Namo Devi Mahaavidye Namaami Charanau Tava
In the immortal realm of shakti, fables weave the space with singular devotion to the Mahavidya. Their praises thrum through the void, the sound of Om reverberating like a pulse beneath creation itself.
Tara draws true knowledge from the ocean of Maya. Bagalamukhi pulls out destructive tongues of demons. Matangi razes Bhandasura's castle of delusions. Kali drinks the blood spilling from Raktabija's severed head.
They harness their anger towards the wicked and instate justice.
By battling chaos with chaos, they instate balance.
"The rift has barely stabilized." Angel Chie's eyes glaze with molten gold as parchment unfurls from empty air, inscribed with Heaven's observations.
Angel Gin urges, voice taut. "We mustn't waste this opportunity and bring an end to this immediately."
The Havan headed by the wise monks has effectively brought a halt to the widening rupture that threatens to crush both hell and earth inside its black hole. However, this halt is temporary.
A significant sacrifice must be made to restore balance.
"Do not worry." the Blue Lotus says at last, gaze drifting away from the mortal plane. Her voice is calm in a way that borders on finality.
"Soon, it will all be over."
Back on Earth, all humans cower from this succession of natural disasters. Tectonic collapse in East Asia has rippled outward, undoing the world piece by piece.
The ground slips from beneath their feet while they go about their day. Tsunamis and floods rush to engulf entire countries and earthquakes of such tenacity strike the world that are immeasurable by the Richter scale.
It is Ragnarok, Armageddon, the end of Kaliyuga. For atheists, it's a nuclear war.
Nonetheless, it is Doomsday.
The people of this planet wear different garbs, speak different languages, and pray to different gods.
But their kneeling desperation and tightly clasped hands, the tears running down their closed eyes. It makes them all the same.
They all want to live.
The sky burns.
At first glance, it resembles a meteor shower—no, a barrage. Fire rains down in relentless streaks, yet no nation claims it. No weapon explains it.
Only the divine remains to blame.
High above, a massive sphere of fire throbs like a malignant star, each pulse sending tremors screaming through the air.
At its core, Zhang Xiyu drives his blade of decay deeper into the cocoon of sunlight encasing Ren Jiang.
One energy brings about growth, turning a fledgling seed into a fruitful tree, a symbol of life itself. The other brings about its gradual, slow decline, until the leaves shrivel up until all life dies.
It is the battle of life forces.
However, their manifestations are incomplete and broken. The sun's power surges without will, trapped in the fractured vessel of Ren Jiang, spilling where it can, uncontrolled.
On the other hand, Zhang Xiyu has the cultivation and physical prowess to control the force of decay. But is it possible to control a power this ancient without losing yourself?
"Now!"
Yutao moves. He flows like a river of violet flame shaped into human form. His blade carves through the air, each arc leaving behind a sigil of ghostfire. One by one, they settle into place, forming a lattice, a cage tightening around the wounded sun.
Liu Xue follows.
His domain cannot rival Enma's, so he reshapes its purpose. The air crystallizes—not to strike, but to contain. Absolute zero rises in silent walls, sealing the sphere from every direction. The Frozen Elegy returns as a prison.
Zhang Xiyu remains at the centre, unmoving.
He stands at the sphere's heart, his blade buried in its flesh, and he feeds it. Decay pours from him in waves. His skin paled. His breath thins. Still, he does not falter.
The cocoon no longer tolerates their incessant attacks. It abandons defence and erupts outward. Cannons of fire detonate from its surface, tearing through the battlefield.
Yutao abandons his blade and summons his ancient bow. His amethyst arrows intercept some mid-flight, shattering them into fading embers. Others grind against Liu Xue's frozen barriers, hissing into steam.
The rest strike the earth. Like shooting stars, they fall to the ground, burning the remains of destruction to ashes. The land becomes unrecognizable, a violent convergence of elements tearing at one another.
The battle becomes a dance of annihilation.
