Chapter 926 The Reckoning (3)
Li Mu’s hand wandered once more to the hilt of his saber, which he gripped firmly once more.
Another bolt of light came wailing out, shooting up into the like a comet.
The searing white projectile slammed into the face of the dragon, plowing through its entire length and reducing it to mere confetti of energy dregs, leaving only slivers of lightning bolts crackling in their final protest before disintegrating.
Song Mian crashed back to the ground with lees of electricity trailing in his wake. He managed to remain to stand, but the ordeal appeared to have weakened him as he reeled unsteadily, beaten and pale.
“As I said, parlor tricks. If that’s all you are, then this duel is over. You’re so weak that you’re not even worth drawing my weapon for,” said Li Mu, overlooking his foe from the top of the inclination.
Song Mian could barely say a word.
He did not think that Li Zhiyuan’s strength and power had grown past his expectations.
He was just unstoppable.
Has he indeed achieved the same unmatched invincibility that has only been attributed to G.o.ds?!
The last thing he expected was that his lightning-based magic to have no use at all against LI Mu’s powers.
From a distance away, the heads of the Great Five and the warriors of the coalition all stared at the premature outcome of the duel with disbelief. Song Mian exhibited powers and strength that exceeded their comprehension and that ability to manipulate lightning like it was his own and harness it was something that could make even the heads of the Great Five shudder. But this was Li Zhiyuan that Song Mian was up against. The one man whose power, speed, and strength — abilities that only a G.o.d could rival — had easily dwarfed even those of Song Mian.
“Is this really the end already?”
Witnessing up-close Li Zhiyuan’s indomitable might have practically crushed what will the coalition have of continuing the fight.
Whereas Lu Chuan and the Creed of Divinity acolytes who came with him all looked invigorated and elated.
Ten years had pa.s.sed and he had almost never seen Li Mu in action before. Now that he had witnessed with his own eyes the greatness of his brother-in-arms, Lu Chuan could only exhale with awe at how incredible and divine was Li Mu’s craft.
At the top of Dawncrest, Song Mian hung his head, but not in shame. He was only just ignoring Li Mu’s remarks.
His shoulders were shaking.
“Heh heh heh heh heh…”
A cold and spine-tingling cackle slipped out of his lips.
“Heh heh heh… Muahahahaha!”
Louder and viler the laughter became. His shoulders were shaking not because of fear and not because of panic, but rather because he was laughing.
He lifted his chin and stared at Li Mu with eyes blazing with a strange morbidly-red glow.
“Do you think that you’ve won, Li Zhiyuan? Just like that?” he glared at Li Mu with a hungry look like a beast that had only just woken up from centuries of slumber with an insatiable appet.i.te.
“What other tricks do you have hidden up your sleeves?” a taciturn Li Mu growled, “Whatever you have, let’s see them all.”
“I did not want to unseal my powers at first. But clearly, I’ve been mistaken. It seems that you’ve forced my hand. Aren’t you curious as to who I am? We’ve met once, you know?”
“As if I care,” Li Mu replied with a stir on his countenance. “Whoever you are, stand before me and I’ll cut you down. Just like that.”
“Hmph, such deplorable hubris… But I’m sure this will surprise you…” muttered Song Mian as fissures began cracking open all over his skin like it was clay, revealing a face and a new body beneath it.
Li Mu’s face betrayed a hint of astonishment.
“The son of the Lion?!”
The outer husk of “Song Mian” peeled off to reveal a young and handsome man, utterly naked if not for the tendrils of Mana in fume-like form swirling all around him. The fog added a mysterious tinge to his presence and his power was at a wholly different level from “Song Mian” before.
“Unexpected, isn’t it?” The son of the Lion cackled wickedly, “You thought I was dead for good, weren’t you?”
But Li Mu remembered full well the details back then. He had killed the son of the Lion, but he did not kill the manservant who was with him. When he came back, they were both gone—the manservant and the body. At first, his initial speculation was that the servant had left the dungeons with the body of his deceased master. Apparently, something probably more grotesque and macabre must have happened instead.
But it mattered not to Li Mu. At least not anymore.
