Chapter 10 – I’m not dead, and yes, I’m still writing this dumb story.
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For some reason, the ceiling of Taiwei’s underground cache was falling apart, and the southern man they had captured was laying on the floor. Another man who was old enough to be Huan’s father was standing in the middle of the warehouse.

“Hey! What’s going on here!? And why are there a bunch of crates?” Huan demanded.

Taiwei slapped her forehead in an exasperated manner. “I’m going to have at least a dozen people fired when this is over. They moved the drugs we were going to sell to the wrong warehouse.”

The slim man from their last meeting, who had his hair tied in a ponytail, was also traveling with them. “If I recall, we planned to finish these guys off once they dropped down here and broke their legs, right? Why is that guy standing up?”

Four escort guards ran up to protect their superiors. Taiwei and the man with the ponytail backed off, but Huan had a grin on his face and cracked his knuckles as if he were preparing for a fight.

“Give it up, grandpa,” he said. “You’re outnumbered. It’s four-to-one, and you don’t have any armor or weapons. Let’s not make this harder than it already is.”

“Really, now,” the man replied. “Grandpa, huh? Guess I must have dementia because I don’t remember asking.”

He pulled out a small vial of light pink powder and poured it out onto his forearm in a thin line. 

“No, wait!” Taiwei gasped. “Shit, he’s got his hands on demon dust!”

Huan shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the big deal? He’s still clearly outnumbered no matter how you look at it. If demon dust is supposed to work similarly to how your limit break works, then he shouldn’t be too hard to handle.”

“You fucking idiot, how did you come to that conclusion!?”

The older man craned his head down onto his forearm and, in one fell swoop, snorted the entire line of powder up his nose.

“Fuck...we’re running, let’s go!” Taiwei shouted, pulling on Huan, who didn’t budge.

“No way. They’re right here, and this is our chance. You’re insane if you think we’re just going to let these guys go,” Huan replied, wrenching his arm out of her grasp. “Get him...no, kill him!”

The four guards drew their spears and began to advance. Two of them in the center sped up and began to charge at the man like a lancer, while the other two fanned out and slowly approached from both sides to flank him.

He was calm; far too calm for a man about to meet his end. It may have just been the old age affecting the man, but Huan had a feeling that he didn’t intend to go down without a fight after snorting a line of demon dust.

Something was wrong. 

In hindsight, I really should have paid attention to all that foreshadowing.

Calmly, the man walked over to the side of the room in long, quick strides.

The guards paused in their tracks, then quickly pivoted to change their direction of approach.

The man placed a hand on one of the crates stacked in the corner and hefted it up. Not in a position where he had to use both of his hands to hold the crate up to his stomach, but using a single arm that held it above his head.

Huan didn’t even notice his jaw drop. He was too busy trying to choke out a word, but the only noise that came from his mouth was a faint rasping sound that could be described as nothing more than a sort of primal reaction to fear. He blinked, and the next thing he knew, a crate was flying across the room, aimed directly at him.

Someone pulled violently on the back of his collar, sending him scrambling back. Instinctively, as he was jolted out of his state of shock, he covered his face just as the crate shattered on the hard floor before him.

A torrent of splinters and shattered glass stabbed into his hands and arms. The sight of his blood slowly dripping onto the floor while his entire body was frozen numb was completely surreal; it had been a while since he last bled. He choked on his own breath as the metallic smell of blood clogged up his nose.

“Shit! We’re running to get reinforcements! Go!” Taiwei yelled, pulling Huan and the man with the ponytail back through the door and slamming it behind them.

Shortly after, the sound of more crates smashing, and the screams of his men began to echo through the door. 

“Why didn’t we arm our men with demon powder?” said Huan, now woken up from his stupor and pushing the others down the hallway.

Taiwei shoved his hand away from her back. “Stop pushing me, I can run by myself. Do you have any idea what’s in it? There’s so much dried heatroot. You’re incredibly likely to die instantly from the sheer volume of magic energy in it, and it even shaves years off of your lifespan.”

“And how come that old guy used it?” 

“Desperation. Still, we can afford to be a little optimistic. The average person on demon dust wouldn’t win against four armed men. The only way I can see them losing is if that guy had a military background or something.”

A loud crash rang out from behind them, and Huan turned around to see the man wielding a bloodied spear in each hand busting down the door.

“So, about what you just said…” the man with the ponytail began.

“Nevermind that. We’re going to pop a pill and get out!” Taiwei replied.

Without hesitation, the three crime lords swallowed a pill of limit break and immediately broke out into the fastest adrenaline-fueled sprint they had ever experienced in their lives.

