Avuri

As Emery closed in on Wenzu, my first move was to push with our combined Domains to try to feel out the situation. I had expected as much, but my Domain was rebuffed by Wenzu's. Despite not reaching very far - only a few meters from his body - Wenzu's Domain was solid.

Pushing up against that wall, I could tell that he was much further into the Sky Realm than Emery and I were. Usually, when two Domains of similar power met, there would be a push and pull, with both sides fighting for dominance. That didn't happen. Instead, Wenzu's Domain acted like a solid wall that my Domain crashed upon like water on a breaker.

I warned Emery through our link, but she was already diving into Wenzu's Domain, sword ready to strike. As she entered the area covered by his Domain, I felt our connection grow thin, as if it was cheese being pulled apart, struggling to remain connected. It held fast, but I wasn't sure that it would have had Wenzu been any stronger.

Thankfully, Emery's Domain functioned as it was supposed to. Even fully surrounded and pressured by Wenzu's, it remained strong around Emery's body, keeping her protected from whatever abilities he may have.

Her sword came crashing down against the demon, but Wenzu met it with his Qi-reinforced claws. He made it look effortless, as if swatting away a rolled up paper. Even Emery's knives bounced off of his blood red skin, tainted with demonic Qi. It was the first time I had seen her attacks turned aside so easily, but she was still holding the demon's attention.

I turned back to the prisoners, who were cowering by the exit, second-guessing their choice to run. I quickly threw up a wall of frosted ice to block the view of the fight. Without Qi to sense the combat on the other side, I was hoping blocking vision of the fight and the dead body would be enough to snap them out of their terror.

With a step I closed the distance to the woman in the group and snapped my fingers in front of her face. She stumbled back, more at my sudden appearance beside her than the finger snapping, and looked lost.

"Hey. Hey. I need you to focus, okay?" I said, trying to coax her from whatever isolated place her mind had retreated to. I saw some focus return to her eyes as they landed on my face. "You need to go. We can beat him, I promise. But we can't do that and defend you all too."

The woman nodded. Thankfully, it seemed like the young man in the group had regained his own senses, and was trying to corral the kids still with them, turning them all toward the exit. The kids were reluctant to move, still frozen in disbelief and terror, but the two adults were able to get them moving after picking up the two that wouldn't or couldn't move.

They didn't even look back as they ran into the tunnel. That was fine by me - looking back was probably a bad idea anyway. With a quick flex of Qi, I sealed the tunnel entrance behind them with ice. It wouldn't do very much to stop the demons from chasing them if Emery and I fell, but it would at least stop the fight from moving down the tunnel if Wenzu decided to try to chase them early.

I turned back to the fight and dropped the first wall I had made, forcing myself not to look at the bloody, discarded body on the ground and instead focus on my wife battling against the demon.

Wenzu was forcing her back, and I could feel her anger and annoyance as he swung wildly at her with his massive claws. Despite his relatively powerful Qi, he was clearly not a well trained fighter. His attacks were as ineffectual as Emery's initial blows had been, as Emery parried and blocked each strike easily, turning aside and redirecting the powerful but clumsy blows.

She hadn't hurt the demon yet, but she was clearly still not fighting at her strongest yet. She hadn't wanted to start the fight properly until the mortals were away, in case the demon retaliated with some kind of area attack.

Now that they were gone, hidden behind a thick wall of ice, and I had rejoined the fight, Emery was prepared to make her move. I gathered my Qi and launched a simple Blizzard Dragon at the demon, aiming a little in front of him. The swirling Qi cut through between Emery and Wenzu, separating them for a moment. Wenzu's focus shifted to me while Emery shifted her Qi to infuse her weapons.

Whatever demonic technique Wenzu had used appeared to be rather straightforward. He had bulked up in a monstrous way, his skin turning blood red from the demonic Qi's taint. It looked as though his body was even fully coated in the Qi, similar to a Domain. However, the demonic Qi didn't extend all the way through his Domain. Despite his monstrous appearance, it seemed like he hadn't become a true demon yet.

Emery had explained to me once that it took a long time, so I supposed it must have been more than a couple months of Cultivating a demonic method.

Wenzu leapt at me, exposing his back to Emery. I grinned at that, and hastily created a few walls of ice within my Domain. I made several of them, in an off-set pattern that left them almost maze-like, and with my Domain's enhanced control, they sprung up in an instant, the Qi coalescing together all at once, rather than building up like normal.

Wenzu's claws sheared through a few walls before Emery crashed into him from behind. I felt his Qi shutter as her blow landed, the now brilliant white blade biting deep into the demon's shoulder. I recognized the white infusion as the one that Emery had said could purify demonic Qi - and it seemed to work as intended against Wenzu, cutting straight through his defenses. The relatively slim, lightweight blade that Emery was wielding didn't quite have the cutting power to make the blow lethal though.

In retaliation, Wenzu spun around and crashed into Emery's side with an elbow strike. The blow sent her tumbling through the air, but our link told me that she hadn't been hurt by the attack, merely thrown away. As he turned to follow after Emery, I shattered all of the walls I had created, and blasted the ice shards at him.

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The demon's defenses had returned quickly, making the ice shards mostly shatter on impact despite their sharpness. They did, however, leave enough of my Qi around him to create a layer of frost on his body to hinder him. It wasn't particularly significant, but small advantages could make the difference for Emery.

She landed several meters away from Wenzu, launching her floating knives at the man. They all gleamed white with her purification infusion, and as they struck his body, they bypassed his Qi defenses with a hissing sound, as if burning away the demonic Qi. With the ten knives sticking out of his body in various places, Wenzu finally looked concerned. Or at least like he was taking the fight seriously.

