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Chapter 79: Insulted
🕑 Added 2025-05-12 11:02:41 +0000 UTC“This is… rather unprecedented, Young Master.”
“Are you denying me access?” Feng coldly questioned.
“If it is your desire, then I — a humble cultivator of your Sect — am in no position to refuse,” the tournament handler apologised dryly. “However, I feel I would be remiss not to inform the Young Master that fatalities are not uncommon within the Tournament Arena. There are many who seek your death, for your untimely — and ultimately blameless — demise would be to their great benefit. Quite a few of the combatants are such mercenary individuals, and more will come once they hear you are participating in the brutal festivities.”
“I am aware,” Feng bluntly replied. “That is why I am here.”
The handler sighed. “Is there no way I can convince you to return to the stands and simply watch the fights performed in your honour? I heard the seat prepared for you is quite lavish.”
“No.”
“Your father will kill me if I allow you in there.”
“Only if I die.”
The two exchanged a look for several seconds. The arena handler eventually scoffed and shook his head.
“Good grief… Youth these days.” Elder Jun moved past the entryway, allowing access. “You better not lose. Wade in their blood, my lord. Show them the name of the Phoenix is not to be insulted.”
~~~
“Ha! What glorious luck!”
Kungli of the Burnished Vanguard Sect turned to the Jade Skies and laughed.
“To think I will have the honour of putting down the worthless Young Master of the Beheaded Phoenix Sect! Truly, the long travel here has been worth it!”
The Burnished Vanguard Sect belonged to the 99th Outer Province, quite a fair distance away from the 103rd. It would have taken the better part of a year for even an experienced cultivator to make the journey. Such undertakings would normally be absurd, for there are few reasons why a foreigner from such a far-flung land would travel to the Beheaded Phoenix Sect.
But tales of Lianshi’s ridiculous cultivation had reached the entire Northern Province by now. As the once-dismissed rumours gradually gained baffled eyewitnesses of repute, cultivators from all over the Empire’s Northern territories began travelling to see her fabled prowess.
They were not disappointed. If anything, her greatness exceeded their wildest expectations.
“No longer will that worthless wretch spurn me again once I deliver to her your worthless head,” the foreigner cultivator sneered. The tiger-stripped hide of his furred attire seemed to ripple in response to his anger. “I do not know what the Young Miss sees in you, but once I prove my superiority, she would be blind to refuse me once more.”
The practitioner of the Vanguard Arts flexed his qi. Tempering Realm, Sixth Step. He was, technically, Feng’s superior in cultivation.
The Young Master sighed. He planted the glaive into the arena’s sands and stepped forward.
“What is this? Abandoning your weapon?” Kungli mocked. The man pulled forth a giant cleaver from his back. It was an ugly thing — its edges misshapen, its form unwieldy — and yet the side of its iron mass was polished to a mirror sheen. “Do not think it will grant you my mercy. The battle has begun! You cannot run!”
Well, the loudmouth was right about one thing. Elder Jun had already signalled the match’s start.
Feng did not have to tolerate any more useless banter.
[Fiery Comet Step]
The Young Master shot forth, fingers laced with killing qi as he aimed for the central mass of his opponent. Being too fast for his unprepared opponent to keep track, Feng’s fingers landed true…
And shattered upon unbreakable skin.
[Arts of the Burnished Vanguard — Unyielding Gold of Loyalty]
“Arrogance!” Kungli roared as he swung his oversized cleaver. Feng dodged easily, his glossy reflection appearing within the polished blade as it screamed past him. The Young Master rose to strike again, his image copied within the blade’s glossy surface in perfect sync—
[Arts of the Burnished Vanguard — Shining Mirror Blade]
The reflection in the blade flickered. Blood sprayed. The fabric of Feng’s robe became torn, and a fist-sized chunk of the Young Master's arm went flying.
Feng frowned. He activated [Fiery Comet Step] once more, creating distance between them. His opponent did not pursue. The Young Master cycled his qi, forcing the shattered bones of his fingers back into place.
