Immortality Starts With Generosity

Chen Haoran opened his eyes and looked at the swarm that surrounded them. Large patches of green miasma ate away at Jiang Lei’s liquid qi dome. Jiang Lei swung his sword. A glowing blade of qi crossed through the barrier and annihilated a hole in the swarm to the outside. It was only exposed for a moment, however, before the swarm shifted and more insects closed the gap.

Chen Haoran blinked once, and the world took on new colors as Liquid Qi enhanced his vision. He watched a green beetle with a subtle purple gloss on its shell land on the peach qi dome. He picked out the scars Jiang Lei’s corrosive qi left on its carapace before it burned away completely. He immediately began tracking the next insect with such clarity he could individually identify their species, even surrounded by a million others. Was this how eagles looked at the world?

Under the enhancement of his growing Liquid Qi, his other senses rose to match the level of his vision, and he marshaled his qi to dampen the nausea it caused. He still needed to grasp the situation. His qi sense flooded out with him as the center stretching ten meters, twenty, thirty, before finally stopping. Within the zone, he could see the swarm rising upward in a single massive column. The insects, all 5,972,451 of them, rotated as they pressed down on the dome like a living drill. Beyond the column, he could sense the connected energies of the Shaman and his Gu. The amorphous energy of the Gu was as normal, but to Chen Haoran’s sense, the Shaman’s green qi blurred and took on several points of similarity to his Gu’s qi.

As he was inspecting, he was observed in turn. What felt like three pairs of ghostly eyes scanned him and were startled by what they saw.

“He succeeded?” Wang Xiao whispered in disbelief. His emotions whipped his gaseous Peach-colored qi into a swarm.

Jiang Lei laughed and shook his head.“Chen Haoran, you crazy bastard.” His lake of pink qi surged as he pushed back the dome.

“Impossible!” The Shaman shouted. The blur over his qi fell as the reality of Chen Haoran’s successful advancement caused a ripple across his own lake of noxious green qi. The Dragonfly Gu’s energy spiked, and the swarm flashed with miasma and doubled its efforts.

Chen Haoran wiped the blood from his face. “Jiang Lei, cover them.”

Startled, Jiang Lei immediately grabbed Phelps and Wang Xiao. Within his body, the Yellow Dragon threaded a line of liquid qi throughout his meridians and then accelerated toward his head. Chen Haoran took a single step and bounded through the dome and into the swarm. A million crawling bodies tried to bury themselves in his skin. The Yellow Dragon roared. Liquid Qi flooded out of Chen Haoran.

The swarm broke.

Xie Jin had said that among insects, the Gu was king. The Dragonfly Gu had more than lived up to those words with the immense swarm it commanded. Even now, as the swarm threatened to break completely under Chen Haoran’s flood, it reasserted its dominance and directed the swarm to crush him. It was an admirable, if futile, attempt.

After all, what was a Dragonfly to a Dragon?

Liquid qi surged and carried the Yellow Dragon’s roar. Where before, the insects didn’t hesitate to sacrifice themselves to Jiang Lei’s corrosive qi, they now reeled back as soon as they touched the dragon’s arrogance. Chen Haoran raised a hand, and his liquid qi followed the motion, flooding up to the air like a spear and breaking the swarm from within. The liquid qi stopped before it could go more than halfway up. He had just broken through, and he didn’t have enough qi to let it flood as he wished. Even as the thought occurred, the Yellow Dragon breathed in more qi and devoured it, feeding the flood while Chen Haoran directed it.

The Shaman cursed, and a silent command to his Gu had the swarm drawn into the air away from Chen Haoran. He glared murder at Chen Haoran and slapped his storage bag, a green beast core flew out of it. “I’ll refine your bones into a puppet! I’ll torture your soul and make your ghost a slave for a thousand years!”

The Shaman tossed the beast core to the Gu. The Dragonfly Gu covered it with miasma and tore into it with a savageness Chen Haoran had never seen before from the otherwise robotic Gu. Before his eyes, the core shrunk and scattered to dust as the Gu devoured its essence. The Shaman waved his hands, and the Dragonfly Gu’s eyes shined with green light. Above them, insects and miasma converged into a sphere. Miasma leaked from within the insect planet like toxic vents. Behind him, Jiang Lei’s qi spiked in preparation.

Chen Haoran calmly watched the formation of the poisonous planet. His hand drifted to his scimitar, and before he drew the blade, he was struck with a sudden sense of nostalgia. A strong Liquid Meridian. A final giant attack. The green qi.

“You mongrel,” Chen Haoran echoed with a laugh.“Don’t tell me a storage bag is all you have, you broke bastard.”

