I Can Only Cultivate In A Game

Victor didn't aim at any of them. He flicked two fingers. Invisible qi tugged the spiral just enough to slide it sideways five feet at the last instant. It carved a path through the refraction layer and found Pheon's real shoulder.

The man's breath jolted out of him as his illusions hiccupped and popped. His palm flew to the wound as he stumbled while light spitting sparks swam between his fingers.

"Your tricks are pretty," Victor muttered. "Mine are rude."

Carin came roaring back with lightning sutures stitching through the air, trying to weave a cage.

They kissed Victor's sleeve, charring it at the edges. He surrendered the sleeve and the arm in one smooth, sacrificial twist, letting the sutures close around emptiness as he Shadow Blinked above Carin's head.

Upon reappearance, he unleashed phantom Moon Slash unreeled from the arc of his descending sword arm in a spray of afterimages....

First it looked like tten slashes and then twenty and then thirty... hanging like a shower of curved moons.

"Pick one," he told Carin.

"Hmph! Such tricks are useless against me!"

The lightning user trusted his instincts and swung his weapon at one of the incoming Victor...

But his instincts were wrong.

The true edge came from the left at knee height, where no elbow could possibly have put it.

It slashed through Carin's outside thigh... like a kiss instead of an amputation, and his leg buckled. He landed with a curse and threw the chain up defensively.

Melan hit him with a sound at this moment that was like an internal shove.

It punched through Victor's sternum and shook his vision loose at the edges. He slid three steps back with his boots scraping against the floor.

He felt the pavement through his soles as if through paper. If he let her build that resonant prison, he'd be a pinned moth.

He grounded himself in wind and insulted sound with silence.

His footwork turned his breath into a metronome the world couldn't ignore; he let that rhythm run down to his toes and back up to his teeth. The next of Melan's pushes broke on it like surf.

"Stop. Playing. With him! He is obviously no ordinary Nascent Soul Realm cultivator!" Vargos grated.

He lifted both hands and pulled.

The surroundings bled moisture toward him, beading on the backs of Fang's knuckles and slicking his face.

The gathered water shaped itself into a serpentine whip shot through with green. It snapped at Fang's feet, and where it struck, stone pitted and smoked.

"Looks like its time I went all out..." Victor muttered while activating his Void Emperor Bloodline.

<[ Activating Bloodline ]>

Heat lifted off his skin in a shimmer. Milky light crawled under it as arrowhead sigils budded across his chest, down his arms, up his neck.

His white hair rose and moved of its own accord. The world within ten paces clicked into a tidy loom that hummed to his touch.

Twice his speed became not exactly speed but choice, the ability to be where his next thought needed him to be.

He stepped once and the whip cut where he'd been. He stepped again and was inside Vargos's guard with his palm opening.

Frost Bloom kissed the man's abdomen through his soaked robes. The toxin master tried to flood his meridians with heat to burn the frost away but the bloom drank the surge and fed it back as drag.

"You could push harder, yes but like running through water... you will always sink..."

Vargos's eyes widened. He tried to call a needle-cloud, and only a mist came.

In the next instant, Victor swung his blade twice with his force boosted by the void.

Both of Vargos's arms were instantly lopped off, causing a fountain of blood to spray into the air.

"AARRGGHHH!"

"Your turn," Victor turned around.

"You little..."

Pheon's light lances bracketed his ribs. He didn't try to jump, instead he moved the lances.

A flick of invisible qi twisted their heading by a handspan. One shaved his sleeve instead of his heart; the other speared the flagstone between his boots.

He kicked off that newborn light-spear like it was solid and Wind Glided up past Pheon's shoulder, elbow hooking the man's jaw on the way by with a meaty thock.

Pheon spun, stumbled and barely caught himself with a hard-light brace.

He snarled in anger, finally cracking the smooth mask.

Carin found the moment when Fang's back was very briefly to him and threw the chain for his spine. Melan dropped tone into that throw, a perfect fusion of muscle and resonance, trying to pin him in the sound as the lightning pinned him in steel.

The world would have seized anyone else.

