by Gore, A. P.
A complex feeling touched Wei’s heart. Tiang Fu was a fierce opponent. However, it wasn’t his attack power that unsettled Wei. No, it was the calm expression on his face that made Wei’s heart palpitate. A calm opponent was always more dangerous than an angry one.
“How boring. Are you done probing?” Wei asked.
Ignoring Wei’s mocking expression, Tiang Fu attacked again. Wei had a perfect counter for his attack, and he used it at the last moment, avoiding any waste of endurance. Not that he had to worry about it. Although his body cultivation was locked, he still had increased endurance and body strength because of his body cultivation.
One more attack came, and Wei countered it as easily as taking a breath.
A few more attacks came, and Wei thought he should change the pattern and attack himself, but when he was about to change his stance, a deep sensation emerged inside his heart. It was his will of fighting, and the more he fought, the more it grew. Although all he was doing was passively defending, it still aroused that will of fighting greatly. And the more will of fighting he accumulated, the closer he felt to his Physical Root. The fighting stimulated his Physical Root, even sealed.
Strange, but true.
Tiang Fu and Wei clashed again and again. In a few breaths’ time, they had clashed hundreds of times already, each attack faster and fiercer than the previous. But none could penetrate Wei’s defense. He stood there as unmovable as a mountain. Standing in one position, he’d blocked all. A weird thought came to his mind: if he could stand here and block ten thousand attacks, he might gain something precious. As the time passed, his eyelids became heavy, but his divine sense remained sharp, and he blocked without looking at the attack.
Once again, that strange feeling grasped his heart, but no matter what, he couldn’t grab it. If only this battle continued for ten thousand more attacks, he might just grasp it.
Tiang Fu stopped abruptly.
“Are you done building momentum for your ultimate skill?” Wei asked, unable to hide the disappointment in his voice.
Darkness flashed in Tiang Fu’s clear eyes before vanishing as if it had never existed. “No wonder you were so calm from the start,” he said calmly. “Take my next attack. Thousand Momentum Sword.”
Wei frowned. This was a troublesome martial skill, and he regretted letting Tiang Fu build up his momentum. If he hadn’t tried to grasp that strange feeling, he might not have to face this tyrannical move. But it had never crossed his mind that this bastard would have learned something as strong as the Thousand Momentum Sword.
The air surrounding Tiang Fu’s sword changed; it started giving off an intense pressure. All the momentum that had built up in the last thousand attacks slowly condensed in a black aura, and it even made the sword turn black. It must have been a treasure sword; a normal sword would have crumbled under that intense pressure.
A stone settled on Wei’s heart. The next clash was important.
Tiang Fu’s sword turned darker as time passed, and a small crack appeared on the blade. After this attack, it would perish. It was the sword’s last-ditch effect to help its master. Although a last-ditch effect, that sword was like a dragon among giants. Looking at it made one feel like the world had stopped. Even the spectators watching from far away forgot to breathe. With Wei’s divine sense spread around him, nothing went unnoticed.
Wei sneered. “Even after building up momentum for so long, this is all you’ve got? How stupid.” The tiny crack in the sword had wasted half of its power instantly, but Wei wouldn’t underestimate it. Lifting his sword above his head, he pushed as much pure qi into his arms as he could. Although there was no use putting pure qi into the attack, it helped his body withstand the backlash. After he’d superimposed the first five moves of his One Sword Strike, he’d found relying on the physical body’s power was taxing, so he’d begun strengthening his hands using his qi, and his integration had improved.
Wei’s face stiffened and his divine sense focused on one thing: Tiang Fu’s sword. He had to face a strong attack with a stronger attack.
“One Sword Strike.”
Power surged through his arms and into sword as he superimposed the first six stances in the attack, and he suddenly had an epiphany. He may have figured out how to superimpose the next move into the attack. It was a hunch, but he didn’t have time to work through it. So, he only superimposed the first six moves and attacked. When his sword attacked, it tore through the dark world built by Tiang Fu’s Hundred Momentum Sword and struck like a primordial elephant clashing with a dragon. Both were overlords of their eras and held power unshakable by the heavens.
When their swords clashed, a hundred-foot area from the point of attack turned upside down. Cracks spread on the supposedly unbreakable martial stage, and even a small pit appeared where Wei and Tiang Fu stood.
The air cracked at the point of impact, and Tiang Fu and Wei were sent flying back. Their attacks canceled one another out.
“What a tyrannical attack,” someone shouted from far away. “It even broke the martial stage. My clan’s old patriarch once said that stage could bear an attack from a peak Bone Baptization Realm cultivator, and here these guys broke it with much less power. How is that possible?”
