Chapter 309 – Escaping the Age of Turmoil, Comprehending the Blade Amid Mortal Dust - Part 2
Four months passed.
A young man with flowing black hair stood In a valley outside the black market ghost domain. He had White Serpent sheathed at his waist and gripped Azure Serpent in his hand.
The long blade’s azure edge hummed softly.
He picked up stones, lumps of iron, and bits of metal one by one and tossed them in the air. As they fell, he positioned the blade directly in their paths.
The stone, iron, and metal all parted like tofu, gliding off both sides without the faintest sound.
“Practice pays,” Li Yuan murmured, recalling how four months ago the cuts, though sharp, still lacked today’s silken ease.
May had already arrived in Cloudpeak Province.
The snows had melted, the peaks lush with green, and wildflowers blanketed the slopes. Animals emerged, nosing through the forest for food.
Li Yuan’s eye caught a mountain hyena loping between the trees. In a blink he was in front of it, blade drifting like water.
Startled, the hyena whirled and bolted the other way. But front or back made no difference; the blade was everywhere.
A heartbeat later, beast and blade slid past each other, and the hillside was spattered with crimson mist.
The hyena felt a sudden chill along its flanks. After sprinting a dozen meters, it saw—almost with a detached calm—its own head and spine shoot from the torso like a blood-red scorpion, flop onto the grass with a thud, then slither half a meter farther like a crimson snake. The limbless stump kept running a few more steps before crumpling, blood bursting outward in a grotesque tableau.