Shadows

A purplish-red more venomous than a centipede, a blood-red more frenzied than a chainsaw. Tearing open his chest, piercing his soul body, gnawing at his flesh and blood, corroding his spirit. What pierced through Yaxiu were not like two shadow swords, but rather two ferocious beasts; the ear-piercing sizzle sounded like monsters chewing on his soul. At this moment, the phantom of the Extinction Resentful Blazing Dragon behind Sonia seemed on the verge of descending entirely into the mortal world. Violent violet mist drowned out the red-haired girl's silhouette, and her brilliant ruby eyes distorted into gruesome vertical slits. The Witch, Silver Lantern, and Vichy seemed to see the Sword Princess of that night once again... More than once, they had imagined: if, on the night Sonia felt the most wronged, the Witch had not tried to curry favor, Silver Lantern had not backed down, and Vichy had not apologized, what would the Sword Princess have done? Now, they finally saw the answer. The sluggishly flowing time suddenly accelerated. The viscous space melted away like butter. No one could see the Sword Princess's blade—midway through the swing, the sword vanished, and all anyone could witness was a wildly surging tide of blood. Sword Law, pursuing them, had no room to evade. Even though Sonia turning around and swinging her sword took at least six moments, in the very first moment, the blood tide engulfed the six-winged angel. The distance of space and time became entirely meaningless at this instant. The Shattered Lake God was not only a god of swordplay and water arts, but also mingled with spatial might. "Lake water" had always been a common symbol of space, as the saying went: What one gazed upon was separated by mountains and seas. Sonia did not even like swimming; why would she want to "shatter a lake" for no reason? "Shattering the lake" had been a metaphor from the very beginning. The first metaphor stemmed from that prison, because it held their purest and most wonderful memories; the second metaphor was still that prison, because it represented the greatest obstacle they had faced at the start. What Sonia truly wanted to slash to pieces was not just that prison, but every obstacle standing between them. Before the Shattered Lake God, insignificant forces like time, space, death, and entropy could not halt the Sword Princess's resolve! The Curtain of Sorrow violently vaporized Sword Law's source energy, yet failed to convert even a single spell sword. Even with her killing intent boiling over, the Sword Princess's combat skill remained precise to the point of butchery. What she swung was neither mountain nor sea, but the fury of countless venomous trajectories layered atop one another, each strike calibrated exactly below the threshold of the Curtain of Sorrow's critical damage—like slowly flaying an angel, slice by slice, with a rusty knife! Screams echoed through the rain of swords, but not from Yaxiu—it was Felix. Spreading her gold and silver wings as she flew, the blonde girl stared at the shadow swords piercing through Yaxiu. At his side, she reached out yet dared not touch them, panicking and at a complete loss for what to do. On the verge of tears, she let out a pitiful whistling sound like a boiling kettle. Yaxiu was almost amused by her. Panting, he squeezed out a smile. "They're not stuck in you, so what are you screaming for?" "B-But..." Felix tried to touch a shadow sword, only for Yaxiu to swat her hand away. "Yaxiu!" Diya's four-part voice rolled through the rain of swords like thunder. Yaxiu had never heard her sound so commanding and urgent: "Pull the swords out, quickly!" "I'm fine." Yaxiu steadied his breath as best he could, even in the mood to joke: "This might be a bit childish for you girls, but for me, it's just right." Naturally, he was not nearly as relaxed as he appeared, but he was not suffering as intensely as the Witch and the others had. Just as Yaxiu said, the despair they could not endure was something he could barely hold out against—not merely because of his stronger soul foundation, but even more so because... he was not as terrified as they were. Pain. It hurt terribly—a torment that pierced his heart and scraped his bones. Yaxiu felt as though he had fallen into a flesh-and-blood millstone, ground down into dust bit by bit. Yet the true agony was not the pain itself, but the cruelest illusions dredged up from deep within his heart. The pain inflicted by the purplish-red shadow sword and the blood-red shadow sword was starkly different. The purplish-red blade made Yaxiu feel as if he and every girl he knew were being chopped into bloody mush by the Sword Princess bit by bit. Every second, he felt sliced apart by her until he was carved into a receptacle for trash, pooling the suffering of everyone—blood vessels brimming to burst, bones splintering, nerves warping. Yet cruelest of all, the torment arrived with such exquisite gentleness that his whole being seemed ready to dissolve in this tender malice. The blood-red shadow sword, on the other hand, was far more violent. Yaxiu felt as if he were crashing into the Sword Princess like a war chariot, like armored cavalry, slaughtering one another like irreconcilable sworn enemies. Even with the last scrap of flesh shaved off and the final bone severed, they would still rise to fight on. He and the Sword Princess were like two stones, or two eggs, shattering against each other countless times, torturing each other beyond endurance yet hopelessly entangled in an endless cycle. Yaxiu did not know what the Sword Princess would experience if these two shadow swords pierced her, but he could guess which shadows in her heart had birthed them. Therefore... he would never let go of these two blades. When Sonia found a moment to turn and fly back, Yaxiu gripped the shadow swords' blades tightly. The redoubled agony made his eyes turn hollow. The Sword Princess bit her lower lip hard; she understood Yaxiu's intention, and by every reason and emotion, having Yaxiu bear the shadow swords was indeed the best choice, but... Sonia practically crashed into Yaxiu's face, awkwardly kissing his lips. She looked so heartbroken, yet the vertical pupils in her eyes burned with madness. She shoved something into Yaxiu's mouth, then turned around to vent all her murderous rage onto the six-winged angel. "...A cigarette?" Felix blinked blankly at the cigarette dangling from Yaxiu's lips. Hesitating for a moment, she summoned a flicker of flame at her fingertips to light it for him. Yaxiu took a deep drag, only to cough repeatedly the next second. "Still too harsh..." he mumbled. He did not take another puff, but neither did he spit it out, letting the tobacco shreds curl and char in the fire, sending up a faint wisp of white smoke amidst the rain of swords. "Can someone else bear the shadow swords?" Vichy suddenly spoke up. The maid wasn't looking at Yaxiu as she said this, but at the two people beside him—or more precisely, she was staring at Daedalose. The Star Feeler did not hesitate in the slightest, reaching straight out to touch a shadow sword. Under everyone's gaze, Daedalose's hand passed straight through the shadow sword, completely unaffected. Amidst a wave of disappointed sighs, only Sword Law breathed a sigh of relief—the Prison of Self-Harm was supposed to affect only the person themselves. If even Daedalose could take someone's place, he would have genuinely suspected something was wrong with the Celestial wonder. Yet he remained bewildered: why was Yaxiu able to bear the shadow swords in place of another? The Prison of Self-Harm had slain countless enemies for the Supreme, and such a thing had never occurred before. Deep within everyone's heart lay a prison holding their profoundest despair—a place no one else could ever reach!