Fates Parallel Chapter 389 - Interconnection (Patreon)

For most people, combat against an overwhelming foe was a terrible time to get lost in thought. One couldn’t afford such distraction when locked in a fight for their life. Between Yoshika’s Absolute Awareness and Kaede’s Weightless Fist, however, she tended to do quite a bit of thinking during battle.

It almost felt like cheating—the compounding effects of her mental technique with the entirely physical nature of her martial art meant that as long as she maintained the Weightless Fist, the rest of the world was completely frozen.

Easier said than done, of course. Kaede’s ultimate technique was draining, and though she’d done a lot to refine it over the years, she’d been straining herself recently and it was already starting to take a toll.

Kaede swiped her blade fruitlessly through Yu Meiren’s ethereal form while Yoshika attempted to intercept the demon’s smoke form with a blast of concentrated Plasma essence—trying to burn away whatever technique was allowing her to ignore their attacks.

It was difficult to coordinate. Her speed was unmatched while she was weightless, but as she regained her mass to put force behind a strike, it gave the demon time to react—and her reflexes were impeccable. At the same time, Yoshika’s body felt like she was trying to move through solid earth, making it difficult to follow up Kaede’s strikes.

Yoshika’s plasma went wide as Yu Meiren changed course too fast for her to adjust. Kaede tried to take advantage of the moment when the demon reformed her body, but to no avail. Yu Meiren had no trouble keeping up with the assault.

The first set of exchanges were over before Dae could react—though to the boy’s credit, he was clearly following the action. He was just too slow to participate. Nevertheless, Yu Meiren aborted her attempt on Yoshika’s family, though they weren’t sure whether that was because they’d managed to pin her down or if she simply wanted to stay behind and mock them.

Either way, it left her with a moment to think, for better or worse. Merging Yoshika and Kaede had been an act of desperation, and she was already starting to feel the feedback. Kaede hadn’t been a unified cultivator before, but fusing with Yoshika had torn open the arterial meridians connecting the centers of her cultivation, leaving her horribly unbalanced.

On top of that, they hadn’t taken the normal precautions of meditating their way into an empty state of mind and slowly synchronizing their souls. The more their focus wavered, the closer they felt to falling apart. She had to focus on the unifying purpose keeping them together—the enemy before them, and the people she had to protect.

She might lose herself entirely at the smallest lapse.

“Dae, evacuate our family.”

Hyeong Daesung’s eyes widened in terrified understanding, but she didn’t have time to wait for a response. She charged forward, concentrating on Yu Meiren. Nothing else mattered—she just had to keep the demon occupied.

The demon that murdered Miyata.

The demon trying to kill Jiaying.

He had—she was—never been—loved—would never—

Yoshika nearly face-planted as her minds tried to unravel. She tightened the grip on her sword and shook her head—concentrate!

Her sword struck wide, her lapse in focus throwing her off so badly that Yu Meiren didn’t even need to repeat her trick of becoming incorporeal to avoid it—and leaving Kaede open to reprisal.

Though she’d been on the defensive so far, the demoness didn’t hesitate to strike, given the opportunity. She enveloped her arm in a sickly purple Miasma and struck Kaede in the side with enough force to send her toppling. The layered plates of her armor tore like paper, barely saving her from being completely impaled by the spear-hand strike.

The Miasma rushed into the open wound in her side and rampaged through Kaede’s body. She tried to purge it, but the momentum of the fight had shifted, and Yu Meiren wasn’t going to let her rest.

The demon dashed forward to deliver a finishing blow to Kaede, but Yoshika intercepted with Lightning God Transformation. Her martial art wasn’t nearly as fast as Kaede’s, but it was still a technique that prioritized speed. Still, with Yu Meiren on the offensive, Yoshika could barely keep up, only managing to deflect a few blows before she was knocked back by a wave of force.

Finally, Dae finished his spell, disappearing with an unnaturally black flash of Void essence as he teleported away, reappearing next to Yoshika’s startled family.

Yu Meiren noticed his departure and grimaced.

“Ugh, really? Fine—no more playing around. Dao companions are such a nuisance...”

The demon’s domain grew unbearably heavy—crushing down against Yoshika and Kaede, threatening to cut them off from each other and rob them of their only advantage.

She resisted with everything she had, but though her domain had gotten larger, it hadn’t gotten any stronger, and Yu Meiren’s status as Sovereign Longyan’s right hand was not for show. She ground her teeth and clutched at her wounds as she fought back against Yu Meiren’s aura.

Was this her limit? For all her bravado, she hadn’t so much as touched Yu Meiren. She’d known how insurmountable the gap was between houtian and xiantian. What arrogance had led her to think she stood a chance against the demon? One, two, or a hundred—the outcome would have been the same no matter how many she brought together.

If only she had Eui’s strength, or Jia’s ingenuity, but she wasn’t them. She was a pretender, as she always had been—putting on a brave facade even as she cringed under her father’s scrutiny and meekly obeyed his every command. As always, she had overestimated her own importance—now, at last, she was paying the price.

Then, just as Yu Meiren’s aura was about to overtake hers entirely, she renewed the grip on her sword and stood to glare defiantly at the impossible foe before her.

No. It wasn’t her paying the price. It was her family. Her people. The ones she’d sworn to protect. Yu Meiren was right—Miyata Toshiharu had died trying to protect her, misguided though he may have been. What sort of coward was she if she couldn’t do the same?

For his sake—for his honor, and that of Tokuda and Ozaki—Kaede would not let the demon take another step towards her family as long as she still drew breath. Whatever it cost—she would make the demon bleed.

Yoshika stood with her. Fractured and incoherent though they were, they still stood as one in body, mind, and soul.

