Chapter 182: Ascension

Lady Murong Xiaoya's face was expressionless; she then raised her hand slightly, and the molten red iron water from the melted chains on the cave floor transformed into a fire serpent, surging with scorching fire waves that crashed with a boom against the tightly shut stone door.

As a tremendous boom erupted, the stone door was almost instantly pulverized into dust, while the red iron fire serpent continued to pierce through and surge into the space beyond the door.

The brilliant firelight it emitted illuminated the space behind the door completely.

At this moment, Lady Murong Xiaoya in the cave could see an iron torture rack suspended in midair by chains, its frame covered in dark red rust, and on the rack was a person bound and trapped.

This person was none other than Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother.

Her eldest brother had been punished and imprisoned in the dungeon by Lady Murong Hong for committing a grave error in the past; they had not seen each other for several years, and she never expected to encounter him again in such a place.

Lady Murong Xiaoya's figure turned into a streak of flame light, appearing in an instant before the torture rack, her gaze fixed on the person before her.

The other person was covered in wounds, with lumps of flesh swelling and writhing beneath his skin; sometimes a spider the size of a fist would dart to his throat, and at other times a centipede would seem to crawl beneath his flesh.

Lady Murong Xiaoya could clearly perceive that dozens of powerful alien martial arts true energies existed simultaneously within the other person, constantly crashing and colliding within his body without cease.

Under the ravages of these true energies, the skin on the other person's body had almost completely cracked, revealing patches of blue-purple fascia.

Ivory-colored bone spikes had drilled through the flesh of his limbs, their tips already congealed with clumps of blood marrow; at a glance, the entire person looked almost inhuman.

Lady Murong Xiaoya frowned slightly, reached out through the air with a casual gesture, and the iron stone stuffed in her brother's mouth was snatched away and discarded.

In the next instant, a heart-wrenching, agonized scream of pain rang out throughout the entire sealed chamber.

"... Please... kill me... kill me..."

Once Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother could make a sound, as if sensing someone had arrived, he continued to scream in torment while desperately begging for death in agony.

"I am Xiaoya, brother, why are you here?"

Lady Murong Xiaoya gazed at the scene before her, yet spoke only with a cold voice.

At this time, her entire body was shrouded within red flames, her features wavering indistinctly in the rising heat waves.

Upon hearing these words, the other person's screams instantly became infinitely more frantic:

"Xiaoya? Is it you... truly you..."

"I have finally... I have finally waited... quickly... quickly kill me..."

The inhuman body wrapped around the torture rack, which had no semblance of a person, suddenly generated a burst of strength from somewhere, shaking violently.

Although the commotion caused was small, it could be sensed that the other person seemed to have exerted every ounce of his strength.

Lady Murong Xiaoya said nothing, for she could discern that every word spoken by her eldest brother was true; the other person indeed desperately desired her to strike and kill him at this moment.

At this time, Lady Murong Xiaoya, her whole body wrapped in flames, hovered in midair; the molten gold vortexes in her eyes receded and vanished, yet the aura emanating from her body remained extremely oppressive.

"Tell me everything that happened; what is your relationship with Second Uncle?"

Upon hearing this, Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother gritted his teeth, endured the pain of his true energies ravaging his body, and suddenly burst into laughter:

"Second Uncle... he is an unadulterated demon..."

As he laughed, his face became utterly ferocious, filled with endless hatred:

"He said he would teach me an supreme divine art... let me escape my father's imprisonment... but in truth, he used me as a cauldron..."

"He constantly collected the cultivation of martial arts experts... poured it all into my body... he even spared neither of the two Laozu Sects..."

"He made me endure the impact of these incompatible true energies every day... making life worse than death... and all of this... was all for you, Xiaoya..."

Speaking thus, Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother suddenly stopped, seemingly wanting to take one look at his younger sister, yet he found he could not do so.

So he fell silent for a moment, then suddenly spoke:

"I... am the gift Second Uncle prepared for you..."

Having said this, he suddenly laughed again; in this laughter there was anger, jealousy, pain, unwillingness, and even deeper despair!

Upon hearing this, Lady Murong Xiaoya did not speak, but calmly gazed at the other person who was laughing madly and asked a single question:

"Why?"

Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother's laughter stopped abruptly, and he said in pain:

"Second Uncle said... the martial arts cultivation within my body... all belongs to you..."

"Only by absorbing the martial arts cultivation within my body... can you accomplish what you wish to do..."

"However... I am curious... what exactly do you wish to do..."

Upon hearing this, Lady Murong Xiaoya fell silent for a moment; the expressionless look on her face finally showed some change, and she slowly spoke:

"The Lady Murong family is gone."

Upon hearing these words, the agonized scream Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother was about to emit suddenly halted; then, he immediately shouted:

"Lady Murong Hong is rigid... I knew the Lady Murong family would eventually be destroyed by his hands... I only killed some people to practice..."

However, before he could finish speaking, he felt his heart suddenly clenched by a hand, and at the same time, Lady Murong Xiaoya's indifferent voice reached his ears:

"Brother, your sins are grave; I am here to help you find release."

"Additionally, I have already killed Second Uncle."

As the words fell, his heart suddenly shattered into a cloud of blood mist, and the pain constantly emanating from his body rapidly departed from him...

At this moment, he seemed truly released, having only time to leave one last sentence:

"Be careful... Second Uncle..."

In the next instant, the blood mist transformed into a wisp of essence blood, floating upward and flowing toward Lady Murong Xiaoya's heart.

Unlike when she killed Lady Murong Fu previously, the dozens of clusters of martial arts true energies originally within Lady Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother's body, through the essence blood as a bond, similarly rushed rapidly toward Lady Murong Xiaoya's heart to merge.

Seeing this scene, Lady Murong Xiaoya's gaze darkened slightly; however, she did not stop it, but absorbed all of the essence blood and those martial arts cultivations one by one.

For a moment, Lady Murong Xiaoya's spine cracked loudly in segments; those powerful martial arts qi rushed into her meridians and flesh, and her body was instantly split open by countless cracks.

But very quickly, brilliant red-gold light erupted from her heart, instantly sweeping over her entire body; blood-red patterns formed at the cracks, continuously merging and absorbing those terrifying martial arts true energies.

As all the martial arts true energies continued to merge into Lady Murong Xiaoya's body, her entire aura also rose rapidly.

Even from her body surface seeped wisps of red-gold fire mist, spreading and dispersing, directly scorching countless honeycomb holes into the stone walls of the chamber.

At the same time, the red-gold flames surrounding her seemed to burn the sky and scorch the earth, then condensed into two lava-wing shadows, each several feet wide.

With merely a slight flutter of the wing-shadow, the entire cavern around it could not withstand the tremors of wind and fire, shaking uncontrollably as gravel rained down in a steady rustle.

And once all the martial Dao true qi had been absorbed, the aura upon Lady Murong Xiaoya's body had already ascended to a level of unimaginable terror.

(End of this chapter)