"Still as taciturn as ever, my dear Master."
Tartaglia chuckled, the corner of his lips curling in a mad arc, while the fighting spirit in his eyes only burned hotter.
The next second—
KRAK-BOOM!!!!
Savage thunder shrieked like ten thousand giant birds at once. Along with it came a vast, ethereal, deafening whale's call.
Water and lightning elements surged madly around Tartaglia. From the ground beneath his feet burst a mountain-sized giant whale, forged entirely of surging water essence and dazzling lightning.
Wreathed in heaving tidal waves and annihilating thunderlight, it charged at the motionless Skirk with world-toppling momentum.
At a glance from Skirk, Bai Xiuxiu obediently darted several hundred meters back, choosing a broken wall as relative cover.
Watching the two clash in an instant, even greater doubts rose in her heart—this senior brother said Master was taciturn, but she clearly remembered that when Skirk was with Snow Empress, though her tone was cool, her words were not so few.
Even when instructing Bai Xiuxiu in cultivation, she was concise but never this absolutely cold.
Still, questions aside, she didn't find it strange that Master and senior brother had suddenly come to blows.
After all, this was a Holy Grail War; encounters and battles between Servants were the norm.
She steadied her mind and focused on spectating this sudden duel between master and disciple.
"Not bad."
Skirk's cool voice pierced thunder and surf, clear in the air. There seemed the faintest, nearly imperceptible hint of praise in it.
"But you're not there yet, Tartaglia… not enough to truly threaten me."
Before the words finished, her figure blurred into a blue afterimage. Rather than retreating, she advanced, charging straight at the roaring thunder-whale.
Her ice sword traced an exquisite curve as if freezing space itself.
Ssshhh—!
That ultra-condensed sword light pierced the whale's vast energy body in an instant, ignoring layer upon layer of protective surf and raging lightning, and stabbed unerringly toward Tartaglia's heart behind it.
Thus, beneath Bai Xiuxiu's gaze, the cross-world duel of master and disciple began in the most direct, most intense fashion.
…
"Piercing Surge! Gáe Bolg!"
With a wild low shout, Cu Chulainn split the ground beneath his feet.
Borrowing the explosive recoil, he leapt skyward, his form like a drawn longbow, brimming with power.
Muscles swelled along his right arm as he raised the crimson cursed spear high behind him. Ancient, mystic runes upon the shaft flared as if ignited by fresh blood, unleashing a heart-stopping aura of annihilation that seemed to end all things!
As the true name of the Noble Phantasm was released, he poured his entire strength and energy into it and hurled it viciously at the alluring figure below.
Screee—!!!
A beam of purest crimson ripped the sky—and midway through its flight, it split and multiplied as if alive, becoming hundreds of identical spears wreathed in ominous deathly miasma.
They formed a dense, sky-blotting rain of death, shrieking as they carpet-bombed the entire area where Xiao Wu stood, indiscriminate and annihilating.
This was a true anti-army Noble Phantasm—its coverage vast, its penetration terrifying, its destructive power enough to completely level and erase the sprawling ruins.
Even the goddess Xiao Wu showed solemnity on her perfect face for the first time.
Her old wounds had not healed; her divine body was far from its peak, and she had lost the strong blessing of the Sea God's divinity. Facing such a wide-area, overwhelming strike, she felt unprecedented difficulty.
Though the Holy Spirit Cult's aid had improved her injuries, Phoenix godforce from Ma Hongjun and Honkai energy still stubbornly lingered in her, and she had to devote a great share of mind and strength to suppressing and dissolving that scorching, overbearing alien power. She simply could not fight at full strength.
…
"That's… mom?!"
In the distance, drawn by the earth-shaking tumult, Tang Wutong and the Clear Sky Sect experts beside her all turned their eyes over.
When Tang Wutong clearly caught the figure weaving amid the crimson spear-rain, she reeled as if thunderstruck. Her pretty pink-blue eyes went wide, her face full of disbelief and shock.
As Xiao Wu's daughter, the unique resonance in her blood would not be wrong—that intimately familiar profile, that aura etched in her soul, that primal pulse from bloodline—this was the mother she longed for day and night.
