Chapter 29: Last Gasp of the Bloodfiend, the Holy Angel Ye Guyi
The Bloodfiend crashed through the dense forest in a stumbling, staggering flight, his severed arm still trailing the ghost of pain. Every breath tasted of rust and torn flesh. He'd managed to seal the wound at his left shoulder with the last dredges of his soul power, stanching the blood loss, but every movement wrenched at the raw nerves, sending black spots swimming across his vision. Worse still was the hollow, drained weakness coiling through his body—his soul power had bottomed out like a bucket with a hole punched through it. Even maintaining basic martial soul possession had become a desperate struggle.
"Wretch..." He spat a venomous curse with every stumbling step, his voice rasping like a punctured bellows. Moonlight filtered through the thinning canopy above, casting pale light across his bloodless, twisted face and etching his expression into something truly demonic. He had never been so utterly humiliated. A dignified Soul Ancestor, driven to tear off his own arm and flee like a beaten cur—and by some nameless woman, no less! This disgrace could only be washed clean in blood!
He would find the organization. He would gather reinforcements. He would hack that woman to pieces and use her blood to nourish his martial soul!
But the flames of vengeance, however fiercely they burned, could not stave off the cold and vertigo surging from deep within his body. Massive blood loss coupled with total soul power exhaustion made his limbs feel heavier with every step, his footing more and more unsteady. His vision kept collapsing into darkness. A droning buzz filled his ears. He could barely tell direction anymore.
"No... can't... collapse..." The Bloodfiend bit down savagely on the tip of his tongue. The sharp burst of pain brought a fleeting moment of clarity. He threw himself against the trunk of a great tree, leaning heavily against it, gasping. He needed replenishment! He needed blood! Copious amounts of blood!
Just then, the flapping of wings sounded from somewhere close by. A few night birds, startled from their roosts, beat frantically through the branches overhead.
A murderous gleam flared in the Bloodfiend's eyes—the look of a starving wolf that had just spotted prey. He summoned the very last wisp of his soul power. With agonizing effort, his remaining right hand condensed a dim, faltering thread of crimson energy—and lashed it out like lightning!
Thwump!
An unfortunate owl was pierced clean through by the blood-thread. It didn't even have time to cry out. Its body shriveled instantly, desiccating into a dried husk that dropped to the forest floor. The blood-thread retracted, carrying back a meager, lukewarm trickle of life energy, rank with blood.
The Bloodfiend absorbed this pitiful "nourishment" with the greed of a desert traveler sipping dew. It was a drop in the ocean—barely enough to push back the darkness swimming before his eyes. The bone-deep weakness in his body hadn't lessened in the slightest.
"Not enough... nowhere near enough..." He licked his cracked lips, a crazed glint flickering in his eyes. He needed a stronger lifeform! A human! A soul master, ideally!
He forced himself upright and pressed on, a wounded beast prowling the darkness for its next target. He didn't dare return to the main road. He could only skulk through the deep woods, clinging to the desperate hope of encountering a lone hunter or a lost traveler.
It was as if fate itself had heard his silent, ravenous plea. Just as his strength was about to give out entirely and his consciousness was beginning to blur, a slender figure appeared around the bend of a forest trail up ahead.
It was a young woman.
Moonlight cascaded over her like water, tracing the graceful lines of her form. She was dressed in simple, crisp white attire, a silver sash cinched at her waist. Her long, soft chestnut hair stirred gently in the night breeze. She seemed to be traveling with purpose, her steps light yet resolute, and she radiated an aura of clarity and purity utterly at odds with the blood-drenched darkness of the night.
The Bloodfiend's heart gave a violent jolt. Not because of her beauty—but because of the pure soul power fluctuations emanating from her! It didn't feel particularly strong; a Soul Grandmaster at most, or perhaps someone just stepping into the Soul Elder realm. But the soul power was balanced and righteous, carrying a radiant, luminous quality that instinctively repulsed him—and yet, stirred a deep, visceral hunger.
"A soul master... and a tender fledgling at that..." A savage, greedy grin split the Bloodfiend's face, his remaining eye gleaming with bloodthirsty crimson light. Heaven has not forsaken me after all! Draining this young woman's essence-blood would be enough to restore a portion of his strength. It might even allow him to suppress that residual, supremely uncomfortable trace of ultimate water that the woman Furina's threads had left corroding inside him!
He hesitated no longer. Like a viper coiled in ambush for an eternity, he burst from the shadows without warning. Soul power churned through his sole remaining right arm, his five fingers curling into a claw, and he lunged at the young woman's back with a foul, bloody gale trailing in his wake! His speed was nowhere near his peak, but with the element of surprise against a young soul master, he was supremely confident it was more than enough!
"Little girl! Lend me your blood!" His hoarse voice scraped through the air like the screech of an owl.
And yet—just as his filth-encrusted claws were about to graze the fabric of her collar—
The young woman's stride didn't even falter.
She merely turned slightly at the waist, the movement as elegant as dancing beneath the moon. And then, without the slightest forewarning, a gold light—so pure it was nearly sacred—erupted from her body!
The radiance wasn't blinding. But it carried an overpowering, majestic righteousness that scattered all darkness and defilement before it! Where the golden light passed, the stench of blood and evil miasma permeating the air rapidly dissolved, like snow beneath a blazing sun.
The Bloodfiend felt an indescribable, searing heat engulf his entire body in an instant! The golden light seemed to carry the very force of purification itself. The sanguine soul power he relied upon for his very existence—the power steeped in slaughter and corruption—boiled and evaporated on contact, as if it had met its absolute nemesis! He let out a strangled grunt. His forward charge was halted dead, as if he'd slammed into an invisible wall of light. The impact sent him staggering backward, and the agony from his severed arm crashed over him in a tidal wave!
