Chapter 555: Chapter 555

White Bird Holy Fist was straightforward and never dealt in empty gestures. The very first time he met Cassius, the Southern Dipper heir, he announced that he would grant him a generous gift.

Now he decided to dig out the heartwood of the Ultimate Dark Form, Pale Origin, and combine it with the Inextinguishable Flame of the Flaming Sun Holy Fist. That would provide the best possible conditions for Cassius’s upcoming Qi tempering. Even a blood-bonded master and disciple could scarcely be more considerate to each other.

The teams from the world of the Covert Martial Arts and the forces of Black Rain Manor stood beneath drifting white ash that filled the sky. They were currently hacking apart Pale Origin’s densely spread root tendrils. Of course, “dense” was only in contrast to the five pillar-like main trunks that were thicker than the sky-supporting columns.

Even the shortest and thinnest of those roots was the size of a house and frightfully powerful. Furthermore, each root was clad in supreme ripple power.

Ripple Master Monchi’s right hand was clenched shut like iron as the Supreme bone ring of Thunder on his middle finger blazed with dazzling light. A colossal purple hand made of ripples soared upward and slammed into a pale root.

Two fingers of the lightning hand exploded with a thunderous roar, but the pale root was left with a gap that was several meters across. However, measured against the vast mass of the root, the wound was a mere scratch.

Boom-boom-boom! Boom-boom-boom!

The thunderous giant hand and the pale root kept crashing into each other. Duelling ripples, one purple and one white, burst and scattered.

The thunder hand disintegrated completely with a final impact. Ripple Master Monchi somersaulted through the air and landed back among the ranks of the Black Rain Manor Hellsings. He steadied himself, eyes wary as he stared at the blast zone.

A single root coated in beige ripples whipped about like a giant python. Fine scars marred its surface, and its tip was a good fifth shorter. The sight of his hard-won damage left Monchi disheartened.

This being known as Pale Origin, the true mastermind behind the Eternal Archipelago and the covert ruler of the Ripple Order for millennia, was far too powerful. It was a foe humans could hardly resist.

He himself ranked among Black Rain Manor’s very best. He bore the Supreme bone ring of the previous Thunder Spirit and rivaled the current Ice Spirit in might. Yet even giving everything he had, he could not destroy a single root.

Monchi had not chosen one of Pale Origin’s five main trunks, nor even one of the dozens of secondary roots, but something from the third tier of hundreds. Doing the rough math, it would take at least a hundred Ripple Masters of Monchi’s calibre just to hold those third-tier roots at bay.

What of the second tier? The first tier? The thought was even more despairing.

So that was the truth. Paradise’s vaunted immortality was indeed propped up by an impossibly powerful source!

No wonder Lord Thunder Spirit had fled for his life and urged him to leave the Eternal Archipelago. This was the reason he had been warned to never dig for the truth, and never set foot on the Eternal Island again.

Had this operation involved only himself, Tyrant Black Dragon, and the Black Rain Manor forces, they would already be bones on the ground. They would have been sucked dry as fertilizer for the roots.

Fortunately, he had joined forces with Cassius and given him the ancient White Bone Tree.

“What is that white-bird figure and the flame-faced man in the sky? They are actually forcing this terrifying power behind paradise onto the back foot. The scales of victory have tipped...” Monchi muttered, the fiery and white glare of the battle reflected in his pupils.

On the side of the Covert Martial Arts contingent, every combat artist was alight with indescribable excitement.

They were witnessing Holy Fists—two Holy Fists!

One Qi burned like a blazing inferno, while the other’s Qi was savage yet elegant. It was so beautiful, so ferocious, and so irresistibly inspiring!

Was this what Covert Martial Arts became when polished to the absolute limit? Every punch and kick seemed to hold the world’s mysteries and elucidated endless principles of the fist.

Each strike made that world-tree-like being shudder in agony, as yawning holes were carved into its trunk. The gliding water-bird burned itself into every onlooker’s heart! An ineffable sense of holiness filled and echoed in their chests.

