Heaven's Laws - Lifestone - Chapter 62

Dvora had lost consciousness under the tribulation ice, only to wake a few moments later to the warmth of overly hot balls of fire floating overhead that were starting to sting her skin. Her grogginess vanished as something was forced down her throat.

Blinking, she found someone in front of her. An ice fairy was lying on her awkwardly, pressing her up against the wall. It wasn’t heat coming from the girl’s body, but a deathly cold.

“This one as well,” an assertive ice fairy said with a fridged expression.

Suddenly the girl on top of her disappeared. That could only mean one thing.

“Can you stand?” the elder fairy asked her.

She spoke without realizing it. “I think so.”

A gale of qi caught her up and placed her on her feet.

She found herself staring at the elder’s ring. The girl that had been on top of her had shielded her from the tribulation ice—likely saving her life. Now she was just a corpse put away for burial.

“Sage Chao, what do you need?” A voice sounded, drawing her attention.

Dvora found the Fire Phoenix Sect’s Lead Disciple Shoi-ming holding a fairy. Not just any fairy, but Sage Pangfua. Her head was resting against the man’s shoulder as his arm had her secure around her back with his hand wrapped under her knees. She looked like a child as he held her effortlessly in one arm while leaning heavily on his massive sword. He was exhausted, but her weight seemed to burden him less than his own garments.

“Nothing, brother.” A man replied. She then noticed who it was. The man that frightened her more than any other person she’d ever met was standing there with his back to the group. “Focus on helping the others. I’ll work on finding the source of this killing intent.”

It was at that moment that she realized what the Lead Disciple had called him. “Tong Tao is… Sage Long Chao?”

She let out an exasperated chuckle. Scanning the area, she found a colorless wall blocking them off from the rest of the room and a lightless tunnel like some man-sized blackhole.

Shaking her head, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The joint sect was upright. Why would they hide their identities?

The most comical thing was that she’d fallen for it. She hadn’t just tried to blackmail a sage, but one that slaughtered Overlords like cattle. And here she was, amongst his sect juniors, only alive because he was holding back the spire’s wrath that was aiming for them all. But how? He did it with so little effort. It was all too much.

She sat down in a daze.

***

Chao examined the defensive array and confirmed it was only targeting them because it was already active. With his barrier of space shielding them, it wasn’t directly targeting them any longer. That didn’t mean he wasn’t having to brace against the random attack.

The room was filled with so much killing intent that just about anything that entered the room would be attacked instantly. He suspected there was a separate array spreading the killing intent around, but he couldn’t find any source.

As it became clear the pylon had no personality behind it, much of his anger cooled. He’d been too late to save everyone, however. At least most of them seemed to have survived.

First trying to explore the room with sound, he found the pylon disrupted what he could discern each time it attacked. It didn’t just drown out other sound waves but cancelled them out. With enough time, he could probably figure out the pattern, but that wouldn’t be a fast method.

He tried to systematically attack parts of the room, but nothing. He then checked the path leading to the stairs. His perceptions were blocked. That meant there were defensive arrays there. Perhaps many. The problem that had to be solved first was how to get the people behind him to safety. He had a few ideas, but the easiest thing was just to wait until Huifen finished her fight. It was difficult, but he decided to wait.

***

The sheer weight Harnish’s domain carried should’ve been impossible. It seemed to wash Huifen away, except it attacked her from every side. The next thing she knew, she was having to squint against the pressure that was threatening to crush her eyes in their sockets.

She thought to retreat, but she couldn’t move.

The water found less resistance as if flooded into her mouth and nose. Her lungs and stomach filled. Like a bug underfoot, she felt like she was being crushed. The pain wasn’t just pressing in from the outside, but from within. Her insides were being pushed apart.

How had she come to this? She’d just used Ice Phoenix’s Breath. Had she made a mistake?

She called on her qi to bolster her body. Her hybrid aura filled her, struggling against the foreign threat. When the pressure lessened, she had a moment to think only to realize the water filling her lungs wouldn’t allow her to breathe. The qi inside it belonged to another.

