Elder Lumen’s words rang through the area and were echoing the thoughts of the others. They had never felt this hopeless and helpless before. At least not together. As though the same thought went through everyone’s head, their heads couldn’t help but look up.

  Floating above them were the two Nascent Souls that hadn’t even taken action yet. As they saw them, the six trembled. This boy had been fighting them without even using two of his trump cards. Tekton hadn’t taken action either. He was still floating there in the sky above.

  Then they realized that their energy usage had been much higher than they thought. They had been fighting in Li Yu’s killing intent field, infused with various laws. It had been draining them of their qi. They had to release qi constantly to resist this domain of his. It bogged them down, made them slower and their spiritual sense couldn’t travel as far.

  Elder Lumen went into a rage in his anger. He hurled his six chakrams. His Radiant Disc Martial Spirit spun wildly, accelerating the weapons to blinding speeds.

  Li Yu’s eyes flashed. The black and white in the right, purple in the left. He saw the trajectories clearly and felt he could even see where they’d be in a few seconds. He also saw the spirit threads controlling the discs.

  “You sure are noisy,” Li Yu said.

  He vanished. Void Step.

  He reappeared directly in front of Elder Lumen.

  Lumen’s eyes widened as he still saw another Li Yu where he had sent his chakrams. It was an afterimage of Li Yu. Li Yu moved so quickly that Lumen’s eyes couldn’t keep up. He tried to summon his Radiant Disc to block but Li Yu was faster.

  Li Yu headbutted him in the face.

  CRACK.

  Lumen’s nose collapsed. The Radiant Disc Spirit flickered and dimmed as its master’s concentration broke. Lumen flew backward, crashing into the invisible boundary of the void pocket that Li Yu created.

  “Formation shift! Protect Lumen!” Cyrus yelled.

  The red lines of the formation pulsed, dragging the stunned Lumen back toward the center. Amazingly, the formation was healing his face rapidly but at the cost of the others' energy.

  “This formation is impressive and also annoying,” Li Yu muttered. “It’s like hitting a pillow. I punch one and the rest of you fluff up to absorb it.”

  He looked at the six of them and their battered beasts.

  “But the disadvantage is also clear. You’re sharing the damage,” Li Yu analyzed in his mind. “Which means if I hit one of you hard enough, you all feel it. But if I hit one of you too hard… the link will either snap or you all will be damaged beyond repair.”

  He smiled. It was a terrifying smile.

  “Let’s test the strength of that red string, shall we?”

  Li Yu pointed his staff towards Elder Varek and Elder Jareth. They were the weakest links, their cultivation only in the early Soul Formation stage. Their Martial Spirits were already flickering from the strain of the battle.

  “Which one shall it be first…” Li Yu began to say to himself.

  “Don’t let him separate us!” Brek roared as he was charging back in with a backup hammer. “Cluster together and stay close! Beasts to the front!”

  The Elders bunched up tight around Cyrus. Their beasts formed a wall of flesh and scales. Their Martial Spirits hovered above them, forming a second layer of spiritual defense.

  The Sentry flew forward at the group. It was diving straight into the cluster of beasts.

  The Blood-Horned Drake struck the Sentry with a massive claw. The Sentry didn’t dodge it. It grabbed on to the claw itself. The Sentry’s body flared with energy. It had turned itself into a bomb, just waiting to go off.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Bang. Flash.

  The Sentry detonated a burst of blinding white light right in the center of their formation. It wasn’t a lethal explosion of force but a concussive one.

  The cluster was stunned momentarily and then broke apart slightly. Li Yu was already moving. He appeared behind Elder Varek.

  Varek was recovering from the bomb and turned to meet him. His Twin-Headed Shadow Snake lashing out at Li Yu. Li Yu grabbed and crushed the beast with one hand. Varek’s Abyssal Python martial spirit screamed psychically as it tried to bite Li Yu’s soul.

  However, Li Yu’s Koi Soul sent out a pulse of energy from above, the first time it has acted this entire time. The pulse of energy from it caused the Python to recoil in terror.

  “Get away!” Varek yelled, his chains lashing out at Li Yu.

