47 Chapter 46: Darkness Falls (1/2)
I landed a few meters away from the completely obliterated courtyard, finding my footing on the edges of the crumbling crater.
Behind me, Qi Fu Ren had ceased his screaming. He laid sprawled in the epicenter of the crater, his body a broken, bloody mess. Smoke fumed from his battered body, cloaking the devastated courtyard in a dull gloom.
”Boss!”
”Are you all right?!”
Hu Shuo and Ba Dao rushed to the fallen Qi Fu Ren, checking on him.
”Don't worry,” I assured them. ”Qi Fu Ren won't die from that. He has got a thick skull.”
While I wanted nothing more to kill him, I lacked the ability to do so. I did my best to crush his skull, but with my minute amount of qi, despite its high purity and triggering a volatile reaction with massive amounts of surrounding qi, I wasn't able to kill him.
That was fine. Murdering a classmate in campus grounds outside of an official match would get me into trouble. While, in the present context, I could get away by claiming self-defense, the staff and White Tiger Sect might charge me for excessive violence if I actually killed Qi Fu Ren. Of course, I could argue my case, but that would consume a lot of time. Time that would be better spent on training and cultivating instead.
”Fucker…” Qi Fu Ren growled under his breath, even as Hu Shuo and Ba Dao supported him. ”I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!”
”Yeah, yeah.” I waved dismissively and ignored him. The bastard had wasted too much of my time. On the bright side, it was precisely because he provided me real combat experience that I finally managed to reach the first step into eventually learning Heaven and Earth Strike. I had finally succeeded in purifying my qi and clashing it with surrounding qi to trigger a volatile and powerful reaction capable of defeating someone who had a sexagenary of qi.
Totally worth it.
Smiling to myself, I headed in the direction of the dormitory.
”Ugh?!”
”Boss?!”
”?!”
Upon hearing Hu Shuo and Ba Dao cry out, I immediately spun around. To my immense surprise, Qi Fu Ren had gotten to his feet and seized the both of them by their throats. Despite his severely injured state, he still somehow managed to retain the strength to hold them up with his hands, their feet dangling uselessly in the air. The two loyal lackeys struggled desperately, but despite their unscathed conditions, they weren't able to break Qi Fu Ren's grip.
”Kuh! I can't breathe!”
”Stop it, boss! Why are you doing this?!”
Hu Shuo and Ba Dao flailed wildly, only for Qi Fu Ren to increase the strength of his grip. The both of them turned pale and blue from the lack of oxygen. While it was subtle, with my Heaven and Earth Formula, I could see faint currents of golden, lightning qi traveling along his arms and leaving his fingers to stab into the two subordinates' bodies.
No wonder…he's paralyzing them with electricity…
But why? Why was he attacking his own comrades?
”The both of you are loyal to me, right?” Qi Fu Ren was grinning manically. It was not an expression I had seen on his face before. The guy had clearly gone mad. In fact, I could detect vast amounts of dark, demonic qi that I had never sensed in him before.
It wasn't the same demonic qi as the one found in magical beasts and demonic beasts. This felt more like…the other side of an orthodox sect's cultivated qi. In other words, the qi of a practitioner from a demonic sect.
But isn't Qi Fu Ren formerly from the White Tiger Sect, one of the most reputable and powerful orthodox sects in the Martial Arts Alliance? How did he end up learning a demonic technique?!
Worse, that demonic technique was awfully familiar. Though the concept and execution was very different, the basic purpose was the same.
”AAAAAAH!”
”NOOOOO!”
As the painful cries of Hu Shuo and Ba Dao echoed throughout the courtyard, my spiritual sense could detect their qi flowing from their bodies and into Qi Fu Ren. The latter was draining his cronies of their qi.
Just like that forbidden technique of Heaven and Earth Formula.
”Then give me your strength! Become one with me! And we'll be able to crush that fucking insect, Fei Wu!”
Hu Shuo and Ba Dao gurgled incoherently, no longer capable of speech. I watched in horror as their bodies shrunk and thinned, their flesh withering as their skin was pulled tightly over their bones. Their eyes rolled in their sockets, their face and lips becoming desiccated as their life-force was literally drained out of them. In seconds, they transformed from muscular, heavily built thugs into bony, emaciated corpses.
