After drawing the spear, that figure didn't pause for a heartbeat. She flipped the spear around, turning into a streak of golden lightning and shot after the retreating Vita.
The assault was fierce and the follow-up seamless—clearly, she had no intention of catching up or wasting breath.
"How heartless, Durandal~"
Vita threaded through the dense flurry of spear shadows. Each movement landed precisely where it needed to be, skirting the holy lance's lethal edge by a hair. As her skirt swirled, she even had the leisure to draw out her tone in a mock-pout.
"We only just met, and this is how you treat an 'old friend'?"
She didn't dare to catch that Black Abyss White Flower head-on—the weapon radiated the breath of life and death. The play had only just reached its true climax; she wasn't about to bow out early because of carelessness.
"I do not recall ever being your friend."
Durandal stood tall as a pine with the holy lance in hand. Her sky-blue eyes were bright as the heavens and sharp as a hawk. The spear tip never left Vita's silhouette. Her voice was severe and icy, without a ripple.
"And at this moment, we are enemies, beyond any doubt."
"Oo… how heartbreaking. Lady Durandal's words pierce poor little Vita's fragile heart like a blade~"
Vita clutched her chest in exaggerated pain. Her delicate brows knit, and she even forced a few crystalline tears from the corner of her eyes. With that aggrieved, on-the-verge-of-tears look, she seemed truly burdened by some immense grievance and betrayal.
The corner of Durandal's mouth twitched almost imperceptibly; the other's over-the-top acting made it hard to keep a straight face.
Lu Jingming's warning flashed through her mind—against a "bad woman" like Vita, who excelled at manipulating hearts and muddying the waters, the best method was to give her no chance to speak, bewitch, or stall.
Decision made, her aura surged again. The holy lance moved with a sudden rise in speed and power, shrouding Vita like a raging storm.
At the exact same moment Vita was fully entangled with Durandal—
Rip! BOOM!!!
A thunderclap split the sky without warning.
A katana wrapped in raging lightning, wreathed in crackling arcs that made one's scalp prickle, turned into a blade of thunder so dazzling it seemed able to cleave space itself. With unstoppable force, it hacked straight down at Niu Tian just as he was about to act.
Niu Tian's face changed drastically.
As a hundred-thousand-year soul beast in human form and a veteran of countless battles, combat instincts were etched into his bones.
Almost reflexively, his powerful Slowing Domain expanded from him like a bubble.
An invisible field of deceleration spread out, and the raging lightning blade's speed visibly dropped the moment it entered the zone.
Seizing the opening, Niu Tian roared. His thick right arm blasted forward.
Dominant azure lightning surged from his fist, rapidly coalescing into a massive, ferocious head of thunder that looked part dragon, part ox. With a soul-shaking roar, it opened its crackling jaws and bit fiercely into the slowed, terrifying blade of thunder.
"BOOOOM!!!"
Two torrents of raging lightning collided head-on. Blinding radiance erupted like a miniature sun, swelling outward.
Niu Tian felt an inconceivable, surging force flood up his arm. His blood churned; his massive body was hurled uncontrollably backward, smashing through several thick, ruined walls before he barely managed to halt, each step gouging deep footprints into the ground.
On the other side, Raiden Mei's figure clung like true lightning. The hundreds-of-meters-long arc of thunder she unleashed plowed a smoking, charred trench across the ground, pressing inexorably toward Niu Tian.
"Da Ming!"
Seeing this, Tai Tan's rugged face filled with shock and fury. He roared and was about to charge to Niu Tian's aid when the space in front of him twisted violently without warning, swamped and corroded by a dense, inky fog of death.
A pitch-black spear, as if forged from the deepest dark, lunged from the void like a viper, silent yet lightning-fast, thrusting straight for his heart.
Alarms blared in Tai Tan's mind; a chill shot from his soles to his crown.
In his haste, he could only cross his arms, guarding his chest with all his might.
"Squelch—!"
The dull, tooth-aching sound of flesh being torn rang out.
The black spear tip pierced his tough skin and muscle without resistance. Blood splattered.
