Chapter 485 – A Return to the Jade Capital, Blossoms Bloom Twice - Part 1

You’ve got to be kidding me!

Wei Huosheng howled inwardly.

How could he possibly run into such terrifying opponents in this desolate backwater? That massive golden hand didn’t show the slightest flaw. No tricks, no finesse, just raw, brutal force, relentlessly slamming down again and again without pause or deviation.

A Heaven Soul with no discernible rank! And another Earth Soul hiding in the shadows!

Wei Huosheng suddenly realized what he was dealing with, and a bitter smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

The truth was, each of the Three Souls had their own strengths depending on the stage of development, but there was also a sort of rock-paper-scissors dynamic between them.

The Human Soul created realms. Within those realms, every fabricated lifeform could manifest a fraction of the cultivator’s power.

The Earth Soul gave rise to ghostly avatars, unpredictable and wildly diverse. Their illusions and tricks could send even the sharpest foes spinning in circles, like a ghost toying with a man, before delivering the killing blow.

The Heaven Soul, meanwhile, birthed divine manifestations. It was colossal, powerful, and brimming with devastating force. Each strike could level mountains and shatter rivers. The only downside? They were slow.

So under equal conditions, the mighty but sluggish Heaven Soul was often played to death by the phantasmal Earth Soul. But that same Earth Soul could easily be overwhelmed by the swarming legions conjured by a Human Soul.

And while the Human Soul might flood the field with creation, it still couldn’t face down the sheer power of the Heaven Soul in a head-on fight, though at least it could still run.

It must be one of those ancient monsters, half-awakened from their slumber. One Heaven Soul and one Earth Soul just to ambush me? I must’ve really made an impression.

Accepting the reality, Wei Huosheng clenched his teeth and endured the onslaught, even as his mind raced, analyzing, calculating, and searching for the tiniest sliver of a countermeasure.

One second, I was in the bustling heart of Bloomtown... and the next, I was yanked into this godforsaken place. My Earthfire Sword vanished. I clearly escaped, yet somehow ended up right back here. All of that...must be the Earth Soul cultivator’s doing. And whatever it is, it’s likely connected to the strange happenings in that town.

His thoughts darted like lightning. Then, as he took in the strange iron doors scattered across this barren land, his heart jolted. He’d figured it out.

It’s the doors! As long as I avoid the places with doors, the Earth Soul cultivator’s influence should weaken.

But while Wei Huosheng was thinking, that golden hand never stopped.

In just a few fleeting moments, he was slammed back into the ground and forced to spit out another mouthful of blood. The crimson glow surrounding his body dimmed significantly.

The once cold and detached look in his eyes shifted, now burning with determination and fury.

“You old bastards ambushing a junior, have you no shame?!”

With that shout, the crimson aura around him flared violently. From his sleeve flew three bronze banners, each about the length of a forearm. They spun through the air like ribbons of light and wrapped themselves around him, whose hair was now wild and unkempt.

BOOM!

Li Yuan brought his hands together once more. But this time, he felt like he’d struck a solid hunk of unyielding iron.

𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The copper banners flared brilliantly, forming a shimmering barrier of light, but then came a faint

crack!

Clearly, Li Yuan’s force was not something this defense could endure forever.

But it was enough.

Wei Huosheng seized the moment and burst out.

This time, he didn’t repeat his earlier mistake by fleeing blindly. Instead, he dashed toward the open space, heading for an area devoid of any kind of door.

Above him, the thousand-foot-tall golden giant loomed, hand raised to crush.

Wei Huosheng clenched his jaw and summoned the twin flows of Yin-Yang energy around him, twisting through the air in a lightning-fast arc. He barely slipped past the descending blow, then with a deft turn mid-air, he landed directly on the back of the giant’s hand.

In that moment, something surged inside him, a flicker of the fire from his younger days. He was weaponless, but the three bronze banners remained.

The trio of banners split apart from their swirling formation, snapping into a wide triangle. Arcs of light connected them like cords of fate.

Wei Huosheng streaked across the back of the giant's hand like a thunderbolt, charging up its arm with blazing speed.

His eyes locked onto the giant’s head. Around him, the banners spun in formation like a storm of lightning.

Then came a fierce, unyielding roar.

“You want to crawl back from the dead? Let me send you back where you belong!!”

BOOM!

The giant’s golden palm faltered for a split second, then suddenly tensed. The muscles on the back of the hand surged violently, and with a flex, it launched Wei Huosheng skyward.

He shot through the air, tumbling high enough to come face to face with the giant’s enormous visage.

A tiny, bloodied figure...now eye to eye with the golden colossus.

In that weightless moment, time seemed to slow.

His crimson armor was shattered. Blood soaked every inch of him. But Wei Huosheng’s eyes, once cold and distant, now burned with unwavering focus.

“Merge.” His voice was calm now. But within that calm, the three banners exploded outward, creating not openness, but a strange, intense containment.

From within, red light surged like the first break of dawn. Sparks erupted from his body, crackling outward, only to be absorbed and crushed by the enclosing banners. The energy grew more focused, more compressed.