“See the difference between us!” Kungli crowed, spreading his muscled arms wide for the crowd. His body shone like the sun as the firelights of the arena reflected off his newly transformed skin, wrought in unbreakable gold by his Sect’s Divine Art. “See how weak he is! This is the man Lady Lianshi chose? This is the man she insults us worthier cultivators for?!”
The man flicked his blade with great force, sending the splattered blood on it flying. The varnished surface of the cleaver shone once more, almost radiant with reflected light.
The surrounding crowd cheered madly. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people were here in the stadium. Most were mortals, but quite a few were cultivators — both foreign and local — who bought tickets to watch the fight, either to enjoy the spectacle or to study the competition before they joined the ring themselves.
Kungli continued his string of provocative insults, his words echoing clearly despite the raucous audience. Feng ignored them all.
There was another voice demanding his attention.
“I should not need to tell you what to do. You already know the way.”
Feng scoffed, a wary grin appearing on his face despite himself.
Some weaknesses are universal, regardless of form, he answered in his thoughts. Eyes, throat, joints.
The Devil within chuckled.
“Good. I would hate to repeat myself.”
With a bloodthirsty smile, Feng sharpened his teeth with qi before savagely biting down upon his own tongue.
Blood filled his mouth from the mutilated stump. The Young Master charged once more.
[Fiery Comet Step]
“Your efforts are futile!” His opponent was on guard. There would be no catching him by surprise again. The mirrored blade came down to intercept him. Feng twisted his body and narrowly avoided the incoming edge. When he turned, his face reflected upon the reflective sheen of the cleaver’s bulk.
[Arts of the Burnished Vanguard — Shining Mirr///]
Before the Divine Art could activate, Feng spat out an entire mouthful of blood over the glossy surface of the blade. His reflection became obscured.
His opponent’s Divine Art fizzled to nothingness, failing to activate.
“You worthless—” Kungli had no time to finish his words as Feng shot forth with a brutal uppercut, slamming beneath the jaws of the golden-armoured practitioner. The Young Master felt his fingers break once more from the force, but the impact left Kungli disoriented.
Feng sucked in a breath and bellowed. A torrent of superheated flames spew forth from his mouth and engulfed them both. Where piercing strikes and bludgeoning fists failed, heat succeeded. The horrid fire sapped at the golden defences of the foe, turning Kungli’s roar of anger into that of pain as his glorious armour melted into him.
“Enough of this!” Kungli snarled.
[Arts of the Burnished Vanguard — Living Preserver of Stripes]
His opponent had yet one more trick up their sleeve. The tiger-stripped furred robes of the practitioner came to life, manifesting mighty claws and fangs as a tigrine beast leapt at Feng. No ordinary attack this was; Feng’s instincts were screaming at him to dodge immediately. There was something wholly unnatural about the tiger’s talons.
The Young Master summoned his qi.
[Fiery Comet Step; Feng’s variant — Dance of a Flickering Star]
The surrounding inferno sufficed to fulfil the Art’s conditionals. The Young Master disappeared into a haze of smoke, appearing right behind his foe within the span of an eye blink.
The armour was still a problem. Feng had planned to grab hold of the mouthy cultivator and burn them both together in a conflagration. The Young Master’s innate resistance to fire would ensure his victory, while the golden man would be thoroughly cooked through within the metallic coffin of his lavish protection. But with the bestial tiger about, time was not a luxury.
Woe for his opponent, then. The Young Master could no longer afford to hold back and provide the man a more graceful defeat.
Feng’s right hand reached up and — with some regret — snapped his finger beside his opponent’s ear.
[Arts of the Beheaded Phoenix – Severed Heads Apostles]
For the flicking flames, a sinister creature began to form upon the Young Master’s fingers. A slithering, headless snake born of flames and light — barely the width of his finger; long and tiny enough to crawl into facial orifices.