“If I can kill you once, then I’ll do it again.”
The surprised look on Li Mu’s face faded swiftly.
The turns of unexpected events did not change the status quo at all.
“I’d love to see you try,” smirked the son of the Lion.
He groped into the air and a pair of lightning bolts, purplish and deadly, coalesced in his grasp, gradually taking on the form of a pair of swords. The eyes of everyone watching the fight contracted with astoundment. What the son of the Lion had just displayed was a complex form of Mana manipulation, using it to condense pure lightning energy into solid form. This was a feat only thought capable by those who had achieved the legendary Cla.s.s XII.
“Is this really it?! The legendary cla.s.s?!
“It must be! And Li Zhiyuan will finally lose!”
Li Mu shook his head wearily. Still, he refused to draw his weapon. He placed his hand on the hilt of his weapon for the third time and gripped it once more.
A salvo of white light wheezed into the air.
“Heh, this again?”
The son of the Lion smirked with undisguised disdain. Brandis.h.i.+ng the light he aimed one fist into the sky and the other down at the ground. Then he spun on his heels, turning in a clockwise direction while he conjured more images of swords, surrounding himself in a magical circle that consisted of numerous lightning bolts shaped like swords.
“The lightning array of destruction!” Yelled the son of the Lion loudly.
He clasped both his hands together and more than ten thousand shafts of lightning filled the sky. As one, they swarmed down at Li Mu, the entire deluge of raining lightning bolts mottled with electric semblances of various predatory beasts eager to sink their fangs and teeth into his flesh.
The sight was easily more imposing, more magnificent, and definitely several times more fearful than what everyone had seen before from “Song Mian”. Right at that moment, the entire world thought as if a demonic being from ancient times had descended upon Molderad to bring death and carnage by means of a raging storm of lightning bolts, not rain.
The sight was indescribably incredible and stunning.
But before champions and warriors of the Great Five coalition could cheer, another blinding shaft tore up into the air with unbelievable grace and poise like a viciously sharp blade sliding through a piece of paper, slicing through the sky.
As if the stroke had cut right through the fabric of Time and s.p.a.ce itself, the air ripped open to reveal a yawning black s.p.a.ce from somewhere unknown, and like a black hole, it drew in everything—from the largest electric-forge beast to the smallest of lightning shafts—into the black gaping hole before it closed shut and vanished as if nothing had happened.
All that destructive forces all suddenly just vanished into thin air as if someone had used a hand to wipe everything off a blackboard.
But that was not all of Li Mu’s retaliation; the searing white shaft arced around and barreled straight for the son of the Lion, cleaving through him like a hot knife through b.u.t.ter.
Whatever vestiges of pride and confidence that once swirled in the eyes of the son of Lion ebbed like extinguis.h.i.+ng embers. As the dread of death and its decay slowly crawled all over him, he gasped with disbelieving panic, “Y-You!? T-That weapon of yours?!”
“Fool. I was already in Cla.s.s XII ten years ago. What makes you think that reaching Cla.s.s XII now will be enough to defeat me?” Li Mu muttered with contempt, “Looks like you’re just another small fry in the bigger scheme of things. Well, what else is next, I wonder?”
“I-I… Argghh! Arrgghh!”
The son of the Lion began spasming and contorting in a sickening manner before his skin began peeling off his flesh, next the muscles and sinews of his limbs began crumbling. The grisly and ghoulish sight was enough to make anyone throw up their lunch as the son of the Lion began to rot at a noticeable speed.
The sudden yet morbid turn of events left everyone witnessing the duel reeled with horror and disgust.
“What devilry is this?!”
The transformation from “Song Mian” into the son of the Lion, who somehow had managed to survive his last encounter a decade ago with Li Zhiyuan, was creepy enough, and now the gruesome fragmentation of his physical body was even worse. “Is this really the ‘Sage’ that the heads of the Great Five wors.h.i.+pped so much? Why does he look so evil and hideous?!”
“Something is clearly wrong here!”
Another incredible event happened.