She was familiar with the technique used to breathe outside her world’s atmosphere. It wasn’t something she practiced but Mother Quinyuan had excitedly shown her after Father Zan had made her practice. As she tried to fill her lungs with qi, she realized how serious her predicament was. It wasn’t just water in her lungs, but water controlled by an enemy sage. His will held the liquid qi in a vice grip. Huifen, the youngest Overlord in the history of the Monolith continent, was going to die by drowning?

Her mouth turned up into a snarl. She attacked the water in her lungs with her own perceptions. Just like playing Chao’s borrow game, she grasped ahold of it to rip it from her enemy’s control. Her expression darkened. It didn’t budge.

Her mouth was closed—teeth were grit. The water was no longer entering her body yet Sage Harnish somehow kept a grasp on the water inside of her. How was that possible? Was it some trick of a Water Sage?

One thing was certain. All the warnings from Mother Quinyuan and Father Zan had been right. Even after reaching overlord with her physique hadn’t left her invincible in this realm. How naïve could she be? If she’d only attacked after her Ice Phoenix’s Breath technique, it would’ve all been over. She had this water sage’s perfect trap.

She wasn’t finished. The only question was how? She remembered Jilpa’s poison. It left her dantian frozen, unable to spin. That may hold the key.

The memory wasn’t alone. Heart of Ice was failing. Jilpa had cast a technique to knock her unconscious, stealing her mind and passions—her ability to respond. That was then, but now?

How often had she dreamed of how she’d react if she could go back to that very moment? She’d planned at great lengths how to carry out a vengeance she could never have.

The greatest storms build, but what erupted inside her came all at once. Had she so thoroughly failed in her recovery? This rage wasn’t blind, yet it seethed with an intensity that no beast could match.

That wasn’t right. How could Huifen forget her terror? The presence of the divine ice phoenix’s fury seemed to have shattered her soul. It was frozen into her memory.

A destructive beam of defilement and filth flew through space on a collision course with the world the phoenix was visiting. She quickly froze the world in protective ice only to spin and face the coming destruction. The divine phoenix’s hatred was almost palpable. It wasn’t just the assault she was protecting the world from. It was herself.

Huifen had seen the protective technique daily for weeks, but the destructive one she’d only seen once. She’d even saved many lives with the first.

Was her own fury a gift of the divine phoenix’s blood? How could it be human? She already knew the answer. A divine beast didn’t have need for learning techniques. The Ice Phoenix Cultivation Tome was developed based on the divine phoenix’s natural talents.

The wrathful storm inside her didn’t belong to another. The ice phoenix had taught her a lesson. Nothing else.

She thought her mind was her own, but then she decided. All the hatred she’d felt for Jilpa and the Sun family—being poisoned and taken advantage of—accumulated into an all-consuming fervor.

The massive beam of ice that repelled the attack from the Worm of the Profane didn’t belong to her. She didn’t need it. Her cultivation, techniques, and elemental laws were intimately hers.

There was an explosion of purpose. Her water laws hadn’t been enough to strip them from Harnish, but suddenly every drop of water was wrenched from his grasp. He’d tried to crush her. To leave her with no way out.

Jilpa’s face flashed before her eyes.

The water didn’t just obey her. It trembled as she had in the ice phoenix’s presence. As if it had a life of its own, water cascaded outward. Like a divine serpent it grabbed ahold of its prey and didn’t let go. The waters around her parted. It rushed from her lungs. It joined with the rest of the water as she squeezed life from the room. But the water laws weren’t her only talent.

Remembering how it had been forced into her stomach and lungs, it was only right.

The next thing she knew she was coughing up blood. She was confident it was over, which caused her to doubt.

Looking up, she saw shattered ice strewn across the floor in great heaps of sharp shrapnel. Not only had she turned the water to ice but caused it to burst.

The fury left her as quickly as it came. Glancing around the room, dread overtook her. She’d intended to save those under Harnish, but now it was too late. There were frozen pieces of them everywhere. The water sage was in no better condition. What frozen piece belonged to who was almost impossible to guess.

She swallowed a recovery pill without thought. Her injury wasn’t a small one. The realization of what she’d done overwhelmed her sense of self preservation. This wasn’t what she’d intended. It would’ve been better if she were ruthless from the beginning and slain them all.

Chao had needed her. She’d insisted that he could trust her to do what was right. How had she failed so miserably?

Not trusting her body to walk, she flew toward the vault, reverse-creating the ice that was blocking her path.