Chapter 390 Tempests of Destruction

To any proud Winged, landing on the ground and stepping toe-to-toe with humans was not only dangerous but also the utmost insult.

Yet they hardly had any choice. This was the Devil. The one man who had almost decimated the Winged Legion and the rest of the Wingeds understood that any dealings with him needed to be handled subtly and delicately.

“What should we do now, sir?” an elderly Winged asked the Ninth Presbyter.

“We watch and play on for now. Lead everyone away from this place at once if things go sour; I’ll hold back the Devil to buy you time.”

The order left the lesser chieftains shocked. By “holding back”, the Ninth Presbyter was admitting that he was no match to the Devil.

“Is he really that powerful?!” gasped one of the elderly Wingeds.

“Very,” breathed the Ninth Presbyter gravely, “He’s at least on par with the Eighth Presbyter.”

It was all the elderly lesser chieftains could do to prevent from yelping with surprise loudly. As a champion merely a hair’s breadth away from breaking through the stage of Ninth-grade Winged King, he could still not yet extricate himself from the site where the rest of the Winged race was sealed.

If Chu Xun indeed wielded such might as he feared, then the company of barely two hundred Winged legionnaires would be nothing but cannon fodder to him.

“We cannot lose any more of our men, sir,” urged one of the elderly Wingeds.

Of the three hundred Winged legionnaires that managed to free themselves from the weakening forcefield that made up the magical seal that kept them locked from millennia, only two hundred remained, and any more losses, the rest of them here would not survive.

“What do you want, Devil?” seethed the Ninth Presbyter of the Winged race. It was torturous enough for him to lower his voice and speak humbly to any human. His original plan of slaying the Devil and retaking back the Reality Painting and the Suan Ni True Blood had all but ended up a messy kettle of fish.

Chu Xun looked rather surprised at the question. “Your army of Wingeds stands before my gates, and you ask me what do I want?”

Realizing his chance, Yan Chong quipped loudly, “They had even taken our treasures and valuables, Master!”

The Winged Legion stirred restlessly.

“I think a battle is inevitable, sir, whether we like it or not,” whispered an elderly Winged quietly.

“Patience. The Devil’s power is beyond our comprehension. Without anything to exploit, we need to bide our time until the Eighth Presbyter is here,” said the Ninth Presbyter.

“One enemy is one too many, Devil, while no amount of friends can be enough. Such is the world we live in. Before your return, we reigned supreme. Now that you’re back, surely we can talk things as equals?” said the Ninth Presbyter.

He waved a hand and all twenty chests reappeared.

“These are what your people had given me earlier. I now return them back to you as a gesture of good faith.”

A hint of surprise appeared on Chu Xun’s face, looking genuinely impressed.

Chu Xun rather admired this Winged for recognizing the need to face realities.

“But surely you’re resentful about my slaughtering so many of your kinsmen?”

“Deaths are all but common in battle. Nothing to fret about,” muttered the Ninth Presbyter casually.

“I guess you’re right,” said Chu Xun, as if pondering about something, “But I took the Reality Painting.”

“It’s yours. You won it by right of conquest,” said the Ninth Presbyter as a matter-of-factly.

“And what about my slaying of your Tenth Presbyter and the taking of his Suan Ni True Blood? To say nothing about the second Reality Painting that was in his keeping.”

Aghast looks of horror broke upon the face of every Winged who heard him.

So did the Ninth Presbyter too. He had been praying hard, hoping that Chu Xun would never discover the other Reality Painting in the Tenth Presbyter’s keeping. To his dismay, Chu Xun had found it and now he had two.

Chu Xun had realized the moment he took Mo Qian’s Reality Painting that it was not a full item but rather, a part of it. Hence, right after he killed the Tenth Presbyter of the Winged race and had taken his Storage Ring, he found another piece of the Reality Painting inside.

“Truth be told, the actual Reality Painting has twelve parts. You have with you only two pieces that hardly accomplish anything,” said the Ninth Presbyter, pausing to let that sink in, “Return the two pieces to me and I’d be happy to trade anything of similar value for them.”

“Well, you’re wrong. I have three,” said Chu Xun suddenly.

“Three?!” gasped the Winged presbyter with disbelief, “Mo Qian and the Tenth only had one each. From whence did you procure one more, if I may ask?”

“You should also have one, am I right?” Chu Xun’s lips curled into a devilish grin.