Tai Tan's mountain-like body was smashed backward as if struck by an invisible colossal hammer, crashing into the earth with a heavy boom and kicking up a storm of dust.
"Apologies. Road closed."
A low, slightly magnetic voice came from the rift wreathed in black mist.
Lu Jingming stepped out of the void with Black Abyss in hand—a spear that seemed to devour all light. A faint, unsettling dark glow circled the tip, silently disintegrating and returning the fresh blood it had touched to primordial nothingness.
"It's you!"
Tang Wutong stared at the suddenly appearing Lu Jingming—who had injured Second Uncle Tai Tan in a single strike—and cried out before she could stop herself. Her pink-blue eyes were full of shock and disbelief.
Things were unfolding too fast for her to process.
The ecstatic surprise and deep confusion of suddenly seeing her mother; Vita being intercepted; her two father-like guardians ambushed in an instant… it all happened in a blink, leaving her reeling.
"Tang Wutong, is it."
Lu Jingming glanced at her. His gaze was calm and flat, as if looking at an irrelevant stranger. His tone betrayed no emotion, as though stating a foregone fact.
"Farewell."
He didn't give Tang Wutong any time to react. He lightly tapped the air with Black Abyss—
Hum!
Dozens of fist-sized, pitch-black orbs of pure deathly energy appeared out of thin air, then instantly transformed into beams of raven light at the limits of speed—like a rain of death—lancing toward Tai Tan, who had just clawed his way from the crater, grievously wounded.
After all, in his "script," after this, the "Tang Wutong" before him would no longer be Tang Wutong—she would become part of Wang Qiu'er.
Tang Wutong hadn't even parsed the meaning of that unprompted "farewell" when an extremely brilliant golden streak—carrying the twin auras of light and flame—shot at her face like a silent, lethal bolt.
She was no powerless vase. As the little princess of the Clear Sky Sect and a Shrek-tempered prodigy, her combat instincts fired instantly at the brink.
"Hum—!"
Dazzling blue-gold radiance erupted.
The Goddess of Light Butterfly martial soul manifested at once. A pair of magnificent, crystalline light-wings unfurled behind her, shedding motes of radiance.
Facing the deadly golden streak, Tang Wutong shouted. Her hands flashed, weaving two blades of condensed light into a tight, impermeable net, intercepting the incoming strike with everything she had.
"Clang—!!!"
The metallic screech was so sharp it seemed to rip eardrums.
Amid the fierce clash, the golden streak revealed its true form—a long spear of ancient, domineering design, its surface flowing with the luster of the sun.
The recoil sent the spear flying back—only to be caught, steady as a rock, by a golden-haired girl who had appeared without a sound.
The girl stood tall and breathtakingly beautiful, bearing a shocking resemblance to Tang Wutong.
But where Tang Wutong's features blended mischief and liveliness, the newcomer's brows carried a colder, keener edge—a drawn blade, all cutting intent.
The instant their eyes met, Tang Wutong's heart clenched for no reason.
From the depths of her soul, an indescribable thrum of resonance and dread seized her. A wild, absurd yet overpowering intuition surged up—like fate itself:
Between them, only one could live!
"Blame your lofty, scheming 'good father.'"
Wang Qiu'er's slender fingers tightened around the Golden Dragon Spear—a weapon that seemed born for her. Her gaze was as cold as a ten-thousand-year abyss, stripped of warmth, leaving only bone-deep resolve.
"From the moment we were born, it was fixed… only one of us could survive to wholeness."
From Lu Jingming, she had learned the whole truth—about her own state of existence, about the fragment of Tang Wutong's missing soul, about how Sea God Tang San, to seize the soul-beast fortune of the Star Dou Forest and the Auspicious Beast's unique bloodline and destiny power, had laid out a string of cold, selfish machinations.
In killing Tang Wutong to seize the other half of the soul fragment and become a complete, independent self, Wang Qiu'er felt no guilt or hesitation.
Though Tang Wutong herself might be innocent—ignorant of it all.