Inside the Formation, the two shouted that the Old Woman was shameless, like sparrows flaring at a hawk. She was unmoved. These little ones were too green, never tasted the cold Abyss. Their branch pampered them the moment they hit Cantata Two. Throw them into the Abyss with only theory, and the abyssal wind would skin them raw.
She knew it from scars. Back then, she and Yuan Dai’s master were hurled into the Abyss together, nearly butchered by native clans. She learned to shoot from the shadows there, learned to breathe like stone. There’s a line that fits that place.
“Mercy to your enemy is cruelty to yourself.”
If you start, you finish. Leave loose ends, and revenge trickles back like poison springs. They once crossed an entire plain, hunted by hundreds of natives, a heartbeat from dying in the dust.
Inside the Formation, the First Symphony leveled her latest model arcane firearm. Gray Mana rounds snapped into the dark Array Patterns—then pinged away like pebbles off iron.
The woman in an azure qipao unleashed near everything. A gale roared through the Taoist hall, snapping her ally’s sleeves, scattering incense ash, toppling clay idols, punching through fragile walls like paper screens.
Wind Blades chewed the Formation hundreds of times in a blink. It only dimmed. Forcing through the Array Pattern with just their strength was wishful.
To break a Formation—find its core, cut its feed, sever its heart channels. That’s what the manuals preached.
If there was anything odd in the room, the woman in the dark indigo qipao found it above the rosewood table: a wooden carving. Her gaze met its carved eyes. She glimpsed a thread of spirit within, and a thin sheen of gold clinging to it.
She was sure—the carving was the Formation’s core. She raised her round fan, stirred wind and cloud, ready to cleave the carving in two—
The Old Woman’s strike arrived.
Earth gathered and hardened, a shield grown from soil. Two massive palms, left and right, pressed shut like bread clamping cheese, trapping the indigo-qipao woman and closing fast.
Seeing the turn, the First Symphony lifted her arcane gun, aiming for the carving, but a sudden surge of stone blocked her shots. Mana bullets shattered against rising rock.
The woman in the indigo qipao knew they would die if this dragged on. She burned everything. A soft glow flowed over her skin. A fierce wind-element surged from her crown; condensed Mana became an invisible sword of air and came down hard.
Invisible greatsword met stone. The impact was a thunder that rattled teeth. Dust billowed. Shards screamed through the hall.
With that one cut, half the temple was near ash. But the Formation only broke one channel. The statue’s killing move didn’t stop. Rays kept lashing at her. She raised elements again, but the recoil bit deep; she staggered, barely standing.
“Cough… you damned hag!”
Blood streaked her lips. Her face blanched to paper.
Anger bright in her eyes, she tore the Arcane Firearms from the fainted First Symphony’s hands. Indigo Mana flooded the magazine, flaring with the last blaze of her Cantata Two life.
She aimed at the Old Woman. The Old Woman tapped the ground. Stone walls rose like slabs from a tomb. That final shot slammed into rock—she stopped it with just three walls.
The indigo-qipao woman’s eyes filled with unwilling fire. But the attack from behind had already arrived: a brilliant sword-radiance bloomed from a plain peachwood sword and cut her clean at the waist.
The Old Woman looked at the ground tinted with Blood and sighed long.
“They were strong. Face-to-face, I’d pay for forcing a win right now…”
Her gaze moved to the wooden carving that anchored the Formation. She could see it—the three linked arrays could handle one Cantata Two, but not two together.
The indigo-qipao woman’s team was only the first wave. There would be a second, a third…
The blast and that death had surely drawn every eye coveting the Key. An organization would send people. They’d find the Formation.
She had hoped the Formation could guard the Key. Now she had to move it.
Her eyes fixed on the Taoist wooden statue. Her arms trembled, and a massive earth dragon surged up, swallowing the carving with the entire rosewood table.
But the Array Patterns were stubborn iron. Almost broken, yet never breaking. The wooden Taoist kept striking. The earth dragon’s body turned ragged, holes ripped through it.
Her Mana drained hard. What she saved earlier would be bled dry here.