Arrows multiply until the sky resembles a web spun from violet light, intercepting the sun's fury before it can spread. Liu Xue tightens the prison, freezing even the space the sphere attempts to expand into. Zhang Xiyu's decay seeps deeper, gnawing at its core, forcing it doubt itself for the first time since Ren Jiang had awakened it.
"Bring him back to me."
The singular command eradicates all reasons to cower. There is nowhere to go back, they can only cut forward.
The cocoon answers with an explosion.
Heat slams into Zhang Xiyu's shield in violent waves, warping the air itself. The barrier shudders under the strain; without it, his flesh would have melted where he stood.
And just when the heatwaves recede, the shield of decay braces under the impact of a broadsword.
With a click of feet, Zhang Xiyu flashes, retreating just enough to create distance. The cocoon has fractured. And what comes out is nothing less of a metamorphosis.
What steps out is not the man who entered.
The first prince has evolved.
His dark hair has bleached into radiant gold. His eyes burn with the same light, empty yet sovereign. Armor reshapes itself into something regal, etched with authority. His sword broadens, its golden hilt gleaming like a divine decree made steel and Ren Jiang looks like a seraph from top to bottom.
Except that he's nothing of the sort.
Zhang Xiyu's expression remains unchanged. Because the first prince is unconscious.
He has completely lost control of his body. His posture shifts unnaturally, his manner of carrying his sword has completely changed. There is only one explanation for this.
He is possessed.
What does it matter?
Zhang Xiyu scoffs, his blade returns to his hand in a curl of black smoke. Behind him, he feels the familiar cold pressure of violet fire.
Good.
Whatever Ren Jiang has become…
It changes nothing.
The dance continues.
But first they have to dodge.
Zhang Xiyu and Yutao flash far above their original positions and blankly stare at the golden broadsword pulsing in Ren Jiang's hand. With just one grand sweep, the sword has cleanly slashed through not just the thick barriers of ice around them, but also the tall skyscrapers far away from them.
Half a building cuts off cleanly as if it were a cucumber, sliding to the ground with a huge crash.
This guy. He has totally lost all control.
Enma's incomplete core has gone ballistic without its true bearer. His identity of being his immortal son alone saves Ren Jiang's body from disintegrating into atoms.
Now only the ancient power of the Blue Lotus can save this dire situation. However, if the prodigal son is in such duress, what will this power make of the fledgling human?
With no body and only a battered soul, cultivating for just above two centuries wouldn't give one an Immortal King's constitution. In terms of realistic progress, Zhang Xiyu is a mere child.
And yet he endures.
Zhang Xiyu grits his teeth till his tongue tears and blood leaks out. He lets the power of goddess take more control of his body.
The mental fortitude and devotion to shakti barely preventing a qi deviation at this critical moment.
With shaky breath, he grits out. "Let's do this."
Yutao moves first.
At once, Yutao's ghostfire erupts into teeth of flames. Violet fangs, arranged in concentric rings, shoot toward Ren Jiang from three directions at once. The teeth close around Ren Jiang's limbs, sinking into his cracked skin, injecting decay directly into his spiritual veins.
Ren Jiang twists, not flinching.
Sunlight traces the teeth like molten lava and the ghostfire teeth shatter. Yutao feels the feedback slam into his chest, blood filling his mouth.
But that doesn't deter him even for a second.
He closes the distance in three strides, ghostfire trailing from his heels like a bridal train. His sword comes up, the flat of the blade striking Ren Jiang's forearm, deflecting a claw that would have opened his chest. He pivots on his left foot, brings his elbow around, and slams it into Ren Jiang's ribs.
The impact was like hitting a mountain.
Ren Jiang does not move. His hand closes around Yutao's wrist.
Yutao twists, using the grip as leverage, and kicks. His heel drives into Ren Jiang's knee, not the kneecap, but the side of the joint, where the ligaments stretched thinnest. Ghostfire erupts from the point of impact, eating into the tendon.
Ren Jiang's knee buckles instantly.