It reared back its length — serpentine fire poised to strike — before plunging itself into the opening of the cultivator’s right ear.
Kungli screamed.
The tigrine creature instantly dissolved as the practitioner’s concentration was fractured in an instant. The flaming snake slithered its way through the narrow tunnels of the tight cephalic crevice. The meat and cartilage of the golden man’s head cooked and blackened with each blistering ripple of its burning, coiling form as it wormed itself deeper.
Feng leapt back as his opponent collapsed to the ground. Kungli’s body convulsed as he clawed futilely at his own head, slamming it repeatedly against the sands in the vain hope of disorienting the blazing invader within. The ground began to glisten as Kungli’s golden crown turned red.
His screams were a horrific symphony accompanied by the boiling of blood and brain.
Clumps of molten gold dripped off his horrified face like wax, carrying with them charred drops of rheumy grey matter as the snake dug and pressed around the innards of his skull.
Inch by inch, the snake vanished into the man’s ear until its entire length was completely within his head. His screaming cut off with a choking gurgle, his fingers gripping his own throat as the metal there began to glow red as well.
The arena was silent now. Where once the screams and cheers of a thousand people were heard, now nought but the gurgling pleas of the cultivator echoed across the stadium.
Feng knelt beside the dying Kungli. With a silent command, the snake burst free through the right ocular socket of the cultivator, the eye within already reduced to a gooey gob of gelatinous brine. The fiery snake itself dripped with all manner of cranial flesh — not least of all the cultivator’s succulent brain.
“...M-mercy…” Kungli coughed, his mental faculties too damaged to do more than beg.
Feng shook his head. “Already? I should be insulted. Dogs should scream louder. Here, let me help.”
The Young Master’s fingers reached out. The headless snake leaned in, almost as if awaiting a tender stroke from its summoner.
Feng injected his qi into the summoned serpent. It expanded rapidly in size, the growth causing his opponent to scream even louder as the maddening conflagration confined within his skull was enlarged. The snake bulged like a balloon, pushing its fiery mass outwards with fiendish pressure.
Kungli’s head bulged outwards. His other eye popped out. The sound of crackling skin and skull rang through the arena as the tempered body of a Third Realm cultivator was unmade from within. The howling screams turned inhuman.
The smell of his burning brain was nothing short of divine.
Then, with a final infusion of Feng’s qi, the summoned snake blew up.
It was a small, localised explosion. Had it detonated outside upon Feng’s or Kungli’s body, it would have barely left a scratch.
However, the snake was wounded through the right side of Kungli’s head, so the effects were more… spectacularly gruesome.
The entire right side of Kungli’s head erupted with a sickening spurt, showering Feng with cooked brain matter and melted bones. A nice chunk of it made its way onto his face. Feng’s brushed the meaty grey matter off with his thumb and sucked on it.
It had been a while since the Young Master had indulged in cerebral tissues, especially ones of such potency.
The body beneath him groaned. Half of Kungli’s head was gone, but the cultivator was still alive. Such obstinate endurance was to be expected of those within the Tempering Realm, but even for the valorous cultivator, Kungli’s wounds were not ones he would survive without aid.
“The battle is over,” Feng announced to a quiet stadium. “Please have medical acolytes attend to the wounded.”
The disciples of the Medical Pavilion rushed to enter the arena. Within the terrified awe and silence, Feng directed his gaze to the audience, to the rows of cultivated men and women who had watched his performance.
Some flinched when his eyes met theirs. Others wore amused grins. Most were furious by the unspoken challenge in his gaze, their murderous glint only restrained by caution.
One particularly worrying pair of pink eyes grew flushed when their gaze met. Feng quickly moved on from that one.
When the Young Master spoke, it was a clear provocation that resounded to them all.
“Send in my next opponent. My needs are yet satisfied. The screams of worthless dogs who can only yelp behind their betters’ backs will suffice.”
He had no shortage of foes then.
