Re: Evolution Online

DONG!

Xerathuna attacked with her staff. The golden eye embedded at its crown opened completely. An unimaginable quantity of power compressed around the staff. Hundreds of enormous golden inscriptions appeared behind Xerathuna and rotated around one another like the mechanisms of some celestial machine.

The two soul avatars moved simultaneously. The first disappeared within white-golden fire. The second dissolved into a mixture of black and crimson mist.

Xerathuna’s third eye flashed. She turned left.

CLAAAAANG!

Her staff intercepted the first avatar’s fist before it had completely emerged from the flames, and the collision produced a circular shockwave that ripped through the clouds for hundreds of kilometers.

White-golden fire erupted around the staff and rushed toward Xerathuna’s hands, but divine inscriptions immediately appeared across her skin and prevented the flames from reaching her.

The first avatar increased its strength. Xerathuna didn’t contest it. She tilted the staff by several degrees, stepped sideways, and allowed the avatar’s own momentum to drag its fist past her shoulder. Her free hand was already moving by the time it realized what had happened.

A golden palm struck its chest.

BOOOOOOM!

The first avatar vanished into the distance. Xerathuna immediately thrust her staff backward. The second avatar materialized behind her at almost exactly the same moment. The golden eye at the end of the staff slammed into its abdomen.

KACHA!

Half its torso disappeared. The second avatar didn’t retreat. Its remaining hand caught the staff. Demonic energy surged from its palm, followed immediately by crimson Blood Dao energy that crawled along the pale-golden weapon.

Xerathuna’s expression changed. The two soul avatars were not easy to deal with at all.

White-golden flames swept through the space where her head had been an instant earlier as she appeared several hundred meters above them. Her fingers formed a complicated seal, and the enormous divine formation behind her immediately rearranged itself.

"Celestial Prison."

Golden lines appeared across the sky. The second avatar released the staff just as space around both avatars divided into thousands of perfectly geometric sections. Golden barriers materialized between those divisions, transforming several kilometers of the heavens into an enormous three-dimensional prison.

At the same time, Xerathuna sent an attack towards Liam. "Fool, puppets are only puppets. You are not a King yet. You will always be the insignificant rat that died at my hands!"

The golden eye atop her staff flashed. A needle-thin ray of divine light shot across the battlefield.

Xerathuna had compressed a Dao King’s power into a line barely thicker than a finger. More importantly, she had timed the attack perfectly.

The two avatars were trapped inside the Celestial Prison, and although the barriers were already beginning to crack beneath the first avatar’s white-golden flames, neither could possibly break free and cross the distance before the attack reached Liam.

Xerathuna smiled. She had already understood the nature of his ability.

Those incarnations were powerful, perhaps absurdly so, but the little rat himself was still a Transcendent. His body, soul, and cultivation had not suddenly become those of a Dao King simply because he had somehow created two of them.

Kill the original, and everything ended.

However, the next second, her smile disappeared.

CLANG!

The needle-thin ray of divine light stopped less than a meter from Liam’s forehead.

Xerathuna’s eyes widened. A sword had appeared in its path.

The weapon looked almost ordinary at first glance, with a long silver blade and a simple dark hilt, yet the Dao King’s attack that should have pierced straight through Liam had somehow been stopped at its tip.

Golden light screamed against the edge as the surrounding space fractured, but the sword remained perfectly steady. A hand was wrapped around its hilt.

Xerathuna’s gaze slowly moved upward to look at the wielder. Her heart dropped when she saw the familiar face.

Another Liam stood in front of the original.

His clothes were plain, his expression calm, and unlike the other two soul avatars, there were no raging flames, demonic clouds, or rivers of blood surrounding him. He simply held the sword with one hand while staring at the divine ray pressing against its edge. Then he moved his wrist.

SHING!

The divine ray split apart. Two streaks of golden light shot past Liam from either side and disappeared into the distance, where they pierced through several mountains before finally dissipating.

The sword avatar lowered its weapon. An incredibly powerful sword aura emerged from its body.

Xerathuna’s face stiffened. Even the Green Mountain elders were shocked. They had barely recovered from the appearance of the second soul avatar when another wave of Dao pressure swept across the sect.

