Chapter Four: The Fall of Golden Might

In an instant, the fierce wind stilled, the clouds and skies fell silent, and even heaven and earth seemed to sink into utter stillness. Hundreds of people held their breath, staring in dumbfounded disbelief at the figure of Thunder Flame suspended in the air.

His hair stood on end, his features were fierce and savage, and occasional serpents of lightning crackled over his body, making him appear as terrifying as the very god of thunder descending upon the world.

“Floating? How can a person float in the sky? How can a person swallow lightning?” One bandit’s legs trembled uncontrollably. No longer able to endure the pressure of that silence, he roared, “A monster!!”

Then he did what anyone would do when seized by fear: he turned and ran.

Once one man led the way, everything changed at once. Dozens of bandits fled in a rout toward the rear, still screaming as they ran, “Monster! Monster!!”

“Monster? You dare call my Brother Thunder a monster? You’re courting death!” Qingling gritted her teeth in fury. She had completely forgotten that she was a woman, crudely rolling up her sleeves as she bared her teeth and chased after them, chanting as if reciting an incantation, “Die! Die! Die...” Wherever her figure passed, the fleeing bandits were all “sent beyond.”

Spurred on by Qingling’s furious assault, the panicked bandits finally understood that running was no solution; only resistance offered even the faintest chance of survival. But would resistance help? Could it truly keep them alive? The answer was of course no. Resistance would only mean a quicker death. How could an ordinary martial artist hope to contend with an immortal cultivator? Even if Qingling was only a cultivator at the Foundation Establishment stage, she was still beyond the reach of these ordinary fighters. In the blink of an eye, nearly a hundred martial artists had died beneath Qingling’s hand. Their only thought before death was: Is this woman a monster too?

Fear, screams, blood—everything was tearing at Zhao Liu’s nerves. He buried the shock Thunder Flame had given him deep in his heart and suddenly charged forward to join the slaughter.

Kim Ji, who had grown numb or perhaps simply become accustomed to death, could no longer hold back. He bellowed, “Kill that woman!”

At his shout, the bandits seemed to find a spine at last, rallying in excitement as they rushed at Qingling with blades in hand. In an instant, nearly a hundred men had surrounded her.

Everyone was preoccupied with killing, as though they had forgotten the figure floating in the air, and even Thunder Flame himself had forgotten himself. At this moment, he had forgotten time, space, and even his own existence. The only proof that he still was were the lights flickering in his mind. Red, yellow, white, black, and green—five streams of light kept flashing around a blue radiance, the red being the brightest of them all.

“Kill that woman!”

Kim Ji’s furious roar forcibly thrust itself into Thunder Flame’s mind, dragging him back into reality. Thunder Flame suddenly opened his eyes, and his five senses returned the moment he did. Feeling the ceaseless true energy within his body, he subconsciously murmured, “What just happened to me?”

Crackling snakes of electricity still flickered across Thunder Flame’s body. This immediately drew his attention.

“Oh, right. I was undergoing tribulation just now!” With a thought, he instantly remembered. Scenes from the ordeal flashed through his mind in rapid succession.

“Lucky...” That was Thunder Flame’s first reaction. Earlier, he had gained a bit of inspiration from the flower demon’s resistance against heavenly lightning. He had originally intended to use inner force to destroy either the yin or yang polarity within the lightning, so that it would naturally vanish. But unexpectedly, the lightning blocked his path and even entered his body. It was precisely because of that that he discovered the lightning could actually transform within him. The sensation was wondrous, as if his body were melting the lightning away. That was why he had tried swallowing it. As he had suspected, the lightning he swallowed instantly turned into red and blue streams of light within him, merging into his muscles.

“Aah...” A scream from below interrupted Thunder Flame’s thoughts. He reached out with his right hand and seized the flower demon floating beside him. The flower demon, still sunk in deep sleep within a halo of light, gave no reaction at all before being tucked into his chest by Thunder Flame.

With a whoosh, Thunder Flame dove from the sky. The wind shrieked past his ears. Then with a thunderous crash, his body slammed into the ground like a cannonball, kicking up a vast cloud of dust that instantly engulfed a group of bandits.

“Aah!!” “Aah!!” Screams of agony rose one after another from within the dust.

“Is this the power of a cultivator?”

As he moved at high speed, Thunder Flame felt the wind tearing past his ears. Each time he flashed by a bandit, he took that man’s life. In the blink of an eye, all the bandits shrouded in the dust had been slain by him.

“From this day forward, there will be no more Golden Might in this world!”

A voice thick with hatred came from within the dust. Thunder Flame’s voice was not loud, yet it seemed to sound in everyone’s ear.

“Brother Thunder!” Qingling was overjoyed. Her hands suddenly accelerated, and in an instant she struck down the three bandits blocking her path.

After hearing Thunder Flame’s voice, Zhao Liu’s body jolted. Turning back toward the dust-filled direction, he muttered, “What kind of power has Thunder Tyrant obtained?”

Thunder Flame’s voice made Kim Ji tremble violently. His gaze instinctively turned toward the dust, where he saw a figure slowly walking out.

The pace was very slow, yet it made Kim Ji feel as though he could hardly breathe. For some reason, his heartbeat seemed to have been pulled into the rhythm of that figure’s steps, thudding slowly along with him.

Kim Ji did not know why he was trembling. He gripped the single-edged blade in his hand more and more tightly, repeating over and over in his heart, “I have to avenge myself. I have to avenge myself!”

Perhaps the obsession with vengeance finally overpowered the fear within him. “Qin Feng, kill him for me! Qin Feng...” He shouted and looked around, only to discover that Qin Feng was nowhere to be seen. “Could he already be dead? Dead is fine too. After all, today either they die or we do!”

With that, Kim Ji raised his blade and charged at Thunder Flame. As for Qin Feng, whom he thought dead, he was already running for his life. The moment he saw Thunder Flame swallow lightning, he had fled at once.

“Overestimating yourself.” Thunder Flame looked disdainfully at the charging Kim Ji. In his eyes, Kim Ji was full of openings. With a flash, he vanished from before Kim Ji’s eyes.

“So fast!”

Kim Ji was shocked. He had not even seen Thunder Flame move before he disappeared into thin air. Muttering to himself, he said, “What kind of power is this?”

“Cultivation.”

Thunder Flame’s voice suddenly sounded by Kim Ji’s ear. At the very same moment, Thunder Flame’s right hand thrust out through Kim Ji’s chest. Then Thunder Flame pushed with his left hand and borrowed the momentum to draw his right hand free.

“Cough...” A mouthful of blood came up with Kim Ji’s cough. “Cultivation?”

As he spoke, his body crashed lifelessly to the ground. Until death, he never understood why a cultivator would exist in Dragon Tyrant’s ranks.

Kim Ji’s death announced the end of Golden Might. From this day on, there would be no more Golden Might in this world.