"What?!" The Bloodfiend's remaining eye bulged wide, sheer horror and disbelief flooding his face as he stared at the young woman before him.
She turned around slowly.
Under the moonlight, her face was strikingly pure and beautiful, her brow carrying a heroic, untouchable resolve. But what truly made the Bloodfiend's spirit quake was what unfurled behind her—a pair of enormous wings, formed entirely of condensed light element, slowly spreading open! Every feather shimmered with golden luminescence, radiating a sacred, majestic presence!
"Holy... Angel?!" The Bloodfiend's voice cracked and warped under the weight of absolute terror and shock. He recognized this legendary, apex-grade martial soul! It was the innate, heaven-sent bane of every evil soul master lineage!
The young woman—Ye Guyi—looked at him now with cold loathing and unmistakable killing intent shining in her clear eyes. She didn't even bother to ask a single question. The dense, cloying reek of blood and the corrupt soul power roiling off this one-armed man, along with his cowardly ambush attempt, told her everything she needed to know. This was an evil soul master! One who had just committed unspeakable atrocities!
"Filth of the demonic path—your judgment is death!" Ye Guyi's voice was cold and sharp as a blade of ice, carrying the indisputable finality of a judge pronouncing a sentence.
The words had barely left her lips when three soul rings blazed to life beneath her feet—yellow, yellow, purple! The standard configuration of a Soul Elder! But the moment those rings ignited, the sacred radiance they emitted far outstripped anything of their rank!
Her first soul ring flared with blinding intensity!
"Holy Radiance!"
A condensed, near-solid beam of golden light—like a spear of divine judgment—hurtled toward the Bloodfiend with the absolute, inescapable swiftness of light itself! And what could a grievously wounded, crippled wretch possibly do to evade the speed of light?
The Bloodfiend could only manage a single, despairing howl. Pure instinct drove him to raise his right arm in a feeble attempt to block, while simultaneously pouring every last scrap of soul power he could summon into a thin, pathetic blood-red barrier before him.
Fffssssshh—!
The holy light passed through the flimsy blood shield like a hot knife through butter, striking his right arm with unerring precision.
"AAAAARGH—!!"
A scream tore through the night—so piercing, so inhuman, it hardly sounded like it came from a living throat.
There was no explosion of flesh, no shattering of bone. The arm struck by the sacred light simply... dissolved, like snow flung into a furnace. It wasn't severed—it was annihilated, erased at the fundamental level, purified into absolute nothingness! Even the sinister demonic patterns entwined around the limb were obliterated along with it!
The agony of his earlier severed arm hadn't even subsided, and now a new, infinitely more horrifying pain engulfed his nerves. The sacred energy crawled into him through the stump like a parasite, searing and purifying the sanguine soul power he'd spent years cultivating with excruciating, relentless thoroughness! The pain was as if his very soul were being roasted over holy flames!
"No... mercy..." The Bloodfiend collapsed entirely. What little remained of his consciousness was swallowed whole by boundless terror and torment. He crumpled to the ground, writhing like a pile of sludge, gurgling unintelligible pleas.
Ye Guyi's expression never wavered. Only icy, absolute resolution remained. She gave her angel wings a light beat, rising into the air, looking down from above at the dying abomination crawling in the dirt beneath her.
Her second soul ring ignited!
"Sacred Sword!"
A massive blade, forged entirely of brilliant, condensed golden light, materialized in her hands. Sacred runes flowed across its surface, radiating an aura of supreme, incontestable judgment!
Without a single superfluous word, Ye Guyi grasped the sword in both hands and brought it down in a merciless arc upon the squirming, filth-ridden mass of flesh on the ground!
"Judgment!"
The golden sacred sword, wreathed in the majesty of heaven's own decree, descended without the slightest hindrance!
There was no earth-shattering explosion. Only a soft, wet pfft, like a swollen sack of filthy water being punctured.
The instant the sacred sword made contact, the Bloodfiend's body began to disintegrate—as if it were base metal thrown into a purification furnace—starting from the point of impact and spreading outward with terrifying speed. It didn't char. It turned to ash—but not black ash. The ash was nearly translucent, bleached white, as though purified of every last trace of corruption. Then, under the holy radiance, even that ash dispersed completely, vanishing without leaving a single trace behind.
All that remained was a small patch of ground, seared by the sacred light into an almost unnaturally pristine state. The stench of blood and the miasma of evil that had hung thick in the air were utterly gone. In their place lingered only a faint, cleansing afternote—serene and almost sweet.
Ye Guyi touched down lightly. The angel wings behind her and the sacred sword in her hands dissolved into myriad flecks of golden light. She gazed at that patch of purified earth, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Such a heavy stench of blood... he must have slaughtered innocent lives." She spoke in a low murmur to herself, her clear, cool gaze sweeping the silent woods around her. "It seems this region is far from peaceful."
She didn't linger. Her figure flickered, transforming into a faint stream of golden light, and she sped off in her original direction—as if she'd done nothing more than casually crush a filthy insect beneath her heel.
The moonlight remained cold and serene. The mountain forest returned to its silent repose. Only that patch of earth, cleansed by holy light, bore mute witness to the end of a wicked life—a life of sin brought at last to its appointed, absolute conclusion.
And far away in Fontaine City, Furina remained utterly unaware that the Bloodfiend she'd been grinding her teeth over had already met a fate wholly deserved, at the hands of a passing holy angel, in a purification far more thorough and final than anything she could have delivered.