They scaled up the stairs to the surface in record time. Huan smashed through the exit door with his shoulder, completely disregarding the metal lock. 

“Reinforcements! Reinforcements! Call reinforcements, right now! We’ve got a war veteran high on demon dust on our tail!” Huan screamed at the two men guarding the entrance.

One of the men blew into a horn without hesitation. It made a low, droning sound that the entire city block could probably hear.

“I should’ve become a lawyer like my mom wanted me to,” the man with the ponytail whimpered.

“There goes five hundred thousand units’ worth of uppers,” Taiwei groaned. “Do you have any idea how much demon dust is worth, now that it doesn’t get produced anymore?”

“Maybe we could set everything in there on fire and blow up that guy?” Huan suggested.

“Uh, no. I don’t put any explosive drugs with my non-explosive ones. That’s like a tragic accident waiting to happen when some drunk guy lights a blunt, and the next day my entire inventory is burned to ash.”

They began to slow themselves down when they spotted multiple squads of Syndicate guards running through the alleyways and streets. A group of the guards ran over to protect them upon realizing that they had all lost their escort.

“W-whew,” Huan panted. “That adrenaline really is something. And now my legs are burning.”

Taiwei patted him on the shoulder with a sad smile on her face. “It only gets worse from here.”

The man with the ponytail was already laying down on the floor, heaving with each breath and whimpering, “Why does my ass hurt so much?”

Nervously, Huan began to scan his surroundings in anticipation of their pursuer. His arms were beginning to throb, and he remembered that his arms were still being stabbed through with splinters and broken glass. Gradually, he slowed his breathing and began to pull the foreign objects out of his skin.

“Are you fine? Do you need any help, boss?” one of the guards asked, pulling a bottle of healing pills out of a pouch on his hip. 

“Do I look like I’m fine? I’ll take one after I get all this glass and wood out,” Huan snapped impatiently.

Just as he was passing his eyes through an alleyway, he spotted a figure approach. It was strange how he was able to notice the silhouette of a person with nothing but the moonlight to help, but he wrote it off as nothing but a side effect of limit break. He jumped in surprise and was about to call out the person to the guards.

Zhou Liuan rounded the corner with a hand in the air. 

“Calm down. It’s just me.”

“W-what are you doing? Shouldn’t you on the other side?”

“Huh? Have you seen what’s going on? Everything’s coming down! The immortals running the place are in an absolute panic because some kind of weird flower grew out of the ground. It’s enormous, like, taller than the city walls! Even the river is dried up. All the water coming in just gets sucked into the ground.”

Huan looked towards the general direction of the West District. The buildings around him blocked his view, but he tilted his head up and noticed a white flower glowing in the moonlight.

“Honestly, with all the weird shit that’s been going on, I’m not even surprised that this happened,” he said. “Hey, Liuan. Do you want to help me pull shrapnel out of my arms?”

 

“Does anybody have a brain? Anybody!” yelled a furious immortal with golden quills extending from his back.

“Calm down,” his advisor (who was walking on two pairs of insect-like legs) replied. “Control your emotions. That is the key to success. What the city needs in its time of need is a calm leader.”

The mayor cleared his throat. His shoulders lowered, and the quills on his back relaxed. “You’re right, but I can’t calm down. The Duke is going to kill us. Or worse, fire us. Anyway, do you have a report, Rouyi?”

Rouyi nodded. “Yes, father. The security chief has evacuated most of the people trapped in the river, and he is currently attempting to dam the river to prepare for the incoming rush of water.”

Currently, they were gathered around one of the ghostly vines that had shot straight through the city hall. Another immortal was trying to cut through the vine with an ax that was twice the size of Rouyi, but each time the blade dug into the fibers, the vine simply regenerated when the immortal pulled out the ax to strike it again.

“Have we tried torching the vines? Or the flower? If you kill the flower, the vines should also wither away,” Rouyi suggested.

“Sorry, but I’m not exactly willing to approach an unknown plant the size of a tower,” the man wielding the ax replied.

“What if we had magic? Someone just shoots the flower from far away with a bolt of lightning. Have we even tried torching these vines? If we cauterize it...”

“These vines have plenty of water inside. There’s no way a fire would spread. Have you ever tried to light a moist log on fire?”

The mayor interjected. “No, no. My son’s got a point. We don’t know until we try, right?”

Rouyi’s father sucked in a breath and calmly released it. He had a tranquil expression on his face, despite the current predicament, and he clapped his hands together.

