Dragonblood: Book 2 of the Coiling Dragon Saga

by Wo Chi Xi Hong Shi

  “Bam!”

  The nine mirages spun their spears in different ways, then thrust their spears at Linley.

  Originally, Linley had only seen nine spears, but after those spears coiled about mysteriously, suddenly, it seemed as though the entire world was filled with countless spear-shadows.

  An infinite number of spear-shadows, giving Linley no place to run.

  “Haha…” Linley laughed loudly, while at the same time, he himself transformed into a whirlwind of action. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Linley’s entire body had turned into a spinning tornado, and surrounding that spinning tornado were countless flashes of that devilish purple light.

  Those countless spear-shadows were all blocked by those countless flashes of violet light.

  McKenzie was stunned.

  “Tornado Technique – Shatter!”

  Linley roared loudly, and then he slammed towards McKenzie as though he were a giant warhammer. In the blink of an eye, that Bloodviolet sword in his hand seemed to have transformed into ten thousand different swords.

  Those sword strikes all seemed so light and graceful, but when they collided against McKenzie’s spear, McKenzie felt as though they each had the power of a thunderbolt.

  Wielding something light as though it were heavy!

  “Bam!” “Bam!” “Bam!” “Bam!”

  Linley’s entire body had been transformed into a tornado, and McKenzie had a feeling as though the heavens themselves were aiding Linley. The strangest thing was, it seemed as though the sword in Linley’s hand could disappear then reappear at will.

  Under these repeated assault, McKenzie was forced down to the ground from the sky.

  “Bam!”

  McKenzie landed heavily on the ground, and the earth around him cracked as dust swirled up everywhere. The flames atop of McKenzie’s body began to burn even hotter, and the warlike look in his eyes only grew wilder.

  Linley landed heavily on the ground as well. Covered in azure-black battle-qi, the aura Linley gave off was totally opposite compared to McKenzie’s.

  One was domineering and tyrannical. The other was dark and mysterious.

  McKenzie lowered his head to glance at his chest.

  Fresh blood oozed out from beneath his clothes, and then evaporated under the intense heat of the flames. But McKenzie’s bloodstained clothes indicated that he clearly had been wounded.

  “Linley, I could understand your movements, but there was one thing I couldn’t understand. How could that Bloodviolet Godsword of yours fuse with the wind so well?” McKenzie was a very experienced Saint-level combatant.

  The level of ‘impose’ was that of using the imposing force of the heavens and the earth.

  But the amount of natural force that Linley had used to support his attack was truly frightening.

  “Of course there is a limit to the amount of energy which the heavens and earth can loan you. As for the reason why you had such trouble defending…” Smiling, Linley lifted Bloodviolet into the air, and it suddenly, bizarrely, began to curve about every which way.

  If you wanted a sword to be sufficiently hard and sharp, one of the pre-requisites for that was that the sword would not be able to be very flexible.

  “This… this is a flexible sword?” McKenzie was very surprised.

  Just then, when Linley exchanged blows with him, he had used Bloodviolet to attack in curving arcs. However, due to Linley’s usage of ‘impose’, the impression that McKenzie had gotten was that the sword would suddenly disappear, then appear from somewhere else.

  This was another way one could use ‘impose’.

  “Right. This is a flexible sword,” Linley said.

  “But how can a flexible sword fight head-on against my Azureflame spear?” McKenzie was very shocked.

  The reason why a flexible sword could straighten and be hard was because of battle-qi. But how could a weapon that relied on battle-qi to become straight be comparable to a weapon that was straight to begin with?

  McKenzie’s Azureflame spear was also a very precious spear.

  “This is a divine artifact.” Linley didn’t hide anything.

  “A divine artifact.” McKenzie nodded in amazement, and then laughed loudly. “Wonderful. Linley, next I will use my ultimate attack. Be careful.”

  “I have a special attack that I haven’t used either.” Linley was very confident as well.

  Right now, both men were on the ground, staring at each other.

  “Haaaargh!”