“What nonsense are you talking about? That was a Thousand Momentum Sword attack. As per my patriarch, it reaches beyond the Bone Baptization Realm’s peak attack powers. Those two are real monsters,” another person replied.
Getting to his feet, Wei coughed and spat a mouthful of blood, his hair scattered over his face. Pulling a headband from his storage ring, he tied it back neatly. That strike had expended one quarter of the pure qi from his body. It wasn’t normal qi, but what he’d gotten after using the Essence Burning Art, the forbidden technique he had used to break through. Surprisingly, he had broken through with his pure qi instead of wood qi and it had expanded his original qi path, Refinement Realm qi path once again. Maybe it was because his foundation was pure qi.
Either way, he didn’t worry about it. Instead, he tapped on the metal token hanging on his chest. It continuously converted essence energy into pure qi. Although the resulting amount was minimal, every tiny bit counted.
“Li Wei.” Tiang Fu jumped to his feet, appearing unharmed, but his sword had crumbled under the pressure. “I underestimated you. But this time I won’t hold back.” He pulled a translucent red pill out and gulped it down.
Wei’s face hardened. It was a Blood Advancing Pill, a high-tier Silver Grade pill used to increase cultivation in Bone Baptization Realm experts. It was a costly pill. The Destiny Mirror Sect must be filthy rich to allow a disciple to have such a rare pill.
He glanced at his grandfather, and he was holding his own against Wen Shang, so his worries lessened. “Come, fight with all you got,” he said stepping forward. “I’m not afraid of you.”
Chapter 91
Revealing Trump Cards
Tiang Fu suppressed the blood trying to gush out of his mouth. The last strike had instilled a bit of fear inside his mind. It had reached the peak of what he could do. It took him a moment to suppress the shaken organs inside his body, but he couldn’t show it on his face. He would look weak if he did that.
But this was inconceivable. How could trash from a wasteland dare hurt him? How could dare he go against the skill Tiang Fu had honed for so long?
Thousand Momentum Sword was a martial skill he had cultivated painstakingly. It was even more powerful than the Wood King’s Strike when unleashed with full strength, but it required one to gain momentum from a hundred attacks, and that took a long time. Then there was the fact that his sword couldn’t handle it and turned to dust after one use.
But when the trash grew arrogant and let him build up the momentum, Tiang Fu had thought he had a hundred percent chance of success. Even an early Marrow Cleansing Realm cultivator would be injured if he suffered that attack.
Unless the trash practiced a higher-grade martial skill. Did he practice a Gold Grade martial skill?
Impossible. Li Wei had attacked with a simple sword attack. It didn’t even look like a martial skill. Then how did Li Wei injure him, a prodigy of the Destiny Mirror Sect?
Once again, he felt blood rushing to his mouth, but he pushed it back so he wouldn’t lose face in front of the peasants watching them. If he had timed it well, he would have silenced them all.
“Li Wei, I underestimated you. But this time I won’t hold back.” Pulling a Blood Advancing Pill from his pouch, he gulped it down. This time, he was going all out. He had to kill Li Wei and capture his soul quickly, then get out of here. If imperial forces from the State of Zin came rushing in before he left, he might be in trouble.
“Wood King’s Strike.” He charged forward like a tiger and sent a sword image at Li Wei. The brown sword image traveled in the blink of an eye and clashed with Li Wei’s sword, forcing him back a few steps.
Tiang Fu flashed forward, utilizing his movement martial skill to the fullest. Before Li Wei could recover from his instability, Tiang Fu strike again, vertically chopping at Li Wei’s head.
Li Wei’s eyes flashed with a strange light. He twisted his legs and bent sideways to dodge the attack, and at the same time swung his sword horizontally, striking back at Tiang Fu.
Tiang Fu jumped backward to dodge the attack, uneasy. Suddenly he realized that for each of the thousand strikes he’d made, Li Wei had always defended at the very last moment. As if he’d predicted each strike.
How could one be so fast and guess all one’s opponent’s attacks? That left Tiang Fu bewildered. There was no way mere Foundation Realm trash who had cheated his way into the Bone Baptization Realm could move that fast. There must be so many treasures in this trash’s body that Tiang Fu wanted to tear him apart and look at them right away.
Tiang Fu snorted and threw a Body Sealing Talisman at Li Wei. This was a precious talisman he had obtained from a sect elder that doted on it, and it was a sure-shot method to incapacitate one’s opponent. Li Wei wouldn’t survive today, and all his treasures would fall in Tiang Fu’s hands.
Li Wei froze in place, his face turning grim. Even at a glance, he knew what that thing was. It was a Body Sealing Talisman, another precious item Tiang Fu pulled out of his pouch, making Wei envious. What kind of deep pockets did this bastard have? Or had he seduced his sect leader’s daughter?
