At first, he didn't understand what the shattering in the air was. But as Daisy's fists came down, Danny watched the sky itself contract violently with the blow, and a heartbeat later, the energy erupted in every direction.
The air was compressed with brutal force, forming wall after wall of pressure that slammed into everything around it. Even thousands of meters away, Danny felt a gale rush against his face. He was fairly accomplished in martial arts, and he quickly ducked behind a tree so thick it would take a grown man's arms to encircle.
The tree shook violently, countless branches snapping off. Under Danny's tense gaze, it barely held back the lingering shockwave that stretched for kilometers.
"BOOM—!" The colossal sound arrived in its wake. The sonic blast forced Danny to cover his ears, and the gathered people of K'un-Lun did the same. Only the Yu-Ti and Lei Kung remained standing, watching.
If even the outer edges had been hit this hard, the power at the center point could only be imagined.
The sheer magnitude of Daisy's vibration this time wasn't fully absorbed even by her Vibranium bracers. Her finger bones and arm bones took a savage impact, and the fracture of several bones cut into her like a knife. But she didn't care—because this was her final strike. Whether or not she defeated the dragon no longer mattered. She had surpassed herself. She had conquered herself.
The feeling was profound beyond words, different from the enhancements of the Heart-Shaped Herb or cosmic rays. For the first time, Daisy felt the allure of combat—that joy of conquering and transcending oneself on the razor's edge between life and death.
The air shattered, the force punching through countless obstacles. The dragon Shou-Lao could no longer hold on. Wailing, he plummeted from the sky and crashed heavily into the ground.
Daisy fared little better. Her powers and stamina were utterly spent. Having fallen from a kilometer up, she now lay sprawled spread-eagled on her back, gasping for breath.
"Prepare the ceremony. A new Iron Fist is born," the Yu-Ti said to Lei Kung from where he watched in the distance.
"I understand." Lei Kung bowed and went to the ancestral shrine to retrieve the ceremonial brazier.
The Yu-Ti gazed at the distant battlefield, saying nothing.
"Elder? Are you still there? I think I won…" Daisy ached all over now, her wounds beginning to bleed again. She could no longer manage telepathic communication, so she just shouted at the top of her lungs.
By the time the Yu-Ti and Lei Kung arrived with the ceremonial implements, she was still hollering like she was on a phone call. "Elder, hello? Hello! Are you still there?"
Lei Kung's face twitched with exasperation as he helped her up.
"Shou-Lao has returned. Your ceremony should begin." The Yu-Ti remained calm. He sat cross-legged on the ground, muttering incantations, and a thing resembling a charcoal brazier began to emit faint wisps of smoke.
She had assumed a scene of gutting the dragon would follow. Daisy felt a real fondness for Shou-Lao and didn't much want to commit something so profane. To her surprise, the next step was mercifully considerate—the dragon's corpse vanished on its own, leaving only a deep-red heart floating in midair.
Good, good, Daisy thought to herself in relief. Shou-Lao had been guiding her to unlock her potential the whole time. Once she calmed down, she could see it: the dragon had been full of goodwill toward her.
If gaining power had meant rushing over to behead him, drink his blood, and skin him, her own principles wouldn't have allowed it.
Now the corpse had disappeared on its own. This was good.
She bowed deeply to the dragon's heart, then took it.
Following the Yu-Ti's instructions, she placed the heart into the brazier.
"Put both your hands in," the Yu-Ti commanded.
"Um…" she asked, a little haltingly, "this won't make some kind of dragon mark show up on my chest, will it?"
The question was important. She had to get it cleared up.
The Yu-Ti didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He thought it over. "I recall Shou-Lao mentioning that women may adjust it. The mark must appear, but you can adjust its position yourself."
Daisy took a deep breath and slowly slid her hands in.
The brazier had been wreathed in faint blue smoke, but once the heart was thrown in, it was like a bucket of oil had been poured over it. The scorching flames cast the Yu-Ti's robes in a sheet of crimson. And after Daisy put her hands in, the brazier changed again.
Both the smoke and the flame seemed to find an outlet. Following the dragon's blood and aura that clung to Daisy, they came first in thin threads, then surged into her body like rivers flowing backward upstream.
Shou-Lao's pure chi poured into her endlessly. Pure meant without a fixed attribute—though even this wasn't absolute; there would always be some measure of impurity. For the Yu-Ti and Lei Kung, this chi did more harm than good; the time spent transforming, breaking down, and expelling the impurities would be better spent cultivating their own. But for Daisy, who had been practicing chi cultivation for all of three days, that was no concern at all.
Shou-Lao's chi was gentle and vast. Through sheer volume, it neutralized the fierce, domineering nature of the Phoenix chi. Two energies, five hundred years apart, converged once more.
Unlike the previous female Iron Fist, that woman had been a Phoenix host herself, and Shou-Lao could only suppress it temporarily. Daisy had no such worry. As long as Jean lived, the trace of Phoenix Force she'd picked up off the darkened Jean would be suppressed by Shou-Lao for a very long time.
Vast amounts of pure chi were transformed, absorbed, and made part of Daisy. The chi she manifested outwardly still took the form of flame, only now with Shou-Lao acting as a regulator.
The Yu-Ti and Lei Kung exchanged a glance. They could see that Daisy's transformation rate was very fast, and the purity very high.
Unfortunately, envy could get them nothing. They watched, wide-eyed, as Daisy's chi grew vigorously, from a thread fine as hair to a winding, twisting river, and finally to a surging, roiling sea. In just ten minutes, Daisy had walked a road that many people couldn't finish in a lifetime.
Three hundred years' worth of pure chi entered her body, and Daisy felt only an indescribable bliss.
It was different from the bliss of being with her girlfriend. To force a comparison, it was like having been starving for a long time and suddenly getting a feast—a joy that seeped out from her very cells.
The exhaustion and wounds on her body healed in an instant. Her body, once weakened from heavy blood loss, returned to peak condition, and with the flood of chi, her physical condition rose another small notch.
If the Inhuman bloodline's enhancement to her body was a one, then the Heart-Shaped Herb's enhancement was a two, the baseline state of her chi was a two-point-five, and running it at full power could boost her physique to a three.
By her current standards, that was already remarkable.
The absorption and transformation of chi soon entered its final stage. Her hand bones became as hard as tempered steel, and her skin grew firmer. The Vibranium bracers could only protect her forearms—her hand bones had still been subject to the recoil. This Iron Fist enhancement thoroughly patched up her weakness.
The recoil problem was basically solved.
"Whew—!" She let out a long breath and slowly stood.
The mangled flesh of her back had fully recovered. Through her torn clothes, her skin could be seen, more crystalline and translucent than before. The tyrannical aura of the Phoenix was suppressed by Shou-Lao's power, and the violent impulses that occasionally flared in her heart subsided.
Daisy felt only a wave of calm. After two months of cultivation and effort, she had at last returned to her normal state.