”Ha ha ha ha…not enough…not enough!”
Qi Fu Ren was chortling as he drained them dry of their qi, and then callously discarded their corpses on the ground. He licked his lips and wiped the blood from his body. I stepped back nervously when I saw that his wounds had all healed after he plundered such a massive infusion of qi from Hu Shuo and Ba Dao.
”Y…you…”
Stammering, I shook my head, not believing what I had just seen. As terrible of a bully that Qi Fu Ren was, he had always treated his subordinates decently. He rarely smacked them or physically struck them, until recently. He had always rewarded them for his loyalty, looking out for them and allowing them to follow him wherever he went.
The Qi Fu Ren in front of me was no longer the Qi Fu Ren I recognized. He had changed enormously, to the point where I almost wondered if he was possessed. Or perhaps I never had understood him, and this was his true nature.
More likely, something had happened to him in the past six months or so, after his defeat to me in an official match, that caused his personality and values to change so drastically. If I was self-conscious, I would have speculated that the reason he snapped and went down this dark path was because of me, because I defeated him.
But I doubted that. The world didn't revolve around me, after all.
”Heh…”
Qi Fu Ren raised his arm, where visible wisps of highly dense lightning qi escaped his palm and rose from his fingers.
”I'm really lucky. It's a good thing that both those idiots were in the same sect as me, and learned the same type of martial arts as I did. Thanks to that, they have the same elemental affinity to lightning element as I do. That's why I'm able to immediately absorb and assimilate their qi without needing to spend too much time integrating the absorbed qi into my own innate spiritual pool. This must be Heaven's will! Ha ha ha ha!”
I was at a loss of words, and the first thing I blurted out was an exasperated question.
”Why the hell are you indulging in an explanatory monologue? For the sake of explaining to the existences beyond the fourth wall what just occurred, and why you received a power-up immediately without needing to spend some time to assimilate the qi you just absorbed?!”
Recalling what Master told me, absorbing someone's qi wasn't a straightforward process. Normally, you wouldn't get access to that qi immediately, especially if the other party's qi wasn't compatible with yours, or had a different elemental affinity from yours. When that happened, it would take days, sometimes weeks to absorb, assimilate and integrate the foreign qi with your own innate spiritual qi. And if you failed to do so, the conflicting, incompatible qi would rage and clash against each other within your body, eventually rupturing your meridians, overloading your qi vessels and destroying your internal organs, leading to death.
And if one was to be attacked while in the middle of assimilating the qi he had just absorbed, he would be vulnerable, for he wouldn't be able to use any of the qi that was currently conflicting and resisting each other within his body. That was the one weakness of the Heaven and Earth Sect, and how the Martial Arts Alliance succeeded in exterminating them so soon after they massacred innocents, despite them killing countless martial artists to greedily devour their strength. The technique was really a double-edged sword.
”You really are an unfortunate soul,” Qi Fu Ren mocked me as he took a step forward, his body brimming powerfully with his recently stolen qi.
This was bad. The one exception to the rule of Heaven and Earth Absorption was that if the other party just happened to have the same type of qi as you did, the same elemental affinity and almost the same techniques, then there was no reason that you couldn't assimilate the qi immediately. It was almost like blood type, despite many differences. Blood O+ could immediately recover after receiving a transfusion of another person who was also type O+. While normally it meant that recipients with type O wouldn't be able to receive type A or B or AB blood, in the case of qi, it just meant that the recipient would need more time to assimilate and covert the Type A/B/AB blood into type O blood in order to have twice the amount of blood in his body.
Okay, that was a terrible analogy, but you get what I mean, right? And no, in reality, blood transfusion did not work like that.
I desperately withdrew, drawing as much as from the surroundings as I could. I could barely beat Qi Fu Ren earlier, taking a few good hits and was only able to bring him down with that last-ditch attack of mine.
And now Qi Fu Ren had become three times stronger, absorbing about another two sexagenaries worth of qi. Of course, the absorption wasn't efficient, and most of the qi was probably lost to the surroundings, so he didn't actually have exactly three sexagenaries right now, but even then the amount should still be quite close to it.