Spasms of shock and horror writhed upon the face of the Ninth Presbyter as he frantically summoned his powers to prepare for battle.

Grinning, Chu Xun activated his magic using his mind. The gigantic monolith of his Demon-slain Finger spell came crashing down from the sky, sending waves of shock that pulsed across the air as its gargantuan weight bore down on the Wingeds.

The Wingeds could not believe it. “What brutality is this?! The Devil is ambushing us?!”

The Ninth Presbyter screamed as his powers churned, shrouding him in a shiny white glow as winds resonating to his powers churned and billowed. With a powerful sweep, he sent as many of his men as he could, delivering them to safety from the incoming attack.

Then he amassed in his hands a bright ball of light and he thrust an arm upwards to point at the incoming monolith and bolts of white light assailed the monolith like a barrage of laser fire.

Boom! Boom!

Boom! Boom! It was no use. The monolith blew past the array of white energy lights like a locomotive and smashed down on the Ninth Presbyter, causing an explosion that kicked up waves of dust. Cracks split open on the ground and the earth trembled.

“Sir!”

Anxious and worried about his safety, the rest of the Wingeds cried to him.

Whoosh!

The auric silhouette of a demonic dragon reaching almost a dozen meters long streaked up into the air, churning up more dust and sand into the sky and forming a raging sandstorm that whipped at the earth mercilessly while whisking up every grain of sand and dirt it could find.

A monstrous-behemoth-like tornado. A natural and disastrous calamity with strength enough to rend and tear anyone into bits and pieces.

Several huge boulders from outside the compound of the Palace groaned as they resisted being drawn into the tornado. But it was no use. They floated into the air, as weightless as papers, only to be shredded by the spinning scythe-like winds that even uprooted sturdy trees as old as centuries.

Yan Chong and his companions gasped with terror. The force of the tornado was so strong that it was all they could do to prevent being drawn in. After seeing what happened to the huge boulders and tall oak trees, they knew that they would only become minced meat if they couldn’t hold on any longer.

The aura of Hong Meng Immortal Qi cloaked over Chu Xun, wrapping him in a shiny purplish glow. With three successive kicks into his men, he punted all three of them several hundred meters away before the tornado’s suction could pull them.

Rumble!

The freshly-repaired gates of the Palace toppled down. Bits and pieces of its rubble, coupled with several more flagstones ripped off the ground by the winds, got pulled into the tornado and subsequently crushed.

In the upper strata of the skies, the clouds clustered and spiraled overhead the tornado. The tornado that spanned more than ten meters wide trampled upon anything in its path of destruction like a monstrous behemoth.

Chu Xun’s clothes snapped in the roiling winds. He spied the Ninth Presbyter of the Winged race standing in the midst of the tornado, brandishing a golden feathered fan with his face filled with rancorous malice.

That reminded Chu Xun of the Bajiao Fan – the Palm-leaf Fan – of the fables that could hurl even humans for tens of thousands of miles.

Made fully of gilded tail feathers, whatever the Ninth Presbyter was wielding, it was definitely not the fabled Sacred Relic of the legends, although its powers seemed no less destructive.

Whoops and cheers of joy resounded from amongst the Winged host.

Looking noticeably pale, the usage of this powerful weapon must cost the Ninth Presbyter considerable power.

Even so, he broke into a sneer. He spread his wings and took into the air. With a powerful swing of his gilded feathered fan, he sent a gust of gale at the deadly tornado, prodding it to rumble towards Chu Xun.

Chu Xun’s eyes flared with a purplish glow as he beheld the gigantic tornado thundering his way with a casual stare.

His fingers weaved and performed several hand seals and a wisp of his Immortal Qi appeared on the ground. By the time his hand seals were done, it began burgeoning with power.

Boom! Boom!

Another dragon – this one purplish in shade and hue – shot up in a column straight to the sky. As it charged heavenward, it began to grow in size and girth. The earth groaned as if cowering in fear, causing stones and gravel on the ground to shake and the air screamed as if in fear. In its advent, even the tornado’s speed began to dwindle.

The Wingeds who had been cheering loudly lost their voices suddenly. None of them could say anything as they gawked with shock and awe.

Another spell from the Hong Meng Scripture: Tempest of the Amethyst Drake!

“Let’s see whose tornado’s better! Whether it’s yours or mine!” yelled Chu Xun confidently through the raging turbulence.