The body… or rather, what was left of it — of the son of the Lion that was slowly turning into nothing but just bones was suddenly swallowed whole by a giant glob of red. Thin strand-like tendrils swayed around in the air before they interlaced and conjoined with one another, forming strange and bizarre runes and glyphs that no one could recognize, hovering in midair.
The ground shook and the earth roiled, uprooting trees and snapping trunks into halves.
“T-That’s…!?”
A voice rising from the midst of the coalition forces yelped with fright and someone was pointing a finger at something far away.
He was pointing at an empty tract of land. One that was used to bury the dead. The dead bodies of those who had perished trying to defeat the magical force field that guarded the way leading up to the Creed of Divinity stronghold, if left unclaimed and unidentified, were all brought to this spot of land and ma.s.s buried. Right now, the layer of gra.s.s that swathed the burial mound had split open and rotting corpses with eyes glowing macabre red were crawling out of the soil as if a strange force had awakened them from their slumber and was drawing them towards the skeletal remains of the son of the Lion.
There was some sort of evil devilry at work for dead bodies –Mintact, mangled, or maimed — writhed and squirmed as if they had just been reanimated.
“What the h.e.l.l is going on?!”
Warriors from the coalition were all left stunned with disgusting horror.
None of them could believe their eyes.
Countless dead bodies, disjoined limbs, and even blood that had long gone dry on the ground were being drawn in on the son of the Lion’s near-skeletal corpse by some unknown force.
In mere seconds, every form of horror that spewed out of the ma.s.s grave threw itself and ma.s.sed together into a gigantic and throbbing ball of rotting and putrid flesh.
Li Mu just stood there and did nothing.
He could vaguely guess what the third form of this “Sage” fellow was going to be.
Lo and behold, the new Abomination, like the one he had encountered ten years ago in the subterranean cavity underneath the dungeons of Arcusstone, once again took shape.
It looked identical to the Abomination of old in almost every way, although the old Abomination was a monstrosity comprised of fresh dead bodies while its new rendition appeared fouler and loathsome with its composition of flesh rotting to the point of turning into something so mushy, fetid, and even obnoxious that no amount words could barely describe.
Fume-like tendrils of both blood-red and black — the smoke-like representation of foul Mana — coiled and interlaced with each other, both the harbingers of destruction and despair.
“Li Zhiyuan!” boomed a voice that sounded more like the ensemble of voices of the dead than the roar of a lone person — resounding with the disorderly and yet crisp-clear din of the lifeless and the disturbed — the voice echoed sonorously, “I told you before… I will be back for the final reckoning and here I am to make sure that you’ll be breathing your last!”
From the fume-like auras that coiled and constricted all around its fat and misshapen girth, one could tell that the Abomination wielded powers far beyond Cla.s.s XII. The emanation that he radiated caused even the air to tremble and the atmosphere turned so tense and suffocating as if the world itself was going to crumble because of the sheer force he exuded.
A power that did not belong to Molderad.
The entire coalition withdrew and backtracked several miles. The fight had long gone out of proportion and the men were all terrified by what they had seen today, which would undoubtedly come back to haunt them for the years to come. They asked for none of this and they knew that something diabolical must be in the works. Something that would make them regret being here today.
Even the worse fool in the coalition was beginning to ponder if Li Zhiyuan had been right all along.
For what did all the dead and all the wounded sacrifice themselves? Was it because to eradicate the allegedly evil Creed of Divinity, or were they only here because someone had knowingly directed them to their own deaths, just so that their deaths could be used as the offering in some sort of infernal ritual?
Li Mu wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his saber in an ice-pick grip and drew his weapon with deliberate slowness.
Allowing the weapon’s steel to sc.r.a.pe against its sheath as it revealed its edge bit after bit, its steely ring resounded like a death toll.
Every pair of eyes panned to the weapon and the length of its blade.
Li Zhiyuan has proven himself to be the deadliest and the most skillful master in the crafts of the saber and the weapon of his choice must be one of rare and pristine quality.
But as the weapon revealed itself inch by inch, the whole world was stunned beyond words by what they realized.
Simple.
Just a very simple weapon.
And with such a simple weapon held in a backhand grip, Li Mu furiously lashed it as how he would with a whip.