Beyond the Timescape

Chapter 97: Finally Seeing the Rakshasa

A fierce night wind howled through the seventy-ninth port, crashing against the glowing defensive barrier of Xu Qing’s Dharma Boat and scattering uselessly into the dark.

Had the wind managed to pierce the shield and sweep into the cabin, it would have found it completely empty.

Far from the Dharma Boat, swallowed by the pitch-black shadows of a nearby alleyway, Xu Qing leaned silently against a wall. His arms were crossed over his chest, his gaze locked coldly onto his own vessel.

When his eyes blinked, a razor-sharp killing intent glinted within them.

“Will anyone come tonight?” Xu Qing murmured, glancing up at the suffocatingly black sky. “It is a good night for murder.”

His thoughts, however, briefly drifted to the apocalyptic black cloud he had witnessed upon his return from the sea, and the terrifying, eagle-like entity concealed within it.

He had asked Zhang San about it when retrieving his Dharma Boat. Zhang San only knew fragments, mentioning that the supreme entity was tied to the largest forbidden area in the South Phoenix Continent—the Phoenix Forbidden Zone.

It was the absolute emperor of that dead land, known as the Blazing Phoenix!

Its very existence was the origin of the Phoenix Forbidden Zone’s name. It possessed a supreme, crushing authority that suppressed not only the forbidden zone but the entirety of the South Phoenix Continent. In fact, the continent itself was named in its honor!

South of the Wanggu Continent, high above the Forbidden Sea, a divine creature danced across the nine heavens. Its terrifying aura dimmed the sky, forcing all living things to bow in reverence. They respectfully called it the Blazing Phoenix. Because it roosted upon this island continent, the land was crowned South Phoenix.

As for the exact details, Zhang San was ignorant.

Blazing Phoenix, Xu Qing whispered in his heart. As his cultivation deepened and his exposure widened, the terrifying scale of this world was slowly unspooling before him.

A sudden gust of sea breeze blew in, carrying the faint, unmistakable rustle of fabric.

Xu Qing’s thoughts snapped back to the present. The icy pragmatism returned to his eyes, instantly locking away any awe regarding the Blazing Phoenix. He stared into the distant harbor.

Five silhouettes melted out of the darkness.

Three men, two women.

The two women at the vanguard were instantly recognizable, given away by both their silhouettes and the briny stench of the sea clinging to them. They were the elder sisters of the mermaid youth he had slaughtered.

Their cultivation bases were heavy and condensed—one at the ninth level of Qi Condensation, the other at Qi Condensation Grand Perfection.

The three male attendants trailing them were also mermaid clan cultivators, radiating the aura of the eighth level of Qi Condensation. Under the pale moonlight, their faces were twisted with feral, murderous intent.

Xu Qing watched them with dead, half-lidded eyes. He didn’t move a muscle, his gaze sweeping past them into the empty shadows behind.

Why haven’t their Foundation Establishment guardians appeared? he calculated silently.

The five assassins expertly evaded the port’s patrol squads, creeping toward his Dharma Boat under the cover of night.

Perhaps emboldened by the backing of the Third Highness, or simply blinded by their innate racial arrogance, the younger sister suddenly surged forward, preparing to breach the vessel.

The elder sister snatched her shoulder, stopping her dead. Far more rational and cautious, the elder sister raised her right hand and activated a jade talisman treasure.

It wasn’t a weapon; it was a sensory probe.

From his hiding spot, Xu Qing watched as the two sisters realized the boat was empty. They immediately fell back, preparing to retreat.

The temperature in Xu Qing’s eyes plummeted. He had abandoned his ship precisely to avoid butchering them on its deck. Bloodstains and shattered formations on his own Dharma Boat would draw unwanted attention and endless administrative headaches.

He had planned to let them leave, silently stalk them into the city’s dark underbelly, and assassinate them one by one, erasing the corpses without a trace.

