The giant Stinger thrust its stinger forth. It moved so fast Wu Jian almost missed it. He jumped back on pure instinct and the stinger slammed into the ground where he had been standing. Before he could even respond, the creature turned and spat acid at Huǒ Shuchang, who was able to avoid the attack by burning it with his flames.

Hou Jingshu raced forward while it was distracted, moving underneath it and attacking the magical beast’s joints. She thrust her spear, but it was blocked when the Stinger raised its leg, accepting the attack on its hard carapace. It then tried to impale her with its sharp legs. Hou Jingshu wove through its scuttling legs and backed off.

Just as the magical beast looked ready to attack her with its pincers, Wu Jian threw his sword. The weapon spun through the air. A spatial blade had formed along its glowing edge, and it severed one of the pincers before the magical beast could retract it.

The giant Stinger reared back with a hideous shriek. This didn’t deal much damage. Another pincer sprouted from where the first one had been severed. Yet it served as an adequate distraction.

Huǒ Shuchang leapt into the air, phoenix wings sprouting from his back, and he spaced his hands about one chih apart from each other. Flames gathered between his hands. The bright orange fires burned hot enough that even Wu Jian felt it from where he stood. The giant Stinger also seemed to recognize something was happening. It looked up and fired a powerful stream of acid.

“Take this! Flame Shot!”

Huǒ Shuchang thrust out both hands and launched the sphere from his hand. The white hot flame slammed into the acid and exploded. While most acids were not flammable, organic acids like the kind found in this scorpion were. The acid caught fire. Chunks of flaming acid flew through the air, forcing Wu Jian and Hou Jingshu to focus on dodging these attacks instead of paying attention to the scorpion.

That was a mistake.

“Hey! Watch out, you two! It’s coming!” Huǒ Shuchang shouted as he landed on the ground.

Wu Jian looked up at the shout. He was just in time to see the magical beast barreling down at him.

Seeing a creature easily five times taller than him and much wider racing toward him was a frightening experience, but he tried to calm his pounding heart and activated Nihility as the creature attacked him with its pincers. The Pincers went through him. He was about to retreat further, but then it fired acid at almost point blank.

“Aaaaaaaaah! Ahhhh!”

Wu Jian screamed as the skin on his chest began melting off. That attack had melted right through his Dragon Scale Mail. He gritted his teeth as he tried to leap back, but then he fell to his knees. It hurt. By the gods, it hurt so bad! His skin was literally melting off. He was lucky it hadn’t melted through his bones, but it was only a matter of time.

Oddly enough, the necklace had survived somehow. It must have had some kind of protection on it that exceeded even the Dragon Scale Mail. He supposed he should be thankful for small miracles.

The giant Stinger raised its stinger and brought it down, unwilling to let an opportunity slip by. Wu Jian would have been done for had Hou Jingshu not intercepted the attack. She slid her spear along the stinger and redirected it into the ground at her side. She then slid her feet apart and thrust her spear into the magical beast’s face.

“Dragon’s Maw!”

A dragon-like roar echoed from her spear as golden chi erupted from the tip and took the shape of a long dragon with no legs. It slammed into the scorpion and sent it stumbling back.

“I got you, Wu!”

Huǒ Shuchang appeared before him, lifted him up, and flew several feet back. He dropped Wu Jian onto the ground, summoned several flasks of water, and splashed it over Wu Jian’s chest. A hiss of pain escaped his lips as Huǒ Shuchang cleaned off the acid. The older man then pressed a pill into his hand.

“Take this quickly.”

Wu Jian didn’t even ask what the pill was as he popped it into his mouth. The liquid gushed down his throat, but then spread through his meridians, soothing his frayed nerves as it all gathered around his chest. At the same time, Huǒ Shuchang applied a thick ointment that helped further soothe the wound.

“Can you still fight?” he asked.

“Of course. Who do you think you’re talking to.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“So, what do you think? Can you do that strange thing you do?”

