The Eternal Sin

The instant their techniques met, the world seemed to fracture.

Jiang Chen’s Heavenly Tiger Fist crashed into He Lan’s Dual Polarity Palms, and the collision unleashed a violent storm of force that tore through the barren land like an awakened dragon shaking off its chains.

Fire surged outward in spiraling arcs, frost followed in erratic waves, and the ground beneath them cracked open with a deafening roar, splitting apart in long, uneven fissures that spread like veins through the dying earth.

Within that collision, He Lan’s eyes widened, the previous rage in her pupils instantly replaced by a sharp, piercing shock that bordered on terror. She felt the impact travel through her wrists and up her shoulders with such violence that the joints popped out of their sockets with a sickening sound.

"Guah!"

A strangled cry escaped her as her entire body was driven fiercely backward. She was sent skipping across the earth like a flat stone across a pond, only stopping after slamming against the ground dozens of meters away in brutal fashion.

’Impossible! Why does he possess such strength?!’ He Lan’s mind was a chaotic mess of pain and disbelief.

Jiang Chen gave her no time to recover. His silhouette blurred into a fleeting trail of ink as he closed the distance between them in a heartbeat, his presence nearing like a shadow cast by an unseen sun.

He Lan gritted her teeth against the white hot ache in her shoulders and slammed her foot into the ground. "Get back, you ant!"

A massive wave of Ice Path qi erupted from her footprint, turning the earth into a frozen graveyard for fifty meters in every direction. Jiang Chen’s eyes sharpened, his body coiling like a spring before he leapt high into the air to avoid the creeping frost.

The moment his feet left the ground, He Lan’s second counterattack arrived. Dozens of flaming spears condensed in the air, each one blazing with searing heat. They shot upward in a tight formation, streaking toward him like a rain of burning meteors.

"Die!" she hissed, simultaneously swallowing a green healing pill. Her shoulders twisted as she forced them back into place, pain flashing across her face for the briefest instant before being suppressed beneath cold determination.

Midair, Jiang Chen’s expression remained unchanged. With a thought, two clones split from his body. He shoved them forward without hesitation, using them as cannon fodder to intercept the flaming spears.

Boom! Boom!

Explosions erupted as the spears struck, engulfing the clones in violent bursts of fire that scattered into embers across the sky. At that same moment, a third clone appeared behind him, its feet planting firmly against his back before it hurled the real Jiang Chen far away from the center of the explosion.

He landed in a rolling crouch and sprang back to his feet, instantly summoning a small army of clones in a single breath. All of them began weaving across the battlefield using the Traceless Ink Steps. To He Lan’s frustrated eyes, the field was suddenly filled with ink like ghosts, each moving with the same silent rhythm, making it impossible to distinguish the real one from the clones.

"Enough of these cheap tricks!" she snorted disdainfully.

Slamming her palms into the earth, a massive pillar of ice erupted beneath her, rising rapidly and lifting her high into the sky. It did not stop until she stood nearly two hundred meters above the battlefield, her figure overlooking everything below like a queen seated upon a frozen throne.

From that height, she unleashed the true prowess of her Dual Polarity Origin Art.

Fire gathered in one palm, and frost condensed in the other.

Then she pressed downward, and the sky responded.

Hundreds of massive hands, formed from a chaotic blend of blazing fire and crystalline ice, each the size of a chariot, descended all at once, crashing toward the ground with overwhelming force.

The battlefield was engulfed in an apocalypse of fire and frost. Clones were obliterated instantly, crushed into nothingness as the hands slammed down. Explosions echoed one after another, and the earth collapsed under the relentless bombardment, turning into a cratered wasteland of shattered stone and burning frost.

Within moments, most of the clones were gone, and the real Jiang Chen was forced to reveal himself as he fought to survive the onslaught.

He Lan locked her gaze onto him, her breathing coming in heavy, ragged gasps. That single move had consumed nearly forty percent of her spiritual reserves, but a cold smirk touched her lips as she saw Jiang Chen struggling.

The hundreds of hands began to target him alone, their movements relentless and synchronized to form a net of certain death. Even with his superior speed, the space around him tightened, and escape routes closed one after another.

’Tch.’ Jiang Chen stopped retreating.

Golden light surged from his fists once more. Each punch shattered a descending hand, the impact sending shards of fire and ice scattering like broken stars.

He advanced through the barrage, his figure flickering in and out of visibility as explosions engulfed him from all sides. Yet even he could not avoid everything. He shattered one descending hand, only for another hidden behind it to slam into his side, sending him flying.

Frost qi spread rapidly across his body, freezing his robes stiff as a third hand caught him midair and squeezed him tightly. A fourth hand descended toward his head with dangerous momentum, but Jiang Chen roared and broke free through sheer physical strength.

His skin was scorched and torn as he twisted aside and shattered the incoming strike. He summoned more clones and pressed forward even more fiercely, but he knew he could not win a battle of attrition against a fifteenth layer cultivator with deeper spiritual essence reserves than his.

High above, He Lan’s gaze flickered toward the incense.

One more minute remained.

"It is over, Jiang Chen! Give up and accept your fate!" she said coldly, her voice echoing downward.

Her hands rose again and began forming a complex mudra. Spiritual energy surged, gathering with a terrifying hum as she prepared a final technique. But midway through her incantation, a violent tremor ran through the ice pillar.

Crrack!

A sharp cracking sound echoed through the air. He Lan looked down, and her expression turned deathly pale, because she saw several remaining clones of Jiang Chen, whom she had overlooked in her haste, now relentlessly striking and chipping away at the base of the towering ice pillar she stood on.

The world beneath her feet began to tilt.

Alarm bells rang madly in her mind. If she fell from this height, the consequences would be severe.

She had to react instantly. The technique in her hands was forcefully dispersed into useless mist, and He Lan vomited a streak of dark blood from the internal recoil. Next, she hurriedly redirected the spectral hands away from Jiang Chen. Some swarmed the clones at the base like angry hornets, while others pressed against the sides of the pillar to hold it upright.

The pillar steadied. He Lan breathed a shallow sigh of relief, her vision still a bit dizzy from the backlash.

Because of that momentary lapse, she failed to notice that the real Jiang Chen had already made his move.

Using the distraction, he had leapt upward, his hand latching onto one of the very hands she was using to support the pillar. He used it as a foothold, and with a surge of power in his legs, he launched himself upward like a coiled spring released from tension. He cleared the final distance in a heartbeat and landed upon the flat top of the pillar.

Jiang Chen wasted no words. He appeared before her like a vengeful ghost, his hands clasped together and wreathed in the savage, golden phantoms of twin tigers.

"Senior Sister, I believe this is yours," Jiang Chen laughed loudly as he struck downward with brutal force.

He Lan’s pupils shrank to pinpricks. In her desperation, she raised her broken arms to block, fire and frost surging together in a last ditch defense.

The impact was absolute. She was driven downward like a drill, her body carving a deep cavity into the very center of the ice pillar until she was buried halfway through its length.

Her condition was horrifyingly grotesque. Her arms were broken and twisted like dead branches, and blood leaked from her mouth, staining the frozen walls around her. Her flesh had been torn into ribbons by the sharp interior of the ice, leaving raw muscle exposed and quivering.

Jiang Chen stood at the edge of the opening, looking down with a gaze that held no warmth.

He reached toward his own stomach and, with a calm motion, pulled free a chunky spear of ice that had lodged in his gut. Blood gushed freely, staining the white ice crimson. At the final moment of his strike, He Lan had launched that one desperate counter, hoping to force him into a retreat.

But she had fundamentally misunderstood her opponent. Jiang Chen would trade his flesh for a killing blow any day.

He spat out Wool Surgeon’s Needle, weaving through his flesh with precise movements. The hole in his gut closed rapidly, the bleeding stopping almost instantly.

He glanced at the incense stick, noting that it would burn out in thirty breaths.

’This should be enough.’ Jiang Chen’s gaze moved toward the flaming chariot in the distance.

He waited for a breath, then a faint frown appeared.

’Not over yet? Does Sun Jian think this girl still has a move to make, or is he waiting to see if I will deliver the killing blow?’ Jiang Chen mused before looking back into the pit.

Then his eyes narrowed.

A strange, ominous energy began to radiate from the depths. Strange symbols crawled across He Lan’s body.

Her blood, instead of staining the ice, began to sublimate into a thick, swirling mist. Jiang Chen’s instincts, honed by numerous life and death trials, screamed a warning. Something was fundamentally changing within her.

’Transformation?’ Jiang Chen gathered his qi and leapt into the cavity, his fist aimed at her skull to finish the matter.

Yet the moment he descended, the symbols ceased their crawling and erupted in a blinding, mysterious radiance that filled the entire pillar.

When the light faded, the broken girl was gone. In her place stood a figure encased in shimmering armor of fused fire and frost. Her hair had split into two distinct halves of crimson and white, and her aura had surged past the fifteenth layer, touching a boundary that felt exceedingly dangerous. The sheer pressure of her presence caused the massive ice pillar to split apart from the top down.

Jiang Chen found himself in a state of free fall as the two halves of the pillar moved outward.

Suddenly, hundreds of jagged ice spikes, each wreathed in white flames, grew from the inner faces of the split pillar, closing in on him like the jaws of a colossal beast.

Death inched closer, the icicles now at arm’s length.

Jiang Chen remained expressionless.

Clink.

He triggered his Space Swapping Beads. In a flash of silver light, he exchanged positions with the transformed He Lan. He stood upon the air for a fleeting second, watching as the massive halves of the pillar converged upon her with the force of a tectonic shift.

Jiang Chen landed safely on the ground and lifted his gaze.

His carefree expression turned solemn.

For he witnessed a wave of white heat explode from the center like the eruption of a volcano that had sworn to burn the world. The entire two hundred meter pillar of ice did not melt away, but was simply incinerated into nothingness in a single breath.

Amid the drifting ash and steam, the figure with red and white hair remained suspended in the sky, her eyes fixed on Jiang Chen with a cold, divine fury that made the previous rage seem like a child’s tantrum.

The battle, it seemed, had only just begun.