“I’ve seen a Holy Fist unleash his full power in my lifetime... Now I can die without regret...” An elderly combat artist with snow-white hair lifted his gaze to the heavens, time-worn face awash with emotion and tears glimmering in his eyes.

“To see two Holy Fists at once, hahaha!” A slightly younger combat artist was beside himself with fervour, eyes blazing and Qi almost boiling. “My master was right. Holy Fists who equal heaven might truly exist. That realm we yearn for is real...”

“To fight alongside two Holy Fists, what an honour and thrill!” A burly man wrapped in Qi shot forth like a mortar shell, colliding bodily with root after root.

Truth be told, his words merely gilded his own face. The whole Covert Martial Arts force put together served merely as support for the two Holy Fists. They were hardly even icing on the cake. Of course, if one insisted, it could still barely count. To stand beside Holy Fists was indeed any Covert Martial Arts Practitioners’ honour.

Meanwhile, Cassius rapidly recovered strength and breath beneath the fiercely burning canopy. He had just unleashed the annihilating Blood Vulture's Beak and the explosive Sonic Fang Torrent, which had drained him. An ordinary extreme combat artist would be near exhaustion, but Cassius possessed the physique of a Golem. A brief rest would refill his body with power.

Looking into the distance, he saw the three monsters’ clash grow fiercer. Pale Origin no longer cared for anything else and had activated ultra high-speed regeneration. It had regrown the three and a half trunks that had been previously severed, and its combat strength had returned to its peak.

The price was the shrinkage of its vast body and an even fiercer blaze of the Inextinguishable Flame. It was trading long-term gain for short-term might. It had broken the optimal form that had held the balance against the Inextinguishable Flame. Thɪs chapter is updated by NoveIꜰire.net

Every moment it shrank gave the flame further dominance. The day it would be burned away entirely drew nearer with every breath. Even its ultra-speed regeneration could no longer keep up with the roaring blaze.

“It’s time to throw on another log...” Cassius muttered, suddenly producing the ancient White Bone Tree from his bosom.

As his Qi withdrew, the bone tree lay fully exposed to the air. At once, the three battling figures all turned their gazes toward him.

Pale Origin’s eyes almost burst in fury. Endless roots rolled across the ground like waves as they surged toward Cassius like giant dragons.

A single water-bird intercepted them, yielding not an inch. A single man held the passage, yet ten thousand were unable to break through. Every approaching root was shattered and devoured, vanishing as if it was alcohol evaporating.

“As long as I forbid it, none of your tricks or outbursts will reach him. Stop wasting effort and die quietly beneath the flames...” The aged voice of White Bird Holy Fist rang out.

Fwoom, fwoom, fwoom, fwoom...

The Inextinguishable Flame enshrouding the entire Pale Origin grew ever more violent. It spread almost a kilometre, like a giant hand in front of Cassius. A twisted face of flames appeared upon the wall of flame.

“This bone tree was fashioned from a piece of Pale Origin’s heartwood. Once we ignite it, Pale Origin’s own heartwood will burn with it, striking straight at the root. Then we can burn it out for good... Today! Today we finish it off completely!!!” The face of flame laughed madly, bursting with reckless abandon.

It looked insane, yet also like a triumphant, swaggering arch-villain. A second later, Flaming Sun Holy Fist’s grin vanished and he spoke solemnly.

“At least half of this moment is thanks to you. After the heartwood has been tempered by the Inextinguishable Flame, it will become the perfect Pale Seed. Afterward, I’ll help you temper your Qi. May you reach the Holy Fist realm soon and join our war! Fight for humanity and for martial arts...”

“Of course!” Cassius’s mouth twisted into a sickly upturned grin. “Mortal opponents bore me now. Only these Ultimate Dark Forms can set my blood boiling. I envy all of you... To battle these monsters ceaselessly... To grapple in unyielding madness until you’re soaked in blood, teeth filled with gore, and skulls cracked!”

He hurled the ancient White Bone Tree into the Inextinguishable Flame. Flaming Sun Holy Fist gave Cassius a deep look and bared a savage grin of his own. “So kid, you actually chose the Dominator Fist...”