However, Victor activated Shadow Blink and came out on the far side of the area of concentration.

He dragged the chain with him using telekinetic fingers, causing it to tear across Carin's own shoulder, biting into the arm Frost Bloom had already slowed.

He cried out as Victor spun the chains around like a weapon he had used before.

With a swing, the chains shot forward, wrapped itself around Carin's neck.

"Gruhhh!" Carin groaned in pain as he tried to claw the chains off him but one of his shoulders was seriously bleeding and he could barely conjure qi.

With a pull, Carin's entire body was lifted into the air and sent crashing through a building by the side.

His body kept soaring forward nonstop, until it rammed through numerous trees and was stopped by a massive rock protruding from the ground over a hundred feet away.

Cracks spread from the rock down to the ground.

"Stop," Melan gasped.

"You first," Fang shot back.

He blinked and reappeared before her with his palm layered in frost.

With a single thrust, Frost Bloom Palm slammed onto her chest, causing the frost-glow to run like ink through the channels that fed her voice.

Her next tone came out a different person's voice entirely as she dropped onto one knee, clutching her ribs with widened eyes.

Victor raised his blade, reasy to finish her when Pheon threw the surroundings into noon.

Light flared white and for a heartbeat, all shadows died.

However, Victor didn't need shadows.

He spilled void over his sword arm, cloaking it so completely even the glare couldn't find it.

His sword turned invisible as he proceeded to swing forward.

[ Shadow Cresent Strike Activated ]

An invisible Shadow Crescent Strike whispered out, cutting through the air like hot butter through knife.

Pheon could feel the vibrations in the air but hqd no idea what was coming so he flicked three hard-light panes into place like a shield.

However, Victor used his void qi to change the trajectory of the invisible dark crescent.

It spun through the shields and hit Pheon's spear-hand in a line that smoked.

His forearm was instantly cleaved off and dropped with a crackle of dying light.

Victor stood alone amid the ruin with his sword tip dripping embers onto grass. He allowed himself a single breath before Bai Xue's voice cut through the aftermath.

"You left them alive?" she voiced while stepping into the clearing.

Victor shrugged in response.

Cerulean robes trailed behind her as she raised her hands and chanted an incantation of jamming.

Her fingers wove a lattice of silver runes in the air. The vice-leaders who were battered ans severely injured now, found their qi channels seized.

Their cultivation realms flickered, collapsing from Nascent Soul to helpless Foundation Establishment as their energy rolled up like retreating tides.

"No mercy," Bai Xue declared. "You will not leave this place alive."

She flicked her wrist, jamming the seals solidifying on their brows and pinning their qi at the lowest ebb.

At that moment, a tremor ran through the clearing as the earth itself shuddered.

In the distance, atop a shattered tower, a phantom silhouette formed...

This was the Marauder Lord himself, veiled in mist.

His robes were the color of void and his hair was like a starless sky. A single silver sword hung at his hip, perfectly still. The clearing hushed as he drifted down, barely touching ground.

Bai Xue met his gaze. "So, you finally show your face."

Before she could utter more, he flicked his palm. A ghostly blade of anti-qi sprang forward, slicing through the air with uncanny silence.

Bai Xue had only milliseconds to react; the blade struck her chest and sent her flying against a craggy mountain spur beyond the clearing.

She crashed into stone with a resounding crack, tumbling down the slope in a shower of dust and petals.

Victor's heart lurched. He sprang forward, using Wind Dash to vault the smashed crater where Bai Xue had stood.

The Marauder Lord pivoted with his golden eyes flashing as he brought his sword into a flawless Spectral Mooncut... a cultivation martial technique only to peak Nascent Soul warriors could execute.

The blade arced like liquid silver.

Victor spun his sword into the slash, meeting the strike with a Shadow Crescent Parry. Sparks of void and soul qi chattered as the two swords locked.

The shockwave of their collision rippled outward, cracking nearby trees and sending splinters raining.

The Marauder Lord's lips curved in surprise. "You—your qi… it's too condensed for a Nascent Soul Realm cultivator..." He pressed forward with a conflicted gaze.

"What are you?"