  Li Yu gripped his staff with both hands and quickly pulled it back. The air around the tip of the staff distorted, collapsing into a singularity.

  “Third Form: The Comet’s Kiss.”

  It was a near instantaneous thrust. A single concentrated point of infinite pressure. The staff tip met the wall of black chains and the desperate shield that the Abyssal Python spirit managed to throw up.

  THWIP. CRACK.

  The staff punched through the chains. It punched through the spirit. It punched through Varek’s chest. The force of the thrust created a cone of vacuum behind him that extended for a hundred meters.

  Varek looked down. There was a hole in his chest the size of a dinner plate.

  “The link…” Varek rasped with his last breaths. His head turned to the red link that was supposed to save his life. The red line of the formation connecting him to Cyrus flickered violently.

  SNAP.

  The red line severed.

  “One,” Li Yu counted.

  He didn’t pause to enjoy his kill. He used Varek’s dying body as a springboard, kicking off it to launch himself toward Elder Jareth.

  Jareth saw him coming and dread spread across his body. This was the kind of internal instinct that had served him so well his entire life. The only tragedy was that it was now screaming that he was going to die. The spearman screamed himself, ordering his Wind-Blade Wolf to intercept.

  Li Yu spun in mid-air.

  “Second Form: Sweeping Tsunami.”

  The staff hit the wolf first. The beast was obliterated into a fine mist before being erased by the void energies in Li Yu’s attack. The staff continued its arc.

  It caught Jareth across the neck. Jareth’s Storm Hawk Spirit tried to block with its wings, but the staff shattered the spirit and the master in one blow.

  Jareth’s head and upper half of his torso disintegrated just like his wolf had done moments earlier.

  “Two,” Li Yu said as he landed softly on the nothingness.

  The formation was now shattered completely.

  With two nodes destroyed, the pentagram collapsed. The backlash hit the remaining four survivors like a sledgehammer. The red link might have snapped but the amount of pain and suffering it brought back before it broke on both occasions was devastating.

  Cyrus, Brek, Vokin and Lumen all vomited blood simultaneously. Their Martial Spirits flickered out of existence, forced back into their bodies by the trauma. Their surviving beasts whined, sensing the sudden drop in their masters' power.

  “My… my cultivation…” Vokin wheezed. “The backlash… it cracked my meridians…”

  Cyrus looked at the two corpses. He looked at Li Yu, who was flicking blood off his staff.

  The fear in Cyrus’s heart was no longer a cold thing. It was a hot, consuming panic.

  “He killed them,” Brek whispered. “In a few clean moves. He killed them both. Killed their beasts and shattered their spirits.”

  Li Yu turned to look at the remaining four. From above Li Yu, the opalescent ocean of the Fisherman Soul began to churn.

  From the depths of the illusionary water, the figure finally rose. The Fisherman raised the rod. The line cast out, the hook glistening with terrifying purpose.

  Swish.

  The hook snagged Jareth’s soul. The Fisherman yanked. Jareth’s glowing soul was dragged into the opalescent ocean.

  Swish.

  The hook cast again. Varek’s soul followed. The Fisherman had a slight grin on his face, as though he had a satisfying meal.

  Li Yu pointed the staff at Cyrus.

  “Now,” Li Yu smiled as his left purple eye glowed with hungry intensity. “Who’s next?.”

  Cyrus stepped back. For the first time in hundreds years, the Patriarch of the Crimson Fang felt the urge to run and abandon everything. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know how. Looking at the gray expanse before him, he knew there was nowhere to run.

  “Brek,” Cyrus whispered, his voice cracking. “Vokin. Lumen. Buy me time.”

  “Patriarch?” Brek asked while trembling.

  “BUY ME TIME!” Cyrus communicated to them mentally. His eyes rolled back in his head as he began to channel a forbidden technique. “I need ten seconds to summon the Ancestor’s Avatar! If you don’t hold him back, we all die!”

  The three remaining Elders looked at Li Yu, then at their insane leader and realized with despair that they were already dead. They were just meat shields now.

  Li Yu twirled his staff as he prepared to continue his assault.