Chapter 89 - Foxhunt (Patreon)

Author's Announcement: Hei guys, CatVI here. I just wanted to let you know that for the holiday season, I'll be travelling around Finland and then France (to visit my cousin's place). The chapter on Monday will be the final chapter this year. And then I will start posting again in January after the first week, so that's the 8th (if all goes according to plan). I want to spend the next two weeks with my friends and the few family I have in Europe, and unfortunately, that does mean I won't be updating any chapters. I hope you guys won't mind. Happy holidays to all my readers, thanks for supporting me by reading this strange novel I write. Fingers crossed, you won't have to wait long.[Table of Contents]

Chapter 89 - Foxhunt

Within the dark cavern, now marred by clouds of soot and dust, the sounds of battle rang out. Golden light tinged with green after tones flashed, colliding against the sinister purple void qi arts of the evil strangers.

The cavern was littered with corpses, both Ren and the cultists alike.

Among these dead bodies were two young girls with infinite futures, elders carrying the name of the local ruling clan, and even gang members from a slum where the prejudiced lived.

Their eyes were glossed over if the corpses still had their heads attached, for most of the Ren dead were beheaded in one manner or another.

As for the strangers, alien beings with hominid frames but features too disgustingly strange to be even Yao, their corpses numbered the most.

Beings with bodies that looked like they were a mishmash of different sea creatures. Squid-like heads, crustacean skin, and vertical mouths covered by mandibles.

But although they numbered the most among the dead, they were undoubtedly the winners of today's dark battle. Not even a fourth of their members, who were much more expendable than their Ren counterparts, had perished. For even if they were to die, their souls would simply return to their void lord, awaiting further rebirth in a newer, more perfect form.

Yet the same could not be said for the Ren, who were now all dead, the most crucial part of their soul, their ‘heads,’ delivered to the lord.

Now, only one last heretic stood. Su Nanya, the shapeshifting fox. A harlot who called herself a princess, yet nothing but a bedmaiden whore from the clan of Vixen temptresses.

And even though the Su were quite annoying, in the grand scheme of things, they were of no issue.

Their lord had already taken care of one of their grand princesses, a corrupted grace in the Unfolding Heaven 3rd Realm, no less! As such, one who was merely in the Imperfect Heaven 1st Realm as Su Nanya would pose no problems.

Should pose no problems.

But even as Youjin Fuqiang separated the heretic’s head from her body for the eighth time that night, she just refused to stay dead.

The head of her soul declined to enter the lord’s embrace, as if mocking them!

Something was wrong. Youjin Fuqiang could feel it.

But he didn’t know what.

Their cohort had sacrificed not a small number of heretics today—more than a dozen native cultivators, with many from his own Youjin clan.

Their heads cleaved and souls extracted. Usually, with such a tribute, the lord's power should have strengthened its influence in the surrounding area.

But Youjin Fuqiang felt nothing.

It was not his place to question the lord’s choices. Though he could not control the sense of unease he felt.

Su Nanya’s body scattered apart into a goo of emulsified blood, bones, and flesh, and reformed again into a giant fox, bearing down on one of the weaker cult members.

But by now, their cohort had already noticed the vixen’s fighting pattern. The cultist simply forewent attack and used all of his void qi for defence, barely surviving the strike from the Essence qi-powered paw swipe, while more than thirty cultists around them attacked Su Nanya with abandon.

The vixen’s body shifted and squirmed in that disgusting manner, holes appearing on her flesh to escape arrows and skin parting into two to evade blades. But she could not dodge all attacks.

A few landed, most of them from cultists of the Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realm.

“Ou!” The heretic cried. She scurried to dodge the follow-up attack.

But Youjin Fuqiang wasn’t just going to stand there.

He appeared on the vixen’s path, using his clawed hands to manipulate a web of dim gold silk.

Dim Gold Severance 7th Form!

The dim gold silk, far better than its normal counterpart as it was augmented by the blessings of the lord, twisted into a hurricane of death and struck the vixen from the flank.

“Awwooooooooooo!” cried the harlot once more. Her fur, guts, and innards were ground like minced meat and rained down the area.

Some unlucky cultists were too slow to dodge the grime. The moment they made contact, the corrupted essence from the vixen sizzled the cultists' skin, causing them unimaginable pain.

One died, her body melting into a puddle of goo, and the rest hastily channelled their void qi to wash away the corruption from the Last Ascension Mortal Plane.

