by Jeremy Bai
He snapped his sheathed Wind Saber out in front of him, sending a stream of bluish wind energy spiraling toward Lin Cuirou at incredible speed.
However, Lin Cuirou was a profound master, just the same as Sunan, and he had been planning this ambush for a very long time. He had even visualized how the fight between him and Sunan would play out. Although Sunan had been gone for many years, and no one in the empire was aware of what techniques he might have invented during that time, Lin Cuirou had extensive combat experience, and he was confident in being able to handle anything Sunan threw at him.
There was no time to dodge or leap to the side, so instead, Lin Cuirou reached out with the four fingers of his right hand curved like hooks.
“Four Emptinesses of Death!” Lin Cuirou growled. Shockingly, his four fingers pierced into the blue wind energy, stopping its motion. Lin Cuirou’s entire arm began to tremble violently, sweat popped out on his forehead, and his eyes turned completely bloodshot.
However, to the shock of Sunan, the wind energy simply faded away into nothing. Shaking his hand out as if to loosen it, Lin Cuirou chuckled. “And now something special I’ve been working on just for you. The next version of my Glamorous Stomp. I still haven’t named it yet. Maybe I’ll go with Dragon Decapitation Steps!”
Before Sunan could do anything else, Lin Cuirou stomped his foot down, causing energy to surge up around him that was ten times more intense than the energy from his third step before. Then he took two more steps forward, and the energy continued to build, filling the entire chamber with blinding light, causing everything in the area to vibrate on the point of collapse.
When his foot stomped onto the floor after having taken his third step, an arm-thick streak of light shot toward Sunan across the floor.
“Blink of the Dragon,” Sunan murmured, closing his eyes. In the instant that his eyelids closed, he completely vanished. The arm-thick streak of light shot past the point where he had just been standing, slamming into the rear wall of the chamber, causing an enormous blast that sent shattered stone and clumps of soil showering out in all directions. Even many of the stones that formed the roof of the chamber fell to the ground.
A moment later, Sunan opened his eyes, reappearing in the same spot as before.
Lin Cuirou gritted his teeth. “Dammit, you’re really making things hard, aren’t you? Fine. No more holding back.”
Hands blurring, Lin Cuirou produced two objects, one being a small jade vial, the other being a metal sphere. In one smooth motion, he popped open the jade vial, then launched the sphere into the air, sending it speeding toward Sunan.
Sunan, couldn’t see anything particularly incredible about the attack with the metal sphere, so he simply swept his Wind Saber out to deflect the sphere. However, when the surface of the scabbard made contact with the sphere, a clicking sound rang out, and the sphere popped open, releasing a cloud of powder into Sunan’s face.
As Sunan leapt backward, coughing, Lin Cuirou chuckled and said, “And now my reward!”
Laughing loudly, he said, “You’re dead for sure now, Sunan. That poison will kill you within a day no matter what you do! Therefore, according to my agreement with the King of the Pure Ones, I am free to drink this potion!”
Lifting the jade vial up to his lips, he drank the contents and then tossed the vial off to the side. A moment later, a tremor passed through him, and a faint green light began to shine out of his eyes. “But waiting that long would be a real shame. I think I’ll rip your head off your shoulders first!”
Shaking visibly, Lin Cuirou began to laugh, softy at first, but then louder and louder until it turned into maniacal raving. “I can feel the power erupting inside of me! You’re dead, Sunan. Dead!”
Sunan gripped his sheathed Wind Saber in a ready position as he watched Lin Cuirou twitching. Shockingly, the green light began to shine from Lin Cuirou’s veins, many of which were bulging out of his skin. His hands were clenched into fists, and his muscles were taut. Next, to Sunan’s shock, Lin Cuirou began to grow larger and taller, until he ripped through his upper garments. Then he threw his head back and roared, whereupon green flames erupted from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. As the flames swirled about, his hair caught fire, melting it into nothing but ash.
Lin Cuirou’s laughter had ceased.
