As Yoonji faced her three remaining opponents, a trio of lux techniques flared behind her. They had taken advantage of her fight with the brothers and put their time to good use. She had no time to unravel the techniques, just react.

She leapt into the air as the techniques went off. One snared her legs with ropes of red and blue lux. She slashed with the blade of her guangdo, severing the ropes. The second technique exploded under her. Her will channelled the lux from the explosion harmlessly around her, and her shoulder constructs gobbled it up quickly.

The noise and light from the explosion stung her senses. Her ears ringing, Yoonji leapt to the wall of the garden.

The third technique was blue and green lux mixed together. It slithered toward her, snake-like, a hunter-seeker pattern that would doubtless deliver poison to her veins and seek to drain her strength. Yoonji fashioned a quick counter technique, tossing out a heavily red weave directly into the mouth of the green-blue snake. It blossomed there with a smell like blood.

Yoonji smiled. The Corpse Decoy technique was one of her favorites. By using red lux animated with a hint of blue, she could confuse lesser seeking spells into thinking they'd found their target. The serpent technique coiled over her decoy corpse and began devouring it. If the technique had more lux than hers, it might come after her again when it was done consuming her decoy. But for now, she had a moment.

Her enemies leapt up after her. The garden below shook and rumbled. Yoonji raised a glance as her bird techniques continued to harry the woman she'd targeted with them. She tossed out a handful of sticky webs, forcing the others to dodge.

As she looked below, something had gone horribly wrong. The ruins of the jade vase had consumed both brothers' bodies and all their lux. It was a swirling black whirlpool now, tugging at her will.

Yoonji grinned suddenly. She could make use of this.

Two of her opponents, the woman attacked by birds and the man, were on the wall in front and behind her. The third one, another woman, perched atop one of the misshapen statues that littered this garden.

Yoonji feinted, beginning a rush toward the man on the wall as he raised his weapon and the artifact in his hands. It was a large tapering purple feather, similar in size to his sword. She pivoted, leaping off the wall with a lux-fueled kick, and flew toward the woman on the statue.

The woman had a long golden ribbon in her hand. Her eyes were wide in shock and fear but she flicked her weapon as Yoonji came toward her. The ribbon lashed out and wrapped around Yoonji's torso. She could feel it immediately beginning to eat away at her protective layers of will, absorbing her lux into the ribbon quickly.

Yoonji strengthened her will with Intent and staunched the drain. This construct, artifact, was strong. Stronger than the woman wielding it. That was interesting, and Yoonji immediately determined to try to bring one or more of these artifacts back with her for further study.

Now, though, she gripped her guangdo with both hands, and as she closed the gap with the woman, thrust it forward. At the same time, she slammed her Intent hard against her opponent.

The woman staggered, losing her balance. Yoonji took one hand from the guangdo and grabbed the ribbon, yanking it hard. The woman still held it with both hands. Now she fell forward, right onto Yoonji's blade. The guangdo stabbed through her torso and out her back.

Yoonji dismissed the weapon, and the woman fell toward the ground, loosening her grip on the ribbon. Yoonji pulled it in as the woman hit the black morass below.

The ground exploded.

Yoonji leapt clear, aiming for the next statue beyond, planning to alight there, then turn on her enemies. Now the entire garden exploded, sending pieces of trees and rocks fountaining skyward. The walls surrounding it shook and began to crumble. Yoonji's opponents cried out in fear and leapt away.

Yoonji quickly changed her technique to a hovering pattern as the statue she had been heading toward crumbled into shards. She couldn't keep up for very long, not with the morass below continuing to drain at her lux. The ribbon she was holding still pulled at her lux, too.

She took it into her soulspace and then released her hover. She only dropped a span before reaching out with a foot and pushing off a fragment of stone. The technique she used needed only the tiniest of impossible footholds to push off. It used much less lux than simply willing herself through the air. She quickly pushed off a broken branch and then a fragment of a tile in rapid succession, to send her soaring high, away from the garden. She angled toward where her enemies had gone.

