Fates Parallel Chapter 359 - Dragon (Patreon)

The dragon’s coils seemed to go on forever as it wound its way lazily through the sky, flying as effortlessly as if it were submerged in water. It was so enormous that Yoshika had a hard time thinking of it as a person, or even a creature—it was more like a force of nature. But when it opened its mouth, the earth-shattering roar she expected never came. Instead, it spoke with a deep masculine voice—surprisingly smooth for his size.

“Begone, humans. You trespass upon the domain of the Dragon Lord—your kind is not welcome here.”

Yoshika wasn’t sure how to respond. Was she even supposed to? How were they going to fight that? Sovereign Shen ended up being the first to step up.

“I am Sovereign Shen Yu, Divine Overseer of the Immortal Realms. You know why I am here, and I know that you have chosen to ally with the Demon Lord, Sovereign Longyan. I had always believed dragonkind to be an honorable lot—why would you fall so far as to consort with demons?”

The dragon turned his gaze onto Shen Yu and emitted a low, rumbling growl.

“I know you, Sovereign Shen. Your presence in this realm is an unwelcome disturbance, and a breach of the oath you swore when Chou’s tomb was sealed. You should never have come.”

“Tsk, as if I could allow Longyan and his demonic forces to do as they pleased. And my decision is only vindicated by your treachery! Let your divine master speak to me of broken oaths himself—the hypocrite!”

Yoshika couldn’t read the dragon’s body language, but she could feel his disappointment as his body coiled and unfurled repeatedly.

“You are mistaken, Sovereign Shen. Sovereign Tianlong has not sent any avatars or representatives to this realm beyond those which were already present—that is to say, myself. Our key remains safely hidden within the main sect of the Draconic Realms, and we have no association with the Demon Lord.”

“Lies! I have seen fiends cooperating with the demons! Those I captured confirmed that they had been sent by representatives of the Dragon Lord, and that the location of Chou’s tomb had been discovered.”

The dragon’s movements grew agitated, and he sounded surprised as he responded.

“That is not possible—I sent no such representatives, and the secret of this location was guarded even from me until humans from your continent came to warn me of your intentions and Jianmo’s release. Nobody knows of it but me.”

Yoshika’s eyes widened.

“Humans?! Do Hye and Qin Zhao? Is Elder Qin alright?”

The dragon glanced at Yoshika and flicked its whiskers.

“The same. It is thanks to them that I knew to guard this place against the Divine Sovereigns. The tomb must not be opened, for the sake of this realm and all others.”

Yoshika felt a cold sweat coming on.

“Do they know where this place is? Could they have communicated it to others?”

“No. The one called Do Hye was given only enough information to confirm that this place was the same one that he had described, and the humans have both been kept isolated within my palace.”

“I have reason to believe that Elder Qin was able to send a message somehow, and Do Hye is known for having created a network of long range communication formations across our continent. Are you sure there’s no way either of them could have been behind the leak?”

The dragon’s entire body went still. After a long pause, he responded.

“It is possible that we have been—”

A beam of raw destructive energy erupted from beneath the waves, targeting Bai Renshu’s cloud. Sovereign Shen was already there, blocking the attack with an array of flying swords, and deflecting whatever was left.

The ambush was so sudden that Yoshika barely had time to react, throwing up her own shields and defenses as more demons emerged from the depths.

Bai Renshu fled towards the maelstrom, summoning several moth-like spirits to protect his escape. Another beam struck out towards him, ruthlessly targeting the weaker cultivators and forcing Shen Yu to intercede once again.

This time, the source of the attack made himself known. Sovereign Longyan emerged from beneath the sea, one palm pointed towards Shen Yu. The beam of destruction came from one of the draconic eyes embedded in his hands, and it took Shen’s full concentration to block it.

The dragon roared so loudly that Yoshika felt it in her bones, then dived towards Longyan. The demon lord casually raised his other hand and fired a pitch black beam of Void essence at the dragon.

