"Xiao Hei!" I shouted, summoning my dog spirit. The hellhound materialized, howling, before landing on the lava. To the surprise of Hu Li Jing and the other girls, the heat didn't have any effect on him at all. The black hellhound landed on the molten lava and bounded across the superheated landscape, black flames igniting in his jaws.
"How…?" Hu Ling Ji demanded, but she and her friends weren't able to get away in time before Xiao Hei reached them.
In a single pounce, he leaped over a desperate earth spike that one of the girls had conjured to impale him, and then landed on the assailant. In a single motion, he tore her throat out. The girl let out a strangled shriek and went into spasms, clutching at her ruined throat but unable to stem the bleeding. With a gurgle, she sank into the ground, drowning in her own blood as it spilled through her torn windpipe and filled her lungs.
While she died a slow and agonizing death, her two "friends" ignored her plight and continued to attack Xiao Hei. My hellhound weather the twin fireballs that the two girls hammered him with. Hu Li Jing's eyes widened when she saw that he was unaffected.
"How?!"
"Lady, you do realize that Xiao Hei isn't affected by molten lava, right? What makes you think a bit of fire is going to hurt him?"
I couldn't help but roll my eyes at her sheer stupidity.
Cursing, Hu Li Jing turned to her spirit while her friend tried to keep Xiao Hei at bay, to no avail. She screamed and fell, her arms bitten and ripped to shreds by the ravaging hellhound. She unleashed a tide of flames to incinerate him, but Xiao Hei simply shrugged off the flames. He responded by opening his jaws wide and exhaling black hellfire.
At first, the girl scoffed, unable to believe her eyes at what was happening. "I'm a fire type cultivator, you think these flames are going to hurt me?"
Then her smugness immediately disappeared when her body caught fire, the black flames consuming her flesh and transmuting her into…ghost-like vapors. She wasn't simply burned to ash or incinerated into cinders…her very soul was being devoured by the hellish flames.
"How is this possible?! This isn't fire! What the hell is this?!" she shrieked, panicking. "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!"
"Your death," I replied, and then I cringed. Fuck, I couldn't believe I just said that. That was cheesy as hell.
The girl screamed one final time before she vanished forever, consumed by the hellfire. Seeing the demise of her comrade, Hu Li Jing panicked.
"Su Da Ji!" She yelled.
The nine-tailed fox managed to break away from Lu Bu and leaped to her side, making use of her superior speed to escape the much slower Lu Bu. Xiao Hei jumped to the side, ducking under several swinging tails, and then rolled away, even as a couple of the tails plunged toward him with such forced they stabbed deeply into the ground, leaving craters.
Xiao Hei then jumped over the tails and pounced on Su Da Ji. The nine-tailed fox recoiled when he bite a chunk of flesh out of her arm, and she tried to counter by sending a spiral of vines and branches at him, only for the hellhound to incinerate them with hellfire.
"Huh? How?!" Hu Li Jing spluttered. "How is Su Da Ji being pressured by that damned dog?!"
She was forced to duck under Mu Rong Shu's punch, my wife having propelled herself from the mountain she created and reached our enemy's position after the molten lava had cooled. With the demise of the two other girls, Hu Li Jing was no longer able to maintain the volcanic spell. That technique was a combination of skills from the three girls – if any one of them was missing, it would fail.
And now Mu Rong Shu had seized the opportunity to cross the cooling field of lava and close in on the panicking Hu Li Jing.
Hu Li Jing was no pushover, however. Snarling, she snapped her arm up and launched a fireball, but Mu Rong Shu countered it with her Kan trigram, calling forth a tide of water to extinguish the flames. She then struck Hu Li Jing, who just barely managed to duck. But even with her evasive maneuver, she was unable to avoid getting hit in the shoulder and the impact spun her to the ground.
Mu Rong Shu landed next to her and kicked her without hesitation. Somehow Hu Li Jing managed to cross her arms and parry the blow, but the force of the attack hurled her across the forest.
Before she could land on the ground, she succeeded in releasing flames from her hands, slowing her fall and softening the impact before she adjusted her trajectory and gently lowered herself to the ground. Before she could raise her hands and retaliate against Mu Rong Shu, however, Lu Bu charged through the foliage and slashed her from behind, his spear cleaving through the inferno and cutting deeply into her back.
With a cry, Hu Li Jing fell to her knees, the ground beneath her stained red with her blood. She gritted her teeth and looked up at her spirit.
"Su Da Ji! What are you doing?! Finish off that dumb dog and then keep Lu Bu off me!"
Then her words died in her throat and she stared at the unbelievable scene unfolding before her in shock.
Xiao Hei was actually pushing Su Da Ji back. She was doing her best, her tails swiftly striking and cutting deeply into him, causing what would be fatal wounds on a normal dog, but the hellhound was no ordinary dog. He weaved through the intricate net that the nine tails had cast, biting and clawing at them, sending sprays of blood into the air. Su Da Ji hissed in pain and countered violently, but Xiao Hei always managed to stay one step ahead.