Her eyes widened. In her urgency she’d forgotten. She was thinking of herself as Kaede and Yoshika—two minds joined against their common foe, acting in concert. But she was so much more than that.

Yu Meiren scowled.

“How the hell are you still resisting me? That’s it—I take it back, you’re more of a threat than I thought. No more holding back, you die here and now.”

She leapt forward, but one last time her charge slowed to a halt. Yoshika’s nose bled, and Kaede’s body practically burst at the seams as she strained her already overworked meridians beyond their limits.

Lightning crackled across her weightless body as she lowered her stance and held her sword in a low two-handed grip. The rainbow-colored flames of the True Awakening of the Dragon’s Heart enveloped her blade. Her overtaxed meridians began to burst, but she ignored it—focusing everything she had on her opponent, and the shiny green orb of concentrated essence on Yu Meiren’s collarbone.

She knew that she would only have one opportunity. One strike, with everything she had behind it. It would break her, one way or another, and she wouldn’t get another chance.

Xiantian cultivators were notoriously hard to kill, often ignoring injuries that would have been certain death to any other cultivator. Not even beheading was certain. Shen Yu had given her a weapon—a careless bit of trivia he hadn’t considered important. Demons were their cores. If Kaede could just damage it, then maybe...

Time was up. The world exploded into motion as Kaede shot forward like a streak of lightning and swung her blade up at the demon’s center of power. Yu Meiren’s eyes widened in shock, but her reflexes stayed strong as her body transformed into smoke, only to immediately solidify again as Kaede’s blade cut through the mists and sent up a spray of blood.

At last, her blow had landed.

The cut was deep, but whether it was by instinct, luck, or sheer resilience, the demonic core was unscathed. Yu Meiren leapt back away from Kaede, but Yoshika was already there behind her, a crater beneath her feet and the red-black essence of Destruction surging within her fist.

Yoshika struck right through Meiren’s back, but once more the demon twisted at the last moment to prevent damage to her core. Yu Meiren tore herself free from Yoshika and flew up into the air away from them.

“You little shits! How dare you?! I’ll—”

Kaede leapt into the air, controlling her ascent with Yoshika’s flying techniques. Her body cried out in protest, but she remembered her bloody, messy duel with Lee Jia. They had both been determined to continue until their bodies gave out, and now she had their combined resolve.

Let her body fail. She’d fight until the very spark of her soul was extinguished.

Yu Meiren grimaced and held up a hand, but a blast of Lightning from Yoshika caught her off guard. She cried out in agony and frustration, her eyes glowing bright purple with her rage. With Kaede’s blade inches from her core, the world froze again.

Only this time, it wasn’t Kaede and Yoshika’s doing.

In the space between moments, the world trembled under the might of Yu Meiren’s words. Her divine essence tore meaning from the universe and twisted it into truth, manifesting her will upon reality.

Demonic Art: Heartrender

Kaede’s heart exploded. The momentum of her strike carried forward, but without any essence left behind it, the blow glanced off of Yu Meiren harmlessly. Kaede’s body disappeared completely from her senses as it plummeted to the ground, and if not for a similar experience during Eunae’s tribulation, Yoshika might have panicked.

Kaede’s body was unconscious—possibly even dead—but her soul still persisted, and her determination was unfaltering.

Yu Meiren’s technique wasn’t finished yet. Yoshika could feel its malevolent purpose twisting its way through the channels of her soul, searching. It was a horrible, virulent mirror of Yoshika’s domain, and through its power she came to a disturbing understanding of the demon Yu Meiren.

Like Yoshika, Yu Meiren’s domain was one of connections, but rather than forming and strengthening such connections, it sought to exploit and break them. Heartrender was a technique that didn’t stop at just killing its target. It fed on the connections between friends, comrades, lovers, or even simple acquaintances.

The stronger the connection the better, as the technique fed on such bonds and propagated itself through them. Heartrender would not stop at Yoshika, it would spread to her family, to her friends—with enough power behind it, perhaps it would even worm its way through whatever force separated her from Jia and Eui to kill them too.

It was a vile technique, and it revealed just how vile its creator was. How many genocides had Yu Meiren caused with this art? What kind of twisted person had that as the ultimate expression of their soul?

Yoshika rejected it. From the very bottom of her soul, she rejected it. It was the antithesis of everything she stood for—everything she was. Without thinking, she reached out with her divine spark and tried to tear the abomination from reality, but it was too strong. Its essence clung to her soul, as if mocking her for her frailty.

Then she felt something reaching out from the edges of her soul. As though Jia and Eui were with her, their hands on hers, urging her forward. She felt the connections to each and every one of the important people in her life, flaring brightly within her senses.

The demonic art practically giggled with malicious glee, as if to say that she was only making its job easier, but she ignored it. Whatever was empowering her domain was too distant, too weak to turn the tides entirely, but while she loathed to admit it, Yu Meiren’s domain was already similar to her own.

If she couldn’t destroy the technique, perhaps she could subvert it. Twist it into something less affronting. She grasped at the demonic art as it tried to slip away from her and continue its grim purpose.

Thanks to her practice with Seong Eunae’s Kumiho fragment, Yoshika was able to get a firm grasp on the divine essence empowering Meiren’s technique. She put everything she had into the attack, even as it fought against her and seared her soul. With Kaede’s determination, and the weight of her bonds behind her, Yoshika pushed.

Yu Meiren’s eyes narrowed.

“What are you doing? Stop. You’re only a mortal, how can you be doing this?!”

The demon flew forward to intervene, but within Yoshika’s soul, something gave way. Yu Meiren’s control was stripped away from her own technique, replaced by the essence of Yoshika’s domain. The words came to her unbidden, as if summoned forth from the fabric of the universe.

Sacred Art: Heartmender