In other words, he was three times stronger. Right now, I had no way of fighting him. I had to escape and hope that a teacher or staff had heard all the noise and commotion and was running over to investigate.
Speaking of which, we were making so much in the middle of the academy, and even destroyed an entire courtyard, and no teacher has arrived on the scene yet? Where are the teachers? What's going on?
As disturbed as I was by the lack of teachers, I didn't have time to focus on thinking about that question right now. Qi Fu Ren was moving.
”!!!”
No matter what I did, it was pointless. While I was using Tui to withdraw and propel myself backward, in just one bound, Qi Fu Ren caught up and even surpassed me in speed. My eyes widened and I crossed my arms in reflex as he punched me.
Boom!
”Gah! Cough!”
I was flung across the courtyard, slamming into the ground and bouncing about helplessly. My body left a trail of broken dirt and soil as it carved a crater into the earth, sparkling with devastating lightning. Even as I managed to finally roll to a stop I couldn't get up. Blood dribbled from my lips as I lay, stunned from the tremendous impact.
”Ugh…”
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to my knees, but even that little action alone was too much for me. I bent over and threw up blood.
”Ha ha ha ha! How weak! How pathetic!”
Having reversed the situation through underhanded means and sacrificing his underlings, while completely forgetting that I had beaten him just minutes before his cheat move, Qi Fu Ren was guffawing in triumph.
”I knew it! This new technique is incredible! I'm so glad I learned it!”
Now he was blabbering something to himself, his eyes crazed as he savored in his delight. I wanted to ask him what new technique he had learned, but I was in such pain that the words didn't come out. It didn't matter. I doubted Qi Fu Ren would answer me anyway. He was too obsessed with celebrating and crowing over his victory.
”Ah!”
Qi Fu Ren stomped on my back, forcing me to the ground and pinning me against the ruined earth. I felt as if several tones of metal had fallen on top of me, crushing me to a pulp. Qi Fu Ren grinned as he looked down condescending on me, and shifted more of his weight to my spine, intending to snap it with his foot.
”How does it feel to be the one stepped on right now?”
Painful, I thought, but I was in no condition to answer. I was in too much agony to say a word, never mind respond defiantly with a snarky comment.
”I'll finally destroy your dantian and sink you into despair!”
The guy talked too much. If you were going to destroy my dantian, just do it already instead of stepping on me and preaching and ranting about how you were going to do it, you moron. Otherwise you were going to miss your chance.
”I want to see the look on your face as I snuff out all hopes of you ever being able to cultivate! I will savor your misery and turn you into my slave! I need a replacement now that Hu Shuo and Ba Dao are gone.”
You were the one who killed them, you fucking asshole…
”I will…”
Qi Fu Ren never got to finish his sentence. Nine fireballs slammed into him, detonating with such force that he was flung off me and thrown into the trees that decorated the academy garden. With the tremendous weight pinning me down suddenly lifted, I exhaled in relief and quickly rolled to my feet, heaving and panting.
I told you so, I thought as I rolled my eyes, shaking my head as I stared in the direction where Qi Fu Ren was blown off toward. You talk too much…and now you've missed your chance to cripple the protagonist. Again.
What was with villains and their overblown, obsessive compulsion to deliver overly grandiose speeches right before they finished off the protagonist? It was a wonder any of them survived, being too stupid to actually accomplish the most logical thing in the most efficient manner possible.
”Fei Wu! Are you all right?!”
My savior hopped down, landing elegantly next to me. I nodded and bowed gratefully.
”Thank you very much, Tang Qi Hong.”
”What's going on? Qi Fu Ren is attacking you?”
Tang Qi Hong looked furious as she glared in the direction where she had blown the bastard toward. I resisted the urge to grumble about her asking the obvious and merely nodded wearily, wiping the blood from my mouth.
”Yeah.”
”How did this happen?”
This time, a difference voice pierced the air. Turning around, I saw Lian Rou running up. She knelt beside the corpses of Hu Shuo and Ba Dao.