Chapter 44: Foxtrot Yankee

Lu Bu continued cleaving through the fireballs and advancing toward Su Da Ji, who didn't relent on bombarding him with fireballs. She launched nine at a time, trying to incinerate her opponent, but the legendary warrior simply cut through them as if they were nothing more than paper.

Within a minute, Lu Bu crossed the distance between them in a couple of bounds, his spear a destructive blur, and slashed Su Da Ji. The fox spirit responded by catching the deadly blade with several of her tails, stopping it from reaching her head.

Several of her other tails swiftly darted forward to strike Lu Bu, but he pulled back quickly. Yanking his spear out of the grasp of the unfurled tails, he twirled his spear and parried the quick and lethal tail strikes before knocking her back.

While she skidded backward, Su Da Ji wasted no time retaliating, launching another nine fireballs at him. Lu Bu calmly spun his spear and hacked them apart, leaving cleaved conflagrations to explode all around him, but none of the flames managed to touch him. The orange flames illuminated the night, causing his golden armor to gleam against the burning light.

Lu Bu didn't hesitate to lunge at her once more, his spear flashing at a speed that was beyond the ability of any normal human to follow. Even so, Su Da Ji reacted impressively, her tails rearing up and knocking his strikes back. Sparks flew as metal clashed against fur, their spiritual energies colliding violently to produce small detonations. The ground crumbled under their feet, unable to withstand their exchange, but neither of them stopped, spear striking against tail or blocking another lethal strike.

After an intense clash, the both of them sprang apart in an explosion that left a crater in the ground. Smoke drifted from the tails of Su Da Ji, settling down upon the place. The two of them glared at each other before charging again, spear meeting tails in another shower of sparks.

From initial observation, it was clear that Su Da Ji was faster and more agile, but Lu Bu was stronger and sturdier. The two combatants were using their strengths to their advantage, with Su Da Ji avoiding the worst of blows by evading and attacking at Lu Bu's blind spots while Lu Bu relied on raw power to force her back. They continued pummeling at each other for the next few seconds, the poor environment unable to withstand the tremendous impacts that resulted from their trading of vicious blows.

"Don't you think you should pay attention to the battle at hand?" Hu Li Jing asked, darting from the side and slamming a flaming fist against the side of my head. I managed to seize her by the wrist and stopped the fire punch from burning my face off, but my skin was still scalded by the close proximity of the heat.

Cursing under my breath, I swung her about and used her own momentum against her, hurling her against the ground. The yin-yang symbol appeared behind me while I assumed my stance. Undaunted, Hu Li Jing continued to assail me from all sides, using her superior speed to confuse and bedazzle me, to no avail.

I was like a rock in a river, unmoving and calm. Unflinching and sturdy. I countered speed with stillness, only moving when Hu Li Jing drew close, catching her attacks and repelling them. Often, I used her own strength against her, causing her to fumble about and crash to the ground.

Even in such instances, Hu Li Jing would simply skid across the ground before jumping up, unscathed, and resume her attacks once more. She wasn't alone. Two of her friends had joined her, hurling fireballs and earth spikes at me. Hemmed in from three different directions, I was forced to adapt and evade, but most of the times I simply moved my hands in a circular motion to deflect the elemental projectiles, sometimes reflecting them back at their firers. The three girls were forced to dodge their own elemental attacks, scattering like vermin.

While I fought against the three of them, Mu Rong Shu was occupied with the two girls wielding water scythes and icicles. They continued to bombard her with their elemental projectiles, but she countered them with the Li trigram, raising a wall of fire to boil the water into steam and vaporize the ice into mist.

She spun around, kicking one of her opponents before throwing a hand out to knock the second one away. The both of them rolled, conjuring water and ice to impale her, but Mu Rong Shu smashed them apart with her hands, feet, elbows and knees, either causing the water to splash harmlessly across her or shattering the ice. Turning around, she then stomped on the ground, using the Kun trigram to send tremors that robbed her two opponents of their balance.

The two of them grunted and hurriedly retreated, only to fall into my wife's trap. Earth spikes burst out of the ground and would have stabbed through them had they not dove to the side to avoid them.

Not to be outdone, I stepped up my attacks a notch and hammered the midriff of one of my assailants, throwing her to the ground. She cried out in pain, blood bursting out of her mouth and her earth spears went wide. Her comrade descended upon me, her hands clad in flames, but I spun away to avoid her strike. She left a crater in the ground, only for me to ram a hand into her face and fling her away. She spun about before striking a tree, setting it alight and having the burning trunk topple over on her.

"You…!"

Hu Li Jing glared at me furiously, flames blazing to life all around her silhouette. In the background, there was another huge explosion when Lu Bu and Su Da Ji clashed, trees falling all around them, the trunks charred or neatly cut through at the base. Uncaring of the destruction they were causing to the environment, Lu Bu and Su Da Ji continued to fight, leveling the forest. Leaves lazily drifted around them, only to be sliced into shreds or combusting into cinders. Soil was gouged out of the earth, leaving colossal craters devoid of grass – most of which had been mowed or burned away.

