Molting the Mortal Coil

Just like the last time he’d been hunted, these fellows still had some sort of way to follow him. Sage had no idea any of this was going on, as he had focused completely on escaping. He thought about leaving the Soul Clone to spy upon the enemy’s movements, but last time Whitestaff had destroyed his Twin Soul quite easily and he wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance. Even if the Soul Clone was much more powerful than the Twin Soul, he didn’t want to take the risk at such an important moment.

Eventually, Sage had to come out from the ground. The tunnel network was quite large, but even with years to work, the Warp Worms hadn’t dug farther than thirty miles from Lionheart Town. Emerging from the ground, Sage brought out Ruanfu and dove into the Universe Ring. She’d had a few minutes to recover and pop a bunch of healing pills, so now he let her take over. They switched from moving underground to going airborne. As a Nascent Soul, Ruanfu was the fastest flier and she shot into the air. Even more impressive was that with the Soul Fragments in her wing feathers she had astounding control over her flight. That extra control over her wings allowed her to be more efficient. Combining that ability to Cosmic Traction pushed her speed to another level entirely. She cut through wind resistance and her flying speed put one of those Airships to shame. In fact, Sage thought that she might be one of the fastest flyers in the world.

Only those who practiced speed laws or had reached rank 7 had a chance to be faster than her in the sky. Sage guessed there were probably special movement techniques that could push someone to match her speed, but they probably couldn’t maintain that pace for very long. She was a rank 6 flying Demonic Beast with an innate technique to increase her flying speed. As they moved Sage got a message from Wan Ling.

“They didn’t find me, and they don’t even know what I look like. After you left, Hei Bai broke through Lionheart Town’s defenses and her group took the city along with the Violet Light Sect Ancestor. The Fu Clan and Whitestaff are chasing after you along with one of the Nascent Souls from Hei Bai’s group. Rumors around town confirmed the old man’s identity and also Hei Bai’s group. The Artful Life Alliance.”

Sage let out a sigh of relief, “You’ve done well. Don’t take any Dragoons with you, just get out of there. You should have stayed at the Holy Flame Sect, I’m sorry for putting you into so much danger. Hire some mercenaries from the Kang Clan to get you home, they aren’t very kind, but they’re trustworthy.”

There was some unintelligible grumbling and cursing, but then Wan Ling finally answered properly, “Fine. Don’t die you idiot.”

At that moment, Sage felt something wrong and the outside world shifted. He sent his awareness outside the Universe Ring and saw the world exploding. At least that’s what it looked like at first. Fire shot into the sky. Swirling smoke and flame rippled around Ruanfu’s snowy white wings. Her pristine feathers were burnt away and she fell from the sky like a rock, the damage to her wings ruined her flight ability and Sage reacted quickly, hopping out of the ring and pulling Ruanfu to the Inner World. He used Cosmic Traction himself to break his fall, Ruanfu could do the same, but she relied too much on her wings. She wasn’t ready to react in the same way.

Slithering across the sky, Sage brought up a layer of Blue Icesilver to armor himself with, and not a moment too soon either. A huge molten boulder crashed against him. Burning with heat, the partially liquid rock smashed against his side and made him tumble a few times through the air. His serpentine body flew in a flat spin for a few rotations before he could catch himself again and continue slithering down to the ground, now with a burn wound on his side. The rock had smashed through the icesilver armor as well as his scales, they’d stopped much of the kinetic damage, but the heat transferred into his flesh.

After a few more tense moments that involved dodging two more molten projectiles he finally found his way to the ground and had a moment to turn back towards the source of the trouble. A volcano. A literal volcano had erupted beneath Ruanfu as she flew past. What sort of terrible luck did they have for something like that to happen?

He continued to examine the erupting volcano and then his heart rate suddenly quickened. That was not just any ordinary volcano. There was a huge gap between the bottom of that volcano and the ground. A gap a few hundred feet high. Sage immediately started slithering away, turning his head backwards just in time to catch a large object swing into view above him like the boom of some massive crane. It looked like a high-rise building had been turned on its side and was flying through the air. Sage had no idea what the hell was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good.

Slithering on the ground alone wasn’t fast enough so he used Cosmic Traction to give him more things to push off against and enhance his pace, trying to put as much distance between himself and that volcano thing as possible. Getting out from underneath that flying building he started to gain enough distance from it to get a better view at what it was. That’s no volcano. It’s a monster.

The volcano was not just a mountain, it was the shell of a massive tortoise. That flying stone building was actually the colossal neck of the beast. The few hundred feet between the volcano and the ground was the bottom of the creature’s shell. Now that he’d built up enough distance from it, he could see the smaller mountains that were the gigantic monster’s legs. Sulfurous smoke and fire shot out from the peak of the monster’s back.

Sage had imagined this planet of immense proportions containing creatures of similarly immense sizes, but why did he have to run into one now?

Worse yet, as he ‘ran’ away the creature's head swung down towards him. It’s eye looked like a vertical lake, one which swept towards him. The pupil dilated slightly and that massive head stopped swaying. A terrible feeling washed over him, especially when those huge eyes stayed locked onto him. One of its mountain-like legs slowly lifted into the air and equally slowly pressed against the ground. A small earthquake shook the ground when it took a step, that literally mountainous body seemed to move slow as molasses, but its immense size meant each step carried it thousands of feet.

The huge tortoise seemed fixated on him, and it made his heart race faster. Thankfully, even with its huge steps, he still had a speed advantage. Yet, it wasn’t going to be that easy. As he slowly gained distance, the tortoise tipped the balance. It opened its cavernous mouth and spit molten boulders at him. Each of these boulders was the size of a small house, launched through the air as if by catapult and landing with a bang in Sage’s path. The giant tortoise seemed to know that its accuracy was poor and the molten rocks didn’t land anywhere near Sage’s huge cobra body. They ignited the forest and forged huge craters on the ground in front of him, turning the landscape from an easy to maneuver forest into a flaming and rocky wasteland. He had to slither around the huge boulders and clouds of smoke that were a product of the forest fires that had sprung up.