“This power,” he said through grated teeth. “It’s too much. I can’t… It’s killing… me… Damn you, Demon Emperor.”
Closing his eyes, he pressed his palms together in front of his chest and took a deep breath, apparently attempting to slip into a meditative trance.
Meanwhile, the green light had spread beyond his veins. His skin was now glowing, so brightly that Sunan had to avert his eyes. A sound filled the air like the roar of countless beasts and demons, increasing to such volume that Sunan clamped his hands over his ears.
A long moment passed, although Sunan wasn’t sure how long it was exactly. On the one hand, it seemed like the blink of an eye, but on the other, it seemed like an eternity. Eventually the light and the sound faded, and Sunan opened his eyes.
The sight which met his eyes caused his jaw to drop. Right there in the spot where Lin Cuirou had been standing was what appeared to be a slab of semi-translucent jade, with Lin Cuirou seemingly trapped in the middle of it. He had been transformed into something not human anymore, as if he were part of the jade itself. He looked almost like a statue, except that his eyes were open and appeared to be staring directly at Sunan.
His hands were held in front of his chest, palm to palm, just like they had been moments before.
In the eerie quiet that filled the area, Sunan took a tentative step forward, then another, until he was in front of the jade slab. As he did, Lin Cuirou’s eyes seemed to follow him, even though they didn’t move. Finally, Sunan reached out and touched the jade, to find that it was as cold as ice. After a moment, he shook his head and sighed.
“What have you done to yourself, Lin Cuirou?” he thought. “Are you still alive in there?”
Considering the size of the slab of emeraldlike jade, there was no way Sunan could move it on his own. Resolving to come back later for it if possible, Sunan quickly sat down cross-legged and cast his senses inward to check his blood vessels for traces of poison. At the moment, he couldn’t find a single trace of anything out of the ordinary.
“Was it a bluff?” he thought. After a few minutes passed, he rose to his feet. Shaking his head, he began to make his way back to the main courtyard.
***
With Bao’s Phoenix Crown, and the fact that Dragon-Phoenix Sect vastly outnumbered the soldiers in the prison fortress, they met no serious resistance.
By the time Sunan made it back up to the ground level, the evacuation had already begun. Families were being reunited, but there was no time for extended reunions. Everyone began to file down to the beaches below, where they formed back up into ranks according to the divisions of the sect. It was a large group, nearly twenty thousand in total, so the entire process took quite some time.
No one saw even the shadow of Bone General Geng or any other high-level Bone Slicers. As for the news regarding Lin Cuirou, Sunan told Bao, Mao Yun, and Li Runfa, who all agreed that now was not the time to reveal the information to the sect as a whole. They simply said that he had fallen in a cowardly attack by a Bone Slicer.
It was late in the afternoon before all of the imprisoned friends and family members were freed and the prison was emptied. The Dragon-Phoenix Sect and the other miscellaneous martial artists made a huge conglomeration of people that stretched from the area where the land sloped up steeply toward the prison, all the way to the sand of the beach.
When the task was accomplished, Sunan and Bao, as well as the other leaders of the sect, prepared to march south according to the plans they had made back in the salt mines.
The two divisions would split, one going up the Southern Fei River with the intention of reoccupying the palace on Zun Shan, and the other would go to infiltrate Xu
anlu. Only two of the boats in the nearby shipyard were complete, so a smaller group would use them to sail down to the Zun River, then up it toward Zhe Valley and the Scorpion Villa.
As the sect leaders were conferring about the final details, Wang Tian suddenly interrupted, “Dragon Sovereign. Phoenix Sovereign. Look!”
Everyone turned to find that two people were walking up the beach toward them, some distance away.
***
High atop the mountain above Heart’s Ridge, Hui stood on a ledge, looking down at the sprawling group of people that was the Dragon-Phoenix Sect.
“The time has come,” she murmured. Raising the Kun-Peng Pipes to her lips, she took a breath.
Chapter 87: Kun-Peng
The two figures approached from the south, too small to make out clearly at first. However, as they drew closer, their features became clear.
The first one was none other than Geng Long.
He wore his Bone General armor and had something slung over his back in a sack.
Roughly a hundred meters to the west of him, and a bit farther back, was a tall, burly man with a long scar running down the side of his neck, also clad in bone armor, with a similar sack hanging over his shoulder.
As soon as Bao saw Geng Long, her heart began to thump, and she felt her rage beginning to burn. However, instead of the hot, uncontrollable rage from years ago that burned like wildfire, this rage was like a sea of lava, slow moving but destructive.
Bao immediately pulled out her Phoenix Crown and put it on her head.
“Geng Long,” she growled, then she took two steps forward.
Next to her, Sunan also stepped forward, his Wind Saber at the ready. Although nobody noticed it—not even Sunan himself—he was sweating more than usual, and he had begun to cough occasionally.
The other leaders of the Dragon-Phoenix Sect, as well as Sun Mai and Blackleaf, all stirred, some of them drawing weapons. Others simply got into ready stances.
When Geng Long was about fifty meters away, Bao raised her voice, imbuing it with some qi to make it boom like thunder.
“Do we really have to do this right now, Geng Long?”
Responding with his own qi-imbued voice, Geng Long said, “That’s Bone General Geng to you, bitch.”
His profanity and disrespect caused cries of anger to rise up from the Dragon-Phoenix Sect, and the air soon filled with the sounds of weapons being drawn.
“How dare you!”
“This bastard needs to die!”
“The Phoenix Sovereign killed two of the Demon Emperor’s generals already. It seems today is the day to kill a third!”
Geng Long subsequently flung the sack off his shoulder, sending it thumping into the sand in front of him. Whatever was inside the sack was relatively large, reaching all the way up to Geng Long’s waist. Reaching out, he untied the sack, allowing it to slip down to reveal a four-sided cauldron, greenish-colored and covered with carvings of demonic creatures.
The Bone Slicer a bit farther west followed suit.
“I was hoping to kill you myself, Bao,” Geng Long said. “But I suppose watching you get killed will have to do.”
“Come fight me one on one,” Bao replied. “We’ll see who kills who. The last two times we met, you ran away like the coward rat you are.”
Geng Long’s jaw twitched for a moment, but he didn’t respond directly. Instead, he reached into a pouch at his waist and pulled out a jade pendant, which he held out directly over the cauldron.
“It’s time to end this nonsense,” Geng Long said. “And ironically, the Dragon-Phoenix Sect will be brought to death… by dragons.” Chuckling, he crushed the jade pendant and dropped the pieces into the cauldron.
Immediately, rumbling sounds that seemed to come from another time and place filled the air. The ground began to vibrate beneath their feet. A moment later, black flames erupted from the cauldron, shooting dozens of meters up into the air as they radiated not heat, but intense cold.
Then a howl echoed out, hoarse and grating, seemingly filled with rage and sorrow and hatred.
A moment later, another howl echoed from the west, where the Bone Slicer had crushed a similar jade pendant and tossed it into the cauldron he had been carrying.
Before anyone could do anything, two more pillars of freezing black flame shot up far to the north, on the other side of the amassed Dragon-Phoenix Sect.
The howls erupting from within the cauldrons joined together in a vicious, angry harmony that caused the skin to crawl and the heart to tremble.
The ground continued to tremble harder and harder, until it was quaking with such intensity that it was difficult for some of the lower-level Dragon-Phoenix Sect fighters, as well as the ordinary family members, to keep on their feet.
Meanwhile, the four cauldrons were expanding, growing twice, three times, ten times larger than before.
Finally, a burst of cold air far more frigid than the previous coldness spread out in all directions as an enormous figure burst out of Geng Long’s cauldron.
It was like a huge snake, with long horns and cold eyes, as well as two viciously clawed talons. It was huge, fully one hundred meters long, with scales so black they glinted with violet light. Shockingly, much of the creature was in a state of decay, as if it had been dragged up from the grave. There were even bones visible on many parts of its body, and in some areas it was possible to look right through it to the other side.
As the creature shot out of the cauldron, it howled with rage, then flew through the air in a spiral before coming to a stop just above Geng Long.
Even as gasps of shock and cries of alarm could be heard from the Dragon-Phoenix Sect, another of the creatures shot up from the cauldron to the west, and then two more off in the distance, behind the sect.
“What are those things?” Sunan said faintly.
“If I’m not mistaken, they’re flood dragons,” Sun Mai replied. “Although, they have other names, depending on which texts you read. These ones appear to be reanimated corpses.”
“How do we fight them?” Bao said.
Sun Mai shook his head. “I don’t know.”
With that, Geng Long raised his arm above his head. “And now, let the slaughter beg—”
Before Geng Long could finish speaking, a piercing sound entered the ears of all present, boring into their ears and down into their minds. It was a long, resonant, vibrating call that resembled that of some winged creature of the heavens.
It was so loud, that many people clamped their hands over their ears and closed their eyes. Even Sunan and Bao winced, and Geng Long’s eyes flickered.
A moment later, the pitch of the sound rose, and then fell, then began to twist and spiral into what was clearly a song of some sort.
It was an ancient, melancholy song that was somehow tinged with righteousness and vigor.
Next, an enormous crashing sound rose up from the water out in the bay, causing everyone to turn their heads and see a huge plume of water surging up into the air, as if an enormous object had just dropped down into the water.
As eyes widened and jaws dropped, a shape bulged out of the water some distance from where the water was still spraying out in all directions.
Something emerged silently from the depths of the bay, a creature the size of a whale, or even larger. However, it was no whale, but a fish with bright blue scales and long fins.
The fish sailed through the air for a moment before splashing back down into the water, unleashing another eruption of water and sending huge waves rolling out across the bay.
Everyone stared in shock, and the fish again leapt up into the air. This time, its fins rippled and distorted as they spread out, growing larger and longer. Iridescent blue and yellow feathers began to sprout out from its scales. Its tail flapped back and forth, also growing larger and longer, transforming into what looked more like long feathers.
The fish’s mouth changed shape, becoming a hooked beak, above which were black shining eyes.
&
nbsp; As these transformations took place, the four flood dragons seemed to recoil, edging away from the direction of the water.
This time, the fish didn’t land back into the water. Its fins transformed into wings, its tail into tailfeathers, its dorsal fin into a feathered crest that ran from the top of its head all the way down its back.
Legs sprouted out, long, with viciously taloned claws that glinted in the evening light.
Just when the bird reached the apex of its leap from within the waters of the bay, it flapped its enormous wings, propelling it toward the beach at incredible speed.
“Kun-Peng, it’s you,” Sun Mai breathed.
As Kun-Peng flew across the bay, each flap of its wings caused waves to spread out on the surface of the water below. At one point, it let out a piercing cry that seemed to resonate with the deafening song that filled the air.
The flood dragons howled in fear and terror.
Although it wasn’t clear to anyone what exactly was happening, the Dragon-Phoenix Sect, and especially its leaders, could somehow sense that this huge bird bore them no ill intentions. Perhaps it was the way the flood dragons were edging backward, or just the aura of the enormous bird itself, but somehow they felt like bullied children, backed into the corner of an alley, only to have an adult suddenly appear to save them.
As Kun-Peng neared, its size became clearer—it was enormous. Its wingspan was fully twice the length of any of the flood dragons.
With each beat of its wings, it moved forward at incredible speed, and it was only moments away from the shore.
“Dammit,” Geng Long growled, “what the fuck is that thing?” Reaching into another belt pouch, he pulled out what appeared to be a hardened clump of clay, which he crushed in his fist. Green smoke began to rise up from the shattered remnants of the clay, which he then tossed into the cauldron in front of him.
In response, the cauldron shook visibly and began to emit intense humming sounds.
“Kill that bird!” Geng Long shouted.