Free Web NovelChapter 38: Chapter 38—Top Powerhouse
Chapter 38—Top Powerhouse
Lei Cheng scowled.
His eyes were filled with killing intent as they locked onto Bizarre Cultivator Shen—the meatball shape, the tiny limbs, the small head, the absurd silhouette.
’He wants to kill me.’
High above, the winged cultivator spread his wings wide—and gray feathers rained from them, filling the sky. They fell in a dense cloud, each one gleaming with cold metallic light, sharpened to the precision of daggers. Then, with a single enormous flap, they launched.
Lei Cheng exhaled. "I only wanted to kill Bizarre Cultivator Shen. Now you will die as well."
He was not going to let the winged cultivator leave alive. The man had already declared his intention to kill him. That settled the matter.
"Life Intent."
Thick vines erupted from the ground directly in front of Lei Cheng—rising, thickening, pressing together into a wall that climbed tens of meters into the sky. The feathers struck it from every direction.
Tink! Tink!
Every dagger-like feather dissolved on contact with the vines. But the collision between them was not clean. The impact generated shockwaves that rolled outward across the street and down into the next, and the next after that. The courtyard walls of buildings beside the Xiao household compound shattered. The merchant buildings further along the road buckled. Windows burst apart one after another like fragile glass ornaments. It took two, perhaps three streets, of several kilometers each, before the shockwaves finally exhausted themselves.
Lei Cheng exhaled with a trace of relief. He had moved his father out of the Xiao household compound earlier and placed him in protection. He also noticed that the fighting around the Xiao estate had drawn onlookers—and he estimated that many streets around the area had already emptied themselves of residents fleeing the noise, under city guards’ control. No one dared to enter. ’Very few people who didn’t leave with the city guards should have taken the hit. They were greedy.’
What baffled him was that the constables still had not appeared. frёeωebɳovel.com
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Almost an hour earlier, in the government district of Azure Cloud City.
A five-story building flanked by multiple courtyards had been the site of considerable commotion. Azure Cloud City Constabulary—the words carved into the plaque above its gates, its officers moving in and out in red luxurious robes, many bearing a single golden star on the shoulder, a few with two, and three-star officers rare enough to draw a second glance.
It had been going about an ordinary morning when a group of terrified civilians burst through the street outside, screaming.
"Protect us!"
"Save us! There are foxes in the Xiao household—Bizarre Creatures—!"
They had curiously peeked in, seen the foxes, and run.
City guards had arrived behind them, requesting help to move civilians. The constables had moved efficiently. The middle-aged chief constable—unruly long beard, martial robe, four stars on his shoulder, an expression permanently set to ’I have seen worse’—had cleared the surrounding streets of all civilians within five to ten minutes. He had his people pull residents from buildings alongside city guards, maintaining order as everyone fled.
Then a young officer had looked down the empty street toward the Xiao compound and asked, "Chief Constable Jiao—should we go in?"
Chief Jiao had spat on the ground.
"Do you really think we should give up our lives for a few coins of salary? Return to the department. Dead constables protect no one. This is a Bizarre Cultivator matter—not ours."
Under his command, the constables had retreated in full order to their building. The city guards under their leader retreated as well.
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Current time.
Some constables, however, had not followed orders and hid peeking from a distance. A handful of city guards from nearby posts had slipped into the area out of curiosity and greed. Rogue cultivators and a few poor souls drawn by the promise of power had also made their way in from a side alley and positioned themselves well behind Lei Cheng, watching from a distance.
"That dandy boy seems to have gained some kind of power," one of them muttered.
An old man and woman nearby hissed bitterly in unison. "It should have been us."
A middle-aged man with a gap where his front tooth had been stood quietly. "What if he’s going to turn into a Bizarre Creature?" he said solemnly.
Everyone went silent. Then a young man in the group grinned. "Don’t assume he’s lucky. Just wait and see."
They were fortunate to be on the side of the vine wall, protected from the shockwaves. They could not sense the power being exchanged on the other side—all they had was sound, the constant detonations of force against force, and the rumble of nearby buildings shaking on their foundations. The shockwaves from the feather-vine collision did not reach them, as the vine wall absorbed everything. The people on the other side were not so lucky—they died from broken buildings falling on them. And Lei Cheng would not spare a thought for them. They had arrived instead of leaving with the constables and city guards.
The spectators stared at the vine wall and at each other, equally baffled. ’What in the heavens is happening on the other side?’
Through gaps in the vine wall, Lei Cheng watched Bizarre Cultivator Shen charge.
Shen’s entire body had transformed—his already absurd silhouette now coated in a hard silver metallic sheen, the flesh vanishing beneath a shell of dense, reflective energy. He rolled and slammed his massive body against the vine wall like a battering ram, trying to crack it through sheer momentum and mass.
Thud! Bang!
’What kind of technique is that?’
The vine wall pushed him back every time. He bounced off it—literally bounced, rolling left and rolling right, ricocheting against the force—and with each impact he seemed to build more energy, feeding it back into his next attempt. The rebounds were growing stronger, the force accumulating.
Boom! Bang!
Lei Cheng shook his head.
His eyes lit up—white flooding into them, then brightening toward white. He directed his Illusion Intent at the winged cultivator above.
The winged cultivator—without noticing anything had changed—suddenly altered the direction of every remaining feather in the air. They wheeled around, reoriented, and launched themselves downward at Bizarre Cultivator Shen.
