However, the battle was far from over.
But the war had just gained its turning point.
Especially when, from the far edge of the battlefield—where the dust still smoked from Venthros’s earlier detonation—a sudden howl of wind cut through the carnage.
*WHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRMMMMM!*
Air folded in on itself. The sky spiraled.
And Zephyr returned.
The Spirit Tempering stage wind cultivator dropped from the heavens like a falcon in freefall, his cloak shredded, his body bloodied, but his spirit unbroken.
His arrival carved a sonic trench through the enemy ranks, shredding corrupted constructs and sending shockwaves across the ruined arena. With one sweep of his legs, he landed in a swirl of gales beside Nalai, just as her opponent, the corrupted wind cultivator cloaked in sickly green haze, spun forward with a storm of razors.
The two wind-users clashed midair in a spiraling burst of silver and black.
“You alright?” Zephyr growled, wiping blood from his lip.
Nalai didn’t look his way as she replied, “I am.”
“Good,” he chuckled, then narrowed his eyes at the battlefield. “We can’t waste time with these puppets! We must take out the lackeys and then dogpile the Invader. If you three Sovereigns work together with the Avatar and I supporting you, we’ll win!”
His voice boomed across the battlefield in the form of a rallying cry. Those who heard it, be they Rongtai, Nalai, or the soldiers, all understood their path to victory.
Finish the corrupted ones. Then strike as one.
Quinlan and Serika had already heard the call. The Rotwater woman hunched, leaking noxious steam. The Ash Flame man staggered with his aura sputtering like wet coals.
But corruption made them stubborn. Their elements flared again, preparing to sacrifice what remained of them to take Serika and Quinlan down with them.
“It seems they’re about to self-sacrifice. We can’t let them detonate, Serika,” Quinlan said sharply, eyes flicking between their unstable cores.
“On it.”
Serika vanished in a flicker of flame.
She reappeared behind the Rotwater woman, leg cocked back in a blazing roundhouse kick. The impact detonated the air, hurling the corrupted woman into the ash-flame wielder’s side.
Quinlan was already moving.
He exploded forward with the might of a combatant who had an iron-solid foundation in the True Foundation stage of cultivation.
Wind wrapped his legs, accelerating his sprint.
Earth condensed around his fists, making them hit like meteors.
Water cooled and refined the force within his muscles, guiding the flow.
And Fire flared through his core, igniting his strikes.
He dropped low and spun, letting off a sweeping kick that cracked through the ash-wielder’s guard and launched him off the ground.
Before the man could fall, Quinlan stepped in, his body rotating like a coiled spring. With a sharp exhale, he punched upward into the Rotwater woman’s ribs. The impact didn’t just shatter her defense—it exploded through her core.
Then came the finisher.
He took a step between them, drew his body inward, and launched a devastating rising strike with his fist cloaked in a spiral of all four elements, not overpowering the blow but guiding it.
It landed between them like a hammer from the heavens.
The elemental force didn’t erupt outward, but it drilled inward, unraveling their corrupted cores from within. Fire cleansed. Wind disrupted. Earth crushed. Water erased.
*BOOOOOOM!*
The blast wasn’t a chaotic detonation: it was the death knell of two defiled cultivators, their twisted paths severed by clean, disciplined force. Their bodies didn’t just collapse; they dissolved, as though the very world rejected what they had become.
Quinlan exhaled slowly, withdrawing his elemental aura. His stance never faltered.
Serika landed beside Quinlan. One of her arms was smoking, with one shoulder dislocated. She snapped it back in place without even a grimace, then gave him a look equal parts smug and satisfied.
“Nicely done.”
“You too,” Quinlan said, flicking sludge from his wrist. “Didn’t think we’d sync that well.”
She gave him a wicked grin. “I always felt like we’d make a good team once you got on my level. Now let’s go kill a god, or whatever that monster is supposed to be.”
Before either could rest, a ripple of pressure swept the arena.
They both turned, eyes narrowing at the source.
Venthros.
He stood amidst the swirling chaos, unmoving. His four arms were folded loosely at his sides, the halo of corrupted qi around him writhing like a storm caged in flesh. His eyes glinted like dusk-colored gemstones. He was far too calm.
Behind him, the ground shook. The corrupted dark earth qi user let out a final bellow as a swarm of orange-robed monks swarmed his back. Rongtai’s monks pressed in despite terrible losses, their bodies broken and bleeding. But together, they brought it down, pulverizing the corrupted giant in a landslide of synchronized strikes and spirit-shattering mantras.
Only one dark qi servant remained now: the wind-corrupted cultivator, still dueling in a maelstrom against Nalai and the newly returned Zephyr, who had descended with fury from the heavens to rejoin the fray.
And yet… Venthros simply chuckled.
“Hmm… So. They underperformed,” the god mused under his breath.
He glanced down at the steaming remains of the Rotwater and Ash Flame disciples.
“Perhaps I asked too much of them,” he said in a wistful manner. “It seems the true path of cultivation—your path—grants more than raw power. It breeds instinct. Intuition. Experience.”
He raised one hand lazily, fingers tracing invisible lines through the air. “The ability to fight properly. How curious”
Quinlan’s body tensed. Something about the way the god stood, the way he waited like he wasn’t even concerned.
Why?
Why was Venthros so calm, even now, outnumbered?
A terribly bad premonition clenched at Quinlan’s heart when he noticed a detail he didn’t have the time to think of before. They were inside Nalai’s royal palace. High walls. Spirit-form defenses. Ancient seals. There was no way this large, dark creature could have just walked in with four monsters in tow, let alone launch a full assault…
… unless…
A chill went down Quinlan’s spine. His thoughts spiraled as the god’s four arms began to lift slowly.
“Choose, now.”
The words rang out not just through the air, but through their bones.
Across the ruined arena, Zephyr drove his heel through the corrupted wind user’s shoulder, sending him stumbling back. Nalai swept in like a ripple of grace, arm lifted behind him to finish the blow.
“Good!” Zephyr called, having significantly more energy now that his life was on the line in this fated battle. His usual lazy attitude was nowhere in sight as he shouted, “Now! Let’s strike together!”
The woman called Queen Nalai, childhood name Lysandra Vael, smiled.
And struck.
However, her fist didn’t strike his enemy; it struck straight through the wind cultivator.
Water surged around her arm like liquid crystal, shaped not as a stream, but as a spear. It punched through Zephyr’s back, clear and precise, erupting out of his chest in a jet of blood and foam.
He froze. A flicker of confusion crossed his face.
He looked down at the slender arm piercing through his body, his comrade’s arm.
His friend’s. The one he trusted with his back.
“…Nalai?”
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