First Blood

Gale-force winds, swirling snow, and deafening thunder. Faced with the all-consuming blizzard, even the mountain pass, dozens of kilometers wide between two flanking ranges, seemed constricted. Channeling through the mountains, the storm raging across the earth converged into an even more savage fury. It was like plunging into a tempestuous ocean tide in a single instant. A ghastly white torrent swallowed everything. From the darkness that blotted out the sky, endless flurries of snow and debris shrieked through the wind, dissolving into thousands of lingering trails stretching into infinity. Like a curtain descending upon a stage, all prying eyes were shut out completely. Now, with no bothersome spectators watching, no worries about ruining their public personas, and no fear of frightening small children, the "actors" smoothly shifted into their starkly different backstage faces. Yanking hair ribbons, tearing dresses, spitting when it called for spitting, throwing haymakers when it called for haymakers. Now was the delightful time to tear each other apart! *Boom!* The sub-zero chill suppressed the scorching heat of boiling dragon blood. Countless snowflakes falling upon the steel monster vaporized and vanished in an instant, carving a straight wake through the storm. Pan Ying gave a ravenous, savage screech. In the dim tempest, blood-red radiance flared and surged like a blazing torch. From the moment they plunged into the storm—no, prepared long before they ever breached the squall—the counterattack had already reached the pinnacle of speed. Even when cleaved in two, the manta ray could not arrest the sharpness of this strike; instead, its life served as an offering, fueling Pan Ying’s ferocity and lethality even further! A continuous barrage of explosive cracks rang out, only to be swallowed by the howling gale. A flash of residual light vanished in a blink. The defenses and barriers mounted upon Tiancheng’s vehicle instantly shattered and fell apart. The slashing blood-red radiance rent the roof asunder, unstoppable in its momentum! Yet immediately afterward, the air seemed to abruptly solidify, freezing in place. In that near-frozen instant, the furiously blazing blood-greatsword ground against empty air, throwing off showers of sparks as faint fissures materialized in the void, spreading outward. Inch by inch, it pressed forward. The driver’s face was livid. Roaring with veins bulging on his forehead, his Tianyuan-derived telekinesis surged forth. In terms of finesse, it could not compare to Tong Shan, but its instantaneous burst of power was terrifying. The moment he reacted, he actually managed to withstand this long-calculated strike. In his haste, he had no room to hold back, instinctively throwing everything he had into the defense. And the consequence was... overlooking the White Stag lurking in the snow and ice! In the darkness, An Ning snapped her fingers. A glint of faint light abruptly emerged from behind the hurtling snow, soaring with weightless grace. In a sudden maneuver, it traced a curving arc, slipping through a fissure in the vehicle’s window. Like a delicate blade wielded by an invisible hand, it swept toward the driver’s throat. *Bang!* Bizarre clawed fingers reached out from a shattered bottle out of thin air. It was Maya. The instant she realized the manta ray had died, she decisively crushed the bottle at her waist, releasing the calamity beast contained within. Like a wisp of white smoke, it curled and danced in defiance of the gale, wrapping around Maya’s body and extending into countless threads in all directions. Under her command, clawed hands materialized out of thin air, throwing themselves one after another before the faint light, clutching and gripping it tight! The entire exchange took no more than a split second. Immediately after, Little Niuma plummeted from the sky and collided head-on with Tiancheng’s car. Between steel and steel, monster and machine, physical kinetic energy clashed in the most brutal fashion, sending both hurtling backward! Amidst the driver’s agonized scream— Though the wisp of faint light flicked from the darkness had not claimed the Tianyuan driver’s life, it had effortlessly chiseled a nearly imperceptible fissure into the iron wall of air solidified by his telekinesis. The blood-red radiance drove straight in, flashing and gone. A grievous blow! The driver, flung from the car, was caught in midair by Maya. He seemed completely unharmed, yet the moment she pulled him, the half of his body grazed by the blood-light instantly fractured into countless cracks. Crimson sprayed forth, whipped away by the tempest, only to reverse against the wind under Pan Ying’s pull and plunge into the blade. Like blood vessels