The dragon was able to block Longyan’s attack with an exhalation of familiar rainbow-hued Plasma. Yoshika was struck by the feeling that her own technique was a pale imitation for the real thing as the beam of Void essence was harmlessly scattered against the dragon’s breath.

By then, the others had started moving. Yan De went straight for the demon lord, while Guan Yu produced his signature polearm and began cutting demons out of the sky one by one with each swipe of his weapon—as if distance meant nothing to him.

Knowing when she was outmatched, Yoshika also started making her way towards the maelstrom. There was no way she was going to have an influence on this battle, and the only thing she could do was stick to what little remained of the plan—even if she had the sinking feeling that it wasn’t her plan she was following anymore.

As if fate had been listening to her thoughts, waiting for the exact moment to jinx her, a huge magic circle appeared in thin air right behind Shen Yu. In an instant, more flying swords appeared around the Sovereign to strike at the source of the magic, but even the Sovereign’s swift reaction wasn’t fast enough.

A gnarled old hand darted out of the circle and slapped the most intricate talisman Yoshika had ever seen onto Shen Yu’s head. With a bright flash and a palpable surge of mana, Shen Yu vanished.

It had been too sudden. In less than the span of an eyeblink, the divine avatar of one of the most powerful figures in the universe was reduced to an empty robe and a bunch of rapidly dissolving spirit-swords.

The unmistakable bald and hairless figure of Do Hye leaned out of the magic circle and caught the robe.

“Whoops! Can’t lose this, can we?”

Then, as swiftly as he’d appeared, Do Hye ducked back into the circle—narrowly avoiding one of Guan Yu’s qi blades—and vanished.

With Sovereign Shen gone, Bai Renshu had no protection, but Yan De had gotten close enough that Longyan could no longer ignore him.

The entire battle shifted as Yan De engaged the demon lord. Yoshika could see what Yan Zhihao and Zheng Long’s fighting styles had been trying to imitate, and she could see why they’d been so inspired. The Grandmaster of the Great Awakening Dragon Sect was a flaming beacon, his aura of fire expanding well beyond the limits of his physical body.

It was as though he’d become half dragon himself, with bright flames forming a head, wings, claws, and a long whip-like tail—all of which assaulted Longyan relentlessly.

The demon lord weathered the endless barrage of flame, but was forced to divert his attention away from attacking Bai Renshu in order to fend off Yan De. The dragon tried to capitalize on the distraction, but was stopped once more by one of Longyan’s void beams.

Yoshika didn’t know how the demonic sovereign was doing it. In theory, they should have all been on equal footing—and if anything the dragon felt far more powerful than the rest. Yet Longyan fought them both at once, and the sustained blasts of raw essence didn’t even seem to tire him out.

She tore her eyes away from their fight and focused on her own problems. There were more demons with Longyan than they’d expected, and even with Guan Yu cutting them down by the dozen, more and more kept emerging, many of them taking aim at her.

They flew ahead as fast as they could, deterring the occasional demon with a blast of lightning, which was usually followed by one of Guan Yu’s long-distance cuts. The Earth Rending Sword wasn’t flashy—in fact, Guan Yu hadn’t moved from his spot since the fight began—but its perfected form had unprecedented control over the battlefield.

She couldn’t be certain, but she suspected that Guan Yu was even contributing to the fight against Longyan—which would make that a three-on-one fight that Longyan was holding his own in. A chilling thought.

Just as Yoshika and the girls were about to catch up to Bai Renshu, another magic circle appeared in the sky—this time right in front of them.

She panicked, and tried to veer out of the way, but it was as if the essence around her had suddenly been stripped away, and her momentum carried her through the portal, sending all four girls tumbling to the ground on the other side.

Yoshika had already been using Absolute Awareness to follow the xiantian battle she’d just left, but as the girls scrambled to their feet, she accelerated her thoughts as much as possible to regain her bearings.