The earth dragon roared and fell apart. Golden light from the wooden Taoist speared through earth. A shockwave rolled out, bending mountaintop trees sideways. She exhaled, almost empty of Mana, but she finally tore free the wooden Taoist and the table.
Just as she suspected—the wooden Taoist was the core, feeding the Formation with endless Mana. The heart of the linked rings.
Remove it, and the three Formations lost their glow. Wait for the remaining Mana to gutter out, and the hall would open.
She waited, caught her breath, let some Mana drip back. When the grand array wasn’t so lethal, she stepped inside. Attacks woven from Mana couldn’t scratch her now.
The rosewood table had been ground to ash by the carving’s own fury. Nothing hidden within.
She pulled the Key from her belt. Its light shone fierce and bright. That meant the true Key was nearby.
She’d already dug three feet down and found nothing. Even with the clues the two youngsters left, it stayed hidden.
“Hm?”
She stepped closer to the wooden carving. The Key’s glow brightened a hair—faint, but real. She tested by moving the carving around. The Key’s light rose and fell with the distance.
Then the Key must be inside the carving.
She picked it up and weighed smashing it. Two figures appeared behind her—eyes locked on the Key’s sky-blue shine.
“Target found. The Key’s in her hand.”
The Old Woman cursed her luck. She’d just finished off a Cantata Two, hadn’t even stripped the spoils, and the second wave arrived.
She pocketed the carving, shoved the Key away, and bolted downhill. Two masked shadows rode lightning, moving so fast they reached her flank in two, three steps.
These two were both Cantata Two, stronger than the indigo-qipao woman. A hard fight meant the Old Woman died, and they left one dead, one mangled.
She had no plan to trade blows. With the last drops of Mana, she cast Earth Escape again and again.
The two lightning-element Magic Maidens didn’t have the previous team’s Mana soil-density detector, so finding her quickly should’ve been hard—
Damn it—Mana soil-density detector.
Why does every team have one?!
She spat curses at the pair.
She didn’t know they had stripped the indigo-qipao woman’s group the moment the Old Woman left the hall. They’d complained about lugging such a heavy detector. Now they understood—the indigo woman had done her homework.
With a nearly intact instrument in their hands, and power stronger than hers, they’d surely fulfill those two women’s “wish,” right?
Cold sweat streaked the Old Woman’s face. Without the Formation, her proud Earth Escape was cracked by a junk machine. She wanted to smash it, but the moment she moved, the idle Magic Maiden would swat her attack aside.
Forget destroying the machine. Unrealistic.
Running was hard. She wasn’t faster; Earth Escape was countered; her Mana was almost gone.
She sprinted down the slope and hit the highway. Behind her, two bolts of lightning tore the air. A little farther, and she’d cross the border.
Beyond lay wide-open lands. There, her power could breathe. Escape would be easy.
She couldn’t help a bitter thought. If this were then, one against two was fine. Now she was hunted ragged, cornered to the edge.
Two streaks of lightning landed steady on concrete, branding black scars where they passed. Both pairs of eyes locked on the Key.
“Your Mana’s a spent bow. Hand over the Key.”
They felt it—the Old Woman had weathered too many fights. She was propping herself up with grit alone.
“What Key? I don’t know anything…”
“Don’t refuse the easy way and make us pour you the bitter wine!”
One of them bellowed. Her voice broke like thunder. The crackle rushed into the Old Woman’s mind, drums of storm pounding in her skull, knocking her Mana off balance. She gasped for breath.
Purple arcs danced wild in their hands. They pressed in, step by step, toward a prey at her limit.
The Old Woman squeezed the last thread of Mana. She meant to gamble everything.
A clear girl’s voice rang through the ravine. Crimson Gold Flames spun into two Spears, rushing from afar.
Purple lightning met Crimson Gold Flame. Dust geysered. Shards flew.
“Who?!”
A Crimson Gold Spear flicked the dust aside. A girl with ash-white hair stepped lightly from the haze. Her black-gold long dress rippled. Her beautiful Crimson Gold eyes burned bright in the dark.
