Dance with the Inferno
"Ancestral Dragon Overlord Body!"
"Ancestral Dragon's Right Claw!"
The decision was made, but complacency had no place here. Yao Xuan faced not thirty ordinary century beasts, but thirty Flame Lions—each a conflagration given feline form, with power ranging from rivaling millennium beasts to challenging those of three millennia. Even with his bloodline's innate suppression, the sheer numerical advantage was daunting. A flicker of trepidation was instantly incinerated by a rising tide of fierce, challenging passion. As the bearer of the Ancestral Dragon, retreat was not an option. Victory was the only permissible outcome.
Soul power roared through his meridians like a ignited river. His blood and qi surged in response. Nine-colored radiance erupted from his core, and his aura expanded, becoming a tangible pressure in the superheated air. Dragon scales thickened across his body, gleaming with intensified density. His right arm swelled, sheathed in condensed ancestral dragon power that sharpened its claws to points of impossible keenness.
Simultaneously, he unleashed the full weight of his draconic pressure, a wave of primordial authority meant to cow the advancing pride.
The effect was immediate but limited. The Flame Lions' collective aura dimmed, their coordinated advance faltering for a heartbeat, their blazing manes flickering. But they did not break. These were proud hunters, their wills tempered in fire. They slowed, but they continued their encircling maneuver.
Yao Xuan held his ground, abandoning any thought of a reckless charge. To attack now was to be swallowed by a sea of fang, claw, and flame. His strategy shifted: let them commit, find the flaw in their formation, and use his supreme mobility to pick them apart—target the isolated, the weak.
As if reading his intent, the lead male—a titan with a mane like a cascading volcanic eruption—threw back its head and roared. The sound was a physical shockwave of heat. In unison, the pride responded. The fires wreathing their bodies blazed brighter, then concentrated. Gaping maws lined with teeth of crystalline ember distended.
Innate Ability: Conflagration Barrage.
Dozens of spheres of concentrated sunfire coalesced before them. The largest, from the alpha, was over half a meter across, a miniature star of annihilation. The smallest were still the size of skulls. With a collective exhale of superheated air, they launched.
The swarm of fireballs filled the sky, trailing coronas of distorting heat. The air temperature spiked past the boiling point of water in an instant. This was not an attack meant for a single foe; it was an area-denial cataclysm. No Soul King, no Soul Emperor without the protection of mechanized armor or battle gear, could hope to survive a direct hit from such concentrated fury. Even a Soul Sage might hesitate.
Yao Xuan had no intention of testing the absolute limits of his Overlord Body's elemental resistance. As the incendiary rain descended, he became a phantom.
"Ancestral Dragon Shattering Void Step!"
He burned his qi and blood, and space itself became his ally. He didn't run; he unfolded from one point to another a hundred meters away, a golden streak blurring through the infernal glare.
The world behind him ceased to exist.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
The detonations merged into a single, prolonged thunderclap of pure heat and force. The ground at the epicenter was not cratered; it was excavated. A bowl of glassy, blackened slag dozens of meters wide yawned where lush forest had been. Trees within hundreds of meters were either vaporized or transformed into towering torches, uprooted and scattered like kindling by the concussive hellstorm. The air shimmered with stolen moisture and wavered with residual thermal madness.
Yao Xuan landed lightly at the edge of the devastation, the scalding aftershock winds battering against his scaled form like the breath of a forge. His enhanced defenses held, dissipating the lethal heat into harmless warmth. To an observer, it was as if he'd simply stepped aside from the apocalypse.
Outside, in the observation room, the collective breath held by his classmates was released in a shuddering sigh.
"By the gods... that power..."
"Only Brother Xuan could walk away from that."
"If that were me... ashes. Just ashes."
Gu Yue's knuckles, which had been white where they gripped the rail, slowly relaxed. Her analytical mind had computed the escape vector a fraction of a second before he moved, but logic did nothing to calm the primal fear that had clenched her heart. Seeing him whole, untouched, she allowed a sliver of icy relief to melt through her composure.
Inside the Platform, Yao Xuan didn't celebrate his evasion. He capitalized on it. While the pride was momentarily focused on the aftermath of their own cataclysmic strike, their formation loosened. His spatial step had placed him not at a safe distance, but behind their lines, near a younger male lion—its flame-mane less dense, its aura equivalent to a 1,200-year beast. The lionesses, the strategic priority, were guarded at the core. This outsider would do.
The lion was still turning, its internal fire-energy depleted from the massive barrage, its senses overwhelmed by the cacophony it helped create.
Yao Xuan struck. "Sky-Rending Claw!"
No fanfare, just efficiency. His empowered right claw descended in a arc of golden light, aimed not at the body, but at the crown of the skull. The "Absolute Penetration" effect ignited, a focused expenditure of soul power to bypass natural armor.
CRUNCH.
The sound was horrifically crisp. The dragon claw pierced scale, bone, and brain matter with equal finality. A pulse of annihilating draconic energy turned the inside of the lion's skull to ruin. The brilliant flames surrounding it guttered and died instantly. Its massive body swayed, then collapsed like a felled tree.
A rich stream of purple spiritual energy, triple the normal yield, began to seep from the corpse. Yao Xuan's Ancestral Dragon Spirit, hovering near, began its swift, voracious consumption.
The death of their kin sent a visible shudder through the pride. The lead lion's mournful, furious roar shook the burning trees. Ten lions—including the two-thousand-year alpha and its mightiest lieutenants—whirled, their molten gazes fixing on Yao Xuan with homicidal intent. They charged, not with disordered rage, but with terrifying, coordinated speed.
'Ten of them. Including the alpha. Direct engagement is suicide.' Yao Xuan's mind, colder than the void between stars, assessed the threat instantly. Even suppressed, three would be a serious fight. Five could wound him mortally. Ten was an execution squad.
A fierce grin touched his lips. He wasn't here for a glorious last stand. He was here to win.
He raised his dragon-clawed hand, not in attack, but in a deliberate, beckoning taunt to the roaring alpha. "You'll have to be faster than that!"
Then he activated the Ancestral Dragon Shattering Void Step once more. Instead of retreating, he shot laterally, parallel to their charge, a golden comet skirting the edge of their formation, leading the furious heart of the pride on a chase away from the main group and the precious spiritual energy he was still absorbing. The guerrilla war had begun.