But just as the hit squad pivoted to leave, the elder sister’s face violently contorted. She whipped her head around, her eyes piercing the darkness, locking dead onto Xu Qing’s exact hiding spot.

“The bloodline curse from our brother’s death! It’s fluctuating right there!”

The younger sister’s head snapped toward the alley, her green eyes erupting with venomous hatred. With a piercing shriek, she launched herself directly at Xu Qing’s shadow. The three attendants drew their weapons, their killing intent boiling over as they charged.

Discovered? Xu Qing frowned slightly.

These were the Third Highness’s dogs. A protracted slaughter right next to the docks would attract the Sect’s eyes. More importantly, he needed to prevent them from transmitting a distress signal.

The moment they lunged, Xu Qing explosively retreated. He violently suppressed his spiritual aura, plastering a look of panicked desperation across his face. It was a calculated feint—feed their arrogance, make them smell blood, and guarantee they wouldn’t waste time sending a message outside.

He didn’t plan on running far. Just far enough.

The five mermaid cultivators gave chase like starved wolves.

At the forefront, the younger sister waved her hands, conjuring a swarm of pitch-black, Mutagen-laced bubbles. She hurled them furiously at Xu Qing’s fleeing back.

“So it was you who butchered my brother!” she screamed, the bubbles whistling through the air, oozing corruption. “I will tear you apart! You will beg for a death you cannot have!”

Behind her, the three attendants unsheathed their lethal payloads.

One gripped a jagged bone sword; another’s hands mutated into violently venomous, scaled spikes; the third tore through his robes as a massive, pulsating tumor erupted from his spine, spewing a thick, hallucinogenic toxic mist that manifested into the shrieking visage of a ghost.

The elder sister hung at the rear. Paralyzingly cautious, she refused to close the distance, habitually drawing a defensive talisman treasure and crushing it to envelop herself in a heavy energy shield.

Xu Qing didn’t even bother looking back at the incoming spells. He simply accelerated.

Just as the black bubbles were about to strike his back, he crossed the threshold into a dead, isolated corner of the slums.

His fleeing form halted with unnatural, spine-snapping suddenness.

He pivoted. The feigned panic vanished, replaced by an abyss of absolute, predatory violence.

BOOM!

His speed exploded, multiplying several times over in a fraction of a second. Instead of running, he launched himself forward, operating as a human cannonball directly into the charging pack.

He moved so fast the enraged younger sister couldn’t even process the shift in momentum. Ignoring the Mutagen in her bubbles entirely, Xu Qing’s body slammed squarely into her chest.

She was at the ninth level of Qi Condensation with the innate physical hardiness of the mermaid clan. Yet, against a physical body that had long surpassed the limits of Qi Condensation, fueled by terrifyingly dense spiritual energy, she was as fragile as wet paper.

CRUNCH!

The woman’s eyes bulged from her skull. Before her vocal cords could even vibrate to scream, her torso detonated.

Flesh, bone, and organs sprayed across the alley in a sickening shower of gore. Her body was utterly obliterated by the kinetic impact. Only her decapitated head, suddenly encased in a blinding blue light from a life-saving talisman, shot backward, its vitality artificially preserved.

Xu Qing didn’t even blink. With a flick of his wrist, a black iron spike shrieked through the air, chasing the flying head.

Without shedding a microsecond of momentum, he materialized directly in front of the attendant wielding the bone sword.

The attendant’s face twisted in horror. Before he could swing, Xu Qing’s hand lashed out, gripping the bone blade. He wrenched his wrist.

SNAP.

The blade sheared in half. In one fluid, brutal motion, Xu Qing reversed his grip and drove the jagged, broken end straight through the attendant’s throat. He violently ripped the blade sideways. Arterial blood fountained into the night as the eighth-level cultivator died on his feet.

The slaughter didn’t pause. Xu Qing stepped laterally, ghosting directly into the toxic mist of the second attendant.

