Fates Parallel Chapter 285 - Beatdown

Luo Mingyu quickly backpedaled away from Li Meili’s advance, sputtering incredulously.

“Did you just punch me?!”

Meili cracked her knuckles and scowled.

“I’ll fucking do it again!”

Before she could lunge, Luo Mingyu threw his arms forward, pouring billowing fog out of his sleeves and obscuring himself from view. When Li Meili struck, he was gone and she was surrounded by impenetrable fog.

She closed her eyes and concentrated on her surroundings, but she couldn’t hear or smell anything. She frowned, trying to search her surroundings for any sign of her opponent. His technique blocked her vision and dulled her senses—perfect for the sort of cultivator who needed to create distance from his enemies and buy himself time to use whatever empowering medicines he had on hand.

Meili threw herself to the side as a blade of concentrated qi flew through the spot she’d just been standing. She recognized the technique in an instant—the Earth Rending Sword. It was Guan Yi’s signature technique, and one that Eui had practiced as part of her sword training. As far as she could tell, Luo Mingyu was unarmed, which would dull the impact of the technique somewhat.

A silent and invisible technique against a blinded foe was overkill as far as Li Meili was concerned, but Luo Mingyu had clearly refined and developed his fighting style well. She might have been helpless to avoid it if she hadn’t been dodging such strikes since her very first spar.

She considered her options as she narrowly avoided another qi blade. She could follow the direction they were coming from, but she doubted that Luo Mingyu was stupid enough to stay still and give up his only advantage, and she was wary of being led into a trap.

Well, just because she couldn’t find him didn’t mean she couldn’t counterattack. Li Meili called forth the essence of Corrosion from within her, only to click her tongue in frustration when it manifested as Mud instead. She’d forgotten that her spiritual alignment was neutral—Jia’s Corruption of the Fetid Bog was inaccessible to her without taking some extreme measures that she didn’t have the time or inclination for.

Instead, she simply used the technique as-is, creating an aura around her that turned the air into a thick, sticky quagmire that slowed everything trying to move through it. Yoshika had practiced every aspect of her spiritual arts over the years—effectively increasing the number of techniques available to her by up to a factor of three. The slowing aura was probably the least useful version of Tranquility of the Verdant Marsh, but it at least made Luo’s long ranged assault easier to deal with.

The fog was starting to annoy her, so Li Meili decided to take a bit of a risk to escape it. She reduced her weight as much as she could with a combination of Hayakawa’s Weightless Fist, and the same Body Lightening technique she’d just taught Pan Jiaying. While it was nowhere near as refined as the flight technique that Narae had managed to create with the same combination, it enabled her to leap incredibly high into the air.

To her dismay, even launching herself several tree lengths into the air wasn’t enough to escape the mist. Worse, the attacks kept coming—evidently, there was nothing preventing Luo Mingyu from sensing her. In fact, as she twisted in the air to dodge another blade, she considered that the mists probably explicitly revealed her location to him—it was right in the name of the sect, after all.

Li Meili growled in frustration as she landed on the ground and rolled under another attack. She’d talked a big game a moment ago, but now she was struggling to simply defend herself. Part of the problem was the way she was holding back. She could dispel the mists easily with the Awakening of the Dragon’s Heart, but there was no way she’d be able to explain away her use of the most famous sect’s signature technique.

She’d already made a mistake by using Jia’s Lightning God Transformation. Lightning was a Yang element, and should have been impossible for a yin practitioner to access. But the restrictions she was placing on herself left her with precious few tools to combat the illusion that was obscuring her senses.

Li Meili sighed. Strangely enough, the fight had given her time to cool down and realize her errors. She shouldn’t have picked this fight. It wasn’t a matter of being unable to win—while Luo Mingyu’s techniques were well chosen and he was a stage above her in cultivation, she was confident in her ability to punch up. She was far less confident in her ability to do so while holding back the majority of her strongest abilities.

She grimaced, but resigned herself to eating crow.

“Hold on. Luo Mingyu, I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

His voice came from every direction at once as he responded.

“Hah! Now you want to parley? What was it you said? ‘You had your chance. I’m fucking mad now.’ You reap what you sow, Miss Li.”

Another series of qi blades from multiple directions forced Meili to the ground before she had to roll out of the way of a follow up.

“Fine then. The hard way it is.”

Multi-colored flames erupted across Meili’s body, shrouding her in an aurora of protective fire that burned away the mists around her. In an instant, her senses returned to normal and she heard a surprised gasp to her left. She threw herself toward the sound along with a wave of plasma, clearing a corridor of clear air between her and a very surprised Luo Mingyu.

“How did—?!”

She didn’t wait for him to finish, closing the distance between them with lightning steps and following up with a series of paralyzing pressure point strikes. To her surprise, he wasn’t incapacitated by her attack, instead turning to flee as his illusion started to dissipate around them.

His movements through her slowing aura were sluggish, but he didn’t have far to go—he was heading back towards the sect and the safety of his master’s watchful eye.

“Oh no you don’t!”

Meili swiped the air with her hands, using her own modified form of the Earth Rending Sword to hurl streaks of Magma. The viscous liquid struck his legs and wrapped around them, tripping him to the ground as he screamed in pain. With Domain of the Earthen Realm, Meili solidified the molten rock, both relieving him of the burning and rooting him to the ground.

In her training, Yoshika had discovered that Valley of the Illusory Mists was actually an ice element technique that only manifested as Mist in Yang-aligned souls. The toxic Miasma element variant that Jia learned was so dangerous that she’d never used it in a fight, but the neutral form was safe.

Using the now-uncontrolled mist still hanging in the air, Meili formed a pair of icy simulacra that fell onto Luo Mingyu and held down his arms as she advanced on him slowly, glaring down at him with cold fury.

“We could have just had a civil conversation, you know. But no—you had to push me. Now look at what you made me do!”

With a thought, Li Meili commanded her ice statues to flip him onto his back, graciously allowing the stone attached to his ankles to shift rather than break his legs. Luo Mingyu stared up at her in terror.

“Who—what are you?!”

Lightning crackled across her body as Li Meili dropped on top of him, straddling his chest.

“I am nothing and nobody, and I’m extremely pissed off!”

She punched him in the face, letting the lightning discharge over his skin rather than use her martial art for its intended purpose.

“Do you have any idea how much you’ve fucked things up for me? All I wanted was to help! Help my sister, help the nice doctor, help Pan Jiaying, maybe even help you, if you needed it. But you—”

She punched him again, ignoring his feeble attempts to struggle against her.

“You just had to fuck it. All! Up!”

Meili began to punctuate each word with another strike, her knuckles growing slick with his blood. He coughed, trying to wheeze out a response.

“I...thought you—”

She cut him off with another strike.

“I don’t care what you thought! You’re just like every other stupid cultivator I’ve met! A selfish, entitled brat who thinks he’s above everyone else! Too good to treat your juniors with respect! Too good to hear out a stranger! Too good to take care of your own fucking family!”

Li Meili was shaking with rage. She barely even understood why Luo Mingyu had upset her so much, but her own words crystalized it for her.

“You worthless piece of human trash! Taking your precious family for granted while I’m struggling just to keep my sister alive! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

She shuddered as tears ran down her face. Luo Mingyu stared up at her, his face a bloody mess from the beating she gave him, but his eyes as intense as ever. Li Meili wanted to smack that look off his face, but a small voice from behind interrupted her.

“What—what’s going on?”

Meili whirled around to see Pan Jiaying standing in stunned horror, her hands over her mouth holding a shiny beast core—the one that Meili had left her.

“Why are you...how is...did you say ‘sister’?”

“Oh fuck!”

Li Meili panicked. Though it was far too late, she dispelled everything. The aurora surrounding her flickered out, the crackling lightning ground itself, and the ice golems melted into frosty puddles as she leapt to her feet and backed away from Luo Mingyu as if he’d suddenly caught fire. Even the stone binding his feet crumbled away into dirt.

She waved her hands urgently.

“Jiaying, this isn’t what it looks like!”

Pan Jiaying took a step back.

“It looks like you were trying to kill Senior Luo.”

“Not kill him. We just had a minor disagreement, that’s all!”

“Your hands are covered in his blood...”

Meili hurriedly hid her hands behind her back, then cursed herself for doing something so useless—what was wrong with her?

“It got a bit heated, that’s all.”

Pan Jiaying’s shoulders sagged and her arms fell to her sides. She grimaced at Meili, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

“Was it all a lie? Just a trick to make us trust you enough to get what you wanted? What do you want, Li Meili? Is that even your name?”

Each word struck Meili like a dagger. It was worse than feeling betrayed—she had been the one doing the betrayal. Every insult she’d thrown at Luo Mingyu suddenly sprang up in her mind and reflected back on her.

Was she not selfishly using these people for her own means? She shoved down her burgeoning sense of self-loathing and tried to recover.

“It’s not what you think! I admit that I haven’t been entirely truthful, but I can explain!”

“How? What could possibly explain all of this?”

Li Meili floundered, trying to collect her thoughts. Luo Mingyu’s voice startled her out of her spiraling thoughts.

“Thank you for the support, junior sister, but I’ll take it from here.”

Meili whirled around, her fight or flight reflexes going into overdrive as lightning crackled across her body once again, but she was brought up short by Luo Mingyu throwing his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Peace! I’m not interested in another beating, thank you very much. I think you were right—there’s been a misunderstanding and we got off on the wrong foot. Though even once that’s clarified, you’re going to have a lot to answer for.”

Luo Mingyu’s injuries were completely gone. Though his face was still bloody, there was no sign of the cuts and bruises she’d left him with. Seeing him healed raised Meili’s ire all over again, but she reined herself in.

“How are you healed?”

He smiled at her question.

“I’m a healer. It’s what I do. Allow me to ask a question in turn—the one I should have asked in the first place. How do you know my parents?”