And for a fraction of a second, he is off balance.
Zhang Xiyu appears behind Ren Jiang.
His sword is already drawn. The Blessed Blade of Kalaratri hums with darkness, its edge trailing wisps of decay that curl like smoke and he stabs. The blade digs into his shoulder blade, sinking in two inches.
Decay pours from the wound, black and viscous, spreading through Ren Jiang's shoulder, down his arm, into his fingers. Ren Jiang's clawed hand spasms, losing grip on Yutao's wrist.
But Ren Jiang is already moving.
He drops. His body folds backward, spine bending at an angle that should break it, and his free claw sweeps behind him. Zhang Xiyu leaps, the claw passing beneath his feet, and in the same motion, Zhang Xiyu brings his blade around in a horizontal arc aimed at Ren Jiang's neck.
Ren Jiang catches it with his bare hand.
The blade slices into his palm, through the cracked porcelain skin, through the tendon, scraping against bone. He does not let go. Sunlight explodes from the wound, crawling up the blade, reaching for Zhang Xiyu's hands, forcing Zhang Xiyu to release the sword.
He spins, low, and kicks. His heel drives into Ren Jiang's wrist, breaking his grip on the blade. The sword falls and Zhang Xiyu catches it with his other hand and lunges again, this time at Ren Jiang's chest.
Except it crashes against the golden armour.
Sunlight erupts from the breastplate in thick waves of qi. The blade begins to glow, to heat, to burn the decay coating its surface. Zhang Xiyu's lips peel back from his teeth. Ren Jiang pushes back and he pushes harder. The blade trembles between them, caught between sunlight and rot, the air around it shrieking.
Suddenly, the ground beneath them erupts.
Water explodes from the stone and a massive geyser blast upward, carrying boulders, trees, everything in its path.
Yutao throws himself behind a pillar of ice that Liu Xue conjures in the same instant. The water hits it and the ice holds, cracks spreading across its surface, but it holds.
However, Zhang Xiyu does not retreat.
He releases his sword, and rolls over Ren Jiang's shoulder. The geyser misses him by a hair's breadth. Landing behind Ren Jiang, he catches his sword as it falls, and drives it into the back of Ren Jiang's knee.
The blade sinks through tendon, through muscle, through the joint itself. Ren Jiang's leg buckles. He drops to one knee.
Zhang Xiyu yanks the blade free and spins, bringing it around in a rising arc that would take Ren Jiang's head from his shoulders.
What's this?
The sword does slash through his head but there is no impact. As if slashing through a puff of cloud.
"An apparition…"
With the speed of light, the prince moves rapidly around him creating afterimages of himself. This creates an illusion that Ren Jiang's multiple clones have completely surrounded him.
"How churlish." Yutao sneers. The ghost fire blazes again with vigour. This time above their head. Countless lanterns burning red and violet rain down on the ghostly clones. This changes the air around the illusion, making it crackle and eventually vanish.
In just moments, they had weeded out the real deal among the thousands of Ren clones around them. That too, very easily.
Yutao sighs. And the stolen core once again reminds us why it needs its master.
Then, somewhere above him, he hears an emotionless voice.
"Frozen tomb."
The third prince stands above them, suspended on a pillar of ice that rises from the crater's edge while Ren Jiang is focused on the others. His rapier is extended. His left-hand presses against the flat of the blade, and frost pours from his palm, coating the steel in a layer of blue-white cold that seems to drink the light around it.
The air temperature drops fifty degrees in a heartbeat.
Ice explodes from the tip of his rapier and the Frozen Elegy once again manifests around Ren Jiang. Walls of crystalline ice rise from the crater floor, each one ten feet thick, each one etched with the same frozen sigil that had been carved into Liu Xue's rapier.
They form a ring around Ren Jiang. Then a second ring. Then a third. Each ring spins in a different direction, grinding against the others, generating a cold so absolute that the heated vapor around Ren Jiang's arms begin to slow, to thicken, to freeze.