The power of spirits was fearsome. But the summoners themselves were no slouches either.

While they were locked in a stalemate, dealing more damage to the forest than each other, Hu Li Jing lunged at me, flinging fireballs at me. I caught them and flicked them aside, accidentally blowing up a couple of trees nearby. I felt bad, but I didn't have the luxury of worrying about others.

Pushing my glasses up my nose, I took a deep breath and prepared for Hu Li Jing's next attack. She closed in on me, her fiery fists pummeling my location. I caught them, and despite her hands being wreathed in intense flames, I was able to coat myself in a defensive aura of qi to prevent myself from being incinerated by the sheer heat.

Standing my ground, I blocked, parried and deflected Hu Li Jing's punches before smacking her aside, twisting her arm and throwing her around. Unable to halt her own momentum, Hu Li Jing hit the soil and rolled before throwing a fireball at me. But I managed to knock it away.

"How dare you hurt my friends?!" she snarled at me. I rolled my eyes.

"So your friends are allowed to attack me, but I'm not allowed to fight back?"

"Of course!" Hu Li Jing was shameless. "You're nothing but the trash son-in-law of the Mu Rong family! You have no right to fight back at all! We have the right to clean up trash like you, but you don't have the right to retaliate! You only have the right to DIE!"

The fuck? What kind of stupid logic was this? Who decided that other people could attack me but I couldn't fight back? The heavens? Did they issue such an edict? Was there such a universal scientific law that labeled me as trash and therefore deprived me of the right to live?

Oh, right. This was a son-in-law story. Fictional characters would use such absurd logic just so I was justified in beating them up later. I should have known.

Well, I was too lazy to argue. Rather than waste time with words, I might as well rely on my actions to prove myself. You know what they say, actions speak louder than words.

Propelling myself off the ground, I reached Hu Li Jing's position and kicked her so hard she was sent flying several meters away. She crashed to the ground, but managed to hastily throw up a couple of fireballs to keep me at bay.

All she needed to do was buy herself some time.

And not a moment too soon.

Her reinforcements arrived, her two friends managing to pick themselves up from where I had left them and join the fight once more. Fireballs and earth spikes surged toward me from opposite directions, forcing me to duck and evade.

"Huff…"

Jumping several steps back, I watched the three girls reunite once more. They then formed a triangle and combined their techniques.

"Volcanic Blast!"

My eyes widened when I realized what they were doing. They were combing two different elements – fire and earth – to create an incredibly powerful attack. Molten lava and red-hot magma flowed toward me, clouding the entire area in noxious fumes.

There was no way I could block or deflect this particular attack. It was too powerful, too overwhelming. It would be like throwing an egg against a stone.

So I ran instead. Unfortunately, the volcanic magma attack was too massive. Even with footwork techniques, there was nowhere for me to run. The trees caught fire and were instantly incinerated as the lava washed over them. There was no foothold, no higher ground, nothing.

Even Mu Rong Shu and her opponents were forced to retreat. My wife was able to mitigate the damage by using the Gen trigram and conjuring a mountain to elevate her to higher ground. As for the two girls assaulting her, they made use of water and ice to form a barrier to keep the molten lava at bay, but it was clear that they were about to be overwhelmed by the sheer power of it.

Did Hu Li Jing not care about what would happen to her own allies?

"Dear! Over here!"

I glanced up when Mu Rong Shu called out to me. Sprinting as quickly as I could, I leaped up and launched myself toward the raised platform of rock. My wife stretched her hand out and caught mine, hauling me up onto the mountain she had raised.

"Thanks."

"No problem. What do we do now?"

I was tempted to sing You Raise Me Up so I can stand on Mountains, but I suppressed the urge. Instead, I watched the lava well up at the foot of Mu Rong Shu's mountain. The sheer heat began to liquefy rock, turning the base of the mountain red-hot and causing it to soften, but otherwise my wife's mountain remained standing.

Unfortunately, we had no other place to go to.

"Get down here!" Hu Li Jing shouted at us from a distance, pointing vehemently. "Stop being cowards and get off your high ground!"

I think she meant high horse, but whatever. Rolling my eyes, I gestured at the molten lava that surrounded us.

"Why aren't you plunging yourselves into the molten lava then, huh?"

At my words, the three girls exchanged apprehensive glances and instinctively backed away from the molten lava that they had conjured. Their gaze darted to their two comrades – and despite using water and ice to protect themselves, both of them had been engulfed by the molten lava and incinerated. Killed by friendly fire, in other words. Not that Hu Li Jing and her remaining two friends seemed particularly bothered about that – instead, they were more concerned about the lava in front of them. Even though they were fire and earth users, they didn't dare to step into the superheated, molten rock.

Yet they expected other people to? The sheer hypocrisy…

"We can't just stay here forever," Mu Rong Shu muttered, looking around for an alternative. I nodded and smiled knowingly before I showed the middle finger to the swearing girls at the far end of the forest.

"Yeah…but neither can they."