"YESSS!" Cyrus roared in triumph. This would be the end of his life regardless of the outcome but he was extremely happy to be taking down this damn boy. His voice was no longer his own. It was a chorus of thousands of dead ancestors.

  BOOOOOOM!

  A pillar of blood-red light erupted from Cyrus, piercing the gray ceiling of the void pocket. The pressure was immense. It pushed against Li Yu and his robes were flapping violently.

  From the pillar of light a giant emerged.

  It was an avatar composed entirely of blood energy and ancestral will. It stood extremely tall and was towering over Tekton. It wore ancient and jagged armor. It wielded a glaive made of solidified lightning. Its face was a mask of pure rage.

  The Crimson Ancestor.

  It roared and the void layer shook violently. Cracks began to appear in the surrounding area and it trembled like Li Yu had never seen before.

  "YOU HAVE PUSHED US TOO FAR!" The Ancestor spoke as its voice was booming. Cyrus was suspended in the center of the Avatar’s chest. His eyes were glowing red and puppeting the massive construct.

  Li Yu looked up at the titan with awe. It was indeed an impressive technique and worthy of the final technique of the Patriarch from this house.

  "This will be my true test. My crowning moment since learning the laws." Li Yu said to himself. "Now that is a proper fight!"

  The Ancestor swung the massive glaive. The attack seemed slow due to its massive form but it was actually extremely fast and covered the entire area. It was a sweep designed to clear armies.

  "Sentry!" Li Yu called internally to his second mind but it was already in motion.

  The Sentry already knew what it should do. It didn't try to block the massive attack. Instead, it raised both of its hands in the air. The air around the Sentry turned black as it gathered the energies of the Water, Destruction and Void laws.

  "Abyssal Javelins."

  Hundreds of spears of condensed darkness materialized around the Sentry. The Sentry hurled them not at the spear sweeping but was aimed at the body wielding it.

  THWACK-THWACK-THWACK!

  The javelins slammed into the Ancestor’s chest and arms. They didn't bounce off as Cyrus expected them to. They sizzled and buried themselves deep into the blood energy. The destructive and void laws corrupted and erased the red light with spreading veins of black necrosis.

  The Ancestor roared in pain and shock that the boy’s technique could penetrate his defenses. The avatar’s swing faltered slightly.

  Li Yu capitalized on the opening. He launched himself off the floor with enough force to rocket upward and straight toward the Ancestor’s head. He flew pass the path of the sweeping weapon and was there in an instant.

  "Staff Art: Sweeping Tsunami!"

  Li Yu spun his staff but this time he infused it with the Lightning Law he had from the Storm Dragon, Sylus. The staff became a wheel of purple, blue, white and black electricity. The speed increased and became even more destructive.

  He smashed the staff into the side of the Ancestor’s helmet. It was like an ant smashing into the side of a mountain but this ant was extremely powerful.

  KRAKKOOOOM!

  The titan stumbled to the side. The impact blew a chunk of blood energy off its helmet and was erased into the void.

  "INSOLENCE!" Cyrus screamed from inside the chest cavity. "ANCESTRAL GRASP!"

  The Avatar dropped its glaive and reached out with a massive hand. It reached forward and grabbed Tekton out of the air. The beast was surprised that it all of a sudden became involved in this fight and roared. Its metal armor screeched as the blood hand squeezed.

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  "Hey! Your fight is with me!" Li Yu shouted. He dove downward and was aiming for the arm holding Tekton.

  But the Ancestor was ready for this. Its other hand swatted Li Yu out of the air like a gnat. It came extremely quickly and Li Yu raised his staff to block the impact.

  Li Yu crashed into the floor from the impact. He bounced twice on the ground before skidding to a halt. He stood up immediately and was dusting off his shoulder. "Okay. You are indeed stronger than you look. Good!"

  Tekton couldn’t break free from the grip of the avatar but the avatar couldn’t hurt him either. His physical defenses were much too strong for it. The two were at a stand still.

  Li Yu narrowed his eyes. "Let's see if you can handle my souls!"

  Li Yu was finally going to truly bring them into battle. He raised his empty hand into the air. The Fisherman Soul and the Koi Soul moved forward together.

