm.
Prismatic bones resist all efforts to break through!
Forearm pivot and Golden Realms anatomical lessons mean you are suffering only MILD impairment to your grip.
Strength check made!
You manage to hold your weapon securely as you spring back from your foe!
It had been nothing more than a flicker of instinct, as fast as his opponent’s impossibly deadly flickering blades, shifting his grip so only the outer ridge of his forearm was sliced, where tendons and ligaments were protected by the angular pivot alone.
As horrifically sharp as his foe’s daos were, they were still stopped cold after slicing skin and drawing a few drops of blood, cracking against the bone so close to the surface on that part of the forearm.
Yet still, he knew it was a lucky miracle that Mongoose’s weapon hadn’t successfully flicked open the undersides of both his wrists.
He knew it, and he knew that a sneering Mongoose knew it as well.
Alex did his best to center himself. To feel his footing upon the wooden floorboards through his ancient thin-soled leather boots.
His eyes then widened with desperate hope as he felt an ancient connection, long dormant, renew itself once more.
Yet he knew better than to be distracted by his foe’s mocking laughter as he licked Alex’s blood off the edge of his blade and winked so mockingly, his speed now so monstrous that even with Alex’s connection to the howling storm, sensing the flow of bitter waters that was Mongoose’s spirit, it was still all he could do to shift and pivot his weapon in time to meet his foe’s furious barrage while juggling the needs of his own internal imperative.
Understanding so much as his wild-eyed opponent met his gaze and smiled, Alex shivering as he shifted his grip, left arm perhaps a bit too forward as he prepared for a stop-thrust of an attack…
And his opponent moved so fast he seemed to disappear once more.
“NO!” Alex screamed. He bit back a shout of pain clawing at his throat as, this time, his foe’s weapon slid past the howling storm to tear right through multiple tendons in his left wrist.
The pain hurt even worse than he had feared.
Biochemical skill check: critical success!
Quickness check: FAILED! Your foe has CRIPPLED your left forearm! You are no longer able to hold your Fangtian Ji properly!
Fangtian Ji switched for Dao!
You are attempting to retreat!
The air rang with mocking laughter as Alex’s heart pounded with something perilously close to fear.
No matter how desperately he tried to master his environment, no matter the flare of hope he had sensed upon seeing a single budding leaf upon the lintel of an upstairs window through which the moon shown so brightly and full.
A single miscalculation, daring to underestimate his foe’s quickness for even an eyeblink, had just cost him an agonizing wound.
Severed tendons snapped back deep in his forearm as his hand clawed into itself.
He realized with horror that his injury would take much longer than a split second to heal.
“That’s my blood! My blood upon your blade! You’re a monster. A monster!” Alex shrieked, letting his voice break as Mongoose’s eyes grew wild with fiercest glee, elongated tongue taking such joy in licking his blade clean, no matter how much Alex screamed in protest.
“That’s right, little fool. My blade drinks your potency whenever I draw your blood. Could you not feel it?”
Alex’s face scrunched up in visible dismay, features displaying absolute terror as he forced himself to nod, allowing his foe to savor the inevitability of this moment, his steps becoming plodding, assured.
Mongoose loved so deeply the sound of his own voice that he hardly seemed to notice when his lightness technique left him, the creak of ancient floorboards becoming the dull thud of flattened roots and living soil.
The man hardly seemed fazed at all. Laughing like a madman, eyes wild with glee, Mongoose shivered with delight.
“And I taste your power, mongrel. So rich. So sweet! Water, Earth, and so much more! Lightning, of all things. An imperial element! How GOOD it will be to claim your head and give it to my—”
Mongoose’s eyes widened in surprise before his brow furrowed in consternation as a hunched-over Alex focused only on retreating, on giving his foe the whipped-dog look he sensed his opponent was eager to see.
Yet arrogant as the man was, he was clearly no fool.
His eyes bulged in sudden alarm when he wheezed for breath, movements far jerkier than they had been just seconds ago.
“Poison!” he snarled, glaring Alex’s way as he stumbled for only a heartbeat against a support post now budding with fresh leaves reaching toward the moon high above.
It chilled Alex to see his foe’s momentary look of alarm turn not into dismay, but fury.
He didn’t need his interface screaming warning to know that Black Widow Venom, his strongest Silver-tier toxin this time around that he had infused in the blood of his left arm like a sacrifice, foolishly underestimating just how deep his foe’s blade would cut, had failed to cripple his foe.
Instead, it had enraged Mongoose, his soul burning ever hotter as he attempted to consume both poison and Alex in a desperate bid for survival.
“You fall now, Ruidian mongrel!” The man’s scream stretched the length of the warehouse now rustling with leaves that did little to muffle the madness of the furious Silver. He darted forward so fast that he almost seemed to teleport.
Yet when he roared and slashed with blades now glowing red with infernal fury, he did naught but tear out chunks of living wood from the tree that the post Alex had been leaning upon had become.
For where his foe was darting around with Quickness perilously close to Gold…
Alex had teleported away in the only way Rank 2 Silver would allow.
By embracing his newly blossoming environment and putting the very same skill that his survival had depended upon just days ago to the test once more.
Communion with the Eternal Grove has borne fresh fruit!
New shoots have sprung from ancient wood for a promise you are determined to keep.
If you survive!
You are now surrounded by at least traces of living greenery once more.
Bullrush!
You have successfully dodged Killing Blow!