The Lotus and the Dragon
The Mad Ape King's fury had transformed it into something beyond mere beast—a convergence of rage and power that shook the very foundations of the hillside. Its roar sent shockwaves rippling through the ancient trees, shattering branches and sending lesser soul beasts fleeing in primal terror. Twenty-two thousand years of accumulated violence, now fully unleashed, focused entirely on the two figures who had dared wound it.
But Yao Xuan and Gu Yue were not prey to be scattered by rage.
In the moment the ape's attention fixed on Yao Xuan, Gu Yue's hands moved with the particular grace of someone conducting forces far beyond mortal comprehension. Her Elemental Staff blazed with silver light, and around her, the six elements responded to their sovereign's call.
Earth. Water. Wind. Fire. Light. Space.
They came not as separate forces but as aspects of a single truth, converging before her in a dance of increasing complexity. They collided, merged, fused—each element contributing its essence to a whole greater than any sum. The form that emerged was beautiful: a lotus of six colors, each petal representing a fundamental force, each glowing with the particular luminescence of power waiting to be released.
Gu Yue's eyes, fixed on the Mad Ape King's back, held the calm of absolute certainty. This technique would wound. This technique would matter.
"Elemental Lotus."
Her staff gestured, and silver light wrapped the lotus. Space folded around it, and it was gone—transported not through distance but around it, appearing behind the ape in the same instant it vanished from before Gu Yue.
The ape never saw it coming.
Yao Xuan felt the lotus's activation through his bond with Gu Yue—the particular surge of power that preceded significant violence. His own course adjusted without conscious thought, his charge toward the ape becoming not merely attack but distraction, drawing its attention while death approached from behind.
The ape met his charge with fury incarnate. Red light blazed around its body, flowing along its fur with the particular luminescence of life force being converted to killing power. Its claws, already formidable, now gleamed with the Shattering Strike's enhancement—each blow carrying double the ape's already terrifying strength, each impact promising devastation to anything it touched.
The air itself seemed to tear before those claws. Trees in the ape's peripheral path exploded into splinters, unable to withstand the pressure of its passing. The ground beneath its feet cratered with each step, the hillside groaning under the weight of concentrated violence.
Yao Xuan met it anyway.
"Ancestral Dragon Saint-Slaying Spear: Five Spears Shatter the Heavens!"
His spear sang—not a weapon's song, but a dragon's, the particular resonance of ancestral legacy channeled through mortal hands. The phantom weapons that surrounded him, a thousand expressions of lethal intent, converged on the spear's point as he thrust, adding their weight to his strike.
Claw met spear.
The impact sent shockwaves rolling across the hillside, visible as rings of displaced air that flattened everything in their path. For a heartbeat, they held—ape and dragon, twenty-two thousand years of raw power against thirty-nine percent of awakened legacy.
Then the spear found.
Not through overwhelming force, but through precision. Yao Xuan's technique, refined through months of practice and Xiao Zhi's analysis, exploited the microscopic gaps in the ape's guard—the places where even Shattering Strike couldn't fully protect. The spear's point kissed the ape's palm, and the claw broke.
Not the claw alone—the concept of the claw. The Shattering Strike's power, redirected by Yao Xuan's perfect angle of attack, flowed back into the ape's own hand, shattering bones that had survived twenty-two thousand years of accumulated strength.
The ape howled.
But even wounded, even broken, it remained dangerous. Its other claw swept toward Yao Xuan, and he was already moving, Ancestral Dragon Soars carrying him clear of the counterstroke. His arms ached from the exchange, his blood qi momentarily disrupted, but he had achieved his goal.
The ape's attention, focused entirely on him, had missed the greater threat.
The Elemental Lotus arrived.
It struck the ape's back at the exact moment of its maximum vulnerability—when its claws were extended, its guard lowered, its awareness fixed entirely on the dragon before it. The lotus didn't merely explode; it unfolded, each petal releasing its elemental power in sequence designed for maximum destruction.
Fire first, searing through fur and flesh. Then wind, carrying the fire deeper. Then earth, the shrapnel of pulverized stone adding physical trauma to elemental burn. Then water, flash-boiling into steam that expanded with explosive force. Then light, searing through tissue with the intensity of focused sun. Then space, the final gift—tearing at the very fabric of the ape's existence, unraveling connections that should have held.
The wound it left was not merely damage; it was absence. A meter-wide crater in the ape's back, twenty centimeters deep, its edges charred and cracked. Flesh that had survived millennia simply ceased to exist, replaced by a void that pulsed with residual elemental fury.
The ape's roar this time held not just rage, but agony.
It spun, its shattered claw forgotten, its remaining arm sweeping toward Gu Yue with the particular fury of something that had just learned what true pain felt like. Its eyes, already red with madness, now burned with the absolute certainty that it would kill this silver-haired tormentor or die trying.
But Gu Yue was already moving, silver light gathering for teleportation.
And between her and the ape, Yao Xuan was already there.
His speed, enhanced by Ancestral Dragon Shattering Step and Ancestral Dragon Soars working in concert, carried him across the intervening space in heartbeats. He didn't attack—didn't need to. He simply positioned, placing himself as a wall between Gu Yue and the ape's charge.
"Ancestral Dragon Chaos Qi."
Twenty percent of his blood qi, consumed in an instant. The shield that formed before him was not mere defense but statement—nine-colored light deepening to absolute black as five strands of chaotic power wove through its structure. It would hold. It had to hold.
Behind him, Gu Yue's staff rose again. Earth elements surged, forming a second barrier—a wall of stone two meters thick, reinforced by her will, positioned to catch Yao Xuan if the Chaos Qi failed.
The ape struck.
Its remaining claw, still carrying Shattering Strike's enhancement, slammed into the Chaos Qi shield with force that would have pulverized mountains. The shield held, but cracks spiderwebbed across its surface—five strands of chaotic power insufficient against twenty-two thousand years of concentrated fury.
The ape struck again.
The shield shattered.
But Yao Xuan was no longer behind it. He had already moved, his speed carrying him clear of the blow's path, his spear already gathering power for the next exchange. And behind the shield's remnants, Gu Yue's stone wall waited—not to stop the ape, but to slow it, to give them space, to remind the beast that it fought not one dragon but two.
The ape crashed through the wall, its momentum finally checked. It stood amid the rubble, chest heaving, wounds weeping elemental residue, its red eyes fixed on the two figures who had reduced it from king to cornered animal.
But in those eyes, something had shifted.
Not fear—the Mad Ape King had probably never known fear. But calculation. Recognition. The particular awareness of a predator that had just learned it might also be prey.
Yao Xuan and Gu Yue stood together now, fifty meters from their wounded foe. His spear gleamed with residual power. Her staff glowed with gathering elements. Between them, the bond that had carried them through every challenge pulsed with the absolute certainty that together, they were more than any beast could overcome.
The ape made its choice.
It charged again—not at Yao Xuan, not at Gu Yue, but at the space between them, hoping to divide what it could not conquer. Its remaining claw swept toward both, a final expression of the violence that had defined its existence.
Yao Xuan met it with his spear.
Gu Yue met it with her elements.
And the dance continued.