Wei Lin’s spiritual pressure exploded outwards.

  It was like a dam had broken.

  The wave of energy released caused the crystal chamber to vibrate all around us.

  Wei Lin moved faster than I’d ever seen anyone move at the Qi Condensation Realm.

  His fist blurred towards my face.

  Immediately I activated Verduring Step and appeared behind him.

  But Wei Lin’s enhanced sense was able to detect my presence instantly.

  He turned around with an elbow strike that caught me in the ribs.

  The blow lifted me into the air and threw me to the ground.

  My vision went white from pain and blood filled my mouth as I tried to regain my footing and roll away from his follow-up strike.

  His fist cratered the crystal just where my head had been a second before.

  Before I could figure out what to do, Wei Lin suddenly appeared in front of me once again.

  He went to knee me in the stomach.

  I dodged to the side and tried to counter.

  But my punch caught nothing except air as he flowed around it like water.

  His palm strike hammered my shoulder.

  The sheer force from the blow spun me around, and before I could recover, his other hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me into a knee strike.

  It landed clean.

  The impact knocked the air out of my lungs.

  I quickly used Verduring Step and teleported to a seed on the opposite side of the chamber.

  When I materialised, I realised that Wei Lin wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “This is what true power looks like, Ke Yin,” he called out to me. “All those months of watching you show off your mysterious abilities, wondering what secrets you were hiding from me. Now I finally understand. You were afraid of what I might become if I gained that power.”

  I spat blood onto the crystal floor. Every breath caused intense pain in my ribs and my shoulder felt like it might be dislocated. Wei Lin had always been a skilled fighter, but this was something entirely different. The sun energies were increasing his speed and agility, more than I could have ever imagined.

  But there was something wrong with how he was using the sun energies.

  The red sun energy surrounding his body was fluctuating rapidly and erratically, as if it were a flame in a gusty wind. The blue sun energy was repeatedly surging and dropping, producing empty spaces in his enhanced healing. While he certainly had raw power, he lacked the ability to properly cultivate it.

  “Master,” Azure stated quietly. “If you don’t activate your sun energies, you will lose this battle. He has already absorbed them into his cultivation base so there’s no need to hold back now.”

  I knew that he was right. I’d stayed away from using red and blue sun energy to prevent Wei Lin from being exposed to energies he couldn’t handle. But he had already been exposed. He had already been corrupted. And now, he was using that corruption to try to defeat me, but worse was that he might end up killing me.

  Wei Lin vanished from where he’d been standing.

  I raised my arms just as he appeared in front of me, his fist connecting with my guard. The force of his fist sent shockwaves throughout my body and drove me down to one knee. His follow-up kick struck me in the chest and sent me flying backward.

  I activated Blink Step mid-air and the red energy blazed around me as I teleported to solid ground.

  But a punch aimed at my neck was already there waiting for me.

  I ducked underneath it and activated the Titan’s Crest rune on my left hand. Silver light lit up the interconnected triangles of the rune as my physical strength doubled. My uppercut caught Wei Lin’s chin, and he snapped his head back.

  For the first time since revealing his sun energy enhancements, Wei Lin lost his footing.

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  I quickly capitalized on the momentum. Vine Whip activated on my right hand, releasing thick green constructs from the floor around Wei Lin’s feet. He incinerated them with fire essence from his marketplace, but the distraction gave me the opening I needed.

  A four-foot-long, bark-scaled Scorpion Tail shot toward Wei Lin.

  He turned to the side but not fast enough.

  The tip of Scorpion Tail sliced along his ribs, leaving a shallow wound that immediately began weeping neurotoxin into his system.

  Wei Lin's eyes widened as he realised that he had been poisoned. His movements became slightly sluggish, his enhanced reflexes dulling as the toxin interfered with his nervous system.

  I didn’t give him the chance to counteract the effects of the neurotoxin.

  I shot forward with a Blink Step rune and slammed a Phantom Strike straight into his stomach.

  The technique sent shockwaves through his internal organs.

  Wei Lin doubled over, gasping.

  My knee struck him in the face as he bent forward, snapping his head up and sending blood streaming from his nose.

  As Wei Lin tried to retreat, I flicked my wrist, sending Explosive Seeds into the air.

  Each seed contained enough concentrated red sun energy to destroy a small building.

  Wei Lin watched as the seeds traveled through the air, but the neurotoxin was making it hard for him to coordinate a response.

  The first seed exploded near his left shoulder. The explosion propelled him sideways, and his robes were singed by the heat of the explosion. The second seed exploded near his leg, and the force of the explosion buckled his knee. The third and fourth seeds detonated simultaneously, creating a crossfire pattern that left no safe zone for Wei Lin to dodge.

