Desolate Era

“I thought you enjoyed fighting and causing a ruckus. Why are you asking me for help this time?” An icy voice rang out, shaking the world around them as the icy ground off in the distance suddenly split apart. An enormous crevice appeared, followed by a similarly towering figure emerging from it. This figure was dressed in long black robes that had silver patterns embroidered on them. His black hair fell down to his waist. He looked fairly handsome, but his eyes were ice cold. It felt as though there was nothing capable of stirring or shaking his heart.

He slowly walked over, causing an invisible wave of pressure to push down upon Ji Ning and Azurefiend. Both turned pale.

“This black-robed Sourcewalker is far more powerful than the other one,” Ning mused.

“Gwaaaaar! Another one? I’ll eat this one, then I’ll eat you!”

The fire blazing around Flamewing towered ever-higher as the boundless sea of flames around him swept outwards. He flapped his wings, once more charging towards the increasingly-battered armored Sourcewalker.

“Big brother!” The armored Sourcewalker was terrified, hurriedly dodging while flying towards his big brother. The black-robed Sourcewalker took a single step forwards, moving to block in front of his little brother.

“Fuck off!” The black-robed Sourcewalker stretched out both hands simultaneously, causing a strange, gloomy black light to appear from his palms which seemed capable of devouring everything in the world. As for Flamewing, he continued to charge forwards with brute force as he sent his giant fleshy claws towards the black light.

BOOM! The twin palms met the twin claws head-on. Both were extremely confident in their abilities.

The black-robed Sourcewalker’s face tightened slightly as he hurriedly took a few steps back, each step causing the icy ground beneath him to crack and shatter. He had to retreat a total of eight steps before coming to a halt. As for Flamewing, it was also knocked flying backwards. It had to hurriedly flap its wings a few times before stabilizing itself in midair.

“What?! He’s actually able to fight Flamewing head-on to a standstill?” Ning, watching from within the distant realmship, felt rather stunned. Although Flamewing seemed to have a slight advantage, the difference in power was clearly minimal.

“This Sourcewalker is as powerful as that?!” Azurefiend was shocked as well. “Chaos Primordials can effortlessly dominate even Otherverse Lords and Golden Emperors! It took three Sithe Exalts working together to catch the Flamewing God. For this Sourcewalker to be able to fight Flamewing to a standstill means that it is probably quite close in power to the Sithe Exalts.”

“Be careful, Flamewing!” Ning immediately sent mentally. “Don’t be overconfident.”

“Wow!” Flamewing let out a strange cry in midair, the scales on its body standing up like the hair on a cat. An excited look was in its eyes as it howled, “You are pretty strong, Sourcewalker! The only foes I’ve ever met who are stronger than you were those Sithe Exalts. However… you still aren’t a match for me!”

“I’ve long heard of how powerful Chaos Primordials are… but now, it seems, you aren’t all that impressive.” The black-robed Sourcewalker remained quite confident in his chances. He leapt forwards, once more charging towards Flamewing.

Swish! Swish! Swish! Both transformed into blurs as they fought against each other at high speeds. The black-robed Sourcewalker had clearly chosen to stop using the clumsy method of meeting Flamewing blow-for-blow, as that was simply too exhausting. Unlike the Chaos Primordial, he didn’t have endless reservoirs of energy. However, he clearly was highly superior on a technical level, and so he chose to use his superior techniques to deal with Flamewing, using all sorts of defensive techniques to ablate and draw away Flamewing’s power, causing Flamewing to begin to struggle a little bit.

“You still aren’t a match for me!” Flamewing let out a loud bellow as it finally went crazy. SWISH! Its speed instantly skyrocketed to its absolute maximum.

“That’s fast.” The black-robed Sourcewalker’s face tightened.

Riiiiip! Flamewing pounced towards its foe at terrifying speeds, its fierce claws tearing through the air. The black-robed Sourcewalker hurriedly moved to defend. Just as it was about to counter-attack, Flamewing suddenly flew away, then arced back from afar to once more assault him.

Swish! Swish! Swish! The skies became filled with countless streaks of flaming light. Flamewing was so incredibly fast that this was all that could be seen of him. There was no need for it to allow the black-robed Sourcewalker to fight back against it. It relied on its raw speed to launch repeated and unanswered attacks, causing even the black-robed Sourcewalker to feel quite frustrated. Flamewing was simply too fast!

Flamewing’s speed vastly surpassed the speed of any Hegemon. Even Hegemon Thunderstar, who was extremely skilled in speed, was far from being a match for Flamewing; only when Hegemon Thunderstar was riding in his realmship was he able to just barely surpass Flamewing in speed. As for Ning, he was slower than Flamewing even in a realmship.

“It’s too fast. Although I have a realmship, I still wouldn’t be able to outpace it,” the black-robed Sourcewalker mused. In the end, it had yet to reach Hegemony in terms of its insights. In contrast, Hegemon Thunderstar had become a Hegemon via the Dao of Lightning.

“Master! Master!” Flamewing sent mentally to Ning, “This Sourcewalker is a pain to deal with. I’ve yet to harm him at all, despite hitting him with everything I have. It doesn’t look like he’s using up too much energy. If this continues, he’ll probably be able to continue holding on against me.”

Although Flamewing had the initiative thanks to its speed, the black-robed Sourcewalker had reached such a high level of insight that he was still capable of protecting himself.

