Chapter 381 : Heavenly Blood Jiangshi (3)
Chapter 381: Heavenly Blood Jiangshi (3)
It was the first wound ever carved into the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's body.
The others were all masters who had reached their own sublime heights, so none of them missed that hairline cut.
"There! That's the spot!"
"Focus all your attacks on that spot!"
While Il-mok was still skidding backward, the remaining five masters aggressively scrambled forward to strike that same wound.
Unfortunately, this sudden enthusiasm completely backfired on them.
None of them had ever trained together, so the moment they all rushed toward the same point, they ended up tripping over each other and bottlenecking their own movements.
"RAAAGGGH!"
The Heavenly Blood Jiangshi swung its massive leg straight into the fumbling masters.
BOOM!!
The masters who had tangled themselves up scrambled to use their own signature defensive moves and somehow managed to block the attack, but the impact from that attack sent shockwaves through their bodies and hurled them back.
In the end, each of them was nursing unnecessary fresh internal injuries.
BOOM!!
In the chaos, Yangmuja had slipped through to exploit the opening and slashed at the wound with his sword, but his blade completely failed to pierce the monster's unyielding skin.
"Damn it!!"
In return, the monster pried its jaws wide and lunged at Yangmuja’s head to swallow it whole.
"Hah!"
Luckily, Beggar King had managed to stay out of the earlier mess and snapped into action. The finishing move of the Dragon-Subduing Eighteen Palms smashed into the creature’s mouth, causing the Jiangshi’s teeth to graze past Yangmuja's skull by a hair.
Swish.
Right after getting rescued from a certain death, Yangmuja threw himself back into the combat with his lightness skill. It was then Il-mok channeled his internal energy into his voice and called out.
"My sword seems to be the only thing that can pierce its hide. Seniors, I ask that you please support my endeavor.”
Still stinging from the previous humiliation, Yangmuja snarled back. "Do you think I'd fall for the cheap bullshit tricks of a filthy demonic scum?!"
Before Il-mok could respond, the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal cut in on his behalf. "He's likely telling the truth. That sword of his originated from the Blood Cult as well."
"!?"
Seeing this, Il-mok launched a quick explanation to those unaware of this fact. "The vengeful souls of those whom the Blood Cult murdered are bound to this sword. I made a vow to them that I would bring the Blood Cult down and put their grievances to rest."
As he offered this explanation, Il-mok had to dive out of the way to dodge a fist swung by the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi.
Because the others were also facing the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi, nobody had the luxury of standing still to have a conversation right now.
"Then hand it over! I'll be the one to put that wretched thing down!!"
The second Yangmuja screamed those words, the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's fist came rocketing straight toward his face.
"Gugh!! Hurry up and hand it over!!"
Yangmuja screamed in anger as he was pushed back, but Il-mok shook his head. "This sword chooses its wielder. There's no time in the middle of all this to be recognized as a new master by the souls bound to it."
Before Yangmuja could shout back, the Beggar King bellowed first. "Shut your trap and fix your damn temper! Do you really think this is the time for us to stand around bickering like children?!"
"You beggarly little—"
"Silence!!!"
Before a full-blown argument could derail their survival, the Buddha Venerable unleashed a deafening Lion's Roar and demanded an answer. "Enough pointless bickering. Tell us what you have in mind."
"Keep its arms and legs occupied. I'll keep pressing that wound and drive straight through its gut."
In response to Il-mok's straightforward request, the five supreme masters quickly exchanged glances with one another.
Hwangbo Ak was the first to speak up. "Works for me. Better than having no solution. Wouldn't you agree, seniors?"
The second he finished those words, the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi lunged at him.
Hwangbo Ak threw himself clear just in time, and the Beggar King slammed the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi across the back and shouted, "He's right! It's not like anything changes whether that Blood Cult Leader bastard drops dead or not!"
Contrary to Il-mok’s assumption, several among them had already reached the exact same conclusion as Il-mok. It’s just they chose not to say it out loud lest their morale tanked from the truth.
"Since we have nothing to lose, there should be nothing bad about this."
The Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal voiced his agreement and looked toward Buddha Venerable who gave a quiet nod.
"Amitabha."
Seeing that everyone else in the group was fully on board, Yangmuja clicked his tongue and reluctantly nodded with a sour expression.
"Fine, let's see just how well your little plan actually works."
From that point on, the five masters moved to keep the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi pinned down and restrict its movement. And every time they disrupted the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's movements, Il-mok aimed for the opportunity to dig in and stabbed the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's abdomen.
Weeeng!
Every time that happened, the Ascension Sword sang with joy and the wound slowly widened.
But...
'This is too slow.'
Compared to how little the wound was opening, the massive amount of internal energy they were burning through was way too extreme. At this rate, one of the masters was going to collapse from exhaustion or loss of focus before Il-mok could actually punch a hole through the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's stomach.
Beggar King noticed it too and snapped, "To hell with this! Everyone take a limb! If you can't hold down a single arm or a single leg, don't you dare call yourself one of the Twelve Heavenly Pillars!"
Yangmuja opened his mouth to snap back, but the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal already threw himself to the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's right fist launched at him.
"Then I'll take the right arm."
With that, he dedicated his sword to entangle the right arm. No matter how the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi twisted and thrashed to swing that arm, it could barely move its arm as if the sword had bolted that very arm.
This was the profound principle of softness pursued by the Wudang Sect. It was an art that could only be described as their absolute pinnacle.
Every time the creature shifted its force in a different direction, the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal would redirect the force and let it bleed away harmlessly.
Because this required an ungodly level of concentration and technical skill, thick veins began to bulge out all across the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal’s body as if they were going to burst.
Seeing that, the Buddha Venerable locked onto the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's left side. "Then, this monk shall handle the left arm. Amitabha."
He then used a grappling technique to clamp down the creature’s left arm in his grip.
Where the Supreme Ultimate Sword Immortal worked through the principles of softness overcoming hardness, the Buddha Venerable was challenging the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi to a contest of raw physical strength fueled by his majestic Buddhist internal energy.
Even then, holding that one arm is already his limit as veins bulged all over his body shortly after that.
"Then I've got the left leg!"
"Tch."
The Beggar King threw himself forward and brought the Dragon-Subduing Eighteen Palms down to pin the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's left knee and the top of its foot to the ground.
Yangmuja scowled and brought his sword down like an axe to drive the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's right foot into the earth.
With all four limbs locked down by the four masters, Il-mok committed himself fully and plunged straight for the creature.
"Haaaat!!"
The Ascension Sword blazed with Force Qi and rocketed straight toward the spot where the wound had widened.
BOOM!!
A deafening explosion that sounded nothing like a blade cutting into flesh echoed out, and as fiery sparks showered the air as if solid iron had just smashed into solid iron, the Ascension Sword began to slowly tear through the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's hide and dig deeper.
The creature opened its mouth to let out a howl, but a massive figure that is Hwangbo Ak dropped onto its back.
With his entire body draped in Force Qi Armor, he grabbed the creature’s jaw with both hands and wrench it upward to cut off the roar before it could build, and also made sure those jaws couldn't snap shut on Il-mok.
With this, all five masters had cut off the Jiangshi’s methods of attack.
Il-mok realized that right now is their first and only chance.
He could see the internal damage mounting in all of them by the second.
So he stopped holding anything back.
He stopped thinking about defense or evasion and poured every last scrap of his internal energy into the Ascension Sword.
If he didn't kill it now, they were all as good as dead.
Weeeeng!
The sword wailed as the souls within it resonated in chorus and the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's hide shrieked with a grating metallic groan.
CRACK!
At long last, the Ascension Sword finally tore through hide and muscle and buried itself in the creature's flesh.
It was clearly good news, but Il-mok clenched his jaw without even realizing it.
'Damn it...'
The blade had barely gone in deeper than an inch. And worse yet, his dantian was now completely emptied with barely a single drop of internal energy left in his reserves.
'Is this how it ends...'
The thought had barely formed when the Ascension Sword let out a resonant cry, and an enormous flood of energy came surging back through the hilt into him.