The Shaman was not amused. “Die,” he coldly said.

The toxic planet fell.

“As above, so below,” Chen Haoran murmured. He had to give the White Tyrant credit; the scenery of that day was burned into his mind alright.

Chen Haoran pulled out his scimitar and slashed. The jungle lit up with white light. The earth ruptured and parted open. Towering trees fell and became sawdust before even touching the ground. The toxic ball of insects and miasma was split down the middle, and then those halves were themselves split down the middle. White blades of light cut away insects and miasma into fine dust. White lines of metal energy cracked across the Swiftwind Scimitar, and it shattered into pieces.

“Damn,” Chen Haoran sighed. His legs buckled, and he dropped to a knee. The liquid qi within his body dimmed, and the Yellow Dragon hastily drew in more qi to restore it. He’d overdone it with that last attack. He gazed at the broken hilt of his blade. “I wonder what you felt back then.”

The Shaman stared at Chen Haoran with frozen, terrified eyes. A thin red line trailed from his head down vertically on his body, and he split into two. The Dragonfly Gu followed its master’s fate and split in half down the middle but remained floating in the air. Chen Haoran frowned as the halves of the Dragonfly Gu awkwardly reattached themselves. They didn’t heal like how the Auctioneer reattached his arm, however. They just stuck together, and when the Dragonfly Gu flew to its master’s corpse, the halves slid apart and readjusted themselves. Unexpectedly, the Dragonfly Gu spewed miasma over the Shaman’s corpse. After a moment, the miasma turned blood red, and when the Gu swallowed it back, all that was left was the Shaman’s scarlet uniform and bone necklace. Before Chen Haoran could do anything, it turned and disappeared into the jungle.

“So fucking weird,” Chen Haoran muttered.

“On that, we can agree,” Jiang Lei said, slapping Chen Haoran on the back. “Although in my eyes, you’re not much better. I’ve met berserkers less crazy in battle than you are.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Are you alright?”

“Tired and in pain. I’ll live, though.” Even after getting it in what felt like every cell in his body, the fact that he could stand and talk right now was a testament to the exaggerated physique of the Liquid Meridian Realm. His injuries were still there, but under the enhancement of Liquid Qi, they were far less serious an issue than when he was a Qi Realm. This wasn’t even the end of it. Even as they spoke, he could feel his liquid qi settling into the corners of his body. Given time to accumulate qi and adjust, his body would no doubt be even more ridiculous. Chen Haoran couldn’t even imagine what effect Liquid Qi would have on the Stygian Lotus’s durability.

Jiang Lei clicked his tongue. “I’m sure the Heavens are just as surprised as I am about that. What were you thinking?” He offered a hand.

Chen Haoran grasped it and let Jiang Lei pull him to his feet. “Like I had to advance. Someone had to save the day after all.”contemporary romance

“I was working on it. I was in the middle of considering the options when you pulled that stunt.”

“It worked. That’s all that matters.”

Phelps floated over from behind Jiang Lei with a squeal and buried himself in Chen Haoran’s chest. Wang Xiao followed after the sloth with an expression Chen Haoran could only describe as complicated.

“Will that Gu be a problem? It won’t warn another shaman or something, will it?” Chen Haoran asked.

Jiang Lei shook his head. “The death of the shaman is the end of the contract between them. It’ll wander around for a bit as a free spirit before making its way to the Tenth Green Hell.”

Chen Haoran put a lid on his desire for Jiang Lei to expand on that last sentence. “So we just have to worry about the next shaman that comes after us instead.”

“We should be fine. The Empire deploys the majority of the Gu Department outside of Zumulu. That shaman should have been the only one in the area. It will take time for another to get here. So long as we clean up well, there won’t be any traces left for them to track.” Jiang Lei turned his gaze to the ruined battlefield. “Not that there’s much cleaning up to do. You seem to have understood something about your Harmonization.”

“Maybe,” Chen Haoran said. “Or else it’s more of the same, but stronger.” He would have to get a new sword, one that wouldn’t break under his new power, to really see.

“On that note, congratulations on your advancement to the Liquid Meridian Realm.” Jiang Lei clasped his hands in respect. Wang Xiao looked like he was sucking a lemon, but he also clasped his hands. “How does it feel?”

Chen Haoran considered the question. He felt strong. Stronger than ever. He felt safe. Safer than ever. He felt empty. Empty like he hadn’t felt since the Spa Caverns. Like a space had opened up that just waited to be filled.

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He looked at Jiang Lei.

Connection: Negative

Chen Haoran smiled. “A hundred times better.”

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