He thrust a finger at the tornado churned up by the Ninth Presbyter and the purplish dragon began spiraling wildly in circles, invoking a tornado of its own that careened off towards the first tornado.

The elderly Wingeds all watched with apprehensive dismay, so were the rest of the Winged Legion behind them.

The tornado that Chu Xun conjured thundered like a gigantic monster, stomping its way past huge boulders and tall, centuries-old trees, rending them into gravel and sawdust.

The tempests of destruction, one rotating clockwise while the other anti-clockwise, collided into each other with forces that could lay waste to the entire land.

Rumble!

Everything stopped still suddenly. The pair of tornadoes suddenly halted like a pair of gears jammed into each other, culminating in a sudden moment of peace.

The peace before the great calamity, for the ground began shaking wildly all of a sudden. Mountains that ringed around Maple Canyon began wobbling on their very foundations, nudging huge boulders off their slopes.

Chu Xun’s face contorted with horror when he realized what was going on. With speeds that matched even a lightning bolt, he sped towards his companions, screaming at the top of his voice, “RUN!”

Yan Chong and his comrades immediately turned and ran at the command. But they were too slow and Chu Xun had to kick them again into the air, launching them like cannonballs several kilometers away.

“RETREAT!”

The Ninth Presbyter howled to his men as well, beating his wings desperately to flee.

Boom! Boom!

The two tornadoes burst open with a crack as deafening as Heaven breaking asunder and an eruption as powerful as a pair of nuclear detonations, sending death sweeping towards all directions.

“RUN! RUN! FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR LIVES, RUN!”

The blasts terrified the Wingeds enough for even the elderly lesser chieftains to scream with panic. As the pulses of destruction came rippling forth, the Wingeds could feel how dangerous it was just by the way their feathers were standing on ends in extreme fear as they flapped their wings as quickly as they could to flee.

But the ripples of devastation came too quick and lethal; every tree, rocks, knolly mounds in their path were reduced into charred soot and ashes.

“ARGGHH!”

Those who were too slow to fly could only turn back and shriek helplessly as the waves engulfed them.

Some of the elderly Wingeds backtracked, trying to help their younger kin. But it was too late. They watched with their own eyes how more Wingeds were devoured by the waves of death, reducing them into morbid flecks of tissue and viscera.

“RUN! RUN QUICK!”

The elderly Winged yelled hoarsely to their men, rallying what was left of the Legion to escape while they kept their wings beating as furiously as possible.

“HELP! NINTH PRESBYTER—”

One of the lesser chieftains had turned back to help the other Wingeds when the waves caught up to him and all he could do was scream for help.

But the Winged presbyter who had been the first and quickest to escape ignored the call for help. Rather, he jetted quickly away.

“CURSE—YOU—” The elderly Winged chieftain screamed with what little strength he had left before the waves of destruction swallowed him whole and he was gone, shredded into a mist of blood and specks of flesh.

“ARRGGHH! HELP! SAVE US!”

But the deadly waves came swift and fierce. More Winged legionnaires perished in the blast. They tried their best to flap their wings to escape, but that did little to prevent their fate of being killed.

More Wingeds died in the blast, utterly disintegrated into nothing.

By the end, the elderly Wingeds had but abandoned any hopes of rescuing others. All they cared for was their own lives. They flew as quickly as their wings could carry them, even if they were dropping feathers until their wings were bare.

Their leader, the Ninth Presbyter, had deserted them and they saw no reason to not value their own lives as well.

Peals of horrific cries echoed over the air as more Wingeds died being sundered into bits by the deadly winds of the blast.

Meanwhile, Chu Xun led Yan Chong and the others back into the fastness of the Fire Dragon palace. Afraid that their plans of hoaxing the Wingeds might fail, Yan Chong and his companions already had the acolytes all packed their things and taken refuge in the secret vault. They were to wait until the Wingeds left before evacuating to Gujiang to meet up with the Rock Sect. As such, the destructive blasts of the two tornadoes up ahead had demolished much of the Palace, but none of the acolytes were injured.

“Heavens, what was terrifying,” gasped Lei Bao, patting his chest in a feeble attempt to calm himself. Almost every structure or edifice of the Palace built by stone had crumbled into sand and gravel.

Yan Chong and Long Ao looked as pale as chalk themselves as they panted for breath, visibly shaken too.

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