Yoonji bounded in two leaps to the center of Westgate and settled atop the enormous domed palace. Guards below boggled. She wasn't bothering to mask herself. Any cultivator could have sensed her, but they ought to be distracted by what had just happened in the garden.

She had assumed the morass had consumed itself in that explosion. But now, as she alit on the great dome, she felt it still tugging. Whatever had happened was going to take a significant effort to put right.

Yoonji had more important work. Her bird constructs were still harrying the remaining woman. She could feel them interfering every time the woman tried to escape. She was weaving patterns to deal with them, but the bird constructs were among Yoonji's finest. She had designed them to help her handle high-level cultivators, and they were adept at dodging and countering different lux techniques. Given enough time, they might even succeed in killing the woman.

The male cultivator was streaking toward the gate, staying low as though hoping the walls of the city would hide him. He had his will and Intent wrapped around him tight, and she had no doubt he could walk right past an ordinary cultivator without attracting attention.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Yoonji was not an ordinary cultivator. Even without the advantage of a whole cultivation tier on him, she had spent centuries as an Inquisitor. She knew how to find runaways. She paused just long enough to take another pair of constructs from her soul space and activate them. Then she leapt after the fleeing man.

Her first bound took her to to a rooftop within twenty feet of him. He raced down the street below, nearly to the gate. Yoonji smiled to herself. She watched as he reached the gate, which had been closed for the night. He wove a technique, empowering his fist with lux, drew it back, and smashed it hard against the gate, once, twice.

The gate shattered.

Guards were shouting. He flung out a blue and orange technique, and daggers formed in the air, then flung themselves at the guards, who fell screaming as the daggers burrowed into their bodies and sought their life force. The cultivator didn't even pause as he raced through the gate.

Yoonji lightly pushed off of the wall where she was standing, and leapt clear over the gatehouse. She landed on the road far beyond the city, resummoning her guangdo and sending out her constructs. They formed on either side of the road, enormous guardian statues with arms outstretched and a thick weave of lux between them.

He ran straight into that weave and stuck.

Yoonji approached, guangdo in one hand and a smile on her face.

The man struggled. He couldn't summon a spiritual weapon, not in that net, but he hadn't entirely lost his head and was trying to use his will to cut through the weave.

Yoonji focused her Intent on him hard. He cried out, then raised his left hand.

Yoonji's eyes widened as she saw what was in it: a dagger with incredible spiritual weight. This was what he had brought Eri. He slashed at the webbing and freed his left hand. Yoonji began to weave a technique as he slashed the other side.

The guardian statues to either side crumbled. Yoonji was momentarily diverted by surprise at his success. That shouldn't have happened. How had he… Oh, fascinating. The dagger had not such much cut her technique, but instead reversed its workings.

Yoonji suddenly hungered to possess that dagger. Where had Eri found these treasures? How had she empowered her disciples to use them? The man Yoonji had caught before not been using his.

She cursed herself. She had killed that prisoner too quickly, before forcing him to open his soul space and divulge its contents. There was every chance that the real prize had been in there.

What a waste. She wouldn't make that mistake again.

Slightly distracted, she was taken off guard as the man launched a crude technique at her, a mere orange shell filled with yellow lux. She easily parried it with her guangdo.

It exploded in her face and set her ears ringing once more. As she blinked away the stars, the cultivator raced at her.

The attack wasn't particularly powerful, but it was followed up by another, and another. Yoonji revived her estimation of the man. He had some sort of technique that was allowing him to shape these attacks rapidly. Eri had chosen her minions well, but it wouldn't be enough.

Yoonji was still staring at that knife. The man saw her. He tossed out another technique as she wove her own. Suddenly he threw up his hands. "I will surrender!" he shouted. "I will testify against my mistress!"