Ren Jiang's head turns toward Liu Xue.
The ice shatters as he moves, and the water beneath it begins to boil as it rises in a huge column. It moves toward Liu Xue not as a wave, but as a fist.
Surprisingly, Zhang Xiyu intercepts.
He appears between Liu Xue and the column of water, his sword raised, his body a silhouette of darkness against the coming flood. The Blue Lotus on his chest is no longer a wound, but a gate. Black light spills from it, wrapping around his blade, his arms, his entire body, until he is less a man and more a shadow.
He swings, making the column of water part. The decay on his blade touches something deeper in the water and it denies it authority.
For one moment, Ren Jiang's command over that water simply ceases to exist. The column collapses, a billion tons of water falling back into the crater, and Zhang Xiyu is through it before the spray touches the ground.
He lands on Ren Jiang's shoulder.
The pillar of cracked porcelain and leaking sunlight is wide enough to stand on. Zhang Xiyu does not hesitate and drives his sword into the base of Ren Jiang's neck, where the stolen core's light is brightest, where the cracks in the porcelain are deepest.
Decay pours from the blade in torrents.
Ren Jiang's body convulses. His arms sweep toward his own shoulder to crush the thing that has attached itself to him. Zhang Xiyu pulls his blade free and moves, running down Ren Jiang's arm as it rises, his feet finding purchase on the cracked porcelain, his sword trailing black light behind him.
The arm sweeps past. Zhang Xiyu is not on it anymore.
He is in the air.
He tucks, rolls, and descends. His sword points down. The Blue Lotus on his chest blazes, and the decay that coats his blade condenses, compresses, becomes a single point of absolute negation at its tip.
He hits Ren Jiang's chest.
The blade sinking in a shallow wound.
Light explodes from his chest. The stolen core, stabbed and threatened, bleeds its authority into the air around them.
The plateau shakes. The pit below yawns wider. The sky above cracks along lines that were not there before. Yutao is moving before the scream ends.
He is at Ren Jiang's side, his sword in both hands, ghostfire coating the blade from hilt to tip. His blade traces a line across Ren Jiang's ribs, opening a wound that pours light. He steps, pivots, carves another line. Then another. Each cut follows the cracks in Ren Jiang's porcelain skin, widening them, deepening them, creating channels for the stolen core's light to escape.
Ren Jiang's arm swings toward him.
Yutao does not dodge. He meets it. His sword comes up, ghostfire blazing, and he blocks, not the arm, but the water serpent trailing behind it. The blade bites into the serpent's body, ghostfire eating into its substance, and for a moment, the serpent writhes.
Liu Xue is there.
His rapier drives into the serpent's body from the other side. Ice spreads from the wound, freezing the water solid, and the serpent shatters.
Ren Jiang's remaining water serpents rise.
Four of them. Each one the size of a river, each one moving with the intelligence of a hunting beast. They do not strike randomly. Instead, they circle, walling off Yutao, walling off Liu Xue, walling off Zhang Xiyu, who is still embedded in Ren Jiang's chest, still driving his decay into the stolen core.
The serpents contract and the walls close.
Liu Xue's prison expands.
The ice walls that had been containing Ren Jiang shatter. Thousands of shards, each one razor-sharp, each one carrying the full weight of Liu Xue's frozen cultivation, spiral outward in a storm of absolute cold. They target the water serpents.
The serpents freeze instantly.
The water that had been liquid a heartbeat ago becomes solid, becomes brittle and useless. The serpents hang in the air for a moment, frozen mid-strike, their surfaces glittering in the dying light.
Then they fall.
A million tons of ice crash into the crater floor, shattering on impact, filling the pit below with frozen debris.
Zhang Xiyu wrenches his blade free from Ren Jiang's chest and retreats at once. The sun god's armour is almost invincible. The wound he carved is already sealing, flesh knitting as if nothing had happened. Had he pushed further, he would've joined Ren Jiang in his brain-dead state.
