The young girl was quick to notice that the spear was formed of nothing other than pressurized air, held together into the form of a spear by the delicate youth’s command.
The weapon’s outlines were formed by intense light, making for a rather suave, makeshift yet deadly weapon.
Furthermore, the more she stared upon the object made of nothing but the raw materials of the sky, An Fei felt as though she were staring into the eyes of a God.
Her chest throbbed with a painful heat, as though moving even the smallest muscle without permission would trigger the most gruesome hells and punishments.
The young girl lightly swayed from the invisible suppression emanating from the core of the spear, her scarlet irises trembling with fear and hesitation.
Would she survive if her body were to be engulfed by the spear?
Without a doubt, she was doomed to perish if the spear fell onto her body.
The direct impact of the atmosphere’s weight could easily squash any cultivator to death without resistance, and the subsequent shockwaves of spiritual essence would easily terrorize the surrounding environment, depriving it of any breathable air.
If placed in either of the circumstances, she was bound to die – for the <Steps of Underlying Shadow> didn’t seem to bother with any changes in the atmosphere, and the giant spear of golden light was bound to posses not an insubstantial quantity of Ming Xia’s spiritual essence.
And yet, the young girl continued to ask herself the question – would she survive?
Her mind screamed a definite denial of the possibility, but An Fei couldn’t suppress the hopeful gulp of air.
The young girl tore her gaze from the divine presence leaking from the golden artefact dominating the skies, revealing a tortured wince at the throbbing pain assaulting the back of her eyes.
She couldn’t forget – there were two commands that escaped the delicate but monstrous youth’s lips.
Form, and fall.
From the mere appearance of the monolithic divine artefact dominating the skies above her, the divine weapon must have completed its process of formation.
Thus, the next step for it was to fall, fall onto the ground and shatter the earth.
At that point, An Fei’s thoughts ground to a halt.
“What exactly am I supposed to do about that? Flee?”
Flee where?
Did she possess anything in her arsenal – a movement martial arts technique, perhaps?
The answer was a resounding, heaven-defying absolutely not.
To someone who was completely used to hiding in the divine realm of obscurity and peace whenever trouble broke out and a permanent guardian observing her from behind, it was natural to not adopt any evasive maneuvers.
An Fei attempted to quickly ponder on her next course of action, but soon realized that it was far too late.
The giant spear took a rather long time to form, but the time in which it fell onto the earth was incomprehensively short. In the span of a dumbfounded blink of her eyes, An Fei witnessed the spear vanish from the high skies and embed itself into the ground, before her vision warped.
From staring towards the sky with a partially lopsided frown on her countenance, the young girl found herself staring at a down-scaled perspective of the area.
The squadron of eighteen carriages, one dingy wooden box constructed from partially rotting materials – everything appeared rather… small.
Small that it was even smaller than the tip of her little finger, and the entire plains was a mere palm’s size…
Heavens!
Just how much kinetic energy did that stupendous spear contain for her to be flung up into the air to such a height!?
“…no way.”
A broken laugh escaped the demoralized young girl as she witnessed a sonic shockwave pass through the plains as though a slow-motion capture of a water droplet splashing into a tranquil lake.
Observing the devastating shockwave gradually tread through the plains as though an eternally starved ant, the young girl couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry.
…she ended up choosing both.
She laughed because of the sheer absurdity of the astonishing ability of the delicate youth who seemed to a timid, powerless youngster.
She laughed because of the creeping notion that it wasn’t that unbelievable to call this young man a godly being, for a simple spear created out of two words from his mouth hurled her into the sky to a height at least half of that of Jiang’an’s elevation.
And then… she cried, cried a river of tears that contained her solitude and sorrow.
Do you know what it feels to suffocate?
It burned.
A scorching heat slugged at her lungs with the force of a modern battering ram; one moment, An Fei could draw a thin stream of air from the thinned atmosphere into her lungs, but next, she clutched at her neck in utter agony.
The environment outside of her body was excruciatingly cold, and the extremities of her limbs had partially frozen.
Had it not been for the sea of golden light automatically seeping through her entire body to stabilize her condition, An Fei would have been the Shattered Star Continent’s first young girl to perish in the troposphere.
Blisteringly cold outside, excruciating heat assaulting her from the inside, the young girl suffered as she fell from the sky. The farther she fell, the greater the discomforting and miserable sensations increased in magnitude.
It was only when she fell onto the ground that the <Steps of Underlying Shadow> took mercy onto her sorry figure, eliminating half of the pain in an instant.
As her vision distorted into the familiar mixture of color, the young girl housed a single bitter thought in her mind.
She wanted to flee.
“I…”
She wanted to flee, but could not utter the glorifying words. For an unknown reason, the moment her lips parted to utter anything that constituted of opening the Sanctum’s gates, her throat clenched to prevent any ear from escaping.
It took a few tries to fully comprehend the implications of the unusual circumstance, but the results were both magnificent and laudable.
The young girl felt a streak of red cover the entirety of her vision, and the steel blade of the taijijian swept forth before her.
“F*ck off!”
The same words were uttered in the plains for the second time in the span of minutes. Furthermore, both of its speakers were utterly infuriated to the extent of losing their reason.
Pang!
The taijijian carried forth the entire momentum possessed by the golden spear as it swept towards Ming Xia’s slightly constricted pupils, the sword tip releasing a piercing flash of scarlet light.
As usual, the ever-faithful servant leaped forth with the divine sword before his Young Master, his irises flickering with a solemn gleam of self sacrifice.
Chi!
“Young Master!”
The divine sword was cleanly lopped into two unevenly distributed pieces, and the servant was hurled away into the distance with the velocity of a fully energized war arrow.
The young girl rapidly pivoted on her heels, conserving as much of the momentum as possible to deliver a second strike onto the exposed Young Master of the Heavenly Sword Sect.
“Harden!”
Ming Xia anxiously roared, fright eclipsing his gloomy and enraged countenance.
The delicate youth ignored all notions of reputation and nobility, hurling himself onto the ground at the fastest speed he could muster.
Swish!
The Young Master of the Heavenly Sword Sect shuddered as he felt the gust of wind generated by the thin blade graze the top of his head, severing a few strands of his silky and smooth black hair.
Not daring to hesitate, Ming Xia rolled several times on the ground to increase the distance, crouching on his feet as he delivered a piercing glare towards An Fei.
“You!”
“What, me?” the young girl revealed a lopsided grin.
“I haven’t finished yet – why are you so angry?”
The charming and attractive voice was suffused with wrath, and the usually dim irises of cracked scarlet released a dazzling gleam that bewitched the soul.
Scrambling to his feet, Ming Xia coalesced the atmosphere into a sharpened pair of swords.
A monster in the form of a young girl was quickly approaching – far to quick for him to reac –
Ting!
The incompetent taijijian easily severed the swords of compressed air into two, disrupting the golden sheen of the weapons grasped in the youth’s hands. Pressing on her advantage, the young girl stepped forth with her right foot, forcing Ming Xia to retreat with his left.
The battlefield soon transformed into an awkward dance, of which each step between the two resulted in the sacrifice of a pair of swords formed from spiritual essence and compressed air.
And when the young girl took her thirteenth step, a mysterious change impacted itself onto the world.
“[Thunder]!”