Now that was interesting. Yoonji continued to weave her technique. "Oh?" she said. "Have you anything interesting to say? We already know Eri is a traitor. We know she's trying to claim the Primal Tower, and it's clear that she has arranged to rob the vaults of several other sects and steal their best toys."

Sweat was pouring down the man's face as he clutched his dagger. "I can tell you which sects."

She shook her head. "None of that is worth your life. You'd better offer me something far better." She drew out the technique.

The man's eyes were wide, terrified. He clutched the dagger in both hands, while his will hardened around him. He was fortifying it with Intent.

Yoonji smiled. She could feel now that his Intent was only half-formed. Worse, as happened to so many who attached themselves to a more powerful cultivator, it seemed to be focused on service to his mistress.

"Not that it will do you any good, but let me give you a suggestion so you know where you have failed," she said.

She sent her lux absorption constructs forward to swoop around the man, all the while monitoring her birds, who now had the other woman cornered. Neither of these would be getting away. With the toys she was taking from them, she would be a power to be reckoned with, perhaps even able to go toe-to-toe with Eri herself.

And wouldn't that be something? To be the one responsible for capturing a Prism? The Emperor would have to reward her with Prism status after that.

Yoonji wove a blue and indigo braid down the center of her elaborate, expansive technique. There were dozens of strands of lux in it now, different weaves supporting the whole. The man was blubbering now as he spun red lux all around him in a shell. It wasn't going to be enough. "I know so much of her plans! I can tell you everything!"

"You simply have nothing I care to know," Yoonji said, and struck.

Her technique lashed forward. He sliced at it with his knife, but she'd been expecting that, and surrounded the core technique with half a dozen others. His knife cut at one and began reforming its pattern, but her central blue and indigo weave struck him in the center of the chest.

His eyes rolled back in his head as it immediately began to pull lux from his core. In seconds, it had drained away into her two constructs. Not many, even at Lux Domination, could craft a siphon like that so cleanly and easily. Yoonji was proud of her work. The man dropped to the ground, his hands limp at his sides.

Yoonji strode over. His eyes flickered, but he was done, his core not just sucked dry, but crushed by her siphon technique. She bent to take the knife from his fingers... and his hand clenched tight around it, thrusting upward, his knife stabbing deep into her shoulder.

Yoonji stumbled back, the knife a blade of ice in her shoulder, as the man groaned, his head falling to the side. He was dead, but his last breath had injured her.

Yoonji's hand went to the handle of the knife. It shook as she tried to get a grip to pull it out. The knife was disrupting her cycling, interfering with her lux.

Her core throbbed, its rhythms disrupted.

Yoonji's hands were growing cold. She slumped to the ground, her constructs swooping around her.

Get the knife out. Out, she thought to herself. Get it out. While you still have enough lux to recover from this.

"Well, well," said a voice, distant.

Yoonji was looking straight up at the sky. A face stepped into her field of view. A beautiful face, framed by long golden hair. Eri smiled. "So you were the one I sensed. My acolytes have done well to bring you to your knees, Inquisitor."

There was a great weight on Yoonji's chest. She gasped as Eri reached down. Fingers intruded. Eri was reaching into her soulspace somehow. It sent waves of shock and pain through her body, worse even than the knife in her shoulder. She screamed as Eri pulled out the ribbon Yoonji had taken from the other cultivator, held it up, and vanished it into her own soulspace.

"Farewell, Inquisitor." She cocked her head to one side, then smiled as Yoonji gasped.

"Help me..."

"Why should I? You've made it clear you live only to see me destroyed."

Yoonji's vision was dimming. She was going to die. There was nothing she could do to stop this. This wasn't where her path was supposed to end. Not after all she'd done, all she'd sacrificed. "Please," she said. "Please... anything..."

Eri cocked her head to one side. "Huh. An interesting proposition. I suppose I could hear you out..."

She bent, her fingers closing around the hilt of the knife.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.