  McKenzie suddenly began to move. He lifted the spear in his hands, pointing it at the sky. Suddenly, with McKenzie as the focal point, an endless wave of flame began to spew out in every direction.

  In the blink of an eye, within several hundred meters, everything had turned into a world of flame.

  Linley was surrounded and caged in as well. His dark golden eyes watched emotionlessly. Within this World of Flames, McKenzie’s image appeared everywhere, along with his spear.

  Oppressive!

  This World of Flames seemed to be suppressing Linley, and there was no ‘imposing force’ Linley could draw upon.

  “Rumble…” One indistinct spear after another suddenly pierced through the air, thrusting towards Linley. Combined, they formed a seemingly very real fire dragon, which was coiling forth from the flames and roaring at Linley.

  And at the same time…

  Behind Linley as well, McKenzie bizarrely appeared out of nowhere as he thrust the spear in his hands toward Linley.

  One in front, one from behind. Linley had nowhere to run.

  “Rippling Wind!”

  Linley began to move, and the Bloodviolet flexible sword in his hands suddenly transformed into countless vipers, colliding and striking against the various spear-shadows that were attacking from all around him. Each time his sword struck against a spear, there was a thunderous boom. That astonishingly powerful fire dragon seemed to have been surrounded and wrapped around by a large number of enormous pythons, and as the pythons constricted it, it exploded violently.

  “Slash!” McKenzie’s spear thrust out towards Linley from behind.

  But that Bloodviolet flexible sword very nimbly and agilely curved backwards, blocking the spear. As the flexible sword bounced off the spear, Linley too immediately went flying backwards, moving farther away from McKenzie.

  “Bam!” “Bam!” “Bam!” “Bam!”

  To his astonishment McKenzie had discovered that the area around Linley seemed to have suddenly given birth to wild gusts of wind, while the Bloodviolet sword in Linley’s hands seemed to have turned into a violet bolt of thunder, striking in every direction. In the blink of an eye, his World of Flames had been broken open.

  Linley had already located McKenzie.

  “Whoosh!” “Whoosh!” “Whoosh!” The Bloodviolet sword in Linley’s hands would appear and disappear at random. In McKenzie’s eyes, all he could see were countless sword tips stabbing towards him.

  It was simply too fast. So fast that McKenzie wasn’t able to block them all, and his only option was to rouse his battle-qi to defend against it.

  Countless sword tips pierced against his protective layer of battle-qi, and each blow contained an astonishing amount of force. With a sudden exploding sound, that layer of battle-qi blew apart, the force of it causing the earth to rumble, creating ten terrifyingly deep canyons in the ground, dust flying everywhere.

  After a long period of time, the dust finally settled down.

  McKenzie’s clothes were completely ruined, unsightly beyond repair.

  McKenzie glanced at Linley. Chuckling, he nodded. “I lose.”

  But Linley stared suspiciously at McKenzie. “McKenzie, why were all the spear-shadows in your world of flames so weak and illusionary? My sword easily broke every one of them. If all of those attacks were real, I would have lost.”

  Linley had already reached a very high level of understanding. He could tell that those spear-shadows were definitely capable of becoming real a
ttacks. In other words, those countless spear-shadows could all be real spears. It would have been very difficult for him to block them, if that were the case. But just then, he had easily broken every single spear-shadow.

  “Haha, if all of them were real, then I would be a peak-stage Saint-level expert.” McKenzie laughed. “My current World of Flames can only reach this current level.”

  “How is it that your Rippling Wind technique can be so fast? It was even more terrifying than what you were using when we started.” McKenzie asked in puzzlement.

  Linley explained, “When we first started to fight, I was only borrowing the imposing force of the wind. As for the Rippling Wind technique, that was part of the insights I gained with regards to the Profound Truths of the Wind. The sword can become one with the wind, and wherever the wind is, the sword can appear.”

  The Rippling Wind was indeed fast. Terrifyingly fast.

