Blood Scattering The Ground

Not only had Miao Ying condensed a Qi Seed far more wondrous than any of his peers, threaded through with his powerful lightning qi, sword qi, and the insatiable hunger of the Devourer, but he could feel that lightning essence itself had somehow merged into his very being, filling his entire body with never-ending thunder.

To the two disciples, it seemed as if the arrogant commoner had become the Heavenly Dao itself.

Wei Fang and Li Hao could only look on in mounting horror as Miao Ying straightened, his wounds closing, his aura reaching terrifying new heights with every passing breath. An oppressive weight bore down on their shoulders, the primal fear of an ant before the descending boot.

Miao Ying's eyes snapped to the weaker of the two disciples, his gaze alight with the promise of murder. Lightning crackled along the length of his sword, dancing between his fingers in blinding arcs. Thunderous howls boomed through his bones, the fury of the storm giving flesh.

With a single step, he vanished, moving faster than Li Hao's eyes could track. The ground he left behind blasted into dust, an explosion of debris and crackling streamers of electricity marking his passage.

The weaker disciple froze, his legs rooted to the spot by sheer, mind-numbing terror. His face went bone-pale, his sword falling from nerveless fingers to clatter against the ground. A strangled whimper escaped his throat, tears streaming down his face as he beheld his oncoming death.

Miao Ying's sword pierced through the cloud of dust and debris; a lance of blinding silver wreathed in screaming lightning. 

It sheared through the disciple's hastily-raised defenses as if they were nothing more than rice paper, tearing them asunder in a spray of molten steel and burning sparks.

The disciple screamed as the lightning-wreathed blade pierced his flesh, his voice raw with animal agony - and then abruptly fell silent as Miao Ying's sword punched out the back of his skull in a spray of blood, bone, and liquified brain matter.

The headless corpse hung there for a moment, twitching like a grotesque marionette. Then Miao Ying wrenched his blade free in a shower of gore, and the body collapsed bonelessly, the neck stump gushing a river of steaming crimson.

"Li Hao!" Wei Fang screamed, his voice cracking.

The scene before him was like a nightmare come to life. Li Hao had been in the 5th stage of Qi Establishment, an expert who stood head and shoulders above his peers. 

Yet Miao Ying had cut him down as easily as a mortal would crush an insect beneath his boot!

Wei Fang staggered back, his hands shaking uncontrollably. The copper tang of blood filled his mouth, his stomach roiling as he fought down the urge to vomit. Fear gibbered in the back of his mind, the primal, screaming terror of a mouse before a swooping owl.

"Yo-you..." he stammered, unable to force anything else past the lump in his throat. His atrophied nobility, the haughty arrogance instilled in him since birth, crumbled to ashes before Miao Ying's overwhelming might.

Miao Ying turned; his expression as unyielding as the lightning he commanded. Those fathomless eyes bored into Wei Fang's, stripping away every pretense and defense, leaving only the sniveling wretch within.

The pressure of Miao Ying's Qi was like the weight of a mountain, inexorable and crushing. Even if he had been at his peak, flushed with the power of his waning cultivation base, Wei Fang knew that he would have been nothing more than a dry leaf before a hurricane. 

Miao Ying's strength had surpassed his own...and it had only been a few breaths since his breakthrough!

"Wai-wait!" Wei Fang blubbered, all thoughts of regaining face vanishing like mist beneath the harsh light of impending doom. He fell to his knees, tears and snot smearing down his face. "Spare me, Brother Miao! I was rash and spoke carelessly! I-"

He never got a chance to finish his plea.

Miao Ying's sword lashed out; a simple, economical motion driven by the inevitability of a falling executioner's blade. There was no grandstanding, no frills or wasted motions. Only cold, ruthless efficiency.

Wei Fang screamed, pouring every last scrap of his Qi into a desperate defense. His sword burned like a newborn sun, wreathed in incandescent flames that seared the eyes and blistered the skin. 

