Chapter 121 - Stepping on Tails (Patreon)

[Table of Contents]

<Yung: Are you sure this is going to work?>

<Undaunted Darkness: Of course.>

<Graceful Wind: Trust us.>

Yung, of course, trusted them.

He drew a tile from the wall. It was a nine of characters. He had already discarded one such tile the previous turn. Yung frowned. This always happened.

His Link Sight was on overdrive, honing in on the reconnected Empathic Link from the Mi clan assassin. He touched the thread with his free hand. With his other, he rearranged his tiles after discarding. His triplet of four of bamboos could be split into a pair of four of bamboos, the third one making a set with the five and six of bamboos.

Yung could read nothing from the three foxes' faces. They were good. Really good. But he could read the assassin’s Empathic Link.

Indifference. Annoyance. Boredom.

From the Link, there flowed her Scarlet thread of intention.

Yung kept his mind steady.

There, the bloody emotion of killing intent!

But it was transient. The assassin yet hesitated. She was wary of the Enclave’s reaction.

It’s okay. Yung convinced himself. We can do this.

Silky chirped.

Su Yafeng discarded a tile.

Yung injected Heart qi into the assassin’s Empathic Link.

Empathic Fixation!

At once, the thread turned bloody, merging fully with the scarlet Thread of Intention.

<Yung: She’s attacking.>

The foxes were relaxed.

For less than a split second.

Then all three paled.

<Graceful Wind: Oh no! Her attack broke—>

<Su Haochen: She whipped under it!>

Yung didn’t know what happened. He could have called ron on Su Yafeng’s discarded eight of wheels.

But his arms flailed at the intense sense of danger.

One palm rose up in front of his eyes, trying to block the metallic point of the whip pouncing his way with the tile in his hand, the other poured all the Heart qi he could muster into the assassin’s Empathic Link.

He would commit!

There was a roar of lightning.

Wind broke. Shadows surged.

A maw of darkness enveloped Yung, and he flew.

***

Mi Tungmei struck fast. There was no need to hesitate.

She should have hesitated.

The Enclave was an unknown.

But she must end the game.

She must! This Yung boy needed to disappear from the fox princess’s life.

For the sake of unification, for peace and mercy.

But he was an annoying quarry. He vanished from plain sight once. What if he disappears on her again?

Besides unification, this mission is worth a hundred and fifty thousand contribution points!

Mi Tungmei’s Dao Aspect of the Veil cried. Her weapon swam in her Unfolding Domain, bypassing the door of the hotel through another space and time.

It teleported.

The quarry flinched.

He knows. Too late. Mi Tungmei thought.

Above her, the heavens sundered. A streak of light branching into infinite jagged edges struck down at her head.

A tribulation!

The Enclave saw her sin, and it did not approve. Ziyou Yung was needed for its plans.

But Mi Tungmei waited.

She could escape. Her Domain could take her far beyond the borders of the Enclave’s wrath before it could hit her.

She should escape.

But.

It would yet be a split moment before the tribulation could reach her.

It would take less than that split moment for her whip to pierce Ziyou Yung’s life. After which, before punishment could be met out, she would be long gone.

The tribulation would not follow her outside the Enclave. She would not be able to enter this place afterwards, but that was hardly worth mentioning.

I must leave! Mi Tungmei thought. She was more careful than this. Never had she risked death for a mere game before. Even if it was for a noble cause.

I must leave! She could leave after completing the task. But it would be a close thing.

Too close for comfort.

A shield of azure wind swirled around Ziyou Yung. It was a well-known signature of the Su maiden, Su Yafeng.

It bore powers of decay. Of weathering and erosion. Whittling even mountains to dust over millennia.

Su Yafeng merely made the time shorter.

To mere minutes.

The wind would clash with her whip, for it was a shield of erosion.

But even it could would not protect Ziyou Yung.

Her whip slipped under the veil of reality, appearing on the other side of the shield as though it was not there.