But he had no moment to think about these useless things. The Body Sealing Talisman was about to hit him, and if he was struck by it, he would be sealed and then die by Tiang Fu’s hand.
There was no way he could avoid it.
Then again, maybe there was one option. Powering up could interrupt the sealing process. Although the Body Sealing Talisman was a formidable treasure, it had a limitation. A strong energy fluctuation could stop it from working properly. And what could be a better energy fluctuation than increasing it?
“Primordial Blood Palace.”
A gush of blood qi rushed inside his body, rushing through his meridians and forcefully entering his dantian.
A strange pressure appeared around his body, and invisible chains wrapped around him, seizing any movement. It was as if someone had sucked his energy dry. He felt powerless. His body fell on the broken martial stage, and stones pricked into his flesh. The taste of defeat rushed through his mouth.
Tiang Fu chuckled and stepped backward. “Li Wei. Now you’re in my hands, and I’m going to cut your fingers off first. Then I’ll tear your soul from your body and then torture you for a hundred years. I won’t even let you reincarnate.”
Reincarnation. What a joke. Did this bastard think reincarnation was a good thing? Wei had gone through constant trials after reincarnating, so many ups and downs that he wondered if destiny had played with him by reincarnating him.
Well, he didn’t have time to explain things to Tiang Fu, so he focused on his dantian. Blood qi had already entered his dantian, invading his pure qi. As the two qis mixed, a strange thing happened. Part of the mixture of pure qi and blood qi rushed through his meridians like it had done before, and then his cultivation jumped by one layer. But he had the feeling that his body cultivation had improved a little too.
Any jump was better than nothing, and he felt the shackles set by the Body Sealing Talisman loosening as the blood qi dispersed through his body. His cultivation shot to layer two of the Bone Baptization Realm, and although it was fake cultivation and only increased his pure qi level, it still allowed him to get to his knees and launch a surprise attack. He stabbed his sword in Tiang Fu’s thigh.
Tiang Fu’s face went pale, and shock spread through his eyes before he wailed in pain. “Impossible. How did you . . .” He jumped back, avoiding Wei’s next attack.
“Damn.” Wei cursed. Despite breaking the Body Sealing Talisman, his body remained sluggish. The aftereffects of the talisman still lingered, and that made him miss his second attack.
Pushing his feet against the broken ground, Wei charged forward. He couldn’t give Tiang Fu any more chances. What if he pulled another talisman out of his pocket?
If that happened, Wei could only cry for being poor.
As he charged forward, he attacked with his One Sword Strike.
Tiang Fu had no chance of healing his wound, but he reacted faster than Wei expected. “Die!” His eyes grew bloodshot, and he counterattacked with his Wood King’s Strike. A brown sword image shot toward Wei, and dread filled him at the sight of it.
With but a glance, Wei knew Tiang Fu had reached closer to the peak of level one in his Wood King’s Strike. Wei couldn’t underestimate this attack, so he aborted his next attack and used another skill instead.
“Mad Elephant Stomp.” Wei stomped hard on the ground, using the mighty martial skill he had learned for fun. It wasn’t a powerful skill, but with his body’s power it had a tyrannical output power.
As his foot struck the broken martial stage, large cracks formed on the ground, spreading everywhere. The whole martial stage shook, and Tiang Fu shuddered, and his Wood King’s Strike missed the mark and flew past Wei’s shoulder.
Wei was waiting for this chance, so he attacked with all his might. “Tiang Fu, you’re not walking out of here alive. One Sword Strike.”
Chapter 92
Violent Energy Absorbing Array
Tiang Fu’s face grew deathly pale, and blood leaked from his thigh like a river bursting through a stone dam. This was the worst insult of his life, and he couldn’t do anything. He was locked in place, and the trash he’d considered beneath him was attacking him with full strength.
As the humming sword descended on him, his soul shuddered. He couldn’t hold back anymore.
Power gushed out of his bones, and he raised his sword with all his might. He was finally using his real strength as a layer eight Bone Baptization Realm cultivation.
Their swords clashed, and Tiang Fu’s hand shuddered in pain. Li Wei’s attack had almost crushed the bones in his hands.
“You motherfucker.” Power erupted from his bones, and this time he poured everything he had into his sword. Red light shone behind his head, taking the shape of a red bone, forming a channel with heaven and earth’s essence energy to suck everything from the surroundings. It was a special phenomenon called Bone Manifestation that one could conjure after reaching the Bone Baptization Realm. The more bones one baptized with their qi, the stronger their manifestation would be. In troubled times it would aid one to absorb essence energy and enhance their qi to battle. