Shen Yi stood with blood running from two wounds, breathing heavily, but the dangerous light in his eyes had not faded.
He looked at the two of them together, quick calculations passing across his face.
“Two instead of one is no longer enough,” he said calmly.
“It’s time to end this.”
He raised his sword above his head.
A strange silence settled amid the distant noise of battle.
Even the nearby flames seemed to wait for a signal, their tongues frozen in the air.
The smell of smoke and blood mixed in the heavy air, clinging to the throat.
Yuan and He Long exchanged a single wordless glance.
Both knew that what came next would decide everything.
Shen Yi released everything remaining in his reserves at once with a sharp cry.
The ground trembled.
Stone cracked in a complete circle around him, black lines spreading like broken veins.
Thick dust rose from the cracks and curled around his legs like gray mist.
The air itself became heavy, almost suffocating.
Yuan felt his chest tighten, as though a hand were pressing against his lungs from the outside.
Three nearby flames went out simultaneously.
The remaining fire in the adjacent building swayed violently, bending away from Shen Yi as though trying to escape him.
Even the smoke changed direction, curling around the man instead of passing over him.
Several weaker fighters nearby retreated instinctively, fleeing from a pressure they could not understand.
Their bodies understood it even if their minds did not.
A different level, Yuan thought, ignoring the pain in his arm.
Not mid-stage Soul Core.
This is a genuine approach toward the peak of Soul Core.
“This is bad,” He Long said, sweat pouring down his forehead.
“I know.”
Yuan felt the three voices stirring within him.
The Soldier tensed, ready for what might be its final battle.
The Craftsman frantically calculated every possible angle of attack and escape.
The Hunter expanded, its senses catching the smallest movement in Shen Yi’s body before it happened.
There was no room for a fourth voice.
The fourth voice he had refused to even consider moments ago.
Shen Yi charged.
For an instant, he seemed to split into two shadows, an illusion created by his speed.
Each shadow carried a sword glowing with deep violet light.
Wherever his feet touched, scorched marks remained on the stone, as though the ground itself could not withstand his passage.
He Long attacked the shadow on the left.
His sword collided with tremendous force, and his entire arm shook.
He was forced back two steps despite his skill, his hand going numb from the impact alone.
The shadow on the right came for Yuan.
He opened all three voices at once, pushing them as far as he could endure.
The pressure felt like being torn apart.
Pain split through his skull as though three minds were trying to think inside a body too small to contain them.
But he moved.
Faster than he had thought possible.
He barely avoided the strike.
A faint snap reached his ears.
The sword cut through a lock of his hair, sending black strands drifting through the burning air.
Yuan struck back, but his blow collided with the energy barrier surrounding Shen Yi.
His hand recoiled with a sharp burst of pain, as though he had struck a stone wall.
“Yuan!
Right!”
He Long shouted, having pushed past his opponent for a moment to warn him.
Yuan turned.
The shadow was already twisting toward him.
The violet sword descended toward his head, its glow illuminating half of his sweat-covered face.
There was no time to think.
Yuan raised his left arm, using the edge of his forearm bone in one final desperate motion, every muscle tensed.
The sword struck his arm.
He heard the bone break before the pain reached him.
For a fraction of a second, there was nothing.
Then everything exploded.
It felt as though his arm had broken in two places at once.
Yuan screamed.
His voice cut through the noise of battle as he dropped to one knee, his left arm hanging at an angle no healthy bone could hold.
Pain rippled through every nerve like a wave with no end.
He Long surged forward at full speed, heedless of his own life, intercepting Shen Yi’s second strike aimed at the fallen Yuan.
The swords collided violently.
Violet and golden sparks scattered, illuminating the faces of the two fighters for a full moment and casting their shadows across the cracked walls.
“I won’t let you kill him in front of me!”
He shouted with genuine fury, the veins in his neck standing out from the strain.
Shen Yi was caught off guard by his determination.