  Wei Lin crashed to the ground, sliding across the floor as smoke and debris filled the air around him.

  I landed in a crouch position and my scorpion tail thrashed back and forth as I prepared for his counterattack. My breathing was still heavy from the beating I’d taken earlier, but it was clear that the tide of battle had shifted in my favor.

  “This can’t be happening,” Wei Lin whispered, pushing himself onto one elbow. Blood dripped from numerous cuts on his face and arms. His enhanced healing was struggling to keep up with the damage. “I have the same power as you. Same energy sources. Why are you still stronger?!”

  I wiped blood from my split lip and thought about how to respond.

  The fact was, Wei Lin had the raw power, but he didn’t understand how to use the power properly. He was like someone who’d stolen a sword from a master swordsman and expected to wield the sword with the same expertise.

  “You absorbed powers you don’t understand,” I explained, activating the Hawk’s Eye rune to track the flow of his spiritual energy. “Having power isn’t the same as being able to use it.”

  Wei Lin’s face contorted with rage and disbelief. The red sun energy surrounding him flared brightly, but it remained chaotic and uncontrolled. He was pushing harder, burning through his reserves faster, but without the proper cultivation framework to channel it effectively, it wouldn’t be enough.

  He charged at me again, desperation driving his attacks to become wild and unpredictable.

  A fist shot toward my head.

  I caught his wrist with the Aegis Mark creating a barrier that absorbed most of the impact.

  My counterpunch struck the edge of Wei Lin’s elbow joint.

  Wei Lin screamed as his elbow joint bent backward with a sickening crack.

  His blue sun healing was already mending the damage to his elbow, but I didn’t give him the opportunity to heal completely.

  I activated the Leaf Storm rune.

  A vortex of razor-sharp projectiles forced Wei Lin to keep his attention on defense rather than offense.

  My next Phantom Strike connected with his ribs. His partially healed arm was not able to provide effective defense, and the technique sent Wei Lin crashing across the chamber. He rebounded off the far wall, leaving another crater in the crystal surface. The sun energies surrounding his body were dwindling.

  Wei Lin struggled to stand, swaying precariously, his robes were shredded, and blood streaked his visible skin.

  However, instead of giving up, he did something that made my heart drop.

  Wei Lin’s spiritual pressure erupted outward once again, but this time it felt different. It was darker. Larger. Reality itself began to bend and twist to accommodate something massive that was trying to emerge from another dimension.

  “No,” I breathed, recognizing the phenomenon. “Wei Lin, stop!”

  It was too late.

  The world around us began to change. The crystal chamber didn’t vanish, but it became transparent as if we were looking at it through stained-glass. Another space was being brought into existence that overlaid our battlefield.

  A cathedral materialized above us.

  This wasn’t any ordinary place of worship.

  The architecture was wrong in ways that made it hurt to look at.

  Gothic arches twisted into impossible shapes. Stained glass windows showed scenes of commerce and exchange, but the figures in them moved when I wasn't looking directly at them. Towering pillars stretched upward into shadows that seemed deeper than they should be.

  And everything was built from what looked like black market goods.

  Columns of stacked forbidden texts supported the ceiling which was composed of arms and armor that shouldn’t have been created. An altar at the far end of the cathedral had a massive scale that measured the weight of souls against gold. Benches carved from the bones of extinct creatures faced toward a pulpit crafted from crystallized regret.

  This was Wei Lin’s Black Market Stall.

  Somehow, he’d transformed it into something greater than a mere cultivation technique.

  This exceeded anything I expected from a person at the Qi Condensation Realm.

  Beyond Heaven cultivation methods really were something.

  “Master,” Azure called out, sounding worried. “He’s manifesting his inner world, but he’s not using it to attack you.”

  He was right. I could feel it now. Tendrils extending from the dark cathedral reached toward my inner world. They were not attacking me or draining my energy. They were searching for something specific. They were trying to connect to my inner world.

  My eyes grew wide with horror as I understood what Wei Lin was attempting to accomplish. He wasn’t interested in defeating me in combat anymore. He wanted to create a direct link between his inner world and mine so he could steal the red and blue suns from their source.

  But Wei Lin had no clue what he was actually trying to breach.

  My inner world wasn’t just protected by standard spiritual barriers.

  The roots of the Genesis Seed extended into every aspect of my cultivation base, establishing defenses that would react violently to any form of forced invasion.

  The fool was going to lose his mind to the defensive mechanisms of the Genesis Seed, or possibly die instantly when it detected his attempted theft and retaliated with the full fury of a World Tree.

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