Fates Parallel Chapter 361 - Prepared

The world around Yoshika roared to life as the silent stillness of Do Hye’s technique ended and he leapt into action. She hurriedly gave her friends a mental update on what had occurred as he began shouting orders.

“Miss Chong, Miss Ruiling, please clear a space—we are to be joined by yet another group.”

The half-dragon girl and the other fiends quickly moved out of the way, circling around to join Yoshika’s group. The girl—Ruiling, presumably—gave them a nervous nod of acknowledgement.

The demons, however, didn’t budge. The woman—who had to be the ‘Chong’ Do Hye had addressed—crossed her arms and scowled.

“That wasn’t the deal.”

Dozens of magical circles began rapidly forming above Do Hye as he spoke without bothering to look at her.

“I said I would open the tomb, and this is necessary to that end—so yes, as a matter of fact it was. Now unless you’d like to be trampled underfoot, please clear the area.”

Chong hissed angrily, but gestured for the other demons to comply with a jerk of her head before begrudgingly following behind them.

Yoshika barely noticed the interaction—too enthralled by what Do Hye was doing with his magic. An incredible amount of power went into his formations, enhanced by the abnormal density of the mana around them, but what truly struck her was the sheer number of them.

Each individual spell strained the limits of Yoshika’s arcane expertise, and Do Hye was writing dozens at a time before slotting them into arrays and matrices so complex they made her head spin.

One of them flared to life as it was completed, unceremoniously dropping Zheng Long and his allies through a portal in the air. A very startled Bai Renshu stared incredulously through the aperture, and Do Hye called through absently as he continued to work.

“We’re opening the tomb, Grandmaster Bai. Do me a favor and keep the dragon from interfering, would you?”

“What?! The Snake?! What’s going on? Why would the dragon—?”

“That’s a good fellow!”

The portal winked out just as two more of Do Hye’s formations lit up, each descending upon the dais. Do Hye held out a hand.

“Miss Yoshika, the core.”

She hurriedly handed over the Darkness core that Ienaga had gifted her, and he casually tossed it into the center of one of his formations, where it began to hover over one of the keys.

“Be a dear and check my work while I procure the other...”

The Qin cultivators had picked themselves up off the ground, and were looking around warily as Yoshika ran over to the dais—not entirely sure what she was supposed to be checking.

“Miss Lee? What’s this? Explain yourself.”

“Eh, not now, Zheng Long—Yue, could you talk to him?”

Yan Yue rolled her eyes but walked over to Zheng Long’s group with a smile on her face.

“If I must. Come, Zheng Long, let’s have a chat about that truce...”

While Yoshika tried to make sense of the ritual formation she was looking at, Ja Yun quietly approached.

“Need help?”

“Desperately. I think Do Hye reverse engineered part of the ritual by...I don’t know—guessing? But it’s so far from what Jianmo left me that I don’t know where to begin.”

Ja Yun nodded.

“Share it?”

Yoshika knew what she was talking about, and immediately communicated the idea to her directly, sending a snapshot to Iseul as well, for good measure.

Ja Yun furrowed her brows, looking over the formation with an intense focus.

“It’s...complex. Brute force, but in a horrifyingly intricate way. He’s trying to connect the core to the key via...something else—it’s blank. But he’s using every single method possible, plus a few that I thought weren’t. Here—just focus on these parts and fill in the blanks.”

Yoshika felt the idea spring to her mind, fully formed, instantly understanding what Ja Yun was trying to say. Do Hye had created some kind of universal interface for his spell that she needed to attach her own ritual to.

It was much faster than the ritual Jianmo had shared with her, but the framework was extravagant. Any other mage might have taken years—decades—to even design a formation like Do Hye’s, and he’d not only had it prepared, but he’d drawn it on thin air in seconds. It wasted power that most xiantian cultivators would balk at on unused connections, but Do Hye didn’t hesitate.

The Grand Magus—and there was no way Yoshika could ever assign the title to another person after this—furrowed his brows slightly as he shifted his focus to only one of his arrays. A massive formation that hurt her brain to even look at, growing increasingly complex as he added more and more spells to it, muttering under his breath.

“Come on, Yumi, I’m not your enemy. Stop being so slippery...aha!”

The formation flared to life, dumping a massive deluge of water over their heads before it was caught by another formation and whisked away into the walls of the vortex. The severed head of the giant serpent that Master Ienaga had been battling landed with a wet squelch, its dead eyes still shining with an intense light, but there was no sign of Ienaga herself.

Do Hye had a puzzled expression on his face as the portal closed.

“Huh...that’s odd. My spell should have—”

The wall of the vortex exploded as a red blur slammed into Do Hye from the side, carrying him across the ocean floor and into the other side of the maelstrom.

After a stunned beat, Yoshika rushed over to the serpent’s head with Eui and drew one of her sharpest blades to hastily butcher it for its core. Do Hye’s spells were still active, and she just had to pray that the xiantian fighters would figure things out between themselves.

By the time she fished the xiantian Light core out from the leviathan’s skull, Do Hye reemerged from the edge of the maelstrom, clutching a bloody wound on his side and bleeding from his mouth.

“A fine hello to you too, Lady Ienaga...”

Master Ienaga entered the maelstrom behind him, frowning. Her eyes immediately locked onto Yoshika.

“Girls, are you alright?”

While Eui hurried over to help Ja Yun with the second ritual, Jia responded to Ienaga.

“We’re fine. There’s not a lot of time to explain, but Do Hye is helping us open the tomb.”

“Alright. Be careful, and don’t trust anything he tells you.”

“We’ll try not to.”

Ienaga’s hand went to her blade, and she eyed the fiends and demons warily. Do Hye limped back into position and returned to his last remaining spell—by far the biggest.

“Please reconsider—I’d have to defend them if you attacked, and that damnable sword of yours has left enough of a mark on me as it is.”

She pursed her lips and relaxed, but her response was cut off by a beam of Destruction cutting through the vortex overhead. Do Hye winced as part of his array was annihilated, quickly writing new formations to fill in the blanks.

“Lady Ienaga, it looks like the fighting has intensified—I suspect the Dragon Lord has realized what we’re up to. I don’t suppose you could buy us some time?”

“Tsk, how much time do you need?”

“Well, the next eclipse to pass over this area should be in four hundred and eighteen years or so.”

She gave him a flat look and he shrugged.

“As much as you can manage would be nice—this is quite delicate.”

“If anything happens to them, I’ll take your head myself.”

“Naturally. Once they are safely through I’ll join in to aid your retreat.”

Ienaga shook her head then knelt down to put a hand on Jia’s shoulder.

“Good luck, girls.”

Yoshika ignored propriety and stepped forward to give her master a hug.

“You too, Master. Stay safe.”

After a beat of hesitation, Ienaga returned the hug and nodded.

“Thank you.”

The ground beneath them shook and Do Hye cleared his throat.

“Not to rush you, but...”

Ienaga didn’t wait for him to finish before diving back into the wall of the swirling maelstrom.

Yoshika finished preparing the last ritual with Ja Yun, looking up at Do Hye desperately as the tremors grew more frequent and severe.

“Now what?! You said four hundred years?”

“Four hundred and eighteen, yes. Not to worry, Miss Yoshika, I have no intention of waiting around.”

“What are you doing? Is this some kind of time magic?”

The Snake chuckled lightly.

“I doubt that such magic is possible, but right now I’m concentrating, and I’m afraid this requires my full attention.”

As he finished speaking, his eyes glazed over, putting everything he had into his spell. Yoshika and the others could do nothing but wait, their tension growing as rapidly as Do Hye’s formation.

Suddenly the tremors stopped, and for the barest moment Yoshika thought that the fight had been won. Then, with a mighty roar, the Dragon Lord appeared at the top of the maelstrom. The fiends paled, and Ruiling instantly dropped into a deep kowtow as the dragon dove towards them.

“Traitor! You will pay for this, snake! Your treachery ends this—”

Do Hye’s eyes regained their focus and his face split into a wicked grin.

“Too late!”

The Dragon Lord slammed into an invisible barrier and roared in frustration.

“Do you think I can be stopped by such petty tricks?!”

With a single breath, the dragon’s multi-hued fire breath instantly shattered the barrier, but Do Hye’s grin didn’t falter.

“Divine Art: Unending Cycle of the Great Celestial Wheel!”

Everything stopped. With a pulse of power that brought Yoshika to her knees, the mana in their surroundings vanished, every last mote going into Do Hye’s grand spell. The world lurched in an unnatural way, and Yoshika felt like she was going to be sick as the sky darkened and space shifted around her.

Then, as if an invisible hand reached out to rearrange the sky, the sun moved directly overhead while the moon dragged itself across the sky to settle before the sun in a perfect total solar eclipse. The mana that had disappeared to fuel Do Hye’s absurd spell was quickly replaced by an endless torrent of Shadow essence, filling the vortex like an empty vessel.

Then, almost reluctantly, the world began to grind its way back into motion. Yoshika gasped for breath, rising back to her feet unsteadily as even the Dragon Lord stopped in stunned silence. For his part, Do Hye was soaked in sweat and panting heavily, looking visibly thinner.

The dragon craned his head up to look at the sky before turning his gaze back down upon The Snake.

“Impossible. Who are you? What have you done?!”

The Grand Magus stood up straight and locked eyes with the dragon.

“What I had to. Alright boys and girls, it’s time to go.”

Do Hye’s words snapped Yoshika’s attention back to the dais. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the warped distortion of space hovering above the dais wasn’t it. It felt bizarre to her senses, as if it were nestled in some twilight between existence and the void. Like it was there and not there at the same time.

It reminded her of the realm of shadow that existed between the physical and spiritual realms, but on a deeper, more fundamental level of reality.

She didn’t have time to hesitate. The dragon’s roar above spurred her into action, dashing toward the distortion with all her might. She barely had time to register the others quickly following after her before she crossed the threshold and everything went black.