Back at the site of the action, everything was shrouded in darkness.

The huge cloud covered an area with a hundred yard radius, completely blocking the view of everything trapped within it. The ‘darkness’ was not an absence of light, but merely an inky black smoke. This became apparent when small sparks of white electricity were seen crackling among the dark particles. It was hard to tell if it was closer to lightning building up among dark clouds, or the effects of static electricity among a cloud of black sand. Either way, the small crackles of light showed that this strange obstacle was not just ‘darkness’.

Other than the small crackles of electricity, it had grown extremely quiet for a few moments. There was no sign of the two women that had been submerged within the black cloud, leaving their whereabouts and current condition to be a complete mystery. At least for a few moments.

The subtle crackling of energy was interrupted by a roaring torrent of power. A massive boom of thunder ripped through the cloud of darkness, blasting away the dark clouds flooding the area. With the dispersion of the billowing darkness the two women were once again revealed standing in the same places they’d been at before. Yue Xiaoqing had a look of utter defeat on her face. In her hand there was a large feather over three feet long. The ink black vanes of the feather fluttered from the wind gusting around them, and the feather was crackling with white lightning, or it was for a moment. As the last of the dark cloud cleared away the huge feather crumbled apart. The comb-like vanes fell from either side of the feather’s spine and dissipated into dust in mid-air before they could even reach the ground. When the spine was the only thing left it withered rapidly and cracks spread along its surface before it too dissipated into dust leaving Xiaoqing with empty hands.

Across from Xiaoqing, Jiao had her arms crossed in front of her face and shoulders. When the cloud was blasted apart she was coated in a thick layer of white lightning. Arcs of electricity were jumping around her body. Most of them were coiled around her thick metal gauntlets and jumping down to curl around her equally heavy metal boots. The crackling white energy crawled over her body like they were thousands of tiny snakes, but somehow she kept most of them jumping back and forth between her fists and feet. Only a few of them seemed ‘unruly’ and crawled over the jade colored aura sheathing the rest of her body. Even so, those few arcs seemed to cause her great discomfort from the look on her face and the twitching of her body where they passed.

“That’s impossible! How can you block a strike from the Inky Thunderbird!?”

Jiao let out a loud yell and then slammed her hands into the ground. When she did, the remaining arcs of white lightning crawling over her body finally left her, shooting into the earth. She slowly stood up and slapped her hands together as if she was dusting the dirt off her gloves, “That was pretty impressive. I never knew the Yue Clan cared so much about you. That will make it even better when you never come back.”

Xiaoqing seemed devastated, but her hands moved rapidly and a dozen different items were pulled out of her Storage Ring, each of them another single use attack item just like that giant feather. She pulled them out and ‘fired’ them off at Jiao in rapid succession, but unfortunately they were all weaker than the first one. Jiao could have moved in and stopped her, but she seemed to enjoy seeing the desperation from this girl who had given her so much trouble in the past. Jiao had always rebelled against the practices of her family while Xiaoqing on the other hand was the perfect little heir even though the Yue Clan was even worse. Yet, even with this vast gap in their ‘status’ within each of their Clans, Xiaoqing always went out of her way to insult her.

Finally that string of consumable Magical Tools and single use Talismans were expended and Xiaoqing looked truly desperate. Jiao smiled at her and waved at the compound behind her, “Go ahead, use your escape treasure. I know it's your last hope. Once it’s gone you’ll truly suffer. You can do it, try and hide in there. My people have already destroyed half of it by now. Go and hide little toad, you’ll probably piss yourself when I find you again. You don’t have any dignity, so there’s no way you’ll choose a noble end, right?”

Faced with the taunting, Xiaoqing’s hand moved, but Jiao moved even faster. Blood splashed across the ground and a severed hand plopped into the dirt. Jiao flashed by and picked up a pocket watch sized token from the ground. She looked at it a second and then it disappeared into her own Storage Ring.

“I knew you had multiple Storage Rings, but I wasn’t sure if you’d fall for my baiting. I wasn’t sure where you’d keep your best escape treasure.”

Xiaoqing was overwhelmed with pain and she used her hidden ring to bring out a pill, but it was suddenly knocked out of her remaining hand by Jiao. She also felt a sudden strike and felt her clothing ripped apart. She hit the ground and realized her hidden ring had been taken away in that instant.

Far away from the battlefield a deep voice was raised to issue an order, “Switch the focus away from the first fight.”

A few of those in the command room were upset since the battle had suddenly got vicious and bloody, but most of them understood. Despite the unwilling feeling felt by some, not one of them voiced a complaint. There were many battles going on for them to oversee going on at this moment and the first site was already completely in hand. This wasn’t a drama for them to enjoy a show. The only problem was that of the multiple fights going on, they had an overwhelming advantage and the higher ups in the command room wouldn't have to do anything for them to succeed. For them, the only interesting part left was this drama, but they also realized it wasn’t befitting of them to want to watch the distasteful acts that their relative was going to do.

The main feeds moved on to the other battlefields, while only the highest generals kept one of their multiple screens tuned to what was happening on Jiao’s end. They shared a quick look, a wordless confirmation of Yating’s judgment. It was really not a good thing for the Clan to focus too much on how Jiao finally finished off her longtime enemy.

Instead they moved over to the six other large forces that had moved tonight. Perhaps it was a tradition from the Jade Horde, but they had seven groups in action moving to destroy the properties of the Yi Yang Group. The Yi Yang Group had five secret bases, including the one that Jiao was assaulting, which they used for their most underground activities. These were the Lang Clan’s main targets, as they knew that once their public locations were targeted the remaining members could always flee to these secret bases. So, rather than target their numerous public fronts, they chose to strike at their enemies' secret retreats.

These hidden bases were not actually all that valuable, which was already apparent from how easily they fell, but they knew if they allowed the Yi Yang Group to know it was in danger they would retreat to these secret forts and reinforce them heavily. In the course of their information gathering, their agents on the inside had found signs that while these bases weren’t equipped with powerful sect defending arrays they were built to a specific template to make it easy to add them. Since these bases were the fallback and hiding spot of the Yi Yang Group they chose to destroy them first. With all their hidden dens cleared out, where could the Yi Yang Group go to hide?