  The Fisherman raised his fishing rod and was preparing to hook the Avatar itself. The Koi Soul opened its golden portal wide and was preparing a beam of pure destruction that would wash away the blood energy.

  "Finish him!" Li Yu commanded.

  But before the souls could strike the avatar, the red light of the Avatar flickered. It didn't fade completely but it stuttered.

  Inside the chest of the giant, Cyrus gasped. His eyes widened.

  "No..." Cyrus whispered. "Not yet... I need... more..."

  The fuel tank was sadly empty.

  Cyrus had burned his blood and is very being but this was all the time he had. He had burned away his longevity. He had burned everything. But sustaining an Avatar of this magnitude required a constant stream of high-level energy and his withered body had nothing left to give.

  This was a technique that was meant to be used with the backing of an entire group of people. With the backing of the majority of the clan he could have been able to keep this form much longer and would not have had to burn his own longevity.

  With him at full power and the energy source from others, this battle would have been very different. He could have had full control of the avatar and would have been able to unleash its devastating attacks. However, all he had to burn by the time he was done was himself.

  "NO!" Cyrus screamed as the Avatar began to dissolve. He was devastated by his failure to kill the boy or his beast.

  “NO!” Li Yu yelled at the same time as Cyrus but it was out of disappointment.

  The massive glaive turned to mist. The armor evaporated. The giant hand holding Tekton crumbled into red dust and dropped the confused beast.

  The Ancestor’s face looked down at Cyrus with disdain before fading away completely. Cyrus fell from the sky. He dropped down and hit the floor with a sickening thud.

  The silence returned to the void.

  Li Yu disappointedly recalled his souls. The Sentry dissipated back into his body. He slowly walked over to where Cyrus lay.

  The Patriarch of the Crimson Fang was no longer a threat. He was barely human. He was a skeleton wrapped in loose papery skin. He looked to be three hundred years old. His breathing was a shallow rattle.

  Li Yu knelt beside him.

  Cyrus turned his head slowly. His eyes were milky and blind. His cultivation, once at the majestic 8th Level of Soul Formation, had completely collapsed. The burnout had ravaged his foundation.

  He was currently at the Body Foundation stage. A pathetic realm for someone that was once so mighty.

  "You..." Cyrus wheezed. "You... monster..."

  "You did this to yourself," Li Yu said. His voice was for the first time since meeting Cyrus devoid of mockery. It was just a fact. "You have been making countless people suffer for your own gains. While I can’t say I am not doing the same, I at least do not target innocent people."

  "Kill... me..." Cyrus rasped as he resigned to his fate. The burden of everything was lifted from him now. He didn’t care what happened to the clan after his death. He didn’t care about anything after his death.

  "Oh, I'm not going to kill you," Li Yu said to him. "Not yet."

  Li Yu reached out and placed his hand on Cyrus’s dantian.

  "You see, you still have a little bit of energy left. And if I let you go, you might find some demonic art to recover. You might hurt someone else trying to get back to power. Also, I have a friend who would like to see you before you enter the afterlife."

  Li Yu’s hand glowed with the green light of the Life Law.

  "So, I'm going to make sure you retire permanently."

  "Cultivation Lock."

  Li Yu pushed his energy into Cyrus. He used life aspected qi to lock away his entire cultivation, preventing Cyrus from accessing any of his qi. Not only that, he was using the life aspected qi to keep him alive so he couldn’t take his own life. Cyrus' life was now completely in Li Yu’s hands.

  Cyrus screamed—a weak, dry sound—as the last vestiges of his power were ripped away. He was no longer a cultivator. He was a mortal. A crippled and dying mortal.

  Li Yu stood up and wiped his hands.

  "There," Li Yu said as he looked at the wreckage of the battle. "Now you're just a harmless old man. The only kind of old men that I like close to me."

  He looked up at Tekton and nodded his head. A sign of a job well done. He swung his hand and the storage rings on the ground flew into his hands. There were probably plenty more resources in them that they didn’t hand over.

  "Tekton, we're going back to the real world."

  Li Yu tapped his staff on the ground.

  The gray world dissolved.