"Seriously?" Li Qiu exclaimed in surprise.
"Rooaarr" The Black Dragon swatted its tail on the still intact barrier and used the resulting rebound to fall off.
"What a sturdy barrier" Commented Li Qiu as he saw the barrier that didn't even have a single scratch mark even after facing such a powerful impact upon it.
'Flap' 'Flap'
As it began to fall down, the Black Dragon flapped its powerful wings that gave rise to numerous gales and finally stabilized itself in the air.
"Rooaar"
'Swiishh'
The Black Dragon unleashed a powerful breath attack filled with its corrosive blood mist in anger towards the wormy birds that dared to injure its mighty body.
"Black Dragon, forget about attacking them. Just encase the others in your jaws and dive into the sea" Bellowed Li Qiu as he saw the Black Dragon preparing another breath attack.
The breath attack quickly approached the flock of birds when it met up against another powerful barrier. Their collision produced sizzling sounds but, just as the barrier started to melt, the flock of birds from behind just added another layer to the barrier.
Seeing as its breath attack failed to do any damage, the Black Dragon, whose size had further decreased after its previous breath attack hesitated for a second but finally decided to follow Li Qiu's instructions.
Prakash, who had finally reached up to the hearing distance from Li Qiu heard his instructions that didn't include Li Qiu into the plan.
"Big bro, what about you? We can all escape safely before they launch their attack" Bellowed Prakash.
"I'm afraid they wouldn't sit around without taking any action till we reach the sea. Don't worry, I'll bring up the rear" Replied Li Qiu as he put up a strong front.
"But bro…" Before Prakash could argue about his arrangement, Black Dragon clamped the trio of Prakash, Akiko, and Aurella within its jaws as it raced towards the sea.
As the breath attack that was unleashed by the Black Dragon finally cleared and when the flock flew out from within the clouds, Li Qiu finally gazed at his soon-to-be enemies.
He could spot 3 separate flocks. The one on his left looked just like falcons, including both their sizes and appearances.
The flock on the right consisted of eagles, with each eagle having a wingspan of 8-10 metres while the flock at the centre consisted of the previously encountered inflammatory birds.
The difference this time was the leaders that led each of the three flocks. The eagle leader was the biggest of the lot with a wingspan of 20 metres.
The falcon leader's entire body was jet black, including its eyes that felt like the gateway to the abyss. Its skin looked like the personification of the colour vantablack, while its size was similar to the other falcons.
The leader to the group happened to be an inflammatory bird that had a wingspan of 15 metres, clearly smaller than the eagle leader but had a massive difference in the amount of Aria they possessed within their bodies. The prime difference that made it stand out from the rest of the flock was the horn that protruded out from atop its head.
It was a single horn that looked similar to a rhinoceros horn in appearance but was Ivory in colour. It was 2 feet in length and constantly flickered with a golden hue.
There was a single oddity in the entire group of inflammatory birds. This was an inflammatory bird that had singed feathers and lacked both claws and a beak. It was floating a metre behind the horned inflammatory bird and seemed to relay something to its leader as it occasionally kept pointing towards Li Qiu's direction with a motion of its head.
"A survivor from my previous attack, huh," Thought Li Qiu as he slowly realized the sequence of events that had proceeded till now.
The injured inflammatory bird, after successfully surviving his attack instantly raced to its leader, who in turn gave chase immediately. Using their advantage in the speed of their flight, they prepared a trap and awaited Li Qiu's group to fall for it.
First, they spread paralyzing poison in the air along the flight path of the Black Dragon and the moment the paralyzing poison had started to affect its movements, they immediately deployed a powerful barrier in its path that lead to their current miserable solution.
"Humph, I'll take out you cocky leaders first" Li Qiu snorted as he prepared to attack.
The current distance between Li Qiu and the horned inflammatory bird was about 600 metres. Li Qiu calmly floated at an altitude of 500 metres above sea level while the Black Dragon had almost reached an altitude of 150 metres above sea level.
As the one-horned leader saw its prey almost reaching the sea level, it gave a signal to the jet black falcon leader.
As he saw the actions of the one-horned leader, Li Qiu immediately materialized two of his newly enhanced Thermal Swords that had been further improved in their prowess after he gained insight in his fight with Katsurou.
On its cue, the jet black falcon flapped its jet black wings once and seemed to disappear from its spot and reappeared in a location 50 metres away from its initial position. After another flap of its wings, it covered another distance of 50 metres.
It almost looked like teleportation, but Li Qiu, after activating his Essence Sense innate ability carefully observed that the movement speed of the jet black falcon was not due to teleportation but more like a flicker.
It raises its speed to the maximum for an instant and thereby moves a great deal of linear distance. Moreover, the way it begins its flicker is in such a way that no sonic booms are produced even after it breaks through the sound barrier, leaving behind zero evidence to its high-speed movement.
By the rhythm displayed by the jet black falcon till its 4th flicker, Li Qiu calculated that the jet black falcon could flicker up to 16 times per second.
"Autumn leaf, expanding flame blade" By calculating its flicker position and time, Li Qiu used his skill and slashed at the spot where the jet black falcon was supposed to appear at the end of its next flicker.
He didn't take any unexpected chances, so the direction at which he swung both of his Thermal Swords covered more than 10 metres along the line of the jet black falcon's flicker.
Li Qiu felt unassured even with this setup, so, at the moment his Thermal Swords touched upon the line of the jet black falcon's flicker, he immediately detonated them at the exact same time.
Either get shredded into two or get burnt to ashes, this was clearly his aim all along.
'Boom'
'Boom'
Two huge suns appeared in the detonated place, each with a diameter of 100 metres that looked like two cell nucleus that was still in the middle of its nuclear fission.
Even in the case, he erred in his timing or if the jet black falcon could flicker to a distance greater than 50 meters, the length covered by the two huge suns was about 150 metres which were bound to engulf the jet black falcon within it.
Li Qiu immediately materialized another two Thermal Swords as he was ready to immediately retaliate in case the jet black falcon still managed to survive.
"Rooooar"
Suddenly, Li Qiu heard the painful roar of the Black Dragon that had almost reached 100 metres above sea level.
"W-what? This cunning bastard" Li Qiu cursed in anger as he saw the left wing of the Black Dragon falling separately from its body, clearly, it was severed by the jet black falcon.
The jet black falcon initially only flickered in intervals of 50 metres to throw off Li Qiu's attack, and seeing how it escaped unscathed from his attach and even managed to sever the left wing of the Black Dragon, it could at least flicker for a distance greater than 200 metres.
Li Qiu saw that the wings of the jet black falcon took on a black coloured hue as they instantly expanded in length to about 10 metres each at the instant it severed the other wing of the Black Dragon from its body.
"Roar"
The Black Dragon roared in pain and then released a huge cloud of blood mist from everywhere around its body. It looked more like the blood mist was escaping from its body without its volition since it seemed as if all of the excess power given to it as a boost by Katsurou could no longer be contained in its badly injured body.
The jet black falcon immediately flickered 200 metres backward as it gazed at the silhouette of the Black Dragon with its cold abyssal eyes.
The Black Dragon immediately reverted back to its original Chinese dragon form from its previous mighty westernized version. But, this version of it had a significantly greater amount of agility and flexibility for the lack of power.
During the time frame of a single second gained due to the blood mist cloud released by the Black Dragon, Li Qiu activated his thrusters to attack the jet black falcon. But, he was immediately met with another of those powerful barriers that the Black Dragon first collided against that generally seemed to be invisible to the naked eye.
"Break!" Li Qiu bellowed as he slashed at the barrier with his Thermal Sword. His first strike left a wide gully on the barrier, while his second strike cleaved apart the entire barrier into two.
But, just when he passed through the cleaved space, Li Qiu was once again met with another barrier that also had similar defensive power.
"Bastards" Li Qiu cursed in rage.
While Li Qiu was getting stalled, the Black Dragon made its final high-speed dive.
On seeing the Black Dragon emerge out of the cloud of blood mist, the jet black falcon immediately flickered to cut off the Black Dragon's head.
In its current form, the Black Dragon swirled, twisted and turned its body in many ways and successfully avoided getting completely cut off many times.
There were numerous number of slashes and cuts that ranged from a centimetre deep to even a metre deep all over the body of the Black Dragon except in the regions in and around its head that the Black Dragon desperately ensured even at the cost of losing the rest of its body.
After numerous failed attempts, something within the mind of the jet black falcon had finished analyzing the moving patterns and tendencies of the Black Dragon and predicted its next assumed form in a particular designated location.
The eyes of the jet black falcon gleamed sinisterly as it arrogantly flapped its wings once again and flickered.
"Pfft"