Qianye couldn’t see through the entire army, so he had no idea what was going on on the other side. However, it seemed the beasts and the natives weren’t friendly at all. It was no exception near the Pond of Life.

The Pond of Life surged as a desire-awakening tide arrived yet again. This time, the covered surface area wasn’t just around the boundary line. It washed deep into the forest, toppling thousands upon thousands of natives in the blink of an eye. The distant giant was furious, but nothing it did was working. No matter how many natives it dispatched, they would all be toppled by a single wave.

The six-armed giant roared ferociously but finally withdrew his troops away from the border. That clash alone had cost hundreds of four-arms and tens of thousands of two-arms.

Even the bad-tempered giant had no choice but to compromise in the face of such losses, giving up on charging the Pond of Life.

Qianye crouched low and retracted his aura while moving. Two more waves washed over him after the native army’s temporary retreat, but the intensity was much weaker. Qianye managed to tide over them without making a sound.

There were natives rolling about on the ground along the border. Qianye was channeling Bloodline Concealment amidst all the chaos, so searching for him with perception alone would be extremely difficult.

The existence in the water seemed fairly tired. It merely scanned the area a couple of times for Qianye and turned silent after failing to find him.

Qianye slowly approached the Pond of Life and crept along the water, slowly leaving the natives’ encirclement. The night was young, and he had lots of time to spare.

…

In a stone-forest that resembled a thousand needles pointing at the sky, two figures were contending with the natives. One of them looked nimble and delicate but attacked with extreme force; even the four-armed warriors couldn’t stand after a single blow. The other was as swift as lightning and shrouded in icy energy. She was just a beat faster than all the natives in her wake, cutting them down in mere moments.

These two were Ji Tianqing and Li Kuanglan. They never went back to the fortress after scattering that day, but now, they had appeared near the Pond of Life.

The lay of the land was complicated inside the stone forest, with pillars of rock forming natural obstructions. The two ladies were like fish in water, attacking and retreating at will as they felled hundreds of natives.

Despite that, their expressions were pretty bad. After killing yet another two-armed soldier, Li Kuanglan said, “This won’t do, there are too many of them.”

“Persevere.” Ji Tianqing continued fighting in silence after saying this.

Li Kuanglan wasn’t willing to stay quiet. “We should’ve escaped to the fortress, yet you had to come here.”

Ji Tianqing said angrily, “This is our only chance at survival, that’s the result of our divination. You agreed to it as well, didn’t you?”

“My divination skills…” Li Kuanglan sighed while slas.h.i.+ng backward at a two-armed man. “Well, we’re here anyway. I just hope… he managed to escape.”

“I hope so too.”

The two grew weaker after a while of fighting. A blus.h.i.+ng Ji Tianqing glanced toward the Pond of Life but quickly turned back and continued fighting.

“What are you scared about?” Li Kuanglan chuckled.

“You’re still laughing?” Ji Tianqing asked unceremoniously.

“The Pond of Life was never a secret, why are you hesitating?”

“Humph, it’s easy to say. Why don’t you try?”

“We can compete with the natives in willpower.”

Ji Tianqing said with a strange expression, “It was never a problem, but now… I’m not that confident.”

“Shall we take a chance?”

Ji Tianqing shook her head. “No, I don’t want that kind of ending if we lose.”

Li Kuanglan glanced at the myriad of beasts and natives near the pond and went pale at the thought. “I don’t want that, either, so let’s fight to the end!”

The sword in her grasp was damaged in many places and looked like it would break before long. Just from the state of her weapon, one could easily see how intense the fighting had been. Li Kuanglan sighed, saying, “We might be able to approach the Pond of Life if we hadn’t done that, right?”

“We wouldn’t be alive if we hadn’t done that. Are you regretting it?”

“Of course not.”

A continuous stream of two-armed and four-armed natives entered the stone forest, and there was no telling when it would end. The two of them couldn’t approach the Pond of Life, and seeing that ma.s.sive figure in the distance, they also had to give up on breaking out of the encirclement. All they could do was fight on in frustration.

Unknowingly the two of them had been forced to fight back-to-back in order to resist the unending attacks. The wounds on their bodies were also growing in number. Ji Tianqing felt her movements growing painful and her breathing labored. Li Kuanglan found her sword getting progressively heavier, to the point where it was difficult to even keep it in her hand.

She sighed. “The six-arm general chasing after us is already this powerful. The one hunting him down is so much bigger. Do you think he can escape?”

“He will! Our man is, of course, the most awesome person.” Ji Tianqing’s mood improved quite a bit and there was even a bit of joy in her tone.

Li Kuanglan’s heart sank, and her expression never improved. The two had been fighting together all this time and knew each other very well. She was clear that Ji Tianqing was out of origin power. If she had any tricks up her sleeve, she would’ve used it by now. There were no reinforcements coming to their aid since the Great Maelstrom was isolated from the outside world.

Perhaps she was already preparing her final killing move.

Li Kuanglan was shaken as she thought of those words just now. “Yeah, our man…”

There was no need to hide anything anymore at this point. Li Kuanglan prepared an origin grenade, planning to kill herself before falling in battle. She refused to be captured alive or let the natives obtain her corpse.

Ji Tianqing likely possessed something similar as well.

It was at this time that an extraordinary fluctuation of origin power arrived from the distance. It was mysterious yet distinct, sharp yet gentle, full of conflicting sensations yet didn’t feel artificial.

As experts, Li Kuanglan and Ji Tianqing possessed sharp senses even on the verge of death. Both of them glanced toward the source at the same time.

In the distance, the six-armed giant’s figure towered over them like a mountain.

All of a sudden, a faintly discernible wisp of black energy spun around the giant’s neck.

A red line appeared around the neck of that six-armed monstrosity. Then, its ma.s.sive head slowly slid away and fell to the ground.

Li Kuanglan and Ji Tianqing were stunned. The six-armed giant… was dead?

For a moment, they had thought that the giant was about to perform some kind of earth-shattering attack and kill them.

“Boom!” Only when that towering frame collapsed did the two girls realize that their enemy was truly dead.

However, a question appeared in their minds: how did it die?

This six-armed giant had joined the chase mid-way. It was a bit smaller than the one chasing Qianye, only reaching up to the latter’s shoulders, but it was more than enough to force the ladies into dire straits.

It was tall, strong, and immensely powerful. Living in the high-gravity region year long made sure that its body was as hard as steel and knew no fatigue. It also happened to know tracking methods that were impossible to counter. Such an enemy was almost invincible. Even though Ji Tianqing was well-experienced and Li Kuanglan had been testing her blade throughout the land, neither of the two had faced a situation where they could neither beat nor flee from the enemy.

Now, the monstrosity was dead, and the process was so simple that it felt like a child’s game.

That black energy flew about and transformed into a giant sickle in the grasp of an indescribable woman. With her dancing black hair and bottomless deep eyes, her appearance could only be summarized as perfect.

The duo’s hearts skipped a beat when they saw this lady. A name escaped from both their lips: Nighteye!

All the young top experts of the Empire knew Nighteye. Her fame didn’t just come from her vampire primo status, nor was it born of her unmatched beauty—it was mostly because of Qianye and his shocking fury. Because of that ma.s.sacre in the city of Indomitable, one of the most powerful geniuses of the Empire, and someone with great potential at that, was driven out.

Even today, people were still debating about Qianye’s treason. If the military hadn’t broken the rules and captured Nighteye, perhaps Qianye would be a pillar shouldering part of the Empire’s burdens. Many voices still believed that, as a vampire, Qianye was bound to be disloyal to the human race. Why otherwise would the founding emperor not tolerate the vampires? He would even kill his own son if the latter were tainted.

To most of the girls in the Empire, however, Qianye was a heroic figure who would sacrifice everything for love. He was like a bright flag fluttering in their hearts, one that would never fade away. As the heroine of this story, Nighteye was the target of many a girl’s envy.

But the current Nighteye wasn’t anything like the two girls had imagined. Why would she have fallen into Li Fengshui’s hands if she could kill a six-armed giant in one strike?

While they were going over their misgivings, the giant had fallen entirely.

Their greatest enemy was gone, but the two girls weren’t in a better situation. The two-armed natives were still attacking with all their might, and there was no chaos because of the giant’s death. There were native warriors everywhere in the stone forest, numbering in the tens of thousands. They would be half dead from exhaustion even if all of them stood there waiting to be killed.

With a flicker, Nighteye’s figure appeared in the air about a hundred meters away. The two girls were stunned because they recognized this move as Qianye’s trademark skill, Spatial Flash. Why did she know this skill?

Nighteye looked down from above with an expression full of mockery and disdain. Her eyes almost seemed to say, “You’ll die if you’re not smart enough!”

Nighteye was holding a young girl in one hand and a shockingly large scythe in the other. She whispered something to the la.s.s, who then nodded and blew hard toward the ground.

In the blink of an eye, Ji Tianqing felt all her hair standing on end. Under the stimulation of impending death, countless pieces of fragmented information and imagery came together. “That’s Zhuji! Hold your breath and protect your body!”

The girls used their last bit of origin power to s.h.i.+eld themselves, blocking the breeze outside. Even when that gentle wind had subsided, they didn’t dare release their barriers until they were completely out of origin power.

At this point, the stone forest was entirely silent with native corpses strewn across the ground.

Nighteye appeared quietly before the two girls. Intentionally or otherwise, Zhuji’s puckered mouth was always aimed at them. Being stared at by the little la.s.s felt no different from being locked onto by a void colossus; they didn’t even dare to move.

Nighteye shot them a glance, saying, “Your man is, of course, awesome, but you two… heh… are quite average.”

With that, Nighteye’s figure blurred into a Spatial Flash. No one knew how far she had gone.