58 In The Light Of The Candle (1/2)
The candle appearing between Shin Sumi and Jun Qian was roughly the size of a person.
With each passing breath of time, Shin Sumi felt the pressure rise drastically as the ethereal object seemed to become corporeal.
”How can it be a weapon?! Either way it's powerful.”
It appeared to her that Jun Qian was concentrating really hard at this point, immobile and his arms pointing at the candle with open palms towards it.
While he was starting his magic technique, he was defenseless!
Shin Sumi took advantage of that, leaping straight at him with the speed of the great circle of Shinsoo Gathering.
Once more she concentrated her power in a punch. She reached the apex of her trajectory in the air right above the huge candle.
And then she fell. In an instant all of her concentrated energy disappeared from her meridians, leaving her coughing a mouthful of blood.
”An attack?! From where? And when?”
It felt to her as if something hit her hard. That was the effect of losing a big amount of energy in one shot. Like a brick hitting directly her dantian.
It was when she saw the candle gain thirty percent more consistence right after she fell that she understood.
The ethereal candle formed a spiritual wall between her and her opponent, draining the Shinsoo she was circulating whenever she attempted to go past it.
And the candle was only half physical yet! With every instant the pressure that the candle emanated was rising steadily.
”If I can't use Shinsoo, then I'll just bash his head in with physical power!”
Shin Sumi was getting annoyed. She still hadn't acclimated to her new level of power and already she had to deal with two of the strongest opponents she knew.
Without daring to enhance her muscles with Shinsoo, Shin Sumi started running. She passed the candle with a bit of apprehension but thankfully she remained fine.
It seemed like the candle was only after her Shinsoo.
Bare handed, Shin Sumi attempted to hit Jun Qian when a flash of orange got in her way.
”If Bai Fulong isn't using magic, then alone I'm more than enough to kill him!”
Chu Erlong intercepted Shin Sumi, using a second sword, not as fancy or strong as the Sun-Cloud Eater.
Shin Sumi may have had incredible strength, without reinforcing her fist with Shinsoo she could not accomplish the feat of breaking a sword a second time.
By sheer reflex, Shinsoo started spinning in her dantian as she readied her hand. Shin Sumi only thought about what she was doing a moment to late.
The blade and her right hand collided the instant before the candle sucked the energy out of her. Had it been a moment before, Chu Erlong would have sliced through her entire arm!
Shin Sumi was blasted back, a second drainage of energy taking a toll of her.
Having the Shinsoo in one's body dissipated forcefully was never a good sign. Even the power coming from the remoulding of her body was temporarily cut short.
Back on the other side of the arena, Shin Sumi slapped her bag of holding to produce a beast core. Anything that could minimize the loss of Shinsoo helped.
”If only the Gold Tyrant Flying Sword was obeying me! I could slice through that pile of wax in no time!”
The candle was now more than eighty percent corporeal.
Shin Sumi knew it was only the start. Whatever the candle did, ruining her momentum and her Shinsoo circulation was obviously not its only ability.
Because of the two consecutive losses of Shinsoo, the refining of her body had paused, as if her own body was feeling that it was not the time for it.
But in doing so, the raw energy created inside her had nowhere to go, rendering her even more unstable, bubbling in her meridians.
”I can't circulate energy, but my physical strength is not enough to deal with Chu Erlong and strike Jun Qian at the same time. And now the candle looks complete.”
Shin Sumi was not able to decide what to do in time before Jun Qian moved his hands together, the candle now being a hundred percent physical.
”You have held up this long against us, but now is time for you to die.”
Jun Qian's voice was cold. Shin Sumi could tell that he was not talking out of rage or in order to provoke her.
He was speaking like it was a fact and he fully intended to kill Bai Fulong.
”First Light: Flame Flickering!”
Following his words, the pillar of wax started shining, the brown wick suddenly catching fire.
The flame looked completely normal but a sense of dread rose from within Shin Sumi.
Somehow she could feel a connexion to the flame. She couldn't ignore the fact that almost half of the candle had been materialized using her own energy and turning it to wax.
”So essentially the flame is burning my energy!”
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Shin Sumi couldn't beat Jun Qian's magic using Shinsoo and she couldn't fight properly against Chu Erlong with only her physical strength.
The situation looked a bit dire but Shin Sumi remained focused. She stayed far from the odd couple to regroup and observe the scene a bit.
”I have a couple weapons but without Shinsoo they won't hold for long enough to get rid of Chu Erlong. And I'm sure that the candle is not simply a passive magic.”
The might radiating from the magical human sized candle was vastly above what it had done to her so far. The true potential of Jun Qian's magic had yet to be revealed in full.
Right as she was thinking that, Jun Qian's hands formed a different sigil and he murmured.
”Second Light: Wax Modeling !”
Instantly the greyish wax of the candle started moving. The top part of the pillar, where the brown wick was sticking out slowly melted, shaping the first fifth of the candle in the form of a head.
It was Shin Sumi's own head! Or rather Bai Fulong's.
The terrifying sight of a candle copying her appearance froze Shin Sumi in place.
Whatever that meant was definitely very bad for her.
Not delaying for longer, Shin Sumi resumed her assault, relying on her strong legs to move side to side in order to shake off Chu Erlong.
She was close to approaching Jun Qian when finally the orange robed girl caught up to her, swinging her sword wildly at her head.
”You fell for it” thought Shin Sumi, ducking at the same instant as she rotated on the ground.
Her heel spun backwards, planting itself in the middle of Chu Erlong's chest, right below where she held her sword.
Under Shin Sumi's fast kick, Chu Erlong felt her breasts crushed inside her ribcage. Who would have known that her ample bosom would be what prevented her from breaking a few ribs!
Nevertheless, the orange talented girl was pushed back coughing, the air having left her lungs in an instant.
Shin Sumi stood up and ran towards Jun Qian.
One step. Two steps. The distance separating the two was rapidly decreasing.
For the first time Shin Sumi thought that she had a chance at beating him or at least severing his connexion to the magical candle.
Brandishing a fist, using all the momentum she could gather, she hit Jun Qian with a lot of force but only to find her hand squishing into a soft and warm substance.
”More wax ?!”
As fast as lightning, Shin Sumi retracted her hand and moved away.
”You know, my spell is not about the candle. It's about the wax!”
Jun Qian laughed madly behind the screen of wax that had blocked Shin Sumi's blow.
”Making a shield out of wax is much easier than a candle. And so is a spear!”
The wax wall condensed into a whiter and harder substance, suddenly becoming a spear two meters long, directly into his hand and pointing at Shin Sumi.
”HAAaa!”
Hurling the spear with unbelievable force, Jun Qian hit Shin Sumi's robes, piercing a hole into the folds right where her heart had been before she jumped out of the way.
Shin Sumi was back to square one, forced away from her enemy and with Chu Erlong now back in the fight with more rage than ever.
Shin Sumi's dantian had momentarily resumed her transformation, her adaptation after having absorbed the fifth Vein of Hell Fire.
The wax candle though was still trying to steal her energy from within her, slowing down the process by a lot.
And even more perturbing was the fact that Bai Fulong's face on the candle was now becoming more and more realistic. From the dead looking grey of the wax, the features were now gaining hints of color, almost copying exactly her skin tone.
Below the copy of her bust, shoulders were being drawn out of the melted wax, and one arm was even half carved.