Chapter 188: Mysterious Tiger, Nirvana

“Whoa!” Long Cheng widened his eyes in surprise!

The warhorses of the Western Continent had bloodlines that leaned toward the snowfield demon horses of the Odin Ice Plain, making them exceptionally large and strong. A superior warhorse stood at least a head taller than an average person and weighed over a ton. With the fully armored knight on its back and the speed of its charge, even a brick wall would be shattered by such a high-speed cavalry assault.

Yet Lin Qi had used his own flesh and blood to crash into and send flying such a massive warhorse!

Long Cheng couldn’t help but softly clap his hands. With Lin Qi’s fierce and brute strength alone, he deserved to become a mighty general.

But before Long Cheng could utter a few words of praise, Lin Qi had already burst into wild laughter and lunged forward. He swung his battleaxe at a cavalryman charging toward him. The gleaming, icy battleaxe descended with a gust of wind. Due to the heavy axe combined with Lin Qi’s terrifying brute force, both the rider and his horse were split into four pieces, spilling intestines and blood all over the ground.

After chopping down the rider and horse with his axe, Lin Qi swung his left fist. The skin on his fist, which was still thickly coated with medicinal salve, split open, and blood splattered everywhere. With a layer of black energy wrapped in a blue glow, Lin Qi exhaled with a roar like a tiger’s, and actually punched head-on into the skull of a warhorse charging straight at him.

Crack! Lin Qi’s fist remained unharmed, but the horse’s large head was mostly shattered by his powerful blow. Lin Qi sidestepped and swept his battleaxe horizontally. The knight on horseback was cut in half at the waist. His upper body flew far away, while his lower body, still attached to the horse with its shattered skull, narrowly missed Lin Qi and crashed heavily to the ground.

“Concentrated fire!” an anxious voice cried from the woods. The sound of arrows cutting through the air rang out, and dozens of heavy crossbow bolts shot from the trees on both sides, all aimed at Lin Qi.

The energy inside him seemed limitless. Lin Qi felt as if he had an endless supply of strength at that moment. Just a moment ago, he had rammed a warhorse and smashed another’s head with his fist. An ordinary person’s body would have been severely injured. But Lin Qi not only remained unhurt, an intense heat flowed from somewhere inside him, continuously replenishing his spent energy.

Moreover, it seemed that as he fought, this heat was constantly strengthening his body. He did not weaken in the slightest; on the contrary, he grew even stronger.

Hearing the sharp whistle of incoming bolts, Lin Qi laughed heartily. He shook his arms, and a hazy black energy surged from his body, gradually forming a black tiger’s head the size of a human head behind him. This indistinct, shadowy black tiger opened its mouth and roared furiously. A fierce wind swept across the ground, and the dozens of crossbow bolts that neared Lin Qi lost their aim, flying past him erratically.

With the strength of the Earth Rank High Stage, Lin Qi’s ancestral Mysterious Tiger Force had finally reached the minor completion stage.

Lin Qi had only ever heard Blackbeard describe the power of the Mysterious Tiger Force at minor completion. But since he was lazy by nature and never put effort into cultivating his Combat Qi, he had originally thought it would take him several more years to reach this level. However, after getting drunk the previous night, he had inexplicably advanced two stages in his Combat Qi, and his Mysterious Tiger Force had abruptly reached minor completion.

Exhaling with a thunderous roar that reverberated deep within him, Lin Qi surged forward like a shadow toward several distant cavalrymen.

The hallmark of the Mysterious Tiger Force at minor completion was the formation of a tiger-like physique and a roar like a tiger’s. The so-called tiger physique meant a body as strong as a tiger’s, with all physical capabilities multiplied—far exceeding the enhancement from ordinary cultivation techniques. Any direct descendant of the Black Tiger Family who successfully cultivated the Mysterious Tiger Force would undoubtedly possess immense, divine-like strength.

The roar resembling a tiger’s meant that even a casual shout was like a fierce tiger’s roar, with the mysterious effect of intimidating the soul. On the battlefield, a single roar from someone with the Mysterious Tiger Force at minor completion would leave no man or beast standing within ten meters—truly a mass-killing technique.

In that moment, Lin Qi was just like that. He truly resembled a hungry tiger leaping across a ravine. With a flex of his spine and a push from his strong legs, he leaped over twenty meters, reaching the cavalrymen in the blink of an eye. Before the cavalrymen could swing their blades, Lin Qi let out a Tiger’s Roar. Faintly visible, a ring of black sonic energy spread from his head in all directions. The snow on the ground, as if swept by a hurricane, was cleared away within a ten-meter radius with a whoosh.

Blood spurted from the ears of five cavalrymen, who dropped their scimitars and clutched their ears, screaming in agony. Their horses reared up, throwing their riders to the ground. Blood streamed from the horses’ ears, their large eyeballs shattered, thick fluid leaking continuously from their eye sockets. With that single roar from Lin Qi, all five cavalrymen and their horses were severely injured.

Swinging his great axe, Lin Qi beheaded the five cavalrymen who had fallen from their horses and were still writhing on the ground, clutching their ears.

“Killing men like cutting grass, beheading like splitting melons! Wonderful, wonderful!” Long Cheng danced and laughed, catching a crossbow bolt shot at him. With a flick of his finger, he sent the bolt back three times faster than it had come. A cavalryman holding a heavy crossbow screamed, fell backward, and died. The bolt had pierced his chest, penetrating both his inner and outer armor.

A faint heat seemed to emanate from inside the carriage, along with low, indistinct chanting. Long Cheng glanced anxiously at the carriage and yelled, “Hey, hey, don’t you dare act recklessly! You two crazy women, don’t get triggered and…”

Before he could finish, the carriage exploded. Countless fragments shot into the sky, quickly turning to ash in the red flames. Long Cheng was blasted dozens of meters into the air, slapping at the fire on his rear and howling in pain as he plummeted into the woods by the roadside, trailing black smoke.

Ya and Ling’s clothes were completely burned away. Their long hair flew as they rose slowly into the air. Holding hands, a pea-sized red crystal flickered faintly on their foreheads. Complex Divine Script covered their bodies. The two women were burning wildly, intense heat continually surging from their bodies. They melted like crystals in the flames, gradually transforming into a purely energetic, ethereal existence.

“Great Flame Deity, in the name of your bloodline, we summon your power to burn all things, to purify this filthy world.”

The two women murmured incantations. Their voices were soft but resonated like great bells, carrying far. Rings of red light rapidly spread outward. Terrifying heat evaporated all the snow within a hundred-meter radius. The nearby trees were scorched dry, and suddenly, flames ignited, setting the entire forest ablaze.

From afar came Long Cheng’s urgent shout: “Run! These two madwomen have gone crazy! They’ve drawn the Fire Deity’s power into themselves—they’re going all out! Damn it, we could handle these small fries. Why are they risking their lives?”

Before his words faded, a vortex of flames appeared in the clouds above. Accompanied by grand, powerful, and majestic chanting, a thin red light slowly descended from the vortex, landing precisely on the ground between the two women.

With a deafening roar, a hundred-meter-wide pillar of fire shot into the sky. Golden flames swept in all directions, instantly incinerating everything. Soil, trees, corpses, even the air—all were swept away by the flames. Under the pure, destructive golden fire, nothing but the flames themselves could exist.

Lin Qi had ducked and sprinted away the moment the thin red light descended. He truly scrambled like a startled tiger, covering over a hundred meters in just a few heartbeats. When the golden flames erupted, a terrifying wave of fire surged from behind him. Lin Qi felt his whole body shake; he was flung through the air by the fire wave, tumbling awkwardly for nearly a hundred meters before crashing heavily into a large tree.

Strangely, the flames did not harm Lin Qi at all. Though he was blasted away, aside from being slightly shaken, not even a single eyebrow was singed. Lin Qi scrambled to his feet and looked toward the center of the explosion. The golden flames were dissipating rapidly. Within a couple of breaths, not a trace of fire remained, leaving only a huge crater a hundred meters wide and dozens of meters deep.

Lin Qi stared blankly at the crater and the hundreds of square meters of flattened forest around it. What kind of power was that just now? Was it truly a power only a Deity could possess? He stumbled and sat down heavily on the ground.

Long Cheng darted over like a ghost. He swiftly entered the crater, snatched up two pea-sized red crystals, then dashed to Lin Qi and stuffed the crystals into his hand.

“These are the Nirvana Crystals left by those two madwomen. You have a duty—you must do everything in your power to resurrect them!”

Lin Qi stared in astonishment at the two crystals in his hand. They were extremely hot and pulsed with faint waves of heat, like a beating heart. He looked at Long Cheng in confusion and asked innocently, “Why me? They were completely burned up. Why should I resurrect them? Isn’t that their fiancés’ job? What does it have to do with me?”

Long Cheng’s expression was strange. He glanced around, lowered his voice, and leaned close to Lin Qi’s ear. “But last night, the one who… with them wasn’t that pretty boy Tixiang—it was you! And you absorbed their Divinity. Aside from you, or perhaps the Fire Deity from the Church’s legends, no one can awaken the Divine Souls within their Nirvana Crystals. No one can help them rebuild their bodies. No one can bring them back to life!”

Lin Qi stared at Long Cheng in shock. He vaguely began to understand something and promptly punched Long Cheng in the Nose.

Long Cheng grunted and fell flat on his back from the blow. Rubbing his sore nose awkwardly, he muttered, “I just wanted to see some excitement. It could have been you or someone else—Tixiang or that fatso Kirk. You got the benefit, so why hit me?”

Just then, hurried footsteps approached from the distance. The panting Lartus and his group had arrived.