CHAPTER 278: CHAPTER 278: HAUNTED

Meng Nian didn’t even glance at him. His gaze remained locked on the battlefield, knuckles white where they gripped Wei Sheng’s cooling body.

"No. Because if I let myself feel what I’m watching, I’ll scream." Ruihuang muttered, it was already hard to watch, only God knew how Qingran must be feeling.

The sky had lost all stability now. Tartarus’ Eye pulsed with unreadable power, its gaze never leaving Qingran as the battlefield crumbled around her.

Chunks of floating land split apart like glass under pressure, spinning out into the void with each blow she and Boran exchanged.

Another shockwave burst through the air as Boran’s palm met her flame-sheathed punch in a head-on clash the resulting blast sent both combatants flying backward, rolling through the debris-strewn terrain.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

The sound was loud enough to make one’s ear bleed.

Boran was the first to recover, crouching low, hands dragging along the scorched stone as he snarled.

Crimson strands of hair stuck to his jaw, half his face blackened by soot and ash, but his grin was still intact.

"You’ve gotten stronger, I’ll give you that," he said, spitting blood. "But power isn’t the same thing as purpose."

Qingran rose slowly from the rubble, flame dripping from her fingers like molten metal. "You think I care about purpose when you murdered someone who trusted you? When you pulled me into this hellhole of a domain just to prove some twisted point?"

Boran raised both hands, pulling a final card from the darkness inside his robes.

It shimmered unnaturally, outlined in deep scarlet like a pulse pulled straight from the underworld.

"Then let me give you true clarity," he said.

[TAROT SYSTEM: MAJOR ARCANA – "THE MOON" – REVERSED.]

A cold wind swept the domain.

The Eye blinked again, slower this time, almost like it was breathing.

And then... the light vanished.

Not dimmed.

Not flickered.

It had disappeared.

For one harrowing second, the battlefield went pitch black as if Tartarus itself had closed its eye and left them all alone.

[WARNING: SYSTEM ILLUSION FIELD MAXIMUM – "MOON REVERSED" ACTIVE.]

Qingran blinked.

Everything was gone.

The battlefield.

Boran.

Her allies.

Even the flame on her hands.

She was standing in a room, that one room from her past.

The white tiles under her foot, the metal table.

"No... no..." Qingran whispered, stumbling backward as her heart pounded so hard it made her ribs ache.

She saw herself, younger, covered in blood, sobbing quietly beside the corpses of people she’d once sworn to protect.

The body with blue eyes stared back at her.

Empty, hollow and utterly lost.

"You always end up alonemm" the illusion murmured in that dry, gentle tone. "And you always fail."

"I didn’t fail. It’s not over yet.." Qingran hissed.

She stumbled forward, reaching out and the illusion flickered.

It wasn’t a corpse now, but Moli.

Smiling with cruel fondness.

"You did everything right, Qingran.." Moli said. "And they still died."

"No!"

The vision shattered as her flame surged cracking through the illusion like sunlight splitting fog.

Reality came back in pieces, stone first, then sky, then the aching weight of Tartarus pressing down on her again.

Boran was in front of her, palm still raised, card still glowing.

"You broke it faster than I expected.." he muttered. "Impressive. But not enough."

His foot hit her chest before she could react, sending her sprawling back across the ground with a thunderous crack.

Blood slipped from her lips, and for a moment, everything tilted.

[He’s dragging out your will..] Lingquan growled in her head. [He wants you tired. You have to end this now.]

Qingran coughed hard and spat to the side, pushing herself up. "Then let’s finish it."

She raised her hand.

And this time, the flames didn’t come like fire.

They came like a storm.

Blue lightning burst from her fingertips, arching between her palms, forming a volatile sphere of condensed flame.

It pulsed erratically, energy shaking the stone beneath her boots.

Boran’s eyes widened for the first time since the battle began.

"That’s—" He took a step back.

Qingran smiled.

It wasn’t a kind smile.

It was the kind you gave your executioner.

"You wanted the real me?" she whispered. "This is who I became without you."

