Soulbound: Dual Cultivation
Chapter 79: Hero of the day

Chapter 79: Hero of the day

The heavens split with a roar, a sudden and furious crack tearing across the sky like the wrath of a forgotten god. In that very instant, just as the Grandmaster’s final strike reached the crescendo of its devastating descent....a brilliant lance of lightning descended from the storm clouds above. It did not strike Lucas, nor the shattered earth around him, but instead tore straight through the heart of the old man’s gathered energy, shattering it in a burst of raw elemental force.

The grandmaster let out a sharp, strangled cry as the lightning arced into his body, ripping through his form and flinging him down like a fallen star. His descent was merciless. The ground erupted as he slammed into it, dust and fragments of stone exploding outward in all directions. The shockwave blew across the ruined temple, sending gusts of wind howling past the bystanders and flattening what little remained of the temple walls. For a breathless moment, there was silence, utter silence.

Lucas staggered where he stood, eyes wide, chest heaving. He had not summoned the lightning. He hadn’t even moved. Yet here he was, alive, staring at the broken figure of the grandmaster, now half-buried in the earth, groaning and dazed. It had happened so suddenly, so violently, that Lucas barely understood what had saved him. He looked up slowly, his heart pounding.

Hovering high above them all, amidst swirling storm clouds and trailing sparks of residual lightning, was a solitary figure. She levitated in the open sky as if born to it, her silhouette radiant and terrible against the stormlight. Lightning wrapped around her limbs like tame serpents, and her long hair, crackling faintly with static, flowed behind her in an ethereal wave. Her face was cloaked in a soft mist, deliberately conjured to veil her features from the crowd below, but Lucas didn’t need to see it clearly.

There was no doubt in his mind. The rhythm of her power, the calm in her stance, the familiarity of her Yin and of her presence, it was all unmistakable. He had felt it before, in moments of silence and strength shared between them. No matter how much of her face the mist concealed, Lucas saw through it.

It was Henrietta and she had come to save him.

A surge of emotion rushed through him, shock, relief and yet even those feelings were momentarily eclipsed by the sheer realization of her transformation. Henrietta was no longer a Grandmaster Cultivator. Her power had risen beyond anything he’d seen in this world.

Her hair had turned silver and that’s no mere ornament, it marked her rebirth into something greater. She had broken through. Henrietta had reached the Ascendant Rank.

She was a force now....untouchable. And she had arrived at the very edge of death to save him.

Henrietta descended slowly from the storm-touched sky, her presence calm and absolute, wrapped in an aura that shimmered with the last whispers of lightning. Each step she took through the air was filled with grace and silent strength, the clouds of dust parting subtly in reverence to her newfound power. Her silver hair glowed faintly, flowing behind her like strands of living light. The air around her still hummed from the raw force she had unleashed moments before.

Lucas stood quietly as she approached, watching her with awe and a silent understanding. When her gaze met his, she offered him a single nod, measured and steady. It carried more than words ever could: acknowledgement, reassurance, perhaps even pride. Lucas returned the gesture, his chest rising with a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Though battered, bruised, and shaken, he now stood just a little straighter, grounded by her presence.

Henrietta said nothing as she descended further, touching down lightly near the edge of the massive crater her lightning had carved into the earth. The floor was shattered, chunks of broken stone scattered in every direction, the force of the blast still lingering in the heat that radiated from the cracked tiles. Smoke curled from the rubble, whispering of ruin and retribution.

At the center of that devastation, the grandmaster lay broken within the jagged hole in the ground. His once-pristine robes were scorched and torn, smeared with blood and dust. He coughed violently, red spilling from his lips with every ragged breath. His arms trembled as he tried to push himself up, but the effort failed. His body, once a symbol of might, now betrayed him completely. His eyes, wild and disbelieving, stared up at Henrietta as if she were some celestial phantom.

She had struck him with the untempered force of a fresh breakthrough, the raw and untamed energy of the Ascendant Rank. It was power in its purest form, the kind that did not merely wound, but shattered. He had never encountered anything like it. In all his years, all his battles, this was beyond anything he had prepared for. To him, the Grandmaster Rank had always been the summit. The pinnacle of what a mortal could achieve. And yet, here she was. A presence beyond the peak, standing over him like a judgment given form.

He had not expected this.

Henrietta stood over the battered grandmaster, her expression unreadable beneath the mist that still veiled her face. Her voice, when it came, was calm but laced with cold steel. She asked him only one thing...who sent him.

She told him she might allow him to live if he gave her the truth, but the man only coughed again, blood dripping from his chin as a weak, broken chuckle escaped his lips.

There was no triumph in his laughter, only bitter surrender.

"My life is meaningless now," he rasped, the words barely audible. "Do you not see it? My cultivation... it’s crippled. That strike of yours... it tore me apart from the inside." He looked up at her, eyes hollow but defiant. "Kill me. Or I’ll do it myself."

The threat was not empty. There was nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose, and Henrietta knew it well. Yet she did not flinch, nor did she indulge his request. Instead, she turned her gaze toward the silent soldiers gathering at the edge of the wreckage, and her voice rang clear through the ruined temple.

"Restrain him. Imprison him. He does not get the death he begs for."

Her order moved with authority, and the guards sprang into action. Cautiously, they approached the shattered crater and moved to secure the defeated cultivator, their steps wary but firm. He did not resist. There was no more fight left in him, and the weight of his failure pressed down harder than any physical wound ever could.

A short distance away, Lucas had dropped to one knee. His chest rose and fell unevenly, his breath ragged from exhaustion. The strain of absorbing the crystal, enduring the clash of elemental power, and facing down a cultivator leagues above him had finally caught up with him. Sweat clung to his skin, mixing with the blood streaking down from a shallow cut above his brow. His arms trembled as he tried to steady himself, every muscle in his body screaming in protest.

All around him, murmurs had begun to rise among the soldiers, the onlookers, and the surviving cultivators. Their eyes were no longer fixed on Henrietta or the fallen Grandmaster. They were fixed on Lucas.

Though Henrietta’s ascension to the Ascendant Rank had shaken the heavens, it was Lucas’s defiant stand that had captured the hearts of the people. He had held the beasts at bay with nothing more than sheer will and his surging Qi, even when the tide seemed impossible to fight. He had faced down a Grandmaster, not as an equal, but as someone who refused to back down. That kind of courage was rare....and unforgettable.

To them, Lucas was no longer just a boy from a noble house. He was the hero of the day.