  Linley was only able to develop this terrifying technique thanks to the unique properties of the Bloodviolet sword. Using Bloodviolet with this technique, it wouldn’t be hard for Linley to produce over ten million sword attacks in the blink of an eye.

  145

  The Magicite Core

  “Wherever the wind is, the sword can appear!”

  Hearing these words, McKenzie was truly shocked. If he hadn’t personally sparred with Linley, upon hearing these words, McKenzie would have taken them to be an empty boast. But just then, he himself had sensed the terrifying speed of those sword attacks, which had reached a speed that was ten, no, a hundred times faster than his own.

  There was no way for him to block them, and so he had to rely on his battle-qi to defend against it.

  To be forced to such a state, McKenzie was thoroughly convinced of Linley’s superiority.

  “Linley, you spoke of merging and becoming one with the wind. I… do not understand what you mean,” McKenzie said, frowning slightly.

  Linley didn’t try to hide anything. Laughing, he said, “McKenzie, you must understand, the wind itself is invisible and formless, but it can be both as fast as the lightning, or utterly slow and calm. My ‘Profound Truths of the Wind’ is, in truth, based on that small amount of insight I have gained into the Laws of the Wind.”

  “The Laws.” McKenzie’s eyes were filled with admiration. “The highest of truths.”

  Every sort of elemental Law was extremely profound and mysterious. In truth, if one could master and understand a sufficiently large amount of one of these Laws, then one’s soul would totally merge with the ‘elemental world’ and crystallize into a divine spark, allowing one to reach the Deity level.

  As for Linley, he had just barely scratched the surface of these Laws.

  Whether it was the ‘Profound Truths of the Earth’ or the ‘Profound Truths of the Wind’, Linley had only understood the smallest portion, like a single drop of water in an endless sea.

  “By merging with the wind, my sword can appear wherever the wind is. But this sort of technique has a very high requirement with regards to the composition of the sword itself, because it requires the sword to almost instantly move from one place to another, causing the sword to come under enormous stress.” Linley smirked. “If there was no such requirement or drawback, then wouldn’t I be able to essentially teleport myself around by merging into the wind?”

  Linley could indeed merge with the wind, but his body simply couldn’t handle the amount of speed and stress it would suffer from teleportation-like movement speeds.

  “Haha, teleportation, eh? Even Deity-level combatants are not capable of such a thing.” McKenzie sighed.

  No matter how powerful an expert was, even one such as the War God, they could at most move as fast as lightning. No one was capable of teleportation. Although people often talked about ‘teleportation’, that was just how the weak described the high-speed movements of Saint-level experts who did battle.

  Saint-level experts were simply too fast. Those ordinary people could only see that the Saint-level experts were sometimes here, and other times there. They took this to be teleportation.

  In truth, there was no such thing as teleportation.

  Even if there was, it wasn’t something that the likes of the War God was capable of.

  “McKenzie, what about that technique of yours? What was that all about? Just now, I couldn’t sense you at all. I felt as though all of those countless spear-shadows surrounding me were real,” Linley stared at McKenzie questioningly as well.

  When Saint-level experts sparred, it did indeed help them learn more and faster. Naturally, Linley wouldn’t give up this opportunity by being shy about asking.

  McKenzie laughed. “Actually, this sort of attack is a fairly common one. Generally speaking, most peak-stage Saint-level combatants use such an attack.”

  “Oh?” Linley looked at McKenzie in astonishment.

  “In the past, during the War God’s battle with the High Priest, many experts witnessed the terrifying power of a Deity’s “Godrealm”. Afterwards, many Saint-level combatants wanted to create an attack that could duplicate the effect of a Godrealm. In truth, that attack I used just now was a sort of ‘Pseudo-Realm’ attack.” McKenzie laughed at himself self-deprecatingly.

  Linley continued to look at McKenzie.

  What Linley wanted to know was the underlying principles behind this sort of attack.

  “Actually, this sort of attack is extremely wasteful,” McKenzie said emotionally. “For example, I myself am a practitioner walking on the path of understanding the ‘Laws of Fire’.”