He burst into wild laughter as a flaming palm closed tight around the bone tree and shot straight toward the sky. The golden-red head floating atop Pale Origin’s crown flared.

A gigantic phantom seemed to take shape within the flames. The giant shadow was nearly as vast as Pale Origin as its twisted limbs entwined to hug the trunk tight. They looked grown together, never to part even in death.

“Pale Origin, today is the day you die!!!” The giant roared and shoved the White Bone Tree straight into its mouth.

Fire detonated within its reactor-like body, igniting the tree wholly.

“Rooaarrrrr!!!!!” Pale Origin bellowed, its branches quivering in torment.

Cracks split the twisted faces on its bark, and lava-like firelight spurted from within the trunk. Through the gaps, one could faintly see a thumping heart wrapped in blazing flames.

The blaze roared skyward, igniting the very air!

Only now did many of paradise’s members arrive on scene. But it was too late. After being unwittingly lured away; one misstep led to another. Rare expressions of panic appeared on their puppet-like, icy faces. They charged desperately toward Pale Origin, only to be intercepted by combat artists and Hellsings alike.

Ripple Master Monchi was even laughing maniacally. “Hahaha! You’re too late. So this is paradise? This is your damn immortality? Nothing but a heap of corpses, a pack of fools chasing decay!”

“Lord Thunder Spirit was right not to wallow with you. A man of such pride would never let himself be caged and ruled. Such wretched immortality is worse than dying outright! Lord Thunder Spirit bested you all by far...” Monchi vented, eyes blood-shot.

The more frantic the paradise attackers grew, the more delight flooded his heart.

Monchi blasted one figure away with a punch. The early Spirit stage joiners of paradise had rotted across the millennia, and their combat strength had plummeted. Only the Spirit stage members of the last few centuries retained anything close to full power and posed some threat.

“Since even the Ripple Order has fallen, you half-living ghosts can hurry along after it into oblivion... Indeed. Seas dry up and stones decay. Where in this world is there truly immortality?”

A silent figure in black robes lifted his head from within the paradise ranks. He seemed out of place among the rest. He gazed at Pale Origin wrapped in giant flames, complicated emotions flashing in his eyes.

There was pain, regret, numbness, and sorrow...

The black-robed man stepped before Monchi. A pale hand, fingers aligned like a blade, slipped from his sleeve, not to strike Monchi, but to slice into his own clavicle. He drove it deep, sliding it down inch by inch.

“The Thunder Spirit you speak of... I was the one who gravely wounded him twenty years ago.” The black-robed man looked Monchi in the eye. “I am the Ripple Order’s first-generation leader, Wood Spirit. I’m also the reason for all this decay...”

“It was I who begged immortality from the Root of Pale Origin and passed it on to generations of Spirit stage members, I who founded paradise, and I who built this absurd gigantic tomb.” As Wood Spirit spoke, his hand-blade carved open his chest and belly.

Inside a dark rotting cavity, his foul organs, half jelly and half soil, were packed with dense pale roots. The roots wriggled slightly like worms.

“This is the price of immortality. I still have a mind unrotted; the others likely have heads as disgusting as what fills my chest...” Wood Spirit now looked lighter than ever, as though unburdening his deepest secret.

He glanced at the tottering Pale Origin, then at Monchi who seemed about to speak yet couldn’t.

His gaze drifted, as though floating back into memories. “Back in paradise, Thunder Spirit asked me: is such immortality worth pursuing? Does paradise truly bring joy? I gave no answer then but now I can...”

“Such immortality is not worth pursuing at all. This is no paradise! It is a lost land! Farewell. I’ll go to hell and tell him all this myself...” As Wood Spirit’s words fell, a golden-red flame erupted from his chest cavity.

His body burst into flames, turning into a man of fire. Wood Spirit spread his arms wide and looked up to the sky raining ash. It nearly filled the entire cavern.

“Look... the Root of Pale Origin that granted us immortality has fallen too...Hahaha, ageless, deathless, what a load of damned crap!”