Yet it seems Su Nanya herself suffered no permanent damage from that.

A normal being would have died with such an injury.

But not the Su. For they were abominations.

And this accursed bed-woman was perhaps the most deviant of their lot, wasting the precious Fear Qi and Void Qi Youjin Fuqiang had so painstakingly gathered over the years.

Because although the Su were heretics, they were the heretics with powers appearing closest to the lord.

Immortality.

Her blood corrupted the lord's domain almost as potently as the lord's powers purified the Last Ascension Mortal Plane.

A mirror image.

“Or rather, you are like a cockroach, are you not?” Youjin Fuqiang said with venom in his words, “No matter how many times you are stepped on, you just refuse to die.”

Right now, the dagger-wielding Imperfect Heaven 2nd Realm cultist was repeatedly stabbing the prone form of the vixen after severing her limbs off, “Why won’t you die?” The cultist rasped, “Die! Die die die die die die!”

The vixen vanished in a shower of essence qi and gore, then reformed again.

With that same, infuriating, yet undoubtedly gorgeous smile on her face.

She bared her fangs, attacked without much result, and was dispatched again.

And again.

And again.

Her body was cracked, her foxball barely visible underneath them. The same type of occultic foxball Youjin Fuqiang was using as a crux for his soul.

Youjin Fuqiang sighed, “Why keep up this meaningless struggle? To take one more life? Or is it perhaps some twisted message you wish to send my lord. Su Nanya, lay down your arms and hand over the occultic foxball. This is a great chance for you, to be the first of the accursed Su to accept the lord’s teaching! You can be a pioneer, a reformer. Join us in our—”

The essence qi beam blasted Youjin Fuqiang off his pedestal; the old patriarch flung all the way to the edge of the cavern.

But he did not mind. He had noticed something.

“Your attack, it’s weakened.” He grinned, the flaky skin on his face stretching into a sinister smile.

The vixen seemed to flinch.

“Even a Su like you does not have infinite qi after all. Not to mention, you are merely in the Imperfect Heaven 1st Realm.” Youjin Fuqiang flew back, the myriad of foxmoth wings that made up his robe fluttering in the wind that did not exist.

He laughed out loud. But inside, this realization did not do much to soothe his mood.

Because he did not wish for a war of attrition.

Yes, Su Nanya was running out of qi. Yes, if they kept up the pressure, she would fall sooner or later.

But even if her attacks were not as successful as they were at the start of the battle, sometimes, she could catch them off guard as she did just now, even causing a death or two.

Although the lord’s children were prepared to lay down their lives for their righteous cause, death without meaning might, on the contrary, just displease the lord. What if it affected their station when rebirth inevitably came?

“F-Fuqiang, enough stalling! Channel the lost plane and finish this defiler,” one cultist said as he limped next to Youjin Fuqiang. Half his face was singed by a blade, the work of that meddling Free Sparrow. The other half was burnt to a crisp, the beady eye barely functional. His body was also fuming like a grilling charcoal stone, cursed by the mad vixen’s essence qi washing over his being. Especially his groins, the area looking as though it was melted together into his body with green paste.

Greedy fool. Youjin Fuqiang spat inwardly.

This particular cultist, a Beheaded Bow Fiend, had been very enthusiastic about trying to ‘force’ Su Nanya into submission after all the other Ren had been delivered.

Su Nanya had a famed yin physique after all. There was no doubt that intercourse with her could help the Beheaded Bow Fiend break through to the Imperfect Heaven 3rd Realm.

For in this cruel world, nothing must be wasted. And as decreed by the lord, Su Nanya was perhaps the most valuable ‘resource’ for the men of their cohort.

They would keep her like a sow, then use her until every last man of their member had broken through into the next realm of cultivation.

Four cultists had nailed her to the ground after ripping apart the scanty shawls she called clothes, pressing down on her limbs like stakes as the fifth cultist, the Beheaded bow fiend, cackled madly, ready to reap a pleasurable reward after the pain he had suffered in Free Sparrow’s hands.

Afterwards, no doubt every other man there would wait in line to bear down their bodies onto her sinful, amorous being.

The fate of innocent farm girls in the hands of bandits would await her. A princess to be defiled and nothing more.

But just as the Beheaded Bow Fiend had removed his hooded robes, his hooked, turtle-like ‘shaft’ aimed straight at the Su Princess’s nethers, the vixen blew herself up like a bomb!