  Every Saint-level practitioner had their own paths to understanding the various Laws. Only, they would all focus on different types of Laws.

  “This attack, the ‘Pseudo-Realm’, basically forces one to blast out all of one’s battle-qi, while at the same time summoning and igniting all of the surrounding area’s fire elemental essence, causing everything within a hundred meters to turn into a sea of flame. Because my own battle-qi has merged with the fire elemental essence, this causes the entire sea of flame to be imprinted with my own aura, making you unable to detect where my true body is located.”

  “However, my control is insufficient. I can only control my battle-qi to form a single true attack from the elemental essence. If I were able to control all the other spear-shadows and change them into real attacks, you would be in a great deal of trouble.” McKenzie laughed.

  Linley was beginning to understand.

  The underlying principles of this technique were quite simple. The difficulty lay in the control of elemental essence.

  For example, ‘impose’ was just borrowing on the natural force of the heavens, but this ‘Pseudo-Realm’ was different. It required complete control! Generally speaking, it was impossible for a Saint-level to fully control all the elemental essence in a given area. This was something only a Deity-level expert could perform.

  But Saint-level experts were very intelligent. By blasting out all of their battle-qi, they allowed their battle-qi to merge with the elemental essence, then used it to control the elemental essence. Although it required them to use a large amount of effort and battle-qi, they were able to just barely create this ‘Pseudo-Realm’.

  But despite that, its control over elemental essence was far inferior to that of the ‘Godrealm’ technique.

  Linley had personally experienced how the King of Killers, Cesar, had used the power of his Godrealm to freeze both Linley as well as the peak-stage Saint-level expert, Stehle, in the blink of an eye, causing them both to be unable to move.

  That sort of control over elemental essence was absolutely terrifying.

  Compared to it, the ‘Pseudo-Realm’ was far weaker.

  “This Pseudo-Realm does have its strong points. Although it consumes a huge amount of battle-qi, as long as one is at a high level of understanding, one can suddenly create ten million attacks out of nowhere. In addition, it also allows one to hide one’s body. It is more powerful than my own ‘Rippling Wind’ technique. The o
nly weakness is that it uses up too much battle-qi, and is very wasteful.”

  But then, Linley quickly shook his head.

  “No. This is simply a clever little technique to mimic the Godrealm ability. Although it is a test of a person’s ability to control elemental essence, it has virtually nothing to do with a person’s actual level of understanding with regards to the Laws.” Linley believed that this was definitely a wrong path of training, not a correct path.

  Earth, fire, wind, water. Each had its own Laws, such as the Laws of the Earth.

  A complete, perfect set of elemental Laws was like a complete, perfectly constructed building. Every single brick in this building was akin to one of the profound mysteries of the Laws. Each Law contained within it countless numbers of profound mysteries.

  Linley had gained insight into one particular mystery, and had developed his vibrational attack technique. This should be considered one of the higher-class mysteries of the Laws of the Earth.

  After this battle, both Linley as well as McKenzie were now in absolutely tattered clothes. But of course, only Linley’s pants were torn. The two changed their clothes, then smiling, left the mountain.

  “Squeaaaak!” On Linley’s shoulders, Bebe delightedly squeaked at McKenzie, baring his fangs. It was as though Bebe was mocking McKenzie for losing.

  “You little rascal. Jeeze…” McKenzie laughed involuntarily.

  Linley laughed as well. Per Linley’s instructions, Bebe wasn’t giving any sign that he was at the Saint level of power. Only when it was absolutely necessary would Linley reveal this trump card of his.

  Under the moonlight, the two Saint-level experts chatted and laughed on the way back to the provincial capital of Basil.

  The next morning, no matter how McKenzie tried to persuade him, Linley was still determined to head off to the imperial capital. Out of options, McKenzie personally sent them off, escorting them for over a hundred kilometers. By nightfall, the group arrived at a harbor at the Yulan river.

  Early on, McKenzie had sent people to arrange a three-story boat for Linley at the harbor.