That didn't man he perfectly evaded all of her attacks, however. He sustained several grazes and cuts from his efforts, and it was clear that he wasn't going to actually win against the great Su Da Ji. However, the fact that a single hellhound like him could pressure her to this extent was surprising enough. Even Mu Rong Shu was stunned.
"What's going on?" she whispered, glancing at me. I grinned.
"In most mythologies, foxes are afraid of dogs. Hunting hounds are the nemesis of foxes. Even in the original tale of the kitsune, the fox wife was scared away by a dog. In the tale of Miss Ren, she was killed by a dog and returned to her true form as a fox. Even Tamamo no Mae was hunted down by dogs before she was brought down by the famous hunters, Kazusasuke and Miurasuke, in the plains of Nasu."
Everyone stopped fighting and stared at me. I shrugged.
"What? It's my job as a summoner to know about myths, legends and folktales. And Su Da Ji is the prototype for Tamamo no Mae."
"Stop acting like an encyclopedic know-it-all!" Hu Li Jing screamed at me. "It's irritating!"
"Maybe. But if knowledge is what helps me win, then all the better."
After all, knowledge was power. What I chose to do with that power – the application of knowledge, for example – would decide what would happen in reality. Nodding at Lu Bu, I had him behead Hu Li Jing before she realized what was going on. As a mere human, a summoner who didn't learn much combat techniques or body tempering techniques (not that those would help against a seven foot long spear) other than throwing fireballs around, there was nothing she could do to defend herself against Lu Bu's spear.
Su Da Ji spun around, looking stricken. With the death of her summoner, she could no longer maintain her existence. While she faded away, she turned to glare at me.
"You…!" she snarled. "I'll kill you for this!"
"Targeting the summoner is always a valid strategy. Hu Li Jing did the same – she tried to kill me so that Lu Bu would disappear. It's just that she failed and I succeeded." I pushed my glasses up my nose. "Blaming me does nothing except hide the fact that you failed."
"I'll definitely find you again and take revenge!"
"Not for a long time," I replied. At a wave of my hand, I sent Xiao Hei forward and he incinerated the spiritual remnants of the fading Su Da Ji with hellfire. She screamed and thrashed about in agony even as her existence was eroded away by the hellish flames bit by bit. She was so consumed by pain that she could no longer glare at me in hatred.
In fact, the hatred was replaced by dread. Su Da Ji instinctively knew that the next time she met me, I would be much stronger than I was right now. She felt a huge chill, one that was also borne out of the unholy flames that now devoured her.
She understood at that moment that I was not someone she could afford to offend.
With one final scream, she disappeared from existence.
"All right, let's go."
"Go where?" Mu Rong Shu asked, puzzled. Then she remembered. "Oh, right. Before this, we were headed for the Huang manor, to meet up with Huang Hong Lin."
"Yeah, that's right. But before that, we should help them out." I jerked my head toward a place further down the forest. I could sense huge surges of qi from there. Mu Rong Shu nodded thoughtfully.
"Someone is fighting there as well."
"That's right," I confirmed. "Seems like the other half of Hu Li Jing's group had managed to lure Huang Hong Lin out of her house and defensive formations to attack her in the open. We should go help her."
We hurried through the woods, leaping over burned trees and ruined grass. It didn't take us more than a few minutes to reach Huang Hong Lin's location…but we were too late.
Huang Fei Hong – he couldn't be anybody else because he resembled his sister a lot and was fighting beside her, Gan Jiang and Mo Ye – was charging toward Bai Su Zhen. Madam White Snake tried to pulverize him with her tail, but he spun away before punching her. She staggered, which gave him the opportunity to kick her head off. The force of his blow was so strong that he literally kicked her head off her shoulders, a sharp crack resounding throughout the forest and blood spurting out from the stump of her neck.
For a moment, Bai Su Zhen shuddered. Then the colossal corpse toppled over, crushing trees in its wake.
"NO!" Bai Xiao Li shouted. She turned to flee. That was the right strategic choice, for as long as she survived, she could restore Bai Su Zhen and summon her again in future. But she wasn't able to get very far before Huang Hong Lin appeared right beside her.
"Did you really think we'll let you get away?" She asked.
"Get lost!" Bai Xiao Li snapped (only machine translators would write it as "roll for me!"), but Huang Hong Lin struck her with an explosive charm that blew her back. Bai Xiao Li cried out as she flew through the air, but she managed to conjure a bunch of vines to catch her so as to soften the impact. They gently lowered her to the ground and she quickly recovered her balance, getting ready to both counterattack and run.
She never got the chance to.
Gan Jiang's blade cut through the vines behind her, sending them scattering harmlessly around. Bai Xiao Li spun around in horror, only for Mo Ye's sword to decapitate her. Her head flew and disappeared into the forest, and for a few moments her headless corpse teetered about. Then it toppled over.
"Both summoner and spirit suffered the same death," Huang Hong Lin snorted, watching the scene in satisfaction. She then turned to me and Mu Rong Shu with a smile, before glancing at the other guy. "Sorry, bro. Seems like we don't need to go to their rescue after all."