Shit!

Zhiwen Shao pressed his hand on the wound to stop it from bleeding too much as he raced across the sky, away from the battlefield. Away from the tragedy that had just unfolded. Away from the shadowed woman that was still pursuing him or at least had been the last time he got a glimpse of her.

He had already swallowed several healing pills, but the dagger had penetrated deep into his side, having perfectly found a tiny gap in his armor. He still felt a little dizzy from the poison that it had been coated with, even though he had expelled it almost immediately.

He hated having to flee, especially from a woman whose cultivation level didn't even exceed his own. Was he not pursuing the mightiest Dao in the land? Well, he hadn't actually lost to her. He would have been more than capable of continuing the fight, but he had seen the writing on the wall. He had seen what these ambushers had done to his subordinates and his troops. There was no way he could have turned that around anymore.

His situation was only slowly beginning to settle in. He had lost the army. The entire army. Eight Dao Contemplation Cultivators were either dead or captured. Five hundred Dao Attunement warriors. And he had fled the scene. His blood ran cold when he thought of his and his family's future… The Patriarch wasn't known for his forgivingness!

But for the Lunar Peaks Sect to intervene… nobody could have seen that coming. They were supposed to have stayed a neutral party in all of this. The Roaring Thunder Sect had not offended them in any way! And for them to ambush his army like this – was it too much to ask for some honor from those backstabbing bastards?

Damn it all, why had he been the one this had to happen to? He had to get to the Patriarch as fast as possible! Perhaps if he was the first one to relay this critical information, he'd be shown at least a few crumbs of mercy for his failings. Competing with Song Fan or even with the other families would be out of question for the next century or so, but perhaps a comeback would be possible at some point.

Shit!

Zhiwen Shao levied a thousand curses in languages no longer spoken against the Lunar Peaks Sect and all its members. Then a thousand more against the shadowed woman who had caused him this wound, that had still not fully healed up… Yue Zhong, this could be no one but her! He'd have his revenge, upon her. Her and her entire bloodline! He'd burn down their estate, plunder their treasury, cripple their heirs! He'd…

A glint of reflected sunlight was caught in the corner of his eye. He twisted his body, rolling to the side to alter his trajectory, barely evading the needle that pierced through the air just where he would have been right now.

His eyes immediately turned to where it had come from. And sure enough, a familiar shadow rose from the woods below him at high speed. He continued to fly as fast as he could, Yue Zhong close on his heels. If she had managed to follow him all the way here, it was unlikely that he would be able to shake her off anytime soon.

Zhiwen Shao glanced over his shoulder, his eyes looking beyond his pursuer. He'd been flying for at least fifteen minutes now. Odds were that the other cultivators would still be busy with the battle for a while. Even if they'd try to pursue him after that, they'd still need to guess the proper direction and then get all the way here. He had time for now.

He abruptly stopped his flight, turning around in the air and facing the incoming woman, his sword materializing in his hand. If he brought back the head of one of the Lunar Peaks Sect's most prolific elders alongside the news of their treachery, that would drastically change his situation. And his personal revenge wouldn't have to wait as long either!

The air around him crackled with electric charge as he pushed his soul to its full power. He'd show this foolish woman the might of the Dao of Lightning!

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Before Yue Zhong had the chance to reach him, he let loose several bolts of lightning towards her. She dodged all of them with perceived ease, but that didn't surprise him anymore. He had already seen her do this in their previous fight and figured out how she did it. She didn't actually dodge the attack itself; she dodged by predicting them from his movement and Qi flow. Still impressive, but by no means impossible to counter.

For now, Zhiwen Shao wreathed his sword in lightning as the two engaged in melee combat. Like before, Yue Zhong relied entirely on speed and deceptive movements to attack him, not even bothering to try and meet his blade.

He warded off a barrage of quick stabs and slashes before retaliating with several mighty swings of his sword. Every one of them sent out arcs of lightning that cut through the air at extreme speed, but none of them managed to catch the elusive woman.

Suddenly, the shadows around her grew darker and larger. Zhiwen Shao retreated just in time before they stabbed forward, hitting the air where he had just been as sharp, long spikes. He struck out at one of them with his sword and sure enough, it had a physical presence, meeting his sword like a steel blade would. However, he did also notice that they seemed to slightly retreat when they came close to the lightning cursing through his sword, as if they couldn't bear its brightness. A plan began to form in the back of his mind.

For now, the two continued their frantic dance through the sky, dodging and weaving through each other's hits, neither of them able to truly break the stalemate. However, the sky was Zhiwen Shao's territory, much more than it was that of a shadow cultivator at least, and so he did gradually manage to increase the pressure on Yue Zhong, as he became better at seeing through her deceptions and faints.

And as he had expected, once he had pushed her enough, she once again tried retaliating with her shadow Qi. But this time, when the spikes stabbed forward, he didn't retreat, instead surrounding himself with a bright aura of lightning. To his delight, the shadows simply dissipated as they passed through it, none of them managing to reach him.

As soon as the attack had passed, Zhiwen Shao grasped the lightning around him and repurposed them into an attack. Dozens of bolts of lightning struck out at Yue Zhong, who hadn't been able to prepare for this attack due to her own. Incredibly, she still managed to twist herself around the first few, but one of them hit her directly.

Hit by the mighty Dao's full force, she plummeted several meters before managing to catch herself. However, before she could recover, Zhiwen Shao shot forward, swinging his sword in a mighty horizontal arc. The blade met little resistance as it cleaved through her torso, cleanly splitting her body in two. He had won!

Blood sprayed in all directions, wetting his hands, faces and clothes amidst his triumphant shout. Strangely, it felt neither wet nor warm.

It took just one second for Zhiwen Shao's celebratory feeling of victory to turn into apprehension, one more for him to fully realize the actual situation. The illusion had been amazing, better than anything he had seen before. His sight and hearing had perfectly lined up with his soul sense in presenting him with the image of his opponent.

Her reaction to his lightning had seemed so perfectly real, so tangible. Perhaps it had been and she had swapped herself out afterwards, as he was attacking her. Perhaps his strike had missed her real body by mere inches.

All that considered, two seconds was not a long time for him to have realized that what he had just killed had been a mere illusion. But it was also two whole seconds in which he had completely neglected to guard himself. And this time, the dagger hadn't just aimed for his side.

As the woman's illusionary body drifted apart into nothingness, like thin mist under the rising sun, Zhiwen Shao felt a sharp sting of pain in his throat where the cold steel had found its way through a gap in his armor and punched right through the chainmail underneath.

With a flex of his will, he sent out a pulse of lightning Qi all around him, forcing the woman to retreat, drawing out the knife in the process. Blood sputtered, warm and wet. This time for real. He felt the poison spreading through his veins with terrifying speed, but he couldn't muster the focus to expel it. Ironic, considering how much blood he was losing.

Zhiwen Shao could see Yue Zhong reappear in the air before him through dancing black dots at the edges of his vision. She was wreathed in twisting shadows so dark they seemed to swallow up all the light around him. Her mask-like face was still just as emotionless as it had been from the beginning, her eyes focused on him.

Then he saw it: right above her stomach, her robes had been ripped open by a horizontal slash and looking closely, he could make out a miniscule trickle of blood.

There was no blood pumping into his brain anymore, no way to direct his muscles. Any remaining consciousness was nested in his soul and any movement directly forced with Qi. And yet an inadvertent grin spread across his face: So he had hit her!

Then he his focus slipped, and Elder Zhiwen Shao of the Roaring Thunder Sect began plummeting towards the ground.

He wouldn't feel the impact anymore.

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