His sword rises again, though his body trembles. The Blue Lotus on his chest is a wound that is eating him alive. Yet his eyes are steady.
Minutes. Hours. Time had no meaning here, under this turbulent sky, above that hungry pit. They struck and retreated and struck again. They bled and healed and bled more.
Yutao's flames begin to gutter. Liu Xue's frost thins into fragile veils. Zhang Xiyu's decay slows, his body trembling, the Blue Lotus consuming him as surely as Enma's core consumes Ren Jiang.
Still, hope lingers.
"Strange." Yutao murmurs.
A tremor ripples across his skin—uneven and insistent. The heat radiating from Ren Jiang intensifies, turning the air hostile, pressing against them with suffocating weight. Each breath grows heavier, the atmosphere thickening as though something vast is forcing its way through.
As if—
The realization strikes all at once.
The moment lasts no longer than a heartbeat, yet it is enough. They understand.
What approaches is not merely danger.
It is the partial domain of Lord Enma.
Had Ren Jiang retained control, he could have dragged them into it without warning, without resistance. But now the domain leaks from a fractured core, seeping outward, warping the night as it spreads.
That imperfection is their only chance.
To survive, they must answer in kind—unleash their own domains.
However, this is comparable to launching a thermobaric bomb on the country. If these four cultivators simultaneously make their domains collide, cartographers would once again become busy at work.
Even if the world below means little to them, there are still lives they cannot discard so easily.
Someone remains down there.
Someone Yutao and Zhang Xiyu refuse to abandon.
In that instant, Yutao makes a difficult decision.
BOOM!
The night ruptures into daylight. The sky appears to tear open, moon and stars collapsing into the widening fracture of light. Yet beneath that devastation, they were safe.
Yutao staggers, coughing blood. His gaze falls to the torrent of blackened souls spilling over the cliff in thick, viscous waves.
Relief and guilt churn together in his chest. His domain spreads wide enough to shield the cities and Renhu.
But Zhang Xiyu—
He is left behind. Alone, with those demon princes to survive.
The reducing size of Renhu also gives him a sense of crisis.
Renhu's shrinking presence gnaws at Yutao's mind, each passing moment sharpening the dread coiling in his gut. Watching it diminish while he stands here, powerless to intervene, feels like failing them both.
A bitter laugh escapes him, rough and unsteady.
"All I can do… is wait."
High in the stratosphere, there lies a convoluted landscape. Within the vast expanse of cold hell, the venomous lotuses bloomed. Their blue radiance traces the black river of decay winding through the terrain, corroding all it touches. But this radiance isn't enough.
Zhang Xiyu's realm is engulfed in utter darkness.
At first glance, it resembles a black hole is swallowing the cold hell. Yet inside, intricate mandalas etch themselves into existence, layer upon shifting layer. The sigil upon his brow burns anew as the patterns multiply.
From those mandalas, limbs begin to emerge.
Countless arms, adorned with bangles of bone, extend outward with unnatural grace. Their clacking echoes through the void, keeping time with the hollow rhythm of pellet drums. They bend and contort, fingers folding into precise, ritualistic shapes.
Some press together.
Others settle into lotus mudra.
They do not stop.
The limbs stretch farther, forcing their way into Liu Xue's domain without restraint, without permission—an intrusion that carries no trace of gentleness.
On that warped, psychedelic land, Zhang Xiyu steps out of the shadows with an even more oppressive aura. With Liu Xue nowhere in sight, he alone stands before the partial domain of Enma.
It feels as though a god has descended.
That's the impression he gets from the magnificent domain. The domain shimmers with an unnatural richness, as if everything has been ground into fine gold dust and scattered into existence. The air glows with it, dense and suffocating, an opulence that demands admiration.
Ren Jiang floats at its centre tranquillity. Broad wings of gold stretch from his back, immaculate and unmoving. His armour gleams with excessive brilliance, and his golden eyes settle on Zhang Xiyu with a cold, vacant sharpness that reminds him of a dead man.
Ren Jiang, hence, looks like a polished sculpture of the god.