connecting the two, it drank greedily in deep swallows. Wracked with agony, the driver steeled his resolve, forcibly using his telekinesis to clamp down internally on his vessels and wounds, cutting off the draining. But from behind, a piercing screech suddenly rang out. The instant he realized what was happening, his complexion turned whiter than the snow. Their... car! No, it was Ji Jue’s car now. Deeper within the pass, the figure standing in the snow and wind raised a hand—Deus Ex Machina! The battered vehicle that Pan Ying had just slashed open transformed in an instant. The steel fused and shifted, morphing into a four-legged, mangled monstrosity that turned on its former master without hesitation, lunging with bared fangs! At the same time, Little Niuma, having crashed and rolled backward, seemed entirely unbothered. It merely tumbled once before scrambling to its feet in the howling wind, riding the gale as it charged forward once more. Over the past half-month of preparations, Ji Jue had used materials scavenged and freeloaded from the Third Department to gradually overhaul its body through alchemy—from the frame to the chassis, from the suspension to the engine. One could say that the absolute shabbiest parts of its entire frame were the external armor plates, and even those were composite armor snatched directly from the Haizhou garrison base and reinforced with material property alterations! Aside from the dragon blood within its veins, the current Little Niuma bore no resemblance whatsoever to that old Little Sheep scooter. Were it a human, it might have agonized over the paradox of the Ship of Theseus. But to a monster that was literally dragon blood given form, its only response was: *tasty, love eating it, want more.* *Nom nom nom nom—* "Watch out!" In the face of the raging wind, the driver’s eyes were practically tearing at the corners as he roared at Maya, trying to say something. But from the darkness at the origin of the storm, the figure looking down with indifferent eyes merely raised his hand. Aim, lock on, pull the trigger. A crystalline bullet sealing corrupted metal hurtled through the gale—imbued with a carefully structured spiritus construct, engraved with numerous Sovereign Virtue insignias to amplify destructive force and grant armor-piercing effects, and packed with scraps and corruptive pollution left over from his research into the *Treatise on Xiang Swords*. The moment it cleared the barrel, it was already right before her. Aimed straight at Maya! With Little Niuma in front and their own converted vehicle behind, the heavily wounded Tianyuan driver was no longer a threat at that distance. From start to finish, the one posing the greatest danger to Ji Jue was this navigator, proficient in both the Ascension and Heart Pivot disciplines! *Bang!* A muffled crack sounded. In the howling hurricane, Maya’s twisted, pale face saw fresh blood seep from her nose and mouth. She had not mobilized the defensive calamity beast on her person—mobilizing it would have been useless anyway. The strong intuition unique to the Ascension path and the pure killing intent read from Ji Jue through Heart Pivot, along with an instinctual dread far exceeding her fear of that sword... Because of that, she decisively called upon a crucial high-order technique of the Ascension discipline—Revision Negation! Mind over matter, transcendent over the physical, capable of denying the physical! Through her own perception, she forcibly erased the incoming attack from reality, refusing to accept it as real. *Snap!* The bullet vanished without a trace. Immediately after, the agony of a fracturing soul and the severe backlash wrung a wail from her lips, but the wound vanished an instant later, redirected into her bosom. Fissures spread across the grotesque, ragdoll-like pendant tucked against her chest as blood seeped out, accompanied by an infant-like shriek. With no time to mourn the scapegoat doll, Maya scrambled and sprinted through the tempest, while simultaneously hurling a spiritus shockwave combining soul turmoil and the torment of the five skandhas toward Ji Jue, Little Niuma, and the monstrosity catalyzed by Deus Ex Machina. *Boom!