Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 103

Chapter 103: A BRUTAL SAVE PART 1

Her gaze swept over Li Wei’s suspended form, catching the subtle shift in his expression. Despite his pain, his scholarly eyes held a sharp warning—the same look he’d given her during training when she was about to make a critical mistake. He was trying to tell her something, but the temporal distortions made it impossible to read his usual subtle signals.

The false elder moved closer, his form leaving afterimages in the air. “Time moves differently here, little girl. While we have this pleasant conversation, your brother experiences the pain of core extraction across multiple moments simultaneously. Shall I demonstrate?” His hand began to rise again.

“Stop!” Li Hua’s voice cut through the temporal echoes. She needed time to think, to understand the patterns of power flowing through the chamber. There had to be a weakness in the formations, some flaw in their structure. Her brother would never forgive her if she sacrificed herself needlessly, but she couldn’t bear to watch him suffer either. “I need to know that he’ll survive, if I agree.”

Li Wei shook his head weakly, tears dripping from his eyes as he forced out the words. “Please… sister, you must go.” It was the first time she had ever seen her eldest brother cry—not when he’d broken his arm during training, not during their parents’ harshest lessons, not even during their recent losses.

Li Wei, who had always been the siblings pillar of strength and composure, was finally breaking. Yet his scholarly eyes, despite the tears clouding them, still held that familiar stubborn determination—the same look he’d worn when teaching her the scriptures, never accepting anything less than perfection.

Li Hua stepped closer, her hand instinctively reaching out to comfort him as she had countless times before—when he’d exhausted himself from reading too many manuals, when he’d pushed too hard in cultivation.

But her hand froze mid-motion, her heart clenching as she truly processed his condition. The cultivation-suppressing chains weren’t just binding him; they were burning into his flesh, each point of contact a source of constant agony. Even the air around him rippled with temporal distortions, making every moment of pain repeat endlessly. Her touch, meant to comfort, would only add another layer of torment to his already overwhelming suffering.

She pulled her hand back, the gesture somehow more painful than any wound she’d ever received. Even this small comfort was denied them by the false elder’s cruel manipulations.

Li Hua looked at the hooded figure and nodded slowly. “Fine.” Her voice carried a weight of defeat that made Li Wei’s eyes widen in alarm. “You win.”

She took another step forward, and something in her brother’s expression shifted—recognition flooding his scholarly features. He’d seen this before, in countless training sessions with his sister: that moment of apparent surrender when her brothers thought they’d finally cornered their little sister, only to have golden light flash before them as she transformed seeming defeat into deadly opportunity. It was her signature move—one that had earned her both victories and their grudging admiration during those endless afternoon spars.

The false elder’s laugh echoed through multiple moments of time as he reached for her. “Finally, you understand—”

Li Hua’s spiritual essence surged into her earrings, their celestial diamonds flaring with golden light. Her mother’s voice whispered through memory: When activated, your body becomes pure energy—a fusion of wind and light. The temporal distortions around her seemed to slow as her form began to shimmer, reality bending around her like sunlight through crystal.

The false elder’s hand passed through nothing but traces of golden light on the wind. Li Hua’s consciousness stretched across that infinite moment—her body transformed into pure energy, moving faster than the false elder’s eyes could track. The temporal fluctuations that had made the cave so dangerous now worked in her favor, the unstable time flows amplifying her already impossible speed.

“Sister, the nexus point!” Li Wei’s scholarly voice pierced through the chaos like a blade of pure knowledge, each word carrying the weight of calculated precision despite his wounds. “Third formation from the left—where temporal lines weave together. The resonance pattern pulses weakest there, like a heart missing its rhythm!”

She materialized behind the formation’s nexus point, her daggers singing with deadly purpose. The celestial diamonds in her ears hummed an ancient melody of destruction, their gold inclusions channeling light essence until reality itself bent around her like water around stone. Her blades, wrapped in layers of her essence, met the temporal bindings—an intricate web of power that sparkled with defiant life. For a heartbeat, they held, crackling with the stubborn resistance of a dying star. But Li Hua’s precision, honed across two lifetimes, proved inexorable; she carved through them with surgical grace, leaving the nexus exposed and vulnerable in her wake.

“The secondary array!” Li Wei called out, his scholarly mind dissecting the formation’s collapse even through his pain. His eyes tracked each failing line of power with the focused intensity of a master reading ancient text. “The binding sequence mirrors flowing water—find its current, sister!”

As Li Hua shifted her weight to strike, Mo Tao materialized beside her like a shadow given form, his presence barely disturbing the air. Gone was the theatrical jester, replaced by something cold and deadly. “I’ll weaken the bindings,” he murmured, his voice carrying none of its usual playful melody. “Strike when the current shifts.” The transformation in him was stark—his face carved from stone, eyes blazing with cold purpose. This wasn’t the carefree man who had fled from marriage proposals; this was a predator uncloaked.

Lightning erupted from his hands in controlled bursts, each bolt precisely targeted to slice through the array’s protective layers. The false elder’s concentration fractured as he was forced to divide his attention, his power splitting like light through crystal.

The formations began to collapse, their corrupted essence turning inward instead of feeding on Li Wei. Through the chaos of failing power and fractured time, Li Hua’s voice cut through with perfect clarity: “Now, eldest brother!”

Li Wei, his scholarly mind having calculated this exact moment, broke free of the weakened chains. His core flaring with renewed power, no longer suppressed by the formations. Together, brother and sister moved in perfect synchronization—just as they had thousands of times in practice. Li Wei, despite his wounds, traced arrays in the air with practiced precision. His scholarly mastery turned the cave’s own temporal distortions into channels of flowing power, creating a net of water-infused formations that trapped their enemy in a single moment of time.

The false elder’s figure roared, his corrupted essence exploding outward in waves of temporal chaos. “You dare?” His voice echoed across multiple moments simultaneously, each syllable dripping with murderous intent. Dark energy crackled around him as he fought against Li Wei’s bindings, threatening to shatter reality itself.

Li Hua’s form flickered through the temporal storm like lightning through clouds. Each materialization brought her daggers closer to their mark, golden light trailing in her wake as the celestial diamonds resonated with her killing intent. The false elder’s figure matched her speed, his corrupted essence letting him exist in multiple moments at once—but Li Hua had fought in the shadows of a thousand worlds, and her blades found flesh in spaces between seconds.