The god whose vast presence stands behind him.
The god's presence looms at an impossible scale, its form flickering like light behind a veil. Gold dust drifts with each slow breath it takes. It lingers there, indistinct yet undeniable, like a puppeteer half-hidden behind translucent curtains, guiding the figure before it.
A crown traces itself along its silhouette, the suggestion of a sun marking it with quiet authority.
The Sun God.
Zhang Xiyu's aura churns restlessly, but his thoughts remain clear. He lowers himself onto one knee without hesitation, head bowed in silent acknowledgment.
His fight is with Ren Jiang. Not with gods.
Right now, he can only gander a guess of what the god wants from him. The god may command him, ignore him or even kill him without a second thought. And Zhang Xiyu can do nothing about it.
Strangely, the realization settles easily.
Instead of desperation, a relieving sense of surrender flows through him. Like a child surrendering his well-being to its parent, Zhang Xiyu is not anxious about the outcome that shall befall on him.
The anxiety wouldn't help anyways. Even now, at his strongest, he might manage to kill a weakened Lord Enma but before a god, he is less than insignificant. His existence being that of an ant in front of their lives that span beyond time.
If the Sun God wished it, a single breath of true sunlight could erase him along with this entire, wretched world.
So he kneels, because expiation is the only way to survive.
"Ugh— "
Zhang Xiyu's head lifts sharply. Ren Jiang trembles where he floats, a low groan slipping through clenched teeth. Sweat gathers and falls in heavy drops, yet the rest of his body remains rigid, untouched, as if the pain belongs to someone else entirely.
The divine aura does not falter.
Only his eyes betray him.
They are the eyes of a man drowning in something far too vast to contain. His lips part, struggling around the weight inside him.
"Help… kgh—"
Help?
Zhang Xiyu rises slowly, taking a measured half-step forward. Of all people, he asks me for help?
His mind turns foggy as he slowly interprets Ren Jiang's situation and then it clicks.
Ren Jiang is unravelling.
A danger not just to others, but to himself. His mother, that obtuse power-hungry woman, allowed her sister to maliciously force Enma's core into a body never meant to hold it.
Ren Lihua hated Ren Lifen. She would never have allowed him to rise cleanly. Which means—
This is no accident. She knew that Enma's stolen core would never make Ren Jiang a king! A woman that wanted to see the ruin of both the mother and son, she would never work to make Ren Jiang even more powerful than he is.
The first son of Lord Enma…
Zhang Xiyu finally understands why the Sun God is here. Breathlessly, he speaks the impending truth.
"You are killing him."
A distant roar rumbles in the sky, drowning out Ren Jiang's pained gasps. Rising from it are muffled words that repeat on and on until they become just clear enough to interpret.
"Bring him back— "
Behind Ren Jiang, hundreds of miniature suns ignite at once, forming a burning wall that hums with restrained violence.
"—to me!"
They fall.
Explosions tear through the air in rapid succession as the spheres descend, incandescent and merciless. Zhang Xiyu moves before the first one strikes, black qi flashing through his blade as he cuts a path through fire. The bangled wrists of his domain surge forth, skeletal and elegant, reducing the suns to ash with a touch that unravels their light.
He advances as he destroys, closing the distance inch by inch.
While the prince quivers with pain, the cultivation of Lord Enma wreaks havoc upon the synergetic domains. Enma's power does not recognize nuance; it seeks only threats, and Zhang Xiyu stands at the centre of its vision.
The battle of light and darkness ensues with no holds barred.
Poisonous lotuses bloom across the domain, spreading with invasive hunger as pure destructive decay sweeps over the domain like waves of tsunami. The golden suns crash through that black sea, each impact tearing open the space between them with violent bursts of heat and ruin.
And still, Ren Jiang does not move.
As if obediently waiting for their executioner to arrive.
A blade of sunlight descends, grinding against the corroding qi of Zhang Xiyu's sword. He stands balanced on the massive hand of his shakti, robes singed and fluttering in air that burns and freezes in the same breath. His arms tremble under the pressure, the force of it threatening to tear him apart.
