The man swung his sword at Pei, unleashing a blood red crescent shaped energy blade at her. The energy blade tore through the ground and cut into the invisible energy wall surrounding the array and standing between him and Pei, but with its energy still being washed away in the process. When the energy finally reached the position of Pei, it was nothing but a poof of foul air.

The invisible energy wall healed when it completely stripped the energy blade of its power. As the man turned his head towards the chanting monks, he recognized that they were the ones who were generating the powerful energy wall shielding the outside world from what was going on inside, as well as the aura of energy within the array that had some suppressive effect on his power. So he lit up his sword and threw it right at the monks closest to him.

A wall of ice appeared right in front of the sword, which instantly shattered upon contact with it, absorbing a lot of its momentum and impact. After destroying the wall of ice, the sword continued on its trajectory and sliced through the bodies of three chanting monks before its blade sunk into the ground.

The man looked up and saw the two mages that created the ice wall, with a very short moment of preparation, he spit out two blood red energy daggers into the sky. And without even a chance to dodge or evade, the two mages lost their heads and fell onto the ground.

Vivian roared and lunged towards the man’s back from behind, her dagger pointing at the back of the man’s neck. At almost the same time, Blue appeared teleported from afar to the space above the man, and with his full force, another arrow of lightning was thrown out aiming at the man’s head.

“Bang!” Vivian’s dagger sunk into the man’s neck, but she was instantly knocked flying into the air by a shockwave that erupted from the man’s back. The man also caught the lightning arrow with his bare hands, and crushed it with his fingers. The subsequent explosion of electric energy in turn sent Blue flying in the air, with his clothes and beard all severely burnt and smoking.

“You… pests!” the man cursed and broke off a few more of the energy chains from the enchanted swords, then he forced himself onto the invisible energy wall in front of him, trying to break out with brute force and attack Pei, who was kneeling on the ground due to extreme exhaustion, directly.

But just when he raised his right hand and was about to bash the invisible energy wall with it, something inside of his right forearm exploded and released hundreds if not thousands of small but sharp and incredibly dense energy blades within his body, tearing his body from within.

The man screamed in agony, for the first time since the battle started, and knelt on the ground holding his entire right arm. The unknown source of tiny energy blades started moving up to his arm and heading towards his torso, while still continuously releasing the ruthless energy blades.

Within just a few seconds, the man’s right hand and right forearm disintegrated and turned to broken pieces of cinder and ashes. He immediately ripped his entire right arm off and threw it far away, the arm did not even land on the ground, instead, it just turned to ashes in midair.

“You!” the man turned his head towards Josephine Wong, who was lying on the ground unresponsive, but just when he tried to run towards her, his right shoulder started showing signs of the same destruction.

The man cursed once again, this time in some kind of arcane language no one understood. The next moment, he plunged his left hand into his chest and took out a dark red orb, and by crushing this red orb with his teeth, he was able to conjure up a dark red portal despite the thwarting power from the aura created by the array.

“Ms. Wong!” after the man escaped through the portal, Vivian rushed to the side of Josephine Wong.

“What happened?” a stern, calm but cold voice came from behind.

----------------------------------

The whole process took Jianmen quite a while, even though he was in a realm where the flow of time was disconnected from that to which he was used to. When he finally came out from behind the stone gates at the bottom of the stairs below Xyn’s temple, the space behind him was in a much more stable state than when he came in.

“My sincerest gratitude.” Xyn’s voice was weak, just like a normal human recovering from a big surgery: “Now, I will need some time for rest and slumber. Please tell your friends that I may not respond to them anytime soon - and when I come back, I would be in a much better state and hopefully would be able to aid them better in their quest.”

“Hopefully it won’t take too long.” Jianmen walked up the stairs with casual but still lightning speed and entered the temple above the stairs.

A strange and uneasy feeling arose inside of Jianmen’s mind, he could not tell what it was, but it worried him. 

“Xyn, forgive me. I think something’s come up and I need to head back.” Jianmen gently bowed to Xyn’s face made of fog: “I’ll come back and check on you. If you need anything, you’ll know how to find me.”

“Go ahead. I shall go into my slumber now.” Xyn’s face slowly faded away.

A light green energy arrow fell from the sky above and stopped right above Jianmen when he stepped out of the temple and onto the surface of the remote planet. Jianmen sensed that the arrow contained information inside, so he grabbed it the moment it stopped moving.

Inside the arrow was a piece of note, judging from the neat handwriting, Jianmen could definitely tell that it was from Josephine Wong. And with just a quick glance he was able to memorize everything by heart. But after reading through this note, the uneasy feeling got worse.

Without hesitating, he took out his phone, and was just in time to receive a few dozen notifications on the phone about missed incoming calls, all of which were from Josephine Wong.

“Fuck!” Jianmen called Josephine Wong, and did not even wait for her to answer, the second the line connected, he opened a portal right in front of him and rushed through it.

There Josephine Wong was, lying on the ground, barely hanging onto her life. Her right hand was sliced off and her abdomen had a gruesome wound. Jianmen could still sense the residual corruptive and corrosive energy on her wounds.

Jianmen felt as if his heart and his stomach was suddenly grabbed by a pair of forceful hands, and as if his blood started boiling.

“What happened?”