Then she hurled the sphere.

The sky screamed, turning blood red.

Tartarus Eye blinked, frantic, alarmed, like it had seen something even it didn’t want to witness.

The impact hit Boran dead center.

The explosion was cataclysmic, fire rippling outward in blinding rings, platforms disintegrating, the air itself splintering with a keening shriek.

Bang!

Bang!

Moli’s platform shook violently and she jumped off just in time before it shattered beneath her.

"Fuck! If they don’t end this soon. We bystanders would die.."

Meng Nian shielded Wei Sheng’s body again, hunkered low.

Ruihuang ducked, wind howling past his ears.

In the aftermath, when the heat faded and the light died...

Boran laid sprawled, unmoving, on the last solid piece of floating stone left in Qingran’s reach.

She stood over him, shoulders heaving, blood dripping from her temple.

"Get up.." she growled.

He didn’t move.

Her flames flickered in her palm.

"I said... get up."

A groan escaped his lips.

He shifted, just barely and smiled up at her with broken teeth.

"I always did like when you were mad..."

Qingran’s fire surged again.

And she raised her hand.

Ready to end it all.

"I still have some fight left in me. I’m the god of this domain."

Qingran’s breath came slow but steady, her boots planted firm on the last slab of floating terrain. The wind was raw up here clawing through the cracks in the shattered domain but the fire around her didn’t waver.

The orb of flame had vanished, but its aftershock still tingled in the air like ozone, charged and alive.

The battlefield around them was in ruins, jagged rocks suspended like shattered constellations, smoke trailing up toward Tartarus Eye which now blinked erratically, as if startled.

Even he couldn’t predict Qingran’s thoughts now.

Boran lay crumpled in the rubble below, cloak scorched, one horn cracked, blood seeping into the fractured stone. His chest rose in shallow, wheezing breaths.

But Qingran hadn’t moved.

Her form had changed.

Azure flames still cloaked her frame, but now, crackling arcs of lightning snaked through them,they were violet and white, pulsing like veins of the void itself.

The Rift energy she’d once kept suppressed now twined through her fire like it belonged.

Half her face was streaked with blackened lines, her veins visible like ink bleeding beneath her skin. Her right eye had become entirely white, her sclera glowing faintly.

Ruihuang gaped from the edge of a crumbling platform. "She— She’s... merging it?! Her flames and the rift...."

"Yeah..." Meng Nian breathed, eyes wide as he clutched Wei Sheng’s body tighter. "She’s done holding back."

Even Moli, usually so smug, sat up straighter on her perch, eyes flicking with something that almost resembled fear.

"What ever gave you the right to look down on me? All I ever wanted was for this nightmare to end."

Qingran finally moved taking one step forward that left the air behind her cracked and glowing. Each movement spilled embers and lightning.

"In this domain of yours..." she said, voice hoarse but steady, echoing slightly with Rift distortion, "I can finally go all out. No cities to protect. No innocent lives around to hold me back."

She stopped just a meter from where Boran laid struggling to rise.

"This is what I am without your twisted love."

He lifted his head slightly, eyes unfocused, but still mocking. "You think that makes you stronger than me...?"

"I know it does.." she said, and her voice rang like a bell tolling the end.

"I don’t need you, Yan Boran. And I never will."

His name landed like a curse. The first time she’d said it with such detachment, without bitterness or grief, just truth. It was cold, final and irreversible.

Boran’s lips twitched. Not into a smile. Into something smaller. Cracked.

Qingran raised her hand again not just with flame, but with power that bent the domain itself.

Tartarus Eye blinked once and then it closed shut.

The entire domain trembled and shook.

[WARNING: DOMAIN CORE—UNSTABLE. SYSTEM COLLAPSE IMMINENT!!]

She took one more step.

The lightning at her fingertips built into a charge that would wipe him from existence.

"You don’t get to haunt me anymore," she whispered.

Then she struck.

A beam of condensed azure fire laced with Rift energy roared down onto him like divine punishment, tearing the ground asunder.