He retreated half a step.
No more.
But it was enough.
He looked at He Long with a dry, unexpected trace of appreciation.
“Rare courage for someone your age.”
He Long did not answer.
He charged again with a speed even he had not known he possessed, driven by the anger Yuan saw through his pain.
Something resembling loyalty.
Not merely an alliance of mutual interests.
Yuan used that brief moment.
He summoned the Hunter with everything he could concentrate, ignoring the pain completely.
His senses expanded.
Every detail in the scene became clearer and slower, as though time itself had bent slightly around his perception.
And he saw it.
A tiny opening in Shen Yi’s spiritual barrier, just above his lower back, where the flow of energy had become uneven from exhaustion.
Yuan struggled to rise.
His left arm hung uselessly at his side, but his eyes never left that opening.
He charged with everything he had left, pushing past the pain screaming through every nerve.
His feet moved faster than his exhausted body should have allowed, as though something deeper than will itself refused to let this moment slip away.
While Shen Yi was occupied with He Long, Yuan slipped behind him.
His right hand alone stretched forward, fingers rigid like a blade.
He struck the weak point.
Shen Yi’s energy exploded.
For one brief moment, it slipped completely out of control.
The ground shook beneath everyone.
A large stone nearby split in two with a thunderous crack.
Fragments struck Yuan’s face, adding several small cuts to the list of his injuries.
Shen Yi let out a terrible scream.
His body arched backward as dark blood burst from his mouth.
He fell.
Hard.
Onto the cracked ground.
He did not move.
The last remnants of his spiritual energy slowly faded, like the light of a candle disappearing into itself.
Yuan and He Long stood together, panting, blood running from their wounds as they stared at the fallen body.
The heavy air slowly returned to normal, as though an enormous weight had been lifted from the area.
The flames that had gone out or bent away began burning again.
The place seemed to breathe.
Even the debris falling from a nearby building appeared slower now.
“Is… is it over?” He Long asked, leaning against his sword.
Yuan did not answer.
He looked at his broken arm hanging at a painful angle.
Then at Shen Yi’s body.
Then at the chaos around them.
Flames rose from several buildings.
Bodies lay scattered across the dark courtyard, some still moving weakly before falling still.
The smell of fresh blood mixed with burning wood.
A scent that would remain in his memory for a long time.
Then Yuan felt something strange moving deep within him.
It was not pain.
It was awareness.
Awareness of all the souls beginning to scatter around him that night.
Souls that had died violently, in anger, in sudden fear.
Faint pulses echoed through the air saturated with smoke and blood.
Each pulse belonged to a life that had ended only moments ago nearby.
It was as though his skin had become another ear, hearing frequencies no one else could perceive.
A shiver ran through his exhausted body.
Not from the cold.
From something deeper.
Something older.
It awakened a memory of the first mountain beneath all this new destruction.
Is this the beginning?
he thought, anticipation carrying something like hunger.
Has the harvest begun without me planning it precisely?
He looked at his right hand.
It was still stained with Shen Yi’s blood, trembling from exhaustion.
But it trembled with something else too.
A dark excitement he could not deny, not even to himself.
His fingers, stained with dark blood, suddenly seemed strange.
As though they belonged to someone else, someone slowly taking shape beneath his old skin.
He looked at He Long, who was wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, unaware that the exhausted, wounded man standing beside him was thinking of this moment as an opportunity rather than a tragedy.
“We’re not finished yet,” Yuan finally said.
His voice was colder than He Long had ever heard it.
“The real battle may have only just begun.”
He Long raised his eyebrows in silent question but did not ask.
He merely nodded and began moving toward the direction of the rising screams, leaving Yuan alone for another moment amid the smoke.
Yuan stood beneath the sky choked with black smoke, the stars hidden behind a curtain of ash.
Something deep within him stirred.
Waiting.
Anticipating what it had been waiting for all this time.
Then he turned his back and walked toward whatever remained of the night.