Chosen: Beyond Fate

Lou Feng had not been surprised in the slightest to see the sharp-tongued woman and the fat man get smashed into the wall. Rather, he had seen it coming. When Zhou Cheng got picked up by Ji Jue, swung around, and sent flying right over his head, his eyelids started twitching like crazy.

Thank god I reacted fast and stayed far away!

Even so, when Lou Feng looked at Zhou Cheng not far away, he still did not feel safe. Frowning, he kept backing up. Even hiding behind everyone else did not feel safe enough, so he kept edging deeper into the corner.

Others might not understand. They would laugh about what had happened before and use it to mock him all they wanted, but after going through that hell, how could Lou Feng not know what was about to unfold? Once a lunatic like Ji Jue started fighting, he did not care who you were, and he sure as hell did not care whether his opponent lived or died!

You people have never been through machine-gun fire or phlogiston bombs before. If you want to get yourselves killed, fine, but don’t let your blood splash on me! This custom-tailored suit is a pain in the ass to clean!

Accusations finally came from nearby.

“Despicable!”

“He actually launched a sneak attack!”

“Shameless!”

Seeing Ji Jue strike first without the slightest regard for fair play, and seeing Zhou Cheng nearly crippled before anyone could react, the others immediately turned pale with shock and started cursing furiously.

As for Ji Jue, he did not care in the slightest. He even felt like picking his ear.

Was this not completely normal? Wasn’t this how fights worked? Whatever worked, he used it. Even an idiot knew that Ember-types were weakest in sudden encounters. He had to go in hard, strike first, kill his opponents if he could, or cripple them first if he couldn’t. He’d have to be brain-damaged to fight these fully geared-up maniacs fair and square.

Ji Jue kicked aside the broken table and walked toward the crowd. “Who’s next? I suggest you don’t fight me one-on-one. If you want to win, you’d better all come at me together.”

But he’d already struck ruthlessly. Mercury surged, enveloping him whole. Within it, a hardened mercury bead quietly dissolved. Then, the outline of heavy armor emerged from the flowing metal. Motors spun madly, roaring deafeningly. More than a hundred kilograms of mass slammed into the crowd like a cannonball.

It was as if he had shattered glass, crushing some invisible barrier.

Before Ji Jue had finished speaking, his fist had already shot straight at the face of the person at the front, but his opponent reacted with surprising speed and tried to lean back to dodge. A spirit light flashed in his eyes, exactly like Ji Jue’s.

Transcendent Vision!

It accelerated the operation of one’s consciousness, thereby slowing down the world as one perceived it. It was the same blessing!

As Ji Jue dodged, the man could not help but sneer inwardly. We’re all Ember Chosen Ones here. Did you really think you were the only one who had this? Now I’ll show you just how—

Bang!

In the slowed-down flow of time, Ji Jue clearly saw that smug, disdainful grin twist out of shape. The man’s eyes bulged, bloodshot and almost popping out of their sockets. His scream stretched without end.

Ji Jue pulled back the foot he had kicked into the man’s crotch. He was utterly baffled. No, seriously. Your opponent is rushing straight at you, and you’re doing some dramatic backbend split, offering up your crotch like that? What the hell is going through your head? I thought you had some kind of Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt[1] training down there!

Before the man could fall to the ground, a mercury mechanical arm shot out from Ji Jue’s back. It grabbed him by the ankle, swung him like a rag, and whipped him through the air in a sweeping arc.

In the chaos, the Ember Chosen One behind Ji Jue was the first to duck out of the way. A flash of electricity sparked over his right hand, and a pair of brass knuckles suddenly appeared. He drove them straight at Ji Jue’s lower back.

Blinding electricity and terrifying force slammed head-on into the mercury armor, resulting in a thunderous boom, yet on the crystalline coating of the mercury armor, there wasn’t even the slightest crack. The shock was rapidly dispersed through the liquid, and the armor formed itself anew. Meanwhile, another auxiliary arm shot out like lightning straight toward the opponent’s chin in an uppercut!

Boom!

The man was launched into the air and buried waist-deep in the drop ceiling, his dangling legs jerking in unconscious spasms.

“Kill him! Kill him for me!” The woman finally clawed her way out of the cracked wall, clutching the gash on her face as she screamed through the blood. Her expression twisted into something even more vicious. The rings on all ten of her fingers lit up.

A burly figure appeared in midair, huge and imposing like a giant spirit. Its massive hand came slamming down. Mercury shifted around Ji Jue, rising to brace against it.

The ground cracked with a deafening sound, and the building shook. That sudden, ferocious attack had actually left a crack in the mercury pillar.

“What the hell is this thing?” Ji Jue waved his hand, and half a chair leg he had picked up from the floor shot through the air, thrusting toward her face like an arrow, but it was blocked by an invisible barrier and fell to the ground with a clang.

Ji Jue’s hand remained suspended in midair. The attempt seemed to be futile.

The woman grinned wickedly. She was just about to say something when the wall behind her suddenly shattered with a loud crash.

A speeding armored vehicle smashed through the wall and rammed into her with full force. Cracking sounds rang out one after another; there was no telling how many layers of defense had been shattered in that moment.

Amid her screams, she flew out once again straight toward Ji Jue’s outstretched hand, entirely beyond her control. It was as if she had offered her own neck right into his grip.

“You just had to fucking make things difficult, didn’t you?” Those were the last words she heard before she passed out.

A spirit matter blast erupted without restraint, flooding straight into her body. It disrupted her matrix, rattled her blessing, and tore through her from the inside. In the blink of an eye, her eyes rolled back, and she went limp. It was impossible for the onlookers to tell whether she was still alive.

“Xiao Lu!” the opponent behind Ji Jue shouted furiously. “You bastard, let her go!”

The air seemed to solidify, clamping down on Ji Jue like invisible shackles. But a moment later, the restraints shattered under the wild roar of his motors.

Ji Jue turned around, swung the woman in his hand, and smashed her straight into the man’s arms. “Fine. You can have her!”

The man was shocked. In a panic, he tried to catch the woman and staggered backward, but before he could even react, a streak of silver light shot out from her arms and sprang onto his face like a spider.

He fell to the ground. He could not even spare a thought for the woman in his arms anymore, clawing desperately at his face with both hands; he could not tear the spider off no matter what.

Meanwhile, Ji Jue did not manage to seize the chance to continue ‌the attack. Instead, he stumbled and lost his footing. The marble floor beneath his feet had somehow softened rapidly, like mud. It rose and wrapped around his legs.

This was another Ember ability. Was it Liquefaction or Spirit Morph? It did not matter.

Seizing that brief opening, every opponent who could still crawl to their feet threw themselves at Ji Jue without regard for their own safety, no longer holding anything back. Once they had him pinned, they immediately unloaded all their skills.

Ji Jue found it a little funny. He actually chuckled out loud. What am I, the final boss?

1. The Golden Bell Shield and Iron Shirt is a traditional Chinese martial arts body-hardening practice, known for combining the internal discipline of the “Golden Bell Shield” with the external conditioning of the “Iron Shirt.”

Through repeated impact training, it is said to strengthen the body’s ability to withstand blows. Legends claim that someone who masters it can endure attacks from ordinary blades, or even protect themselves with a layer of hardened qi. In its most exaggerated form, the practice is said to let a person dive into water without drowning and walk through fire without burning.

The martial saying “fists do not strike trained bodies” refers to this kind of technique. ☜