“No. I already tried. That carapace is like armor. It's covered in a layer of chi that prevents me from using my technique to fold space around it.”

“Damn. Guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

Wu Jian stood up as Huǒ Shuchang blasted off the ground. While they had been dealing with the damage he had suffered, Hou Jingshu was confronting the giant Stinger alone, but she was grossly outmatched. Several cuts already littered her torso and arms. It looked like she had managed to avoid the stinger and acid, but she couldn’t avoid the creature’s pincers, which it moved at lightning speeds.

Because he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach Hou Jingshu quickly, he once more threw his weapon, but then he activated his ability. Space folded around the blade as he created a gate from it to the scorpion. The weapon reappeared right in front of the giant Stinger and became deeply buried in its left eye. Another pained screech echoed from the magical beast as it skittered backward.

Huǒ Shuchang quickly descended toward the giant Stinger while the pain distracted it. He landed on its head, channeled fire into his hands, and slammed them into the other eyeball. The eye burst. More shrieks came from their massive foe as it stumbled around blindly.

Wu Jian clenched his hand and manipulated the space around his sword, recalling it back into his hand. At the same time, Hou Jingshu raced forward and swung her spear at one of its legs. The sleeves of her training gi were gone. The incredible muscles of her arms were visible as she put everything she had into her attack.

The leg was removed at the joint.

Wu Jian wanted to capitalize on their newfound advantage, but the magical beast’s eye that he had destroyed had already regenerated, and the stump sprouted a new leg. This creature seemed to have a high level regeneration. However, he noticed that the damage Huǒ Shuchang had done did not regenerate. Perhaps it could not heal from cauterized wounds.

“Shuchang! You need to cauterize its limbs whenever we remove one!” he shouted.

“Got it!”

“Jingshu! Cover me!”

“Okay!”

Wu Jian raced forward. The giant Stinger tried to attack him with a pincer, but he rolled across the ground seconds before it could close around him. He swung his sword as he came up, removing the pincer just as Huǒ Shuchang swooped down. Before the magical beast could sprout a new limb, the young heir of the Phoenix Clan slammed his flaming hands into the wound, cauterizing it.

Just when it seemed like they had discovered a viable method of killing this monster, the giant Stinger dove into the sand and disappeared.

“Everyone, be careful! We have no idea where this thing will come up from!” Hou Jingshu warned.

“Get ready to jump!” Wu Jian added.

They were well prepared to leap into the air whenever that thing emerged, but what they weren’t prepared for was the room shaking. Wu Jian and Hou Jingshu had to bend their knees to avoid falling onto their backsides. Huǒ Shuchang was lucky. He floated in the air thanks to his phoenix wings.

“What’s going on?” wondered Wu Jian.

“I don’t know. Is this the giant Stingers’ doing?” asked Hou Jingshu.

Huǒ Shuchang said nothing at first, but then he pointed at the ceiling. “You guys! You’re gonna want to move quickly!”

Wu Jian and Hou Jingshu looked up to find the stalactites shaking like leaves on a tree. Several quickly came loose and impaled the sand. They were, fortunately, nowhere near the two of them, but more were falling every second.

The pair quickly darted across the sand as several stalactites fell where they had been. They really were large. Each stalactite was twice the size of Wu Jian himself. Getting struck by one of those would mean instant death.

Hou Jingshu suddenly cried out, causing Wu Jian to look at her. She had fallen to the floor. A stalactite was falling toward her.

Wu Jian raced forward, leapt into the air, and channeled chi through his sword, creating a spatial blade, which he swung with great force. The stalactite was sliced down the middle. He quickly whirled around and kicked the two pieces away from Hou Jingshu, landed on the ground, and stored his sword away before lifting the girl into his arms.

“What are you doing?!” screamed Hou Jingshu.

“It’s dangerous to stay in one spot! We don’t know when the Stinger will attack again! Hang onto me!”