He poured everything into that final stand, spending the dregs of his power in a frantic attempt to live just a few seconds longer.

It wasn't enough. It was never going to be enough.

Miao Ying's lightning-wreathed blade sheared through Wei Fang's sword like a sickle through dry grass, shattering the blazing Qi into a thousand guttering embers. 

For a single, horrifying instant, Wei Fang stared into the face of his death, his mouth open in a silent scream-

-and then the blade completed its arc, and his head tumbled from his shoulders, a startled expression etched into its features. His body slumped a moment later, gore fountaining from the stump of his neck to paint the ground crimson.

Silence fell, broken only by the crackle of slowly-guttering flames.

Miao Ying straightened, his aura receding back into his body. He surveyed the carnage before him with an indifferent eye, as if the ruination of three Blazing Sun Sect disciples was no more noteworthy than crushing a few ants beneath his feet.

These three had tried to kill him, their hearts filled with petty arrogance and the blind conviction of their own superiority. But in the end, they were nothing more than stepping stones on his path to greatness, their lives forfeit the moment they decided to stand in his way.

Miao Ying felt no pity for them, no remorse. They had dared to obstruct him, and paid the price for their folly.

Turning his attention away from the corpses, Miao Ying's heart thundered in his chest, his veins singing with the intoxicating rush of newfound power. 

In a single tempestuous battle, he had ascended to the lofty ranks of Qi Establishment, shattering the shackles of his mortal flesh to grasp the first true stirrings of the profound Dao.

Where before he had labored for years just to stream the tiniest wisps of ambient energy into his body, now that Qi sang through his body in a raging torrent, filling him with strength beyond the wildest dreams of most cultivators.

And this was only the beginning!

Miao Ying knew there would be many more cliffs to climb and chasms to cross on the endless road to transcendence that stretched before him. But he no longer worried about those lurking perils. 

Let them come! He would meet each of them head-on, an unstoppable force that would shatter any obstacle with the indomitable fury of his lightning-wreathed fists.

Flush with the heady draught of victory, it took a concerted effort of will for Miao Ying to wrest his thoughts back to the present. 

He knew he needed to dispose of the bodies before some wandering spirit beast caught scent of the blood and came calling.

His eyes flicked to the broken forms of his foes, still leaking the last dregs of their wasted potential into the churned and scorched earth. A cold smile slithered across his lips as he observed their foolish sacrifice. To throw their lives away in a vain attempt to bar his path...how pathetic.

Kneeling beside the nearest corpse, Miao Ying laid a hand over the gaping hole his sword had punched through the wretch's sternum. He could feel the faint wisps of escaping vital energy, the lingering traces of the man's shattered cultivation.

Concentrating his will, Miao Ying activated the eldritch mark seared into his flesh - the Devourer Rune. At his unspoken command, the coiling lines lit with a ghastly black light, pulsing in time with the sputtering beat of the cadaver's ruptured heart.

Like a starving beast scenting fresh prey, the Rune latched onto those free-floating streamers of Qi with avarice hunger. 

Miao Ying shuddered as the stolen essence surged up his arm in a rush of tingling heat, flowing into his core to nourish the nascent spark of transcendent potential within.

One by one, Miao Ying stripped the remnants of his enemies' power, drinking deep of their fading lives like a glutton at a feast. 

When the last mote had been wrung from their desiccated flesh, he rose to his feet, marveling at the searing blaze of Qi now churning in his gut.

In a matter of moments, he had risen from the first tenuous threshold of Qi Establishment to somewhat approaching the peak of the stage, his dantian thrumming with all the power of a raging thunderstorm. 

It was a rate of growth that spat in the face of the Ancient Dao, an ascending velocity that surpassed all common sense and reason.

But Miao Ying had long ago discarded the decrepit weakness of mortal logic. He forged his own path, fueled by an indomitable will and a hunger that could never be sated.