It was gratifying.

Mi Tungmei could see the shock in the maiden’s eyes. The shock soon turned into panic.

Ziyou Yung raised his hand. Su Haochen, the tod, burst out with all the power he could muster in that split moment of a split moment.

Shadows engulfed the madlander boy.

It was a similar teleportation power! Mi Tungmei did not know about this!

Ziyou Yung escaped through the shadows to a place far west.

Mi Tungmei’s whip followed into the veil after.

Ziyou Yung would not live past today!

The lightning tribulation was still far away.

But time had not stopped. The lightning yet travelled down.

Ziyou Yung fell through the tunnel of darkness that connected his own shadow to another’s.

He tumbled, and the whip followed.

The whip was faster.

Ever so slightly.

Ever so slowly, it inched nearer to the young boy's eyes. Heart qi flared. It was useless. Ziyou Yung could not outrun the whip!

The lightning also inched closer. It loomed above her with its murderous wrath.

I must leave! Mi Tungmei’s instincts screamed at her for the third time.

What was wrong with her?

Why was she so fixated on this one meaningless prey? To risk everything for comparatively paltry gain?

But the whip was so close. It almost reached Ziyou Yung. Just a bit more.

A little bit more.

Mi Tungmei ignored the myriads of Azure foxes made up of swirling wind coming for her throat. She ignored the Fox-headed snakes slithering up from shadows all around her to pounce on her knees. She ignored all the other arts and attacks thrown her way to sever her life.

Her mind focused. There was only Ziyou Yung now.

But then her mind slipped.

She ignored the lightning tribulation coming for her soul!

There!

Her will would be true!

Ziyou Yung shall not live!

***

Yung flew through the darkness. It was like falling into a never-ending dark pit, a looping abyss where he would nevermore reach the ground.

His qi was completely depleted, pushed into the cat girl’s Empathic Link without holding anything back.

His one hand still grasped that Link, these ever-present threads seemingly having infinite lengths.

Yung read the emotions directed towards him.

Obsession. To kill. To hunt. To murder.

They had this flavour. The same obsession with which Su Nanya stared at him.

Yung missed his girlfriend.

The metallic tip of the whip was barely half a centimeter away from his eyes.

It reflected on his pupils. It was inscribed with tiny runes and arrays numbering in the thousands. Maybe millions.

Through the tip, the assassin stared back. Yung didn’t know why, but he could clearly picture her face.

She was snarling, her feline eyes wide. Fingers clawed. Tails puffed up. Forehead bulged with veins.

She wanted to kill Yung. Not because he had done anything to her. But because she could. Because killing him would grant her something. Maybe resources? Maybe it was an assignment? Maybe it was for a greater cause of which the end justified the means.

He was but a 1st realm whelp.

She was in the 6th.

Like a god staring down at an ant.

Then Yung did something to her. He fed her cake with Empathic Fixation. And now the cat had done goofed up!

“Not today, you walking hairball!” Yung screamed. He fell out of the tunnel of darkness.

He fell up.

From the shadow of a bewildered coolie who was tending to his sister in the yard of a restaurant.

Yung flew!

As though flung up from the ground towards the sky with a sling.

There was a shimmer. The whip followed him, seemingly snaking out of reality itself.

It stretched taut. It was close.

Oh, so close. Barely a tenth of an inch away from his eyes.

But it stopped.

The inertia tossed Yung up for a moment more.

There was a sound of roaring thunder hitting something.

Followed by a world-shattering meow, filled with pain far worse than getting one’s tail stepped on.

The whip disappeared.

Yung fell to the ground with an ouch.

***

“You swayed me,” Mi Tungmei said a hundredth of a second before she was hit by the lightning.

It was the boy’s Heart qi.

Something had penetrated her mental defenses as if they did not exist.

Tricky. Tricky.

The golden pillar of light fell upon her.

