Zhua froze completely, petrified by the aura of the masked man.
He seemed immensely powerful.
No light escaped from him,only the eternal abyss pouring out of his body.
All of Zhua’s senses were on high alert, detecting nothing but the deadly danger emanating from this man… or this entity.
Could he even be human?
His silhouette, build, and form seemed human, but who could say?
Zhua dropped into a combat stance, ready to attack.
But the moment he blinked, the Dark Hunter vanished instantly and reappeared right in front of him, seizing him by the throat and hurling him against the northern wall.
Zhua clenched his teeth, holding back a scream while thinking as fast as he could.
He made the star whose presence he had previously “devoured” reappear and fired it at the Dark Hunter at point-blank range.
Yet not a single scratch, not even a speck of dust, appeared on the Dark Hunter’s armor as if nothing could so much as graze that purely abyssal armor.
The Dark Hunter suddenly let out a light laugh.
A truly strange and eerie sound escaped from beneath his draconic-demonic mask, like a thousand glasses shattering at once.
In a voice just as dark, he said
“Pathetic… truly pathetic. You are not strong enough. You must become stronger than you are now ,stronger if you want to destroy them.”
Zhua’s voice was strangled, blood spilling from his mouth.
“Who the hell are you talking about, bastard?! And who the fu”
His words died in his throat as the Dark Hunter’s jian pierced through his liver.
Then space and reality twisted.
Two phantom Dark Hunters appeared, raising their blades toward the colorless sky before bringing them down in a sharp motion onto Zhua’s shoulders, cleanly severing them and cutting straight through his stellar bones.
“AAAAHHHHHH!”
It was a piercing, deeply agonizing scream that tore from someone’s throat from Zhua’s throat.
The Dark Hunter seemed to be judging him, their gazes falling on Zhua’s pathetic state.
The mysterious hunter appeared to feel pity for his weak and contemptible prey.
He seized Zhua’s head with his right hand.
The Dark Hunter began to float into the air.
Zhua tried to struggle, kicking at him, but of course it was useless.
The Dark Hunter pressed Zhua’s head against the wall, then with incredible violence dragged Zhua’s face all the way to the other end of the room at a mad speed while keeping him pinned against the wall.
He finally dropped him onto the floor and said in a dark, amused voice the sound still escaping from his draconic-demonic mask like a thousand shattered glasses.
“Burn yourself with your flames and regenerate again and again. Let the flames devour you so they can revive you. Hurry!”
Zhua was in shock. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
His mind was still reeling and had not fully recovered.
He pushed himself up, barely able to stand, and reflected on the Dark Hunter’s words.
It might be possible for him to use the Flames of Greed to regenerate, but he was not sure it would work if he burned himself essentially stealing his own lifespan to heal.
There was also the risk of ending up completely insane, stripped of all intelligence and guided only by the urge to burn everything… something he definitely did not want to become.
But now his life was on the line.
He did not want to die.
No he did not have permission to die until he had completed his revenge.
White flames appeared on his right hand.
They were hot and yet a little cold at the same time, flowing from his palm up to his elbow.
The same flames manifested on his left hand and flowed up to his elbow.
Focusing on his dao and his soul, the strange golden substance within his dao flowed out from his arms and interacted with the flames, giving them an even stronger hunger and the ability to better devour everything they touched.
The flames, which until now had been purely white, took on a slight pure-gold tint.
Suddenly the flames began to burn Zhua’s skin, melting it and sinking into his body, flowing over his stellar bones and then deeper still, touching and burning his organs.
At the same time, however, Zhua was regenerating his skin reappearing and his organs slowly closing again.
He howled, his voice broken by the sound of the flames consuming his body.
“Come on, you bastard! Let’s go for the second round!!”
Zhua charged, hurling his flames at the Dark Hunter, who moved like a panther, dodging them while creating multiple phantom clones that rushed at Zhua.
But Zhua burned them all while laughing like a madman, a lunatic.
He concentrated the flames in his left hand as if preparing a fire blast and charged at the Dark Hunter without hiding his intention to reduce him to ashes and dust.
The Dark Hunter created several tentacles made of abyss that swallowed the Flames of Greed beneath his abyssal power.
Two phantom clones emerged from his body as if they had split off from him and charged at Zhua without pity ,only to be reduced to ashes by Zhua’s Flames of Greed.
Zhua burst into a hoarse, ecstatic laugh.
The only reason his flames could burn the Dark Hunter’s phantom doubles was probably due to his Will to devour, but also because the Dark Hunter was holding back.
Even without proof, Zhua knew this abyssal being resembling some eldritch monster was restraining himself in one way or another… or something was preventing him from unleashing his full strength… or both.
“Come on, you bastard! I’m going to reduce you to ashes and dust! Even a perfect sword must be reduced to ashes and rebuilt an incalculable number of times if it wants to cut through even stronger steel and be able to point its blade at its enemy!”
The Dark Hunter listened but did not react.
Then he forced himself upon Zhua at an impressive speed that rendered time and space meaningless and insignificant.
Zhua could no longer see him then he felt all his bones shattering as if multiple hammer blows were raining down on him from every direction, yet he could not see them.
Burning himself again, Zhua regenerated.
His desire to burn his opponent grew ,no, he wanted to burn this entire world and everyone in it, the madness dominating most of his being.
“Everything will be nothing but a sea of flames covered by a river of blood filled with corpses!”
The Dark Hunter surged out of an abyssal portal, his fist covered in malevolent energy.
In a serene voice he said
“What the hell are you laughing about, idiot?”
Without warning he struck Zhua’s solar plexus, shattering every bone in the front of his body and sending him flying to the other end of the gymnasium and beyond, smashing him against the academy wall.
Zhua quickly lost consciousness from the shock, his flames extinguishing along with his awareness as it sank into darkness.
The threatening, abyssal silhouette of the Dark Hunter emerged from the hole through which Zhua’s body had been launched, approaching the unconscious form.
He laughed lightly, surprised by something the fact that Zhua had fainted but he did not waste time.
He raised his blade to take Zhua’s life once and for all.
A pressure suddenly pressed against his chest and he was thrown several meters back.
“What?” His voice was irritated and filled with contained fury at not having seen the attack coming.
Looking up, he saw Zhua’s still unconscious body rising with a certain presence of its own.
Zhua’s eyes opened empty of any fear, pain, or emotion… simply void.
Survival mode.
Something deep within the memory of Zhua Rengui.
More precisely, this was a mode that activated when his consciousness or body fainted, allowing his survival instinct to take complete command.
It used everything he had stored in memory and in the depths of his subconscious solely to survive, fighting like a deadly weapon driven only by instinct.
His eyes fell on the Dark Hunter’s body.
Those empty, void eyes suddenly held a single emotion: pity ,the same pity a strong predator feels toward its tiny, weak prey.
In a field of golden wheat, a young man with light blond hair, golden eyes, and porcelain-fair skin suddenly woke with a start.
“What’s going on? I was just…” He stopped as he saw a young woman with long candy-pink hair and green eyes, wearing a classic white dress, approaching.
“Mom!” Zhua shouted, but his words did not make the young woman react.
Zeuna did not even seem to see him.
She said
“Zhua, stop sleeping in the wheat field. You’ll get your clothes dirty, and you need to eat.”
Beside Zhua, a little boy who looked just like him only smaller, about six years old emerged from under the wheat and said
“I’m coming in two minutes.”