The Divine Martial Stars

“Oh? Wait up. So you were thinking that you’re negotiating for your life as an equal to me? Heavens, I’m so sorry. In my eyes, you’re nothing more than a mongrel. A mongrel that’s even worse than that stupid husky—so stupid that you just can’t remember your past lessons. I can spare you now that you’ll come back to bite me, a glutton for punishment.”

There was not even one bit of kindness flashing in Li Mu’s icy stare as he attacked again.

He made well sure that each and every single one of Lei Cang’s ribs were shattered.

“This is for the Trailblazers who were slaughtered like sheep at the staging station.”

Li Mu went on to fracture more bones in Lei Cang’s body.

The sheer agony itself from the torture left a curling Lei Cang writhing grotesquely like an animal in pain.

Realizing that his beggings could no longer save him, he snarled, “Li Mu you bastard! Kill me if you dare! Kill me and just be done with it!”

“Oh? Discovered your nerve, have you?” Li Mu observed wryly.

More snapping of bones echoed in the sealed chamber.

Lei Cang would have chosen death if he could.

Xiao Jianfei was rather enjoying the moment. The sight of Lei Cang’s suffering was satisfying enough.

Although that did little to hinder the question looming within him: is what we’re doing right?

“Is this justice?! Torturing a man, even though he’s an enemy, in such a fashion?!” he thought.

Li Mu strode to the wall where he removed the dagger he deflected out of Lei Cang’s grasp earlier. He squeezed it into Xiao Jianfei’s hand. “Use this. Drive this into that monster yourself. Do this not only for Squad Thunder but also the men from the other two squads as well…”

“What?!” Xiao Jianfei was seriously doubting what he just heard, “What about Captains Lin and Ye?!”

“They did not turn up,” Li Mu shook his head.

Xiao Jianfei stared at him blankly, his gaze lost. What Lei Cang was telling him during the torture hit him like a sledgehammer. “Is it true?! That both Houses Lin and Ye are part of this whole plot as well?!”

“So? Your decision?” Li Mu peered at Xiao Jianfei.

The latter’s shivering hand slowly curled its fingers around the hilt of the dagger.

Rage battered at his beliefs, threatening to dislodge him from his once-solid moral foothold.

“Many times, decide what’s wrong and right yourself. Justice and truth aren’t for the rich and powerful to monopoly.”

Xiao Jianfei peered at the dagger in his grasp.

Gleaming with a bluish fury, its blade bristled with the luster of Spiritual Power.

His gaze shifted over to the sickeningly hideous Lei Cang, whose eyes still leaked inaudible pleas for mercy. He looked at the dagger again, the conflict within him still raging a fierce battle that crescendoed to a climax.

Rustling noises came approaching from outside the chamber door.

Someone was coming.

One with a powerful presence.

Whoever was that must be a dangerous champion.

“We have company,” Li Mu muttered, giving Lei Cang’s body a vicious kick that sent him slamming into the wall. Li Mu seized Xiao Jianfei, “Time to go.”

“Go?!” the latter gasped with a perplexed look back at him.

“Unless you wish to die here?”

“But I have orders…” Xiao Jianfei whimpered.

The footsteps were nearing.

It was not one—but several powerful presences hurrying towards the torture chamber.

Unfazed, Li Mu stared into Xiao Jianfei’s eyes. “You can die here, but your family—your parents, your wife, and your daughter—they will all suffer the burden of guilt and shame. Those people who wronged you? They won’t care. They won’t feel even a shred of guilt. They’ll remain in the shadows, grinning to themselves… Live and you still have a chance. Die and you’ll condemn your loved ones to an irreparable fate.”

“B-But… I-I…” Xiao Jianfei’s eyes turned moist and red.

Such was the role of a soldier: to follow orders with blinding deference. For far too long Xiao Jianfei had been one, developing mechanical obedience to superior orders that he would gladly march into death as long as he was commanded to without any hint of hesitation. Yet now…

Boom!

The door of the chamber was flung open by an external force amid waves of dust and gravel.

Li Mu yanked Xiao Jianfei back to the other end of the chamber almost simultaneously, ramming a hole in the wall.

The chaos was just what he needed to mount an escape.

They were only just outside when beams of lights came slashing their way.

“Stargrasp!” Li Mu grunted.

