Roads on the northeast side of Dragon Border Gate City

“You!? You do not know what’s good for you, do you foreigner?! How did Dai Yijun-”

“Be quiet!”

Every word the prince spoke seemed to stoke a burning fire in Aryon’s core. His contemptuous disregard of others, his condescending attitude towards those beneath him, and the words of Bai Hua on his past actions placed Tang Hang as something hateful in his eyes.

Before the prince could retort, he yelled out in anger.

“You dare to call yourself royalty after discarding the noblesse oblige? You speak of thrones and rulership, when you ignore the conduct and duty of kings? You are no more a prince than the vilest devil in the pit, and I will never abide a tyrant.”

“Enough! I will have what I seek, even if it means cutting all of you down tonight. Kill them!”

The prince’s forces clashed once again with the Bai Clan and Green Blade Forest Sect. Aryon ignored the chaotic melee, casting Dimension Door to appear at a rooftop not far from the prince and his companion Ye Shao.

The duo took no notice, for they were distracted by two more approaching figures.

“Guardian Ji and the sect master. Hah! You think you can take down this prince?”

The former enemies cast their differences aside to attack the prince. From Aryon’s vantage he could see Guardian Ji engaging Ye Shao while the sect master duelled the prince in a clash of swords.

‘This is ideal.’ said Aryon. It felt great to be unrestricted by some high-speed grasshopper of a cultivator.

Both challengers held their ground, but were at a disadvantage given their earlier fights compared to the freshly-arrived prince and lord. Aryon drew in close as he could, incanting a long chant as the duel continued. Finishing, he struck his staff’s end down on the ground.

The four paused momentarily when Guardian Ji and the sect master’s bodies were surrounded by a white glow. When it faded, both receiving parties looked down at their forms, confused.

Then they broke out into grins, and charged in once more.

One could see a difference in the combat afterwards: Guardian Ji and Master Xuefeng were executing their moves and techniques at a greater pace than before. They dodged and predicted the lordly duo’s moves, their strikes had an added strength behind them and they seemed less tired after every bout.

‘The wonders of enchantment.’ thought Aryon. Now to give his gifts to the enemy.

“You and your foreign tricks!” said Ye Shao. Momentarily pushing off Guardian Ji, he dove straight towards the casting Aryon with a mace readied in his hand.

‘Of all the damn weapons you had to use, it just had to be the very thing I made!’

“ [Slow]! “

The speeding bullet that was lord Shao suddenly moved at a jogging pace just a few feet from where Aryon stood. Aryon raised his staff, pointing forward at the confused Ye Shao.

“ [Disinteg- ”

A rumble shook the building they were on, causing Aryon to stumble and break his concentration. Master Xuefeng had just executed his Earth Sundering Cut technique, slicing the whole building clean in two yet missing his target.

All four combatants jumped up to another roof; even Ye Shao shrugged off the Slow spell and made a successful leap. But Aryon fell down with the debris, landing heavily on the street below as a deluge of rock and wood fell on him.

Liu Wong was distracted when the lord fell off the building, but was relieved in an instant when he saw him crawl out of the debris, spouting foreign curses.

Standing side by side with his fellow disciples, Liu Wong continued to battle with the incoming waves of opponents. With waning vigour, they held their ground and swung their blades together at each approaching foe.

The Bai Clan guardss were also clashing with the black-dressed forces of the prince. An unspoken truce formed between their groups as they fought against a common foe, yet did nothing to aid the other.

As for their original target, Bai Hua’s ‘heroic’ defiance of the prince had turned the three-sided battle into a two-on-one melee. When the battle resumed and the Nascent Soul lords were distracted, the Bai Clan mistress and her brother had slipped away into the night in the company of their personal guard.

‘She’s too clever.’ thought Liu Wong as he looked in the distance.

They continued standing in battle formations when a bright light rapidly approached their location.

The battling lords above shattered parts of the nearby buildings and killed Soul Core Realm practitioners and below with stray mystic arts and techniques. One such mystic art launched by the prince, a speeding burst of flame shaped like an eagle, missed his master and was now headed their way.

“Tang Imperial Fire Art! Dodge!”

The disciples broke formation and fled to any direction they could move. Liu Wong leapt out of the way, but a wave of force and heat blasted him further off from his intended destination.

Separated from the rest, Liu Wong scrambled to his feet and made to return to his sect members when a yell caught his attention. Turning, he saw a familiar disciple wounded on the ground, hounded by an equally-injured Soul Core practitioner.

“Feng Yan!”

Aryon rose out of the rubble, dazed, just in time to see several more enemies come for him.

He raised his staff to ‘greet’ them. “ [Freezing Sphere]. “

A light-blue struck the ground at the middle of the group, whereupon it exploded in a wave of frost that turned them instantly to statues of ice.

‘ Where are the- Ah, there!’

Far away from the main battle, above the roofs of the city, he saw the telltale sparks of their clash. With his dangling but still-usable arm, he tapped his thigh and cast the Expeditious Retreat spell, then ran at high speed towards the fight.

The further the distance the Nascent Soul cultivators were from the main battle, the more powerful their attacks became. Closing the distance, Aryon could now see the full and terrifying might of these combatants.

Master Xuefeng displayed his mastery of the Earth Sundering Cut. Aryon saw him raise the very sword he gave away to sect from above his head down into the earth, and when it landed a gash a quarter of a kilometer long split earth and stone before the strike.

Tang Heng displayed his mastery of the Tang Imperial Fire Art in retaliation, with each arcing slash of his golden sword producing a wave of flame in the shape of birds of prey. These birds became blazing fires where they landed, scorching stone and burning wood.

He couldn’t tell what the other two were doing; Guardian Ji had created a moving veil of clouds that followed him where he went, obscuring those within. Whatever they were doing in there caused sparks to illuminate the cloud and destroy anything closeby,

Soon the fires began spreading towards the parts of the city that didn’t evacuate for tonight’s murderous events. He even saw a few dead people here and there, of various ages, hidden under fallen debris or burning wreckages.

‘Have they no regard for the city and its people?’ he thought panickedly. ‘This fight needs to end now before the fire spreads to the rest of the buildings.’

With that, he sped up his pace to follow that whirlwind of fire and destruction.