Concentric rings of alternating light and shadow appeared behind Nura’s back and the speed of Ragyo’s blade slowed down drastically. Nura’s figure blurred, leaving afterimages in his wake as he flickered to the opposite end of the room.

Ragyo turned into a streak of lightning and pursued.

The cramped quarters became crowded with a crisscrossing network of violet electricity and fading phantoms of the Shogun as the two Tier 5s chased each other across the length and breadth of the room.

They both paused for a short while.

Ragyo, electricity crackling all around him, opened his mouth, “Time and space?”

Nura, sweat beading on his brows, remained silent.

“To think you’d manage to merge the bloodlines of two great Daemonic clans. I think I don’t want you dead after all... at least, not immediately."

The two outermost rings of the six that floated behind Nura -- one made of golden light, the other of the purest darkness -- shattered.

Ragyo narrowed his eyes. "A limit..." he muttered.

Clenching his teeth, Nura attacked on his own initiative. His figure disappeared like a sketch rubbed out of existence with an eraser, then reappeared as six identical clones surrounding the elder Kirin.

Ragyo scoffed and spun on his heel, his sword slicing the air in a complete arc around him. But as the edge approached the bodies of the clones, not only did it slow down, it appeared as though the separation between them had expanded by several times as the space around the clones warped and stretched under the influence of the Tengu blood flowing in Nura’s veins.

His eyes flashing with electricity, Ragyo roared and poured more mana into his blade till it blazed a brilliant white. With a sound like shattering glass, the blockade created by the clones was destroyed along with all six of them. They vanished in puffs of bluish-white smoke.

Ragyo’s eyes narrowed and he suddenly whirled around. A stream of metallic powder gushed out of the open pouch at his waist and joined with the cloud of metal his sword had disintegrated into. Then, it reformed in the shape of a thick shield.

Not a moment too late as Nura’s figure burst out of the smokescreen and slammed a golden-scaled fist right into its centre.

The metal crumpled like so much paper and Ragyo was blasted backwards. He slammed into the opposite wall with enough force to make even the monochrome Demigod level barrier waver.

“Interesting,” Ragyo commented as he pushed himself off the undamaged wall and wiped the trickle of blood that had seeped out from the corner of his mouth. Despite his Barrier keeping off the blow, it had shocked his internal organs while wiping out a substantial portion of his remaining mana. He had already spent more than three-quarters to set up the battlefield, and this fight was burning through what he had left much faster than anticipated.

“Now it’s the indomitable strength of the Oni clan,” he said, “I am getting more and more curious about this technique of yours.”

Two more of the rings behind Nura’s back shattered, leaving only the final two, smallest rings floating behind his head like a black and gold halo.

Ragyo smirked and clenched his fist. The crumpled shield in his hand disassociated into powder yet again and then reformed into the breastplate of a suit of samurai armour and enclosed his form. Yet more of the metallic sand emerged from the pouch and turned into the rest of the armour – pauldrons, greaves, bracers and helmet.

The final bit of metal coalesced into a silvery face mask shaped in the form of a demonic visage. Catching it out of the air, Ragyo slotted it onto his face. As he looked up, the eyelets blazed to life with violet electricity.

Distorted by the mask, his voice gained a sinister undertone, “I suppose I’ve learnt enough.”

Suddenly, thin metallic wires shot out from all corners of the room, forming a razor-sharp net all throughout it. Reaching out, Ragyo grabbed two of the wires. Immediately, all the wires began to buzz and glow white as large amounts of electricity coursed through them.

The net contracted swiftly, surrounding Nura from all sides.

He tried to Shadow walk out of the trap but he found that the extreme density of Ragyo’s mana in the net had cut off that avenue of escape. At the very last moment, the approach of the net slowed down to a crawl as it entered the range of the distorted space-time surrounding him.

Cracks began appearing on the last two rings floating behind him. Once they shattered, he would be at the mercy of the vibrating, razor-sharp wires.

The waves of heat rolling off the white-hot wire net reached him even across the region of expanded space and slowed time. Sweat rolled off him, only to be vaporized almost instantly.

Suddenly, all tension drained off his face and he smiled.

Drawing a rectangular piece of parchment out of his pocket, he pasted it on his forehead. Extremely intricate patterns were drawn on the paper in bright scarlet ink. The squiggly symbols seemed to come together to form the shape of an eye. Looking at it too closely would give one a severe headache.

As Nura pasted it on his forehead, the lines of the symbol began to glow softly, the scarlet of the ink giving way to the colours of the elements. Red, blue, green, and yellow intermingled in a complicated pattern before coalescing into a vertical third eye.

Right as the last two protective rings shattered, the eye snapped open.

Light of four colours washed out the room, corroding everything in its path. The glowing net of charged wires melted away under the illumination and Ragyo didn’t even have the time to exclaim in surprise before his form was swallowed up by the light.

After what seemed like minutes but what couldn't have been more than a few moments, the stream of light dimmed, then finally winked out.

The talisman on Nura’s forehead burnt with a crimson flame, turning into ash near instantaneously.

…

Aboard a ship docked beside the Marine Palace, Shang Qing along with the members of his contingent collapsed onto the ground, utterly drained of mana. A milky-white third eye on Shang Qing’s forehead gradually shut and then merged into his skin, leaving no sign that it had ever existed apart from a vertical scarlet line that could easily be passed off as his bond marking.

Reaching up with a enervated hand, he wiped off the stream of blood that had trickled down from the mark along one side of his nose. The blood soaked into his pristine white sleeve, dyeing it red.

“Ahh! I’ll never get used to that,” the chubby Yu Qing complained as he lay sprawled upon the ground, utterly exhausted.

Turning to Shang Qing, he asked, “Brother, why did you agree to this? It risks revealing our trump card. It’ll be much harder to catch Felidae off guard with it if he knows about it.”

Tai Qing, the third of the three brothers, a thickly-muscled giant of a man climbed unsteadily to his feet. Their wives too sat up; all of them waiting for his explanation.

“I had a chat with his Master,” said Shang Qing, his tone as flat as his expression. “He made me realize that completing our mission wasn’t necessarily the best course of action.”