"What? What are you doing?!" Shen roared at the winged cultivator, still bouncing off the vine wall, now also forced to dodge feathers raining down on him from above.
His metallic body deflected most of them—the feathers rang off his silver surface and skipped away. Shen let out a breath of relief, ’Silver Pig Body. His feathers can’t penetrate me.’
Then a single feather descended—bright yellow, distinct from the others—and drove straight through his stomach with no resistance at all. It passed completely through his body and tore out from his back, trailing red.
Blood fell like a river from the hole in his abdomen. He stared at the wound as if his own body had betrayed him.
Shen’s mouth opened. His enormous metallic body began to revert—the silver sheen dissolving, the flesh re-emerging, the colossal mass shrinking back toward something approaching human proportions as the energy drained out with the blood. His small head emerged from the retreating bulk, expression slack with disbelief.
"How... how is he this powerful?... No... he used a supernatural ability... fool."
He spat blood. His body rolled sideways, hit the ground, and went still. Bizarre Cultivator Shen was dead.
The winged cultivator descended from the sky, wings pulling tight, gray energy cycling rapidly. He was panting, and the hair hidden beneath his hood had turned white. His skin had gained new wrinkles.
"That attack took my entire energy and lifespan..." He scowled. "I hope that brat got something good."
In his eyes, Shen was actually Lei Cheng—and he had a glass shard in his palm. The illusion had never broken. Even now, he never questioned what his own eyes were showing him. He had forgotten entirely about Bizarre Cultivator Shen.
He began to move toward Shen’s body with a desperate smile. "The artifact is mine."
Rumble!
Vines erupted from the ground without warning and wrapped around him from every direction.
"Life Explosion."
The words were quiet. The result was not. A scream filled the area. "AHHH!"
Life Intent flooded into the winged cultivator through the coiling vines, detonating against the Bizarre energy in his body. He convulsed, slammed left and right inside the binding, green scars splitting open across every surface of his skin as two incompatible forces burned each other and burned him between them. Within seconds, he was ash.
The vine wall dropped.
The group of spectators behind Lei Cheng stared at the empty space where the winged cultivator had been standing—a smear of dust and scraps of black robe on the paving stones—and at the body of Bizarre Cultivator Shen lying crumpled and deflated several meters away.
Silence.
Then one of them hissed, "This... this dandy has—"
"Who are you calling a dandy?" another cut in sharply, his voice shifting from greed into something closer to respect. "He is the top powerhouse of Azure Cloud City from this moment forward. Show some sense."
No one argued.
Lei Cheng did not look at them. He was already moving—turning away, walking back along the street in the direction he had come. After a few turns, he found his father, still unconscious and wrapped safely in a shell of vines he had left behind. He let the vines dissolve and lifted his father carefully onto his back. He picked up the unconscious boy in the tattered yellow robes as well and settled him over his other shoulder.
Then he walked home, Hua Mingyue at his side.
No one dared to stop him. They ran, afraid he would kill them too. They were just mortals—and the Bizarre Cultivators themselves had died right in front of their eyes.
Word spread through Azure Cloud City before evening.
’He is no longer a dandy.’
’Respect him.’
’He is the top powerhouse of Azure Cloud City.’
The words moved from street to street in the way that reputation always moves in a city where power is the only currency that truly counts. By the time Lei Cheng entered the upper tier of the city, the label had already settled over him—dangerous, and not to be provoked.
In the ruined Xiao household compound, within the invisible Bizarre Domain, Xiao Ming sat on a throne of shaped rock inside the cave—a rough seat carved from boulders and rubble—and looked at the figure kneeling before her.
Mo Ming—or what had been Mo Ming—knelt in a humanoid fox form. He was eerie and Bizarre to the core. He had a fox face, yet one could still recognize Mo Ming in the features, similar in bearing to a Celestial Fox, rearranged by the transformation—chest and back swapped, limbs reversed from where a human’s would be. Nine soft tails swayed behind him, a furry body beneath a luxurious blue robe he had picked off a random corpse.
"You survived," Xiao Ming said, with a slow grin. "It would have taken a great deal of effort—and even then luck—to complete a nine-tailed fox transformation."
She burst out laughing. "Lei Cheng—our life essence acted as a catalyst for this pervert to survive. I gained a powerful servant because of you."
Mo Ming kept his head bowed, his voice carrying the reverence of a man who had decided, somewhere between dying and reforming, exactly who he was devoted to. "I will take care of you, my Madam."
"Go," Xiao Ming said slowly. "Bring me people with sufficient luck to devour. People I can consume to grow stronger and expand the domain."
Mo Ming nodded without hesitation.
"And I want revenge on that brat Lei Cheng," Xiao Ming added, rising from her stone throne. She straightened and placed a hand on Mo Ming’s shoulder with deliberate weight. "I—Nie Hua—will kill Lei Cheng with my own hands."
Mo Ming rose and shifted back into his human form in a smooth, practiced motion. He stepped out through the domain’s invisible boundary into the ruined outer courtyard, emerged into the street beyond, and looked up at the sky.
He licked his lips.
’I wonder how humans taste.’
The thought disturbed him less than it should have.
It arrived without horror, without hesitation—the Bizarre energy that had been burning through his body for hours had changed something in him at a level deeper than intention. He looked at the street ahead with new eyes. It was also the reason he had submitted to Xiao Ming without struggle.
The white flames that had been burning in the sky suddenly disappeared.
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Author: End of Arc One—The Fox Groom Mark.
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