Slowly, he began to open his palms, and a brilliant orb of fire was forming between them. It lit up the area around them better than the lamplights. Rouyi could feel the intense heat radiating, singeing his hair and fur. He rubbed his forehead to make sure that his eyebrows hadn’t been burned off.

“Alright, you damned flower,” the mayor muttered. “Take this.”

A spear of searing hot flames erupted from in between his hands. As far as Rouyi was concerned, this was true magic that he couldn’t wait to learn when he got older.

It struck like a lunging snake that bit into the vine, sinking its fangs into the surface and drilling straight through. The water in the plant boiled, and its fibers burst out like a cracked flagon. Implosions rippled throughout its entire length. 

Surely, nothing can survive that...right?

Across the vine, various parts of it bulged and shrunk all at once as it whipped back and forth from the sheer force of the magic spell. It was hard to believe that anything would last against this level of heat; a normal human would simply melt into a fine paste if they were hit with such an attack.

Then, the flames disappeared and everything returned to normal.

Rouyi blinked his eyes in rapid succession to confirm that he was not hallucinating. “Wait what?”

He turned to look at his father, who was frozen in his casting stance and gaping at the vine in absolute silence.

The mayor broke out of his frozen state and immediately began raving.

“WHAT!? FUCK THIS BULLSHIT! STUPID ASS VINE! I SAW THAT! WE ALL SAW THAT HAPPEN! WE ALL READ THAT EXTENSIVE DESCRIPTION OF THE SPELL’S DESTRUCTIVE POWER! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS!?”

“I’d usually remind you to calm down, but I’d probably be furious if that happened, too,” the advisor admitted.

The vine shuddered, then abruptly began to slither back into the flower. Rouyi noticed that every other vine was beginning to retract itself as well. 

Like a miracle, the flower began to lose its brilliant white luster as it blackened. The petals drew in on themselves and wilted. Every man, woman, and child in the city turned their heads up to the night sky and watched (cheered, even) when the petals wrinkled up as if all the moisture had been wrung from it like a wet towel. Gradually, the brittle and dry flower began to deteriorate into dust. The cold midnight breeze blew away what seemed like millions of pieces that crumbled from the now darkened petals, sending them floating away over the city walls like paper doves.

Soon, the stalk that held the petals up collapsed in on itself, shrinking and becoming a dry brown-yellow color as it wrinkled up; it too became nothing more than dust. Except it wasn’t high enough to have a poetic and dramatic sendoff, and instead was blown directly into Longhuan Hotel. A couple of unfortunate guests staring at the spectacle from the balconies were hit with a faceful of the dust.

Although the display left the residents in shock and awe, the end of the crisis began to settle like a comforting blanket over everybody’s hearts. 

The first person to celebrate was the mayor.

“Now that’s a taste of my true power,” he said. “You know, we really should have just done that from the start. Did you see that? That’s what real magic is all about. Fuckin’ up giant monsters and giant plants. My dick is throbbing, I tell you. I can feel the pure testosterone raging in my body. There never was a doubt in my mind to begin with. That’s the reason why your mother fell for me, Rouyi. It’s my absolute unwavering hyper-masculinity and self-confidence.”

The advisor rubbed his weary eyes. “Okay, fuck this. I’m going home.”

 

Seni had been desperately avoiding and running away from Weishan when he noticed that his flower had just recently wilted.

Weishan brought his black, rocky arm back to strike, but this time Seni swung his entire body aside to avoid the blow. An enormous white vine erupted from the ground below and swatted Weishan away, sending him flying in an out-of-control spin.

There wasn’t much time before Weishan was going to recover. Seni had to act fast. The vine snaked around him, then jabbed forward and impaled his entire torso.

Magic energy began to course through his body from the vine. Quick spikes of pain stabbed him through every nerve as if he were being sentenced to death by a thousand swords. Strips of white fiber-like material were being layered over his body and they tightened, then compressed into his ghostly skin.

Grunting in pain as it began to fade, he detached himself from the vine and rolled his shoulders to dissipate the feeling of needles stabbing into him. 

He spread his arms out wide, and said, “You should’ve taken me down earlier. Because now, I’m at full power! Just like a shounen protagonist when the villain is whooping his ass, and then the opening song starts to play! Maybe if-”

Seni’s monologue was interrupted when Weishan planted a black, rocky fist into his face. It was harsh, with a clean smack as the jagged knuckles dug into his cheek. 

He turned his face, pushing against the pressure of the fist to look his opponent right in the eyes. They locked gazes and stared at each other for what seemed like a full hour.