* Little Niuma’s movement hitched for only a fraction of a second, but behind the Tianyuan driver, the steel monster catalyzed by Deus Ex Machina suddenly detonated, losing control as countless fragments flew in all directions. Upwind in the storm, shielded and supported by his quicksilver limbs, Ji Jue’s vision blurred dark once again. Blood seeped from his nose and mouth, his spiritus thrown into disarray. He actually halted his offensive, raising a hand to wipe the blood from his face. The heavily wounded driver felt a surge of wild joy. Raising his repulsive force once more, he glanced back toward Maya. Then, the smile froze on his face. Stunned. Maya froze as well, bewildered. She could not comprehend why her teammate was looking at her with such terror—until she felt a faint chill over her chest... Without warning, a massive, gaping hole had pierced right through her chest. Blood gushed forth, whipped away by the gale, trailing an ethereal red ribbon fluttering through the air. It was over. When she tried to speak, no sound came out. Just... when had this happened?! The answer was that the very moment she poured everything into revising reality and negating Ji Jue’s bullet, faint light had reappeared from the darkness, hurtling silently through the air. Then, like a phantom, it effortlessly slipped through the defense and interception of the smoke calamity beast. The instant it crossed, it shifted from intangible to tangible, plunging straight into her heart from behind! Like dew, like lightning—a fleeting flash, so fast that pain had not even begun to spread. She had not even felt death arrive. It was clearly just a wound of flesh and blood. Even without a heart, one could continue to endure; whether through Ascension or Heart Pivot, a practitioner ought to be able to temporarily transcend the shackles of the flesh with their own will and consciousness. Yet when that thread of faint light sank into her soul and silently detonated, everything was already finished. Lifespans have limits; destinies have ends. Now, the Flying Light had arrived! Death! With the annihilation of Maya’s soul, the smoky calamity beast coiling around her instantly expanded, as if awakening from Heart Pivot’s control and brainwashing. Regaining its freedom, it soared into the sky before it could even revel in its ecstasy. And then, it slammed into an invisible barrier. Thousands of quicksilver threads spreading through the storm had woven into a cage at an unknown moment. Though the weave appeared sparse, coming into contact with a single thread was like being caught in industrial adhesive, impossible to shake off. The smoke hissed and struggled, lunging and surging again and again, yet it could not break free from the entanglement and shackles of Solid Alchemy. In the end, as Ji Jue closed his fingers, it was thoroughly compressed into a sphere that dropped to the ground. Maya’s corpse collapsed onto the ice, lifeless, finally revealing An Ning standing behind where she had been, having appeared there at some unremembered point. Across the swirling snow, the young girl looked back at the stunned Tiancheng driver and offered a soundless smile. "Send my regards to the ones coming up behind you." In that instant, a cold voice emerged from the shattered radio lying at the driver’s feet. Immediately after, faint light flashed once more, shooting forth. *Boom!* The void hardened into an iron wall by telekinesis shuddered violently, finally cracking open under the cleaving force of blade, axe, and hammer. Then, the surging blood-light of Pan Ying drove straight in, pressing forward. Crushing Ruin! In that final fraction of a second, the driver only had time to raise a hand in terror: "Wait—" Then, the blood-light flashed and vanished. Following that instantaneous piercing, crimson bloomed across the sky, scattering in the wind, only to converge and pull back into the blade as it hungrily swallowed, disappearing without a trace. Not a single scrap of bone remained! Afterward, without Ji Jue even needing to give the order, Little Niuma began spontaneously pulverizing every last scrap left in the surroundings. Once every trace had been thoroughly eradicated, it hoisted Maya’s corpse, tossed it into the carriage cast aside earlier, and shifted once more, returning to its original vehicle form. With a roar of its engine, it pressed forward again. The howling wind remained savage, carrying snow, traces, and fragments away into the distance until they vanished. When the sudden storm swept past and the broadcast airship descended again to scour the vast, boundless snowfield, everyone finally saw— The fallen curtain drew back once more. A miracle unfolded! At the tail of the overwhelming white wave, a pitch-black vehicle broke through the wind and snow, bursting forth like a leviathan from the sea amidst the thunderous cheers and roars of countless spectators! At most, a few more scratches marked its armor, and the patch of crimson on the nose of the vehicle had grown all the more vivid. Just like that, it crossed the final obstacle with calm poise, driving toward the towering mountains at the edge of the snowfield. The Kunwu Plateau was already in sight! "The first." Inside the speeding car, Ji Jue lowered his gaze and drew a cross over the word "Tiancheng" written in his notebook.