With a taunting giggle, her funky-smelling essence qi exploded in all directions, the green aura from the crown of her head taking the form of claw fragments. It, and her cracked bones, were like shrapnel.

The four cultists, each an Imperfect Heaven 2nd Stage powerhouse, perished immediately, while the Beheaded Bow Fiend barely managed to deploy a defensive art in time.

The vixen then reformed with a playful grin on her face. “Oh my, how barbaric bandits you are. Is there no man among you who can handle the true grace of our beauty?” She patted her hips while covering her smirk with the back of her other palm, “Come. We await.”

It was naked mockery mouthed by a naked harlot!

She was confident that she could live.

The Beheaded Bow Fiend might be a greedy fool, but he was right. Youjin Fuqiang had been stalling.

The previous patriarch of the Dim Gold Youjin Clan sighed. He was going to end this, once and for all. And maybe, if he were persuasive enough, the lord would let him usurp Su Nanya’s occultic foxball too, in addition to the previous one, harvested after the Corrupted Grace from the West, Su Xiya, was delivered.

“I cannot say I find it a shame that it has come to this,” Youjin Fuqiang said. His hands were moving in specific mudras, at first glance reminiscent of the Youjin Clan’s techniques. But these were the blessings granted by the lord, to channel his power, and indeed his whole world.

The cavern seemed to quake. First physically, then in a realm too obscure for mortal eyes to ever comprehend fully. It was as if four or five different overlapping images of the world were swirling around each other, with the image of the lord’s perfection at the centre.

The void qi roared in the seams of these images, and Youjin Fuqiang’s own Spirit qi burnt to sustain his own soul.

It did not come for free, such might.

The void qi, the lord provided graciously, and the spirit qi, his own recovered—albeit still not fully healed—dantian could manage. But prayers needed Heart Qi, as did miracles.

The heretics called it Fear Qi. But was it not obvious that unbelievers should tremble in the face of the lord’s judgment?

This was faith, not fear. And it did not come easy.

Youjin Fuqiang could still feel the pain, the ache when his cultivation base exploded after the treacherous Yaoguai had dared to attack him. To dare try and assassinate!

The old patriarch’s fury rose, and, along with it, a sense of mirth.

His body had died that day, but his spirit had not. With the grace of the lord, he had managed to attach his soul to one of the foxmoth pupae. He had been carried to this cave by the Yaoguai and its flock.

And what luck! It was the very place the Corrupted Grace from the West’s occultic foxball had fallen to! The Lord had been searching for it for many a year, and to think Fuqiang’s ‘incident’ would be the catalyst to its discovery.

The foxball was laden with faith qi, as Su Xiya was a Faith Qi cultivator at the peak of the Unfolding Heaven 3rd Realm, the Mortal Illumination Realm! And even she was barely a match for the lord’s awesome might, her core now the perfect fodder for Youjin Fuqiang, the lord’s most beloved child, to ‘grow.’

The Yaoguai had slept, unbeknownst to it how Youjin Fuqiang, after his ‘metamorphosis’ into an adult Foxmoth, would soon show these mindless critters the true path to immortality.

And so he had stolen away the measly Yaoguai’s flock of followers, turning them into the lord's faithful devotees!

The Fear Qi harvest was nowhere near enough to properly integrate his soul into the occultic foxball, but at least it could act as a conduit.

The Yaoguai, nothing but a crass offshoot of Mortal Ascension’s cancerous Planar Consciousness, suffered its just punishment, and it was indeed a shame he could not properly deliver it to the lord.

And now, Youjin Fuqiang had to use his limited reserves of Fear Qi to pray to the lord for a miracle.

If only I could utilize the occultic foxball fully, The old patriarch sighed. But his eyes soon brightened with glee. He could feel the overlapping realities settling. This should have happened even without channelling his heart qi the moment they had started beheading the heretics.

But no matter.

The power of the void filled the cavern fully like the very air itself.

And Su Nanya’s rate of regeneration decreased even further. The cracks on her lecherous body remained fractured for longer, and her own occultic foxball seemed to glow a hateful green in protest.

Her pretty face twisted, her lithe waist turned. It was as though she was being pressed down from all directions by a being far her superior.

Youjin Fuqiang could feel her strange dao of immortality being cut off from the heavens, and by the panic in the vixen’s eyes, she could feel it too.

“A shame. Now you will die.” He said, his brethren cheered. It was time to end this farce.