Ning instantly began to frown. What were they to do? Flamewing was extremely strong, having completely suppressed the first armored Sourcewalker and injuring him, causing his energy to deplete rapidly. As a result, the first Sourcewalker chose to flee after a brief bout! But this black-robed Sourcewalker… its only weakness lay in its speed. In all other aspects, it was Flamewing’s equal; in fact, it actually had an advantage in close combat.

“You are pretty strong after all, Chaos Primordial. You’ll make a good mount for me!” The black-robed Sourcewalker suddenly let out a laugh. “Arise!”

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Light began to shine all around them as power began to circulate through the area. Countless runic lines appeared in the icy earth around them as an enormous formation began to reveal itself. The entire area became blanketed in blurry light; clearly, this was a trapping formation.

“If I had to deal with you anywhere else, it’d probably be quite hard… but this is my turf. Admit defeat, Chaos Primordial.” The black-robed Sourcewalker was extremely self-confident.

“Retreat, Flamewing,” Ning sent mentally. Flamewing immediately flapped its wings and charged back towards Ning.

“Store the realmship into your estate-world, then obey my orders with regards to breaking this formation apart,” Ning sent.

“Alright, Master.” Flamewing was quite unhappy after having been trapped within the opponent’s formation. It didn’t really understand formations, given how low its level of insight was. All it could do was try to overwhelm the formation with raw power! Given that it was strong enough to dominate even Otherverse Lords, ordinary formations were no match for it. However, this was a formation that was controlled by a Sourcewalker that was every bit as strong as Flamewing; overpowering it probably wasn’t an option.

Whoosh. Flamewing put away the realmship. Even though Ning was now within Flamewing’s estate-treasure, his gaze was still able to see past the dimensional barriers and into the world outside. This was primarily because Flamewing was in control of the estate-treasure. It didn’t move to oppose Ning, and so Ning was able to see what was happening outside.

“This trap formation is a bit interesting, but defeating it won’t be hard. Flamewing, given how strong you are, this is actually going to be easy.” Ning felt quite confident. “Obey my commands.”

The Dao of Formations was an incredibly difficult one, but Ning had reached terrifying heights in it. In all the Sixteen Realmverses Alliance, there was probably no one superior to him in this regard! When he had first unlocked the secrets behind the Jadefire Realm’s formation-diagram, he had already reached the Archon level in the Dao of Formations. He had then spent another long period of time studying formations in order to unleash Flamewing, and as a result his insight into the Dao of Formations had deepened even further.

Swish! Flamewing transformed into an arced streak of light, flying through the blurry formation at high speed. It repeatedly changed directions, sometimes choosing to ram through certain points with raw force.

To break the entire formation through raw power was impossible for Flamewing, but Ning’s level of mastery over the Dao of Formations was so high that he was able to find its weak spots with ease. To locate and then break through those weak spots was naturally quite simple.

Boom! Boom! Boom! A number of explosions could be heard in succession. The formation which the black-robed Sourcewalker had spent quite a bit of time setting up was instantly disrupted, and the surrounding area returned to its usual appearance. It was once again possible for everyone to clearly see the vast, icy world around them.

“Why did it break?! Big brother, your formation was so powerful that when I was trapped inside it, I had no idea how I was supposed to escape. How was it breached like that?!” The armored Sourcewalker was rather dazed.

“You idiot. All you know how to do is fight. You know nothing of formations.” The black-robed Sourcewalker stared towards the fleeing Flamewing, his eyes shining. “It was actually able to disrupt my formation in the blink of an eye. There’s no way that Chaos Primordial could’ve accomplished it on its own; those things are legendary for their stupidity. That means that it had to have been one of the two cultivators in that realmship. So one of them is actually a grandmaster in the art of formations!”

……

After breaking through the formation, Flamewing instantly grew excited. It let out an earth-shattering roar, then said: “Hey, Sourcewalker! Wasn’t your formation supposed to be really awesome? Why don’t you activate a few more and let’s see how they do?!”

Formations had to be set up in advance. The black-robed Sourcewalker had detected Ning’s group early on and thus had set up this formation before revealing himself. How could he suddenly manifest another powerful formation out of thin air?

“Gentlemen.” The black-robed Sourcewalker had an excited look in his eyes, and he said with a smile: “Do you think you can escape simply because you breached my formation?”

“Without your formations, do you think you can stop me?” Flamewing howled back, “Be good and hand over the Daomerge Firecloud Flower. Otherwise, I’m going to loot the entire Icewind Sea completely clean.”

“This place is my territory. You should play nice and listen to what I have to say.” A strange, rhomboid-covered globe suddenly flew out from the black-robed Sourcewalker’s forehead and into the air. Boom! A strange power which belonged to the Dao of Space suddenly swept out and covered the entire area, moving at such incredible speeds that it completely covered a trillion kilometers in the blink of an eye.

The entire region covered by this power completely changed. It had transformed into a world of the starry skies, with Flamewing and the two Sourcewalkers both located within it.

“This is a weapon which I acquired from a Sithe who once attacked this place.” The black-robed Sourcewalker’s voice echoed throughout every part of the starry skies.

“Flamewing.” Ning immediately issued an order from within the estate-wrold: “War machines might be powerful, but activating them uses up an enormous amount of energy. Don’t worry about him. You have a virtually indestructible body and limitless energy; focus all of your efforts on tearing through this astral world. Rip it to pieces with your power!”