Compared to the violent manifestations of the first two, this aura was remarkably restrained, yet the moment it appeared, every sword within Green Mountain reacted.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Thousands of swords trembled inside storage rings, weapon halls, disciples’ hands, and sealed caves. Some began humming against their sheaths, while others pulled toward the sky as though responding to something they instinctively recognized.

Several Sword Peak elders shot to their feet. One elderly swordsman stared at the figure standing before Liam, and his expression gradually transformed from confusion into disbelief.

"Sword Dao... Such pure sword dao..."

The avatar raised its sword. An invisible line seemed to extend from the blade all the way to Xerathuna, and although nothing had actually crossed the distance between them, her third eye contracted as an instinctive sense of danger ran through her.

The old swordsman’s lips trembled. "Another Dao King."

Xerathuna staggered back. Who were Dao Kings?

They were existences who stood at the summit of countless worlds.

Reaching the Transcendent realm was already enough for an ordinary cultivator to leave lesser worlds behind and begin pursuing the true Daos. Dao Lords could establish great factions, Dao Generals could dominate entire regions, and Dao Masters were powerful enough that even major forces treated them with respect.

As for Dao Grand Masters, every single one represented an accumulation of talent, resources, fortune, and countless years of cultivation that ordinary beings could scarcely comprehend.

But Dao Kings were different. The leap from Dao Grand Master to Dao King was a chasm that had buried countless geniuses.

A cultivator had to push their understanding of the Dao beyond comprehension alone and establish an authority that could directly impose itself upon the laws of the world.

Their soul underwent another qualitative transformation, their Dao foundation became terrifyingly difficult to destroy, and their lifespan was measured on a scale that allowed entire mortal civilizations to rise and disappear while they remained in secluded cultivation.

Even within the Celestial Court, Dao Kings were not disposable soldiers.

They were entrusted with worlds, armies, temples, and territories spanning distances that mortals could not cross in a lifetime.

When disputes between beings of this level escalated into genuine battles, whole worlds could be destroyed as collateral damage, which was precisely why Dao Kings rarely fought without considering the consequences.

Xerathuna herself had spent an unimaginable amount of time reaching this realm. She remembered every bottleneck, every tribulation and every near-death experience.

Even someone like Von Brehalen, who had only recently entered the Dao Grand Master realm, had already been considered an extraordinary existence worthy of becoming an Archon of the Celestial Court.

Given enough time, resources, and fortune, perhaps he could eventually have attempted the step into Dao King. Yet the mortal standing before her had somehow crossed that distance three times without even crossing it himself.

Her third eye moved toward the Celestial Prison.

BOOM!

White-golden flames struck another barrier. The entire prison trembled.

Another Dao King.

Her gaze shifted toward the black and crimson figure beside it, whose destroyed torso was already reconstructing itself while demonic, vampiric, and divine energies circulated through its foundation.

Another Dao King.

Then she looked toward the swordsman standing protectively before Liam. The third avatar hadn’t moved.

Its sword remained lowered beside its body, yet the Sword Dao surrounding Green Mountain continued gathering toward it. Thousands of swords throughout the sect trembled in response, and the longer Xerathuna examined the avatar, the more uncomfortable she became.

Its aura was too pure. There were none of the unstable fluctuations she would have expected from someone who had recently entered the realm. Its cultivation didn’t feel borrowed or forcibly elevated, nor did it resemble a temporary secret technique that sacrificed foundation in exchange for power.

It genuinely possessed the foundation of a Dao King.

Three fucking Dao Kings!

Xerathuna slowly looked past the sword avatar. Liam stood behind it with his hands clasped behind his back. He was still just a transcendent from a backwater world. How could he possibly accomplish something like this? Did he perhaps make that heavenly treasure submit?

"What are you?" She mumbled as panic and dread filler her eyes. She had made a mistake. She had underestimated this person terribly. She had allowed him to live for too long. And now she was going to pay for everything.

Just as her mind scrambled, suddenly crimson portals opened up all around her.

"Did you miss me, sweetheart?" A sweet voice resounded as a dashing young man stepped out.

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