Her feet were already moving.

But it was too late.

“@#&^%!” Mi Tungmei did not know how to describe the pain.

It was worse than any hurt she had ever felt in her life.

Worse than when she cried in the Gu-filled basin, millions of poisonous creatures slithering around her naked skin, biting her on the skin, in her ears, between her tongue and tails, all for the purpose of training her poison resistance.

Worse than when she was boiled alive in a cauldron, burnt by alchemical flames and stewed in treasured concoctions to strengthen her physique.

Worse than when she was suffocated to an inch of her life under thousands of metres of seawater with one of her clan's most powerful breathing techniques.

When her capillaries burst, eyes gouged out, spleen set on stone, bones soaked in acid, ears pierced with infected needles of diseased creatures that had caused pandemics that had taken millions.

When he, her sun and light in her life of darkness, had refused to take her with him to the lost planes. For she was young and weak, not worthy of being in his harem.

Mi Tungmei felt pain like no other than she had ever before.

Her four Harmonious Heaven Rare Class defensive artefacts shattered. The one Epic Class artefact held on for seven seconds before being nearly ruined too. The myriads of talismans, the formations etched upon her skin, everything was useless.

The lightning slithered in. Inside her Temple and Navel Palace Dantians, inside her Sea of Consciousness, it struck her Dao Aspect after ripping out a piece of the Unfolding Domain, the testament of her 6th Realm Spirit Qi cultivation prowess.

Her Dao Aspect fought back. It was heaven against heaven!

And unless her heaven won against the heavens above, she would perish!

All for what? A mere 1st realm boy. A boy who had the favour of the princess who replaced his first love.

The teleportation completed. Mi Tungmei appeared one thousand and fifty-eight kilometres away, burning two-thirds of her reserves.

Teleporting this far was the domain of the Harmonious Heavens. But she was the Dao Child of the Veils. She could—

Inside her, the Unfolding Domain swirled. Within, the Dao Aspect threatened to burst out.

To harmonise.

No! Not yet!

Outside, the sound of wind intensified, and the shadows grew darker.

Azure Vixens and Shadowy Snakes attacked her without giving her a moment's respite.

They followed her.

Of course they would.

The foxes and their dao of simulacrums, each and every one specialising in some art of cloning either themselves of their powers.

Mi Tungmei refused to die here. And she refused to break through now, not without perfecting her foundation. So that she would be strong enough to one day be with him.

One day hold him.

Not merely fight for him, but with him.

I am the Dao Child of the Veils. This was not the closest Mi Tungmei had come to death, and it would not be the day she would die. Oh Veils of the world, obey my will!

Without hesitation, she destroyed her Unfolding Domain. Her cultivation dropped. She went from the 6th realm to the 5th.

Her Dao Aspect quieted down. What was left of the Unfolding Domain turned into pure Spirit Qi.

The heavenly thunder no longer had a target. It tried to leave.

But Mi Tungmei trapped it in.

She could not finish the game today. Lost parts of her cultivation. Suffered so much pain that she would see nightmares of it for hundreds of years to come.

She would not let the heavenly thunder go. She would analyse it. Consume it. Make it hers. The scrolls spoke of the arts to do so, and those who succeeded could gain a destructive power that could even make immortals kneel.

Ziyou Yung. Mi Tungmei etched that name into the deepest part of her soul. One day, we’ll finish this game.

She ran for hundreds of miles. She fought against the foxes, lost her tails. Her skin was burnt to coal, scarlet red cracks revealing dry flesh and clotted blood underneath. Her eye sockets were empty, eyes long evaporated, no hair or fur on her head.

She was broken, and the foxes were on the hunt.

But she would not die.

The Magical Art was complete.

All the qi from breaking her cultivation, and the true qi too from her Sea of Consciousness, burnt like the most splendid fuel, casting a veil over her existence, bringing her away to a place where she could seethe, cry, and cultivate.