I was willing to bet it was the first time he was injured while fighting in this form with this technique. Most people had no real defense against demonic techniques, given their general rarity.

Wenzu roared and his Qi flared. Emery's knives puffed away to essence, leaving quickly healing cuts behind. Unfortunately, none of the wounds were anything more than superficial ones. As he roared, I felt the Qi of his Domain activate as well. Unsure what to expect, I prepared for the worst, but the only thing I felt was the ice Qi I had forced onto his body being consumed.

I passed that information to Emery, who acknowledged it, and passed back that she hadn't dismissed her knives. We shared the same suspicion, but weren't able to confirm it; Wenzu's Domain would consume Qi within it. For additional power or the healing, we couldn't tell. But that sort of technique left us with minimal options for offense. Ranged Qi-based attacks would likely not be effective, which meant our best option would be focusing on Emery's physical strikes with her weapons.

Emery dismissed her lighter weapon in favor of crafting something heavier. She manifested a large, thick blade that was clearly designed to be a hefty two-handed weapon. At a glance, I wasn't sure that a mortal could have lifted the blade, had it been a normal metal sword. However, with a Cultivator body and a weapon made predominantly of her own softly glowing, snow-white Qi, Emery was able to wield the massive thing like it weighed almost nothing, despite it probably being unnaturally heavy.

Wenzu must have felt the technique, because he ignored me and whipped around toward Emery. I felt a quick wave of anger at his apparent dismissal, but really couldn't fault him for it - Emery was the bigger threat at the moment, especially when she moved in to attack.

The demon was able to fend off her blows, but not as cleanly as he had before. It was a stroke of bad luck for our side when Wenzu redirected the first blow successfully. His expression of disbelief due to the weapon's weight and momentum was obvious, and had he chosen to block that attack outright, Emery may have been able to cleave him in two on the first strike. But he was able to defend himself as the battle continued, conscious of the weight of Emery's strikes.

I did my best to assist Emery in the battle, but she hardly needed my backup in a one-on-one fight like this. Wenzu was forcing as much of his Qi into his Domain as he could, trying to eat away at Emery's conjured weapon - and to his credit, the massive sword was being damaged. It looked like small insects had been eating away at the steel, leaving the weapon pitted, uneven, and rather old looking. However, the weapon's actual physical state barely mattered for Emery as it was the anti-demon infusion that was doing the heavy lifting in her strikes, burning through Wenzu's defenses in any direct clash.

Despite Wenzu clearly having the higher tier of Cultivation - apparent in the way his Domain was able to stonewall ours - Emery just as equally had him outclassed in raw skill. Her combat ability when it came to martial arts was far and away above what would be expected of her Cultivation level, and it showed. And as their battle wore on, it only made Wenzu look that much weaker in comparison. I suspected that while he had raw demonic power thanks to whatever technique he had Cultivated, he clearly had no idea how to use it.

His Qi was flaring in strange ways, trying to find a way to counter Emery's assault. He lashed out any time he thought he had an opening, only for Emery to score a hit as he did. She just couldn't manage to land a significant blow to outstrip Wenzu's demonic healing.

As Emery threw a flurry of strikes at him that should have been impossible with such a massive weapon, I noticed that the demon's Qi pulsed in a distinct pattern. It was strange, and clearly a pointless display as the timing didn't match their fight at all.

"It's a call for help!" I shouted internally, as a warning for Emery. I felt the acknowledgement from her, but her attacks never stopped. She had Wenzu on the back foot, pushing forward with her blur of a weapon. She didn't even feel worried about it.

I went on high alert, waiting for whatever Wenzu had called for. It took seconds for the sudden eruption of demonic Qi to catch my attention. It was a condensed spear of Qi, rocketing through the air aimed straight at Emery's back.

Ice walls sprung up from the ground to impede the flying spear. It was similar to Emery's Qi-forged weaponry, made entirely of Qi, but its physical form seemed less solid. The red demonic Qi within it bled off from the weapon, giving it a blazing red tail as it flew through the air, crashing through the ice walls I had made.

Still, each one slowed it down a little, and knocked off bits of Qi. When it broke through the final hastily made wall, I was positioned in front of it, ready to intercept the spear. Rather than all the layers of quick ice I had made to slow it down, the final wall I made had to be sturdy and thick. Outside of the influence of other Domains, the massive block of ice that coalesced before me was made just as fast, but was several meters thick and more solid than the rest.

I placed my hands on the block to push more Qi into it as the spear crashed right into the ice. Even with only the force of whatever initially propelled it, the spear sliced deeply into the ice, but its momentum bled off quickly after that, leaving the Qi spear stuck near the center of the ice before it began to melt away without a wielder.

"I see Wenzu was fighting at a disadvantage. Let's even those odds, shall we?"

The tall, somewhat lanky demon that had been supporting the front line from the rear against the antlions touched down a short distance from me after a long jump.

"Are you sure your sect will last against the antlions without the two of you?" I asked as I turned to face the newcomer. I needed to steel myself for what had apparently just become two individual duels.

"They'll only need to last until we clean up the mess over here." The man said, cocking back a fist as if to throw a punch. In the same instant, a new roiling red spear appeared in the air beside his chambered hand. "It shouldn't take long."

With a grunt of effort, he threw the punch forward and the spear launched as if from a cannon. With Emery's fight going on behind me, I couldn't simply dodge the attack, so I raised my hands again to prepare to defend, calling deeply on my ice.

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