Chapter 292 - 289: Eradicating the Weeds (2)
The Qiankun Ruyi Staff became a streak of black light. Countless afterimages from the Qiankun Qi Wandering Dragon Staff Technique swept toward Xie Jinglan.
"You’re courting death!"
Seeing his opponent attack directly without a word, Xie Jinglan roared in fury. The wild intent emanating from his longsword intensified, transforming into sword shadows that crashed like tidal waves as he met the charge.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The staff and sword clashed.
The very space around them seemed to momentarily collapse.
In their wake, grass, trees, and stumps were all pulverized into dust.
The sound of their blows echoed endlessly as the two exchanged furiously, matching speed for speed.
Xie Jinglan’s swordsmanship was ferocious and violent, each move a ruthless, all-out attack aimed at mutual destruction.
Chen Li’s staff technique was grand and majestic, with every strike executed to sublime perfection.
Their figures blurred as they flew through the air, Qi Strength erupting from them. The ground cracked and trees splintered in their path.
The longer Xie Jinglan fought, the more alarmed he grew. ’I’m only barely holding on thanks to my wild Sword Intent,’ he realized. ’My defeat is just a matter of time.’
Just then.
"Elder Xie!"
A portly figure in a brocade robe, moving like a rolling meatball yet with astonishing speed, shot over from the direction of the castle gate.
It was Feng Mengtong, the Celestial Sword Sect Elder who had been guarding the other exit.
Feng Mengtong saw Chen Li locked in a fierce battle with Xie Jinglan. Recalling the death of Mo Wenqiu and the long cry he had heard, he instantly understood what was happening. The customary smile vanished from his plump face, replaced by a grim expression brimming with killing intent.
Seeing his reinforcements, Xie Jinglan’s spirits soared. He forced Chen Li back half a step with two frenzied sword strikes and shouted, "Elder Feng, this fiend is the one who murdered Elder Mo! Let’s join forces and kill him now!"
"Right!"
Without hesitation, Feng Mengtong flipped his chubby hand, and a longsword appeared in his grasp. It looked ornate, but its blade was narrow and exceedingly sharp.
With a shift of his feet, he joined the fray. As he unleashed his swordsmanship, it flowed with a strange rhythm.
Xie Jinglan’s swordsmanship grew even more wild and violent, each strike imbued with the ultimate madness of one who scorns all creation and holds life and death in contempt.
The light from his blade was a torrential, maddening storm, blotting out the sky. Treacherous and vicious, every strike aimed for Chen Li’s vital points. It was a suicidal style of fighting, an attempt to overwhelm Chen Li with a frenzied assault.
Feng Mengtong’s swordsmanship, however, took a different path.
Though his frame seemed bloated, his footwork was nimble and uncanny. As the narrow sword in his hand danced, its flashing light carried a peculiar rhythm that seemed to stir the most primitive joy deep within a person’s heart.
This was no warm or pleasant joy, but an unnerving power that made one grow complacent and lose focus.
Wherever the sword’s light passed, it seemed to leave behind countless jeering, laughing phantoms that assaulted the Heart Spirit.
One sword was like a furious wave crashing on the shore; the other was like an undercurrent, silently eroding.
One overt, one covert; one hard, one soft. The two starkly different Sword Intents wove together into a net of death that descended upon Chen Li.
At the center of the storm, Chen Li remained as firm as a bedrock.
The Qiankun Ruyi Staff swept, jabbed, slammed, and smashed. Devoid of any flashy moves, its Dao-like simplicity allowed it to neutralize their killing blows in the nick of time, every time.
The three figures blurred across the battlefield, their Qi Strength tearing through the air and leaving a hundred-zhang radius of the surrounding ground in complete ruins.
Hearing the commotion, more and more Celestial Sword Disciples rushed over from the direction of Hidden Emperor Castle.
When they saw that their two Elders, fighting together, were still unable to gain the upper hand after so long, they were all horrified. They formed up but only watched from a distance, not daring to advance.
As the fierce battle raged on, Xie Jinglan’s anxiety mounted.
’Even with our combined strength, we can’t faze this mysterious masked man in the slightest. We can’t even suppress him.’
’If this drags on any longer, something is bound to go wrong.’
"We can’t drag this out!"
A ruthless glint flashed in Xie Jinglan’s eyes. He let out a long cry, "All disciples, on my command, form the Celestial Sword Array! Junior Brother Feng, keep him occupied!"
"Got it!"
Feng Mengtong reacted instantly. The joyful expression on his plump face vanished. With a flick of his narrow sword, the light from its blade erupted, and he pushed the mind-disrupting joy of his technique to its absolute limit as he furiously attacked Chen Li.
At the same time, he barked at the surrounding disciples, "Trap him!"
At the same time, more than a dozen Spirit Realm disciples formed an array. Their sword lights intertwined as they coordinated with Feng Mengtong, assailing Chen Li from all directions.
Facing this two-pronged assault on both his body and Divine Soul, a cold smirk played on Chen Li’s lips beneath his mask.
He made no move to block the incoming Spiritual Sense Attack. Instead, he deliberately lowered the defenses of his Divine Hall.
Meanwhile, the longstaff in his hands continued to spin like a wheel, deflecting every attack from Feng Mengtong and the disciples.
Xie Jinglan’s Divine Sense Illusion charged into Chen Li’s head unimpeded, storming the Divine Hall Acupoint.
However, the moment his Divine Sense Illusion entered Chen Li’s Divine Hall Acupoint, Xie Jinglan saw something that terrified him to his very soul.
There, in the center, floated an infant. It was only the size of a goose egg, yet it was incredibly solid, and its face was a perfect copy of Chen Li’s.
The infant’s eyes were shut, as if in a deep sleep.
But the instant Xie Jinglan’s illusion burst in, the infant’s eyes snapped open.
Those eyes held none of the innocence of a child, only an icy indifference that looked down on all existence.
A Divine Embryo!
’He’s... at the Divine Intent Pass!’
Xie Jinglan’s Divine Sense was instantly flooded with boundless terror.
In that moment, he finally understood.
’This man isn’t at the Void Transformation Pass at all.’
’He’s a peerless Grandmaster who has reached the level of Divine Intent!’
’The seemingly evenly matched battle was nothing more than a cat toying with a mouse.’
’This man was hiding his strength from the very beginning! His goal... was to wipe us all out in one fell swoop?!’
"Run..."
Xie Jinglan subconsciously let out a despairing roar.
But with his Divine Sense trapped inside Chen Li’s Divine Hall Acupoint, sending a message back to his physical body was an impossible dream.
The goose-egg-sized Divine Embryo, facing a Divine Sense Illusion several times its height, simply lifted a tiny hand and threw a punch.
CRACK!
The instant it made contact with that tiny fist, the sword of light in the hand of Xie Jinglan’s Divine Sense Illusion shattered inch by inch like colored glass.
Immediately after, his entire Divine Sense Illusion began to distort violently and disintegrate.
"No...!"
Xie Jinglan let out one last, silent shriek, desperately trying to condense his essence into a speck of spiritual light and escape.
But the Divine Embryo’s tiny hand simply snatched at the air, firmly clenching the escaping speck of light before gently pinching it.
SQUELCH...
As if snuffing out a tiny spark, Xie Jinglan’s source Divine Sense was utterly annihilated.
「On the battlefield.」
Xie Jinglan’s body abruptly went rigid. The brilliant light in his eyes flickered out in an instant, like a candle in the wind, and he fell backward, stiff as a board.
The Sword Madman, Xie Jinglan, was dead!
"Elder Xie?"
Feng Mengtong, who was still furiously assaulting Chen Li’s physical body, saw this and his heart seized. A chill shot up from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
’Just now, his physical body was fighting me and the other Celestial Sword Disciples.’
’He charged into the Celestial Sword Array like a wolf among sheep, cutting down several disciples in a flash. His strength doesn’t seem to have weakened in the slightest.’
’Logically, even if his cultivation has reached the path of Divine Intent Fusion, his combat power should have been severely drained while his Divine Sense was engaged.’
’The worst possible outcome of his fight with Xie Jinglan should have been mutual destruction.’
’It should never have ended with the attacker being killed instantly.’
’Unless... his Divine Sense was so powerful that it held an absolute, crushing advantage over Elder Xie.’
’He hid his true strength!’
Feng Mengtong understood everything in an instant, and a tide of fear washed over him.
’Even Elder Xie was killed in an instant. The rest of us are just lambs for the slaughter.’
"Run! Scatter! Save whoever you can!"
Feng Mengtong roared.
He knew he had no chance of surviving this day. His only hope was to buy a sliver of a chance for his fellow disciples.
He frantically burned his Inner Qi, pushing his Joyful Sword Realm to its absolute limit. The strange joy in his technique was now tinged with a mad despair as he threw everything he had into holding Chen Li back.
’As long as even one disciple can escape and bring word of what happened here back to the Sect, it will all be worth it.’
"Trying to run now? It’s too late."
Chen Li sneered.
He stopped holding back and unleashed his full power.
VMMMM...!
A vast, majestic pressure from his domain washed over the area like a tidal wave.
The Qiankun Qi Wandering Dragon True Intent Domain.
The air within a radius of dozens of yards seemed to solidify.
Pure qi rose and turbid qi sank. Faint, Dragon-shaped Qi Strengths could be seen galloping and roaring within the domain.
Ever since he broke through to the Divine Intent Pass, his True Intent Domain had expanded more than tenfold.
Within the True Intent Domain, the air was as heavy as lead. A terrifying killing intent, like the wrath of heaven itself, descended upon their hearts.
Heaven’s Killing Intent!
Within the domain, countless condensed projections of Staff Intent materialized from thin air, raining down like a torrential storm upon the fleeing Celestial Sword Disciples.