Then it breaks.
A bloom of yellow fire engulfs everything.
For a moment, there is only brightness—blinding, almost gentle. Ren Jiang's vision flickers, consciousness slipping in and out like a faulty flame. He cannot tell if the ghost has finally been reduced to nothing.
"Your Highness."
The voice cuts through the haze.
A sharp, metallic sound follows.
Zhang Xiyu's blade grinds against the golden wings from behind, creating sparks.
"Your brothers. Your aunt. Countless ghosts."
He withdraws, landing lightly as Ren Jiang turns, face twisted into something between fury and ruin.
"And now," Zhang Xiyu adds, almost pleasantly, "I can name at least two gods who want you dead."
He raises his sword, posture settling into readiness.
"Only your father begs for your life."
Ren Jiang's gaze burns, but Zhang Xiyu only straightens, unbothered.
"They all turn to me." he says, voice softening into something edged with mockery. "Praying my magnanimous blade falls in their favour."
"Tell me… whose wish should I grant?"
Ren Jiang tries to move but is wings resist him, held in place as the bangled hands of shakti unfurl behind him in a grotesque tapestry. They close in, pinning him like an insect caught in a web.
Then they drag him down.
The hands drag his body down the venomous sea that holds the essence of destruction. A power just as important as creation.
The prince struggles against their grip while the image of Zhang Xiyu merely looking at him sink burns behind his eyes. With growing agitation, the wings shoot out its feathers of golden fire. They tear toward Zhang Xiyu from below, fast and vicious, but his steps remain measured, slipping between each strike with an ease that borders on indifference.
Below, Ren Jiang burns.
The solar cocoon reignites around him, devouring the encroaching dark as he forces his way upward. The sea hisses and recoils, parting just enough for him to ascend.
In a single, violent motion, he breaks free and surges back into the sky, trailing fire.
With his broadsword reappearing in his hand, he lunges at Zhang Xiyu with swiftness.
Steel meets steel. They came at each other in a seamless violence – thrust folding into lunge, lunge into parry, each motion colliding with enough earth-shattering force.
Ren Jiang's foot snaps upward.
Zhang Xiyu takes the blow to his ribs, does not let go, does not even flinch. His grip on Ren Jiang's knee tightens. His other hand finds Ren Jiang's throat.
The decay in Ren Jiang's chest closes. His lungs compress, his heart stutters.
His body convulses, divine radiance flaring violently as his clawed hand shoots up, seizing Zhang Xiyu's arm with desperate strength.
The bone cracks.
Zhang Xiyu's face does not change. He releases Ren Jiang's knee, catches the clawed hand, and breaks it. One finger. Two. Three. The bones snap in sequence, each crack a punctuation mark. Ren Jiang's scream tears through the air.
Using the ruined hand as leverage, he pivots low, sweeping Ren Jiang's legs out from under him. The moment his balance falters, Zhang Xiyu drives his elbow down into his chest. Each strike carried a wave of decay that sank into the stolen core like acid into flesh.
Ren Jiang's body strains against it. Until it can no longer stand it.
In that moment of desperation, the core remembers its belongings. It recalls the old invocations; the chants etched into it long before it was torn away and forced into this flesh.
It does not belong here, yet it recognizes fragments of authority, distorted echoes of its true master. Gifted once to Lord Enma by a higher hand, it still clings to that lineage, distorted as it is.
And so, it accepts Ren Jiang.
Not fully, not faithfully. But enough.
A low hum builds in his throat, alien and intrusive. His lips part against his will as the chant spills out, each syllable dragged from him like something being exhumed.
The hands of shakti react before Zhang Xiyu can.
They close around him in a sudden, protective bloom, folding over one another to shield him from what they sense but cannot name. Through the narrow gaps between their fingers, he watches something speak through him.
He watches Ren Jiang summon a divine weapon, an Astra.