They were surrounded by water on all sides, and the ground beneath them was densely packed sediment. It was dark, but enough light filtered down from the open air above them to see by—especially as the sun began to peek over the lip of the vortex of water around them.

The bottom of the maelstrom. Do Hye had teleported them to the ocean floor.

The man himself already has his arms raised, and he began speaking as soon as she noticed him.

“Good to see you’ve been practicing your mental techniques. You really should learn to keep your mind racing at all times—preferably on multiple tasks. Should be easy enough for you.”

Yoshika was surprised that he could speak fast enough to be coherent through her sped-up perception, but she ignored him. He wasn’t the real threat—or rather, if he was, then she was already dead. She was focused on the others that were with him.

There were seven, but none of them felt like xiantian cultivators. They were all in the peak of the third stage, like her, and each of them had their own cores.

Four were fiends. One looked like a half-dragon, dressed in fine robes designed to accommodate her iridescent wings. It was hard to read the expression on her reptilian face, but her posture was unmistakably that of a noble looking down on her surroundings.

Another had an upper body that could have been human or half-spirit, except for his pupiless black eyes, but beneath his scandalously undressed torso was the body of some strange cross between a deer and a rabbit. Tightly coiled muscular legs ending in cloven hooves and covered in a layer of thick protective fur. He looked ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.

The last two were very similar to each other, and by far the most alien. They looked almost completely identical—like someone had taken a wasp and tried to stretch it into something vaguely resembling a human—but one had a thinner waist and a thick layer of fur around its chest that gave Yoshika the impression of a vaguely feminine form.

Even their essence felt the same. Were they twins? Dao companions like her? She had to set aside her curiosity for the time being.

The last three were obviously demonic. Of those, two were boys that looked mostly human. One had horns where his eyes should have been, with a Light core in the center of his forehead acting as a replacement eye. The other could have passed as a regular man of Qin, until he opened his mouth to reveal an unhinged jaw full of razor sharp teeth and a Fire core in the back of his throat.

The last of the demonic group was a woman—or had been. She was the most dramatically changed of the trio. She had long, untamed locks of dirty white hair, split by a pair of spiraling black horns. Her face was like cracked porcelain—ashen white, with jagged black streaks that ran down her face like tears, revealing pitch black flesh beneath. The glowing green points of her irises stood out against the inky void of her sclera, and betrayed no hint of emotion.

At her neck, the barely-human facade faded away gradually, as though thorny tendrils of black flesh were reaching up from her torso, slowly overtaking the last bastion of her humanity. Beneath her neck, she was entirely monstrous.

Her chest looked like it had been torn open to expose her demonic core—an enormous orb that glowed with the sickly green light of Miasma essence. The ‘wound’ wept a thick black sludge that oozed its way across her body and protected her modesty in place of clothing. It even formed a strange sort of ‘cloak’ that hung from her back and shoulders in the form of dripping tentacles.

Her arms and legs ended in claws and talons with veins of toxic green miasma running through them, and her teeth were as sharp as the boy with the maw.

She was strong. Yoshika could sense her essence, even through the oppressive density of the mana around them. Stronger than any houtian cultivator she’d ever met. Without a doubt, that demon was the biggest threat.

As Yoshika observed her, the demoness’ eyes met hers—specifically Eui’s—and smirked.

“Miss Yoshika, it’s terribly rude to ignore someone when they’re trying to speak to you.”

As startled as she was by the demon, Do Hye’s attempts to get her attention became impossible to ignore. She scowled at him as she returned her thoughts to normal speed and braced herself for a fight, but it never came.

Instead The Snake sighed and shook his head.

“You know full well that if I’d meant you any harm I’d have dealt it by now. Come on, we don't have much time.”

Yoshika shook her heads incredulously. She hadn’t missed Do Hye.

“Time for what?”

“To get this thing opened, of course! You’re the last piece we need, but we’d better hurry before the idiots up top catch on and stop fighting each other.”