"It really is Sister Xiao Wu!!"
Niu Tian and Tai Tan, the two soul-beast overlords who had followed Xiao Wu for years, bulged their ox-like eyes now, their rugged faces full of shock and excitement.
Though Xiao Wu's appearance and aura differed greatly from when she ascended to the God Realm ten thousand years ago, they recognized at a glance—the one dueling the Servant was indeed the Sister Xiao Wu they had yearned for through the ages.
"How… how is this possible…"
Tang Wutong rubbed her eyes hard, hardly daring to believe what she saw.
"How could Mom… descend to the lower realm without leave? Where's Dad? And… why does Mom's aura feel… so weak?"
She herself had descended because she was not a formal god, more a special existence with god-level blood, exploiting a loophole in the God Realm's rules.
But her mother Xiao Wu was a true, registered deity of the God Realm.
Descending without authorization was a grave crime that would incur the Law-Enforcer Gods' punishment.
What shook her further was how weak Xiao Wu's current level of power appeared—so weak it did not match a deity's station at all.
Even if her opponent was an extremely powerful Servant, Xiao Wu was a god.
Even if she had to suppress her power for some reason, she should not be trading blows so evenly—indeed, even being forced to brace herself against the foe's trump-card Noble Phantasm.
Though from the surface Xiao Wu seemed at ease, even forcing the opponent to use his strongest treasure, it was worlds apart from the strong, gentle, omnipotent mother in her memory.
"What on earth… has happened in the God Realm all these years?! What happened to Mom?!"
Tang Wutong, Niu Tian, and Tai Tan could no longer stand still. Questions surged in their hearts like a flood, yet at the same time, a vast joy of lost-and-found clenched their hearts tight.
Niu Tian and Tai Tan had not seen Xiao Wu in ten thousand years—one fleeting glimpse was enough to make them tremble with excitement.
As for Tang Wutong, though she had left the God Realm young to temper herself on Douluo Continent, she had never ceased to miss her mother. Seeing her now with her own eyes, her lids already glistened red with gathering mist.
"Heh, interesting."
Vita stood quietly at Tang Wutong's side, her doll-like delicate face curving in an intrigued smile, as if she had found a new toy.
Tang Wutong had never hidden her origins from her, so she knew her contractor had parents who were deities.
But a deity who should have been high in the God Realm not only descended unauthorized, but seemed to have lost the blessing of her god-seat, her strength fallen so far… The hidden story behind this was clearly unusual—irresistibly intriguing.
She observed the duel with interest, especially Xiao Wu's condition, her pale-red eyes flickering with analysis and curiosity.
"Grandpa Niu! Grandpa Tai! Let's go help Mom!"
Tang Wutong's face was filled with worry, her gaze locked on the region drowning under the crimson spear-rain. She was itching to fly over that instant.
But before she could finish—
"Alr—!"
Niu Tian and Tai Tan nearly agreed on instinct—when, mid-word, both their faces changed sharply.
An icy, keen, abyssal aura plunged from the sky, clamping down on them and the space around them alike. Their bodies locked up; they could not move a step. Even their soul power circulation turned sluggish.
Not only them—even the ever-composed Vita raised a brow, a clear flash of surprise in her pale-red eyes—this sudden, razor aura… felt familiar?
In the instant that thought flashed—
Ssst—!
A strangely shaped holy lance wreathed in black-and-white spiral flames screamed down like a meteor tearing the night, crossing hundreds of meters in a blink to appear before Vita.
Its icy tip nearly pierced her pale-red pupils!
"So it's an 'old acquaintance.'"
Vita recognized the lance and its master's aura at once. The playful smile on her face deepened, but her body reacted more swiftly and honestly.
With a light tap of her toe, her petite form seemed weightless as she drifted back, graceful and calm, narrowly avoiding the holy spear's peerless edge.
"Boom!!"
The lance slammed into where she had just stood, detonating a tremendous shockwave.
The ground heaved like waves. Broken stones and shattered walls blasted skyward, dust billowing.
A golden figure descended like a war god, grasped the lance's haft with precision, and wrenched it free in one clean pull.