Wu Jian darted forward as Hou Jingshu clung to his neck. Her breathing was heavy and her face flushed, but he thought that was just due to exhaustion. He dashed quickly across the ground, dodging falling stalactites, until the rumbling stopped.

“Is that… the end of them…?” asked Wu Jian.

“Um… Jian Wu… you can set me down now,” Hou Jingshu said.

“I don’t think that’s—woah!”

Wu Jian leapt backward several times as something burst from the sand. It was a massive pincer, followed by an even more massive body. The giant Stinger glared balefully at them with its one good eye. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was angry that it had missed.

“Jian Wu, set me down,” Hou Jingshu said.

“Do you think it’s gonna let me do that?” asked Wu Jian.

Hou Jingshu wasn’t able to respond. The giant Stinger had already attacked. Its pincer came down like lightning striking the earth. Wu Jian dodged, but he was forced to overcompensate when it attacked him with its pincer. He fell to the ground. Yet that allowed him to avoid it, and he bent space around his foot, slamming it into the pincer, which launched the limb skyward.

“Phoenix Rending!”

Huǒ Shuchang swooped down, hand coated in flames as he shaped his fingers into a claw. He slashed at the pincer near the joint. The orange carapace turned a bubbling red. Huǒ Shuchang was shaken off when the scorpion waved its pincer around, but he was able to remove a flask of water and splash it against the area he had attacked.

The combination of hot flames and cold water caused the carapace to crack. Wu Jian wasn’t going to miss this opportunity. He threw Hou Jingshu into the air, then leapt forward and grabbed the pincer, digging in his heels to prevent the monster from moving. It did try to throw him off, but he quickly locked his body into that space, sealing both his movement and the magical beast’s.

Hou Jingshu came down and swung her spear before the giant Stinger could try to attack Wu Jian with its pincer. The already brittle carapace shattered from her overwhelming strength, and the pincer was removed. The magical beast was sent soaring backward. It had been pulling so hard against Wu Jian that once the resistance he presented disappeared, all that built up energy turned into backward momentum.

It slammed into the rock wall. Then Huǒ Shuchang waved his hands and unleashed a wave of fire.

“Phoenix Wave!”

A wave of flames swept over the scorpion and cauterized the new wound before it could regenerate. Now it only had its stinger and acid.

Speaking of, why hasn’t it used its acid on recently? Has it run out?

Acid was normally formed from the magical beast combining chi into its poison glands. There was probably a limit to how much acid it could form at a time. He assumed it needed to replenish the poison before it could use it again.

“It’s stinger is now gone! Let’s try to remove its limbs before it can burrow into the sand again!” Hou Jingshu ordered.

She and Wu Jian raced across the sands and struck the scorpion before it could recover. Wu Jian summoned his sword and severed the leg on his left while Hou Jingshu tore apart the leg on the right with her spear. They leapt aside as the creature fell face first into the dirt. Huǒ Shuchang appeared seconds later to cauterize both wounds, preventing its limbs from regenerating.

The battle became much easier after that. Wu Jian and Hou Jingshu removed each limb, then its stinger, and Huǒ Shuchang cauterized the wounds. They left the magical beast as nothing but a creature with a body. Without its limbs, pincers, and stinger, it could neither move nor attack.

“This is the end!!”

Wu Jian leapt onto the creature’s head, reversed his grip on his sword, and slammed it into the giant Stinger’s head.

“Spatial Severing!”

He coated his blade with the Dao of Space, creating a sharp cutting edge that sliced through the magical beast’s carapace like wheat before a scythe. The sword penetrated the creature’s blade. Its body shuddered briefly before it died.

“Hsssssss haaaaaaaah…” Wu Jian took a deep breath in, then out. He wiped the sweat from his brow. He was exhausted, but he also felt a sense of exhilaration. This had been a hard fought battle.

But they had won.

Wu Jian looked up to smile at his companions, but his eyes widened in shock as Hou Jingshu collapsed onto the ground.

“JINGSHU!”