And then ferocious beasts, miniature and ablaze, began to materialize. Thick black smoke poured out in waves, filling the space between the banners. It became a world unto itself, roiling smoke, and wild beasts sketched in fire and ash.

Wei Huosheng’s form disappeared completely.

“Open!”

With that single word, the sealed banners split. A seam of light cut through the darkness.

From that narrow breach, the horde of flaming beasts burst forth, soaring straight for the golden giant’s face.

As they crossed the banner’s boundary, the once-miniature creatures swelled in size, enlarging with terrifying speed.

The explosion of force, the sheer number, the speed...it was like dozens of third rank powerhouses striking at once, all converging on the colossus’s face.

But the golden giant had been ready.

Its mouth opened wide and spat out a blast of withered flame.

Compressed, violent, and narrow like a high-pressure jet of flame, it tore through the air like a flamethrower fueled by rage.

Fire collided with fire.

The beast tide met the inferno mid-air, the sky erupting into a duel of crimson and white, two pillars of blazing force clashing head-on.

For a moment, the heavens held their breath. Then, obliteration. The beast tide was wiped out. But it wasn’t over.

From within the fading smoke, one final beast emerged. It was an ethereal shadow, cast in bronze, charging forward with all the fury of a dying world.

Li Yuan’s breath of flame ran dry. Then, without hesitation, he opened his jaws wide and bit down on the beast’s phantom. At the same time, he summoned the withered flame within his body, blasting it toward the bronze beast-shadow from all directions, trying to consume it completely.

Moments later, the beast disintegrated into ash and smoke.

Wei Huosheng froze, his bronze banners still whirling around him with a shrill cry.

He didn’t wait; he turned and ran.

But the golden giant’s massive hand had already finished its motion. One sweep, one slap, one crushing blow—

BOOM!

Wei Huosheng was smashed out of the sky, slammed down into the earth with a deafening crash.

The surrounding forests quaked. The ground split open in jagged cracks stretching for miles.

Mountain peaks fractured and collapsed. Boulders tumbled. The earth split with crevices deeper than ten men tall.

Then, with a sudden grasp, the five colossal fingers clenched, trapping Wei Huosheng tightly in the giant’s palm. Only his head jutted out, gasping for breath.

The giant’s thumb hovered directly above his skull. A gentle press was all it would take to drive his head into the palm, and reduce it to ash in the flame now smoldering across the giant’s golden body.

Li Yuan stared coldly at the speck of a man trapped in his hand, no more than a wriggling ant.

Watch the words. Watch the moves. Listen to the thoughts. Go with the flow.

Cunning was never some deliberate strategy, but rather a matter of striking when the opponent was down, of pushing the current when the river was already flowing.

At this moment, Li Yuan made his judgment.

He spoke, his voice ancient, raspy, laced with curses and chill as ice, “Send them a message for me. Betrayal always comes with a price.”

Wei Huosheng blinked. “You’re letting me go?”

CRACK!

Li Yuan’s fingers pressed down. A torrent of desiccated flame erupted from between the cracks in his palm.

This was everything he had left.

But Wei Huosheng was not so easy to kill.

Though completely bound, the three bronze banners still clung to him like a second skin, shielding him with all their strength.

Now, it was a battle of raw force. No tricks. No words. Just who could last longer.

Seconds dragged into minutes.

The chaos of the battle finally drew attention from Bloomtown.

Figures soared into the sky, stopping several miles away from the battleground, afraid to come any closer. From afar, they could only watch the scene with hearts pounding and souls trembling.

“What kind of monster is that?!”

“That’s no monster... That’s a god. A thousand foot divine being.”

“And in its hand...that looks like Lord Wei.”

Their brief exchange was filled with dread and helplessness.

No one dared approach.

Among them, two men in crimson armor, clearly not from the Lotus Cult, stood in shocked silence.

On the streets below, Peng Mi masked his terror with a poorly concealed sense of glee.

But another man, his face disfigured and hidden beneath red robes, narrowed his eyes slightly. Quietly, he slipped behind the others.

His name was Fang Jianlong.

He had journeyed from the southern territories to the Jade Capital, and later followed the retreat of the Lotus Cult to Bloomtown. Now, he served as an elder of the Red Lotus Cult.

But at this moment, he felt something was very wrong.

The world was changing. High rank meat fields were appearing everywhere. There was no reason to stake his life here.

He made his decision. He would leave. Disappear. Live as a nobody if he had to. That still beat dying for nothing in a clash between monsters.

With that, he sped up, quietly ducked into his home, grabbed the bag he’d long since packed, and slipped away under cover.

He had barely gotten far when a thunderous explosion split the air like the sky itself had cracked open.

With a

boom

, the sound slammed into everyone’s eardrums like a knife, leaving their heads buzzing in its wake.

The golden giant had crushed Wei Huosheng. Just like that. The two men in red robes didn’t hesitate; they turned and fled.

But perhaps realizing that flying through open sky made them too easy a target, they quickly dropped to the ground and tried to make their escape on foot.

It was a reasonable choice.

Unfortunately, in the world of an Earth Soul cultivator,

reasonable

was exactly the kind of behavior that got a person killed.