Weishan seemed to shudder for a moment, then withdrew his right arm and punched once more with his unarmored left hand. The strike glanced off of Seni’s forehead.

Seni reached out and grabbed Weishan’s wrist, pulled him in close, then wound up his arm to land the first punch of his fight.

A loud crack could be heard as Seni hooked Weishan under the chin with a vicious uppercut. His head whipped back, and for the first time, he stumbled.

Seni immediately advanced. Taking advantage of his opponent’s staggered state, he pivoted on his leg and smashed his face in with a spinning kick. Weishan’s entire body folded under the force, and Seni rushed in to follow up with a flurry of punches.

“Useless!” he shouted, throwing a fast strike that left a gash on Weishan’s cheek. “Useless, useless, uselessuselessuselessus-”

As the consecutive attacks gradually ramped up in speed, Weishan suddenly threw his face forward and slammed his forehead against Seni’s fist, which bounced off painfully.

For a moment, Seni found himself off-balance from the unexpected headbutt, then stomped down. Using his momentum, he brought his knuckles smashing back into Weishan’s face. 

Another crack. Warm, dark blood covered and stained his snow-white fist. 

Weishan scrambled away, bringing a hand up to his broken nose. He stared at the blood in his palm, almost in disbelief that he had been hurt. 

“My nose,” he muttered. “That’s impossible. How did you get so strong? Is it your divine organ?”

“You’ll find that your punches can go a long way if you just put some elbow grease into them,” Seni replied with a confident smirk.

“It seems you still aren’t willing to talk. Then I suppose I’ll just have to take it one step further.”

A pair of wings covered in dark membranes burst out from Weishan’s back. They blended into the blackness of night, casting a grave shadow over the streets.

Reaching up, he shoved his hand into the air and pulled something out. It was as if he had just taken something from between the folds of space. Seni squinted his eyes, but the spot in his vision where Weishan was reaching into was warping and twisting in an endless fractal. It was impossible to focus his eyes on that point, no matter how hard he stared.

Weishan finished drawing the object out of thin air, and the space around him returned to the way it was before. However, what was in his hands was more concerning.

It was a bow. Well, not as simple as that. The sheer size of it exceeded what would be classified as a normal longbow. Seni would have called it a titan-bow if he were to guess its name. The length was twice Seni’s height, with numerous metal plates set in the thick limbs to fortify its enormous draw weight. 

Flapping his black wings, Weishan retreated onto a rooftop and began to sprint off to create distance between the two of them. Seni gave chase, jumping after Weishan and spinning his body in midair to kick at him, but Weishan blocked it with his armored hand and Seni quickly found himself back on the ground as if he had never gone after his opponent in the first place.

“Oh, come on!”

Weishan nocked an enormous arrow and pulled the bowstring back. The limbs of the bow strained against his strength as if both he and his weapon were locked into a furious battle each time he used it - and he came out on top. 

“Parry this, casual!” he shouted.

Seni couldn’t even see the arrow in flight, but he ducked to the side out of instinct and felt it whiz past the back of his head.

He jumped through a window for cover just as a second arrow barely missed his chest. For a moment, he began to panic - it was simply monstrous that someone could rapidly fire off a second shot from a bow with such a heavy draw weight. No matter how he saw it, approaching directly was not an option unless he was confident he could survive an arrow that was probably traveling past the speed of sound.

“You’re calling me a casual? You’re the one who can’t beat me without sending me back in time or something. And I’m, like, half your size!” Seni yelled back.

Another arrow shot at him in response. Although it landed nowhere close to him, he still flinched.

Shit, he’s got a ranged weapon. Where’s a possession ability when you need it the most?

He slowed down his breathing to think about his next move. Nervously, he squeezed his sword hilt to calm himself down and suddenly realized - he was grasping at empty air.

Slowly, he began to look down at his hands.

Both of them were empty.

 

AN: In case if you’re wondering where I’ve been due to the long delay, I honestly couldn’t bear how horrible my writing was and went on a pilgrimage to the holy land of Youtube to at least try to fix my action scenes so they flow in a somewhat competent manner. I also tried to use a couple of semicolons in this chapter, because from what I see in other works, they turn out to be pretty handy. Please notify me if it turns out I’m using the semicolons incorrectly.

Although nobody really has to answer these questions, I’m going to put them up anyway, and anyone reading this can just answer if they’d like. 

When I write something like “Seni stomped the ground” do you imagine in your head that he just stomps on the ground, or when he stomps, the ground under his feet crack and rubble flies out and all these special CGI movie effects? Assuming that you’ve read every chapter up to this point and know about how the immortals are supposed to be these godlike beings.

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