Now that it had finally tasted the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi’s flesh, the Ascension Sword went crazy and greedily drank in the creature's Blood Qi.
But this wasn't exactly a cause for celebration.
The Blood Qi flowing through the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi was saturated with malicious Qi which was no different from poison to Il-mok.
"Gugh..."
Blood surged up his throat from the internal damage accumulating by the second but he bit his lips down to keep it in.
At that moment, the Ascension Sword cried out again.
But for some reason, this cry sounded almost like a human voice
—We will lend you our strength.
—We can hear it! The wailing of the thousands of people trapped within the body of that monster!
—Please liberate them from that hell of a prison!
They were the voices of the vengeful spirits who were trapped within the Ascension Sword.
The souls of those slaughtered unjustly in Pingliang County, and those who had nearly been consumed by the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi in the Blood Cult's trap at Sichuan’s massacre.
Right at that very moment, a miraculous change occurred.
—This is the man who will deliver you from your suffering!
—Lend this man your power and fight alongside us!!
As though answering the call of the souls bound to the sword, the Blood Qi it had drawn in began to purify itself.
Knowing very well that there was no retreat left, Il-mok devoured every drop of that purified energy and let out a raw scream.
"RAAAAAAHHHHH!!"
The Qi absorbed through the Ascension Sword passed through Il-mok's meridians and assimilated with him, allowing Il-mok to instantly reignite his blazing Force Qi and drive the blade even further inward.
CRACK!!
This time it plunged far deeper.
More Qi flooded in through the blade and the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi thrashed violently in a last-ditch frenzy.
"Gugh..."
"Ami... tabha."
"Kill the damn thing faster!!"
Realizing that the monster was launching its final wave of resistance, the supreme masters locking down its limbs screamed with desperation and clung on with everything they had.
The Ascension Sword was no different.
Flooded with an even greater amount of Qi, it screamed as though it might shatter while purifying the Blood Qi as fast as it poured in.
—This is the man who shall deliver you all!!
—Please, we beg you to push forward just a little more, O’ Savior!
—Save us from this terrible monster!!
"RAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!"
SQUELCH!!
With Il-mok's scream, the Ascension Sword drove clean through the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's abdomen and punched out through the other side.
But Il-mok didn't stop there.
With the sword still buried inside, he kept pouring the absorbed Blood Qi back into it and expanded the Force Qi outward to widen the wound, all while a massive volume of pure Qi was aggressively flooding into his body.
His head felt like it was splitting apart from the process of refining the Qi and flaring his Sword Force. Every meridian in his body screamed in pain, both from the strain and the heat.
But he didn’t stop.
The heat formed of Force Qi that originated from the Ascension Sword's tip spread and tore the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi apart from the inside.
On its back, Hwangbo Ak felt something and looked up with wide eyes.
"!?"
Pale and hazy shapes were streaming from the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi's nostrils before soaring high into the night sky.
'Are those... souls?'
He stared, momentarily stunned by something he had never seen in his life.
"KRAAAAAAHHHHH!!"
When the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi wrenched its jaws open and let out one final scream, there was none of the malevolent Qi from before in that cry.
From somewhere, voices drifted into his ears and Il-mok slowly tilted his chin to gaze at the sky.
—Thank you, Savior.
—Even if we are reborn, we will never forget this kindness.
Although Il-mok's eyes had become blurry due to severe internal injuries and the consumption of his mental energy, the sight was vividly clear to his eyes.
It was the breathtaking sight of thousands upon thousands of souls pouring out through the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi before ascending into the heavens.
Without a single exception, every soul bowed their head to him, offering a deeply grateful greeting with completely serene and peaceful expressions before slowly drifting far away into the afterlife.
Normally, vengeful spirits were supernatural entities that ordinary martial artists would never see unless they practiced sorcery, but because the sheer density of the souls gathered here was so incredibly massive, the martial masters gathered here could see the souls, albeit not as clearly as Il-mok.
Completely awestruck by the sheer wonder of that profound sight, the supreme masters who had been wrestling the Heavenly Blood Jiangshi entirely forgot about the battle as they stared blankly up into the sky.