The tumor-backed cultivator gasped in panic, desperately trying to backpedal. He made it exactly two steps before his entire body convulsed. His skin instantly flashed a necrotic blue-black, and he vomited a tidal wave of pitch-black blood. He collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.

His toxic miasma was a pathetic, childish joke compared to Xu Qing’s silent, lethal poisons.

Simultaneously, the third attendant’s mind shattered in terror. He opened his mouth to scream, but before a sound could escape, a sphere of hyper-condensed water droplets materialized out of thin air, violently collapsing inward around his body.

SQUELCH. The intense water pressure crushed him into a fine red mist.

High above, the black iron spike slammed into the blue light protecting the younger sister’s head. The talisman treasure flashed brilliantly, desperately fighting the kinetic force. It held, but the sheer concussive shockwave still pulverized a quarter of her skull. Thanks to her alien vitality, she remained conscious, her decapitated head screaming in unimaginable agony as it rode the shockwave toward her elder sister.

From start to finish, the massacre took less than three seconds.

Having instantly butchered three cultivators and crippled a fourth, Xu Qing fluidly drew a dagger. With a flick of his wrist, the blade tore through the air with a piercing screech, aiming directly between the elder sister’s eyes.

It was upon her in a flash.

The elder sister’s face was completely bloodless. Pure, unadulterated terror flooded her veins. The sudden, gory deletion of her hit squad felt like a waking nightmare.

However, her paranoid habit of pre-casting defensive talismans, combined with her Grand Perfection cultivation base, saved her life. She hadn’t been poisoned, and while the physical impact of the thrown dagger was catastrophic, it failed to instantly pierce her barrier.

The dagger struck the shield like a meteorite. The shockwave rattled the elder sister’s bones.

She stared in absolute horror. She couldn’t fathom how this filthy, run-down seventy-ninth port housed such an eldritch monster. In her terrified perception, the sheer lethal efficiency and explosive power of this youth were indistinguishable from a Foundation Establishment expert!

The realization that she had actively hunted this reaper made her scalp go numb. She mentally cursed her dead brother to the deepest hells.

You died, so you died! Why in the world did you provoke such a monstrous fiend?!

Survival instincts overrode everything. Without a microsecond of hesitation, she pulled a second talisman treasure and crushed it, ignoring the astronomical cost.

A deafening boom echoed as the talisman manifested into a colossal, ethereal fish tail that violently swiped at the advancing Xu Qing, intent on crushing him.

Seizing the momentary distraction, she snatched the dying, violently poisoned head of her younger sister out of the air. Igniting every drop of spiritual energy in her body, she turned and fled.

The terror in her heart had mutated into a tsunami, drowning out all rational thought. Only one command remained: Run!

Run until the clan’s Foundation Establishment guardians arrived!

According to their schedule, the guardians should have already rendezvoused with them. Shaking uncontrollably, she pulled out a transmission jade slip, screaming her distress signal to her protectors.

She didn’t even wait to see if the message went through. She was burning her cultivation base, pushing her speed past its absolute limits. Unwilling to take any chances, she crushed a third, incredibly rare talisman treasure, violently tearing through the suffocating curtain of water and poison Xu Qing had laid down, and fled into the night like a madwoman.

BOOM!

The massive ethereal fish tail slammed into the alley. Had this happened near the docks, the entire port would have been alerted. But here, cloaked by isolation and Xu Qing’s sound-dampening water curtain, the explosion went completely unnoticed.

The smoke and dust settled.

Stepping out from behind the dissipating energy of the fish tail, Xu Qing emerged completely unscathed.

His face was an icy, emotionless mask. He stared down the dark street at the fading silhouette of the fleeing mermaid.

He stepped forward.

His spiritual energy erupted. Slapping several flight talismans onto his legs, his body blurred into a streak of deadly lightning, vanishing into the darkness in relentless pursuit.