His right hand jerked Xiao Jianfei to safety while his left hand snaked forth. In quick successive blows that eyes could barely catch up with, he unleashed a barrage of at least a dozen strikes, eliciting cascades of metallic clangors. By the time he stepped back, he had disarmed his assailants with a saber, three swords, and two spears already in his possession, which he easily crushed with just one fist. He ignominiously tossed the metal pulp aside.

“Quaint technique.”

A voice of praise came from the direction Lu Ye was thinking of heading.

A richly-clothed but gnarly old man with thick hair and beard, clad in light leather armor stepped into view, with scarlet effulgence swirling around him.

Without pausing at all, Li Mu charged at his opponent with Xiao Jianfei dragged after him.

“Scorchslam!”

Lu Ye’s fist barreled forward with the force of a breaking dam. Only instead of cold, his fist radiated searing heat like the sun itself was grasped in his hand.

Every strand of the elderly man’s hair and beard sprung up like cactus needles. He responded with a punch of his own that burst into hundreds of other mirages, raining down a volley full of fists down on Li Mu. His brand of fighting resembled Li Mu’s greatly—reliant on brute physical force. The entire air reeked with the tang of metal as the barrage of fists pummeled down with the elderly man crying amid the din, “Back into where you come from, sonny.”

A champion, Li Mu realized.

“Should I?” he responded wryly.

...

As soon as Li Mu’s flaming fist met the elderly man’s, the flames vanished and the heat that engulfed the whole surrounding was gone, only for, one split-second later, a huge torrent of chill to burst forth.

“WHAT?!”

The elderly man gasped, his face teeming with ashen astonishment. The elemental shift from fire to ice had caught him unawares. Before he could even react, ice-blue layers of frost encrusted his hand and then his arms before swallowing him whole, turning him into a life-size sculpture of ice.

Li Mu wasn’t eager to wait. Like an albatross spreading his wings, he leaped over the elderly man and began bolting towards the exit.

“Lord Governor!”

Frantic cries came from all sides.

Crack! Crack!

The ice began to crack.

The tall and strong elderly smashed himself to freedom and spurted a tiny mouthful of blood. Being trapped in the ice had caused internal damage, but he was nowhere near to giving up just yet. With an enraged snarl, he vanished from where he stood, turning into a bolt of light that shot straight for Li Mu.

Both men encountered each other in midair, locked into a blurry whirl of fists. With Xiao Jianfei still with him was affecting Li Mu’s performance. That gave the rest of the enemy champions the chance to catch up to them and surrounded the duo.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

...

The air erupted with successive bursts of energy.

Li Mu landed with Xiao Jianfei.

Figures flickered into view; they found themselves beleaguered by a mob of champions. Footfalls rapped harshly on the ground as an army of Drakonid sentries swept over the whole enclosure, effectively preventing anything from getting in or out of the Lord Governor’s court complex. Even those were not all; the sky rippled with phosphorescent runic symbols. Some sort of forcefield was conjured, enveloping the whole building and its peripherals.

“You’re not getting away,” the imposing elderly man pronounced imperiously.

Xiao Jianfei looked around grimly. He did not need to be told that he was the reason they failed to get out in time.

If only he had made his decision quickly and not wasted time, then they would not have found themselves at their wits’ end! It was his indecisiveness that had condemned Li Mu to this fate.

“Well, if I’m not getting away, then I might as well stay,” Li Mu uttered facetiously, not at all anxious or panicking despite the overwhelming odds. “But don’t say I’m not warning you: you’ll regret keeping me here.”

“Impudent pup,” the old man snorted. “This is the court complex of the Lord Governor of Lauffeuer. Not some squalid marketplace for you to come and go as you please! At any rate, you’re never going to be walking out of here alive—not if I could help it.”

“I see. So you must be Jiang Buping, the Lord Governor of this city,” Li Mu bobbed his head thoughtfully, “The deaths of the few hundred Trailblazers… You have had a hand in that, didn’t you?”

“Piffle,” Jiang Buping denied by means of an authoritarian scoff. “That was your doing, the agent of the Xenoses who had massacred the proud soldiers of Legion Kommodore in cold blood! How dare you slander me, you depraved filth!”

“Wow, so that’s how you intend to close the case of the massacre of the Trailblazers and sweep it under the rug, huh?” Li Mu muttered as if in innocent deliberation, “What a masterful stroke.”

“Lord Governor! This is a mistake! You’ve been hoodwinked by the real culprits! It’s Lei Cang! He’s the one who killed all the Trailblazers! I am Lieutenant Xiao of Squad Thunder of the Trailblazer Corps and I can vouch for Li Mu! I heard with my own ears how Lei Cang had admitted to the crimes—”

“HOLD YOUR TONGUE!” Jiang Buping snapped. “You are an officer of the military with more than ten years of experience under your belt, Lieutenant Xiao! You dare collude with a Xenos and speak in his defense!? You have a nerve! I’ll have you seized and executed myself if that’s the last thing I do!”

Xiao Jianfei immediately lost his voice.

“Save your breath, Xiao,” quipped Li Mu, “You can repeat yourself tens of thousands of times and none of that would matter. For all we know, this old senile is pretending to not understand your truthful words.”

“LI MU!”

A hateful voice boomed from a distance.

What seemed to be a fully recovered Lei Cang stepped out of the wreckage of the portion of the court complex with a small retinue—a pair of old men both donning regal purplish robes and both radiated the same deadly presence. Lei Cang, on the other hand, looked absolutely livid; he flexed his arms, spoiling for the chance to reciprocate the beating Li Mu gave him earlier, although his presence and aura remained relatively weak.

The vast presences emitted by both old men indicated that they were at least Deity-realm Cultivators. The sporadic crackling of electricity, despite how harmless they looked, warped even the air around them, terrifying the Drakonids enough to give them both a wide berth.

They were champions as well.

Xiao Jianfei let out a long, heavy breath.

“How?!

“How is Lei Cang still alive?!

“How did he survive that kick by Li Mu?!

“Dammit!”

“You worthless piece of shit, Xiao Jianfei! I gave you a chance and you made the wrong one! I’ll kill Li Mu today, then I’ll make you suffer! I’ll make you watch what I’ll do to your wife and your daughter!” Lei Cang howled with the same maniacal frenzy reminiscent of a rabid dog.

Li Mu glanced at Xiao Jianfei.

The lieutenant did not say a word.

“I’ll repay to you what you just did to me one thousand times over, Li Mu! I bet you’re now terrified all inside that I’m alive, innit?!” Lei Cang sneered maliciously. “Let’s see how are you going to worm out of this!”

“You should be fleeing with your tail between your legs if you know what’s good for you,” Li Mu smirked with derision, “Your newfound courage, albeit ill-advised, is it because of these two lapdogs of yours? I can smell the stench of blood coming from them. They were involved in the massacre at the staging station, weren’t they?”

“They went there to hunt you down, fool. You’re lucky that you managed to give them the slip before they arrived. But no more. Your luck runs out now—”

Li Mu did not even have the patience to let him finish.

He guffawed loudly, “Luck? As if I need such things.”

Bang!

Lei Cang’s arms erupted into a morbid explosion of blood and tissue spattering in all directions.

A howl of agony pierced the sky, interlaced with a pair of enraged snarls, before they too, wailed with pain.

A couple of blasts had come from nowhere, catching the two elderly champions unawares and wounding them.

Li Mu had used his magical sight to read their movements before they could even pull off any trick. Firing a Four-Blade God Killing Broadsword blast that broke into halves, he directed both halves to each of the elderly champions with such quickness, finesse, and might that all everyone saw was just a blur and he was back at where he was standing as if he barely moved.

The pair of champions was barely finished channeling their lightning powers, mustering enough electricity when all of a sudden, they were attacked and the lightning was gone.

Everything had happened just too quickly.

Lei Cang was still reeling over his mangled arms—or rather, what was left of them, “W-What have you done to my arms, Li Mu?!”

“And you thought I would really spare you? I did not kill you just now because killing you would be too merciful. I want you to suffer a painful death with everyone watching you. That’s what a monster like you deserves.”

He snapped his fingers.

Crack!

As if resonating with the snap, Lei Cang’s left leg burst into bloody bits.

He crashed to the ground.

Crack!

Another snap.

Crack!

Lei Cang’s right leg this time.

Crack!

Another snap.

Bang!

Lei Cang’s left knee detonated into a fountain of red.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

With every snap, every joint in Lei Cang’s body would blow up like firecrackers like tiny little bombs that Li Mu had left hidden in his body. Blood and flesh scattered all over the ground and pools of blood spread wider and wider, but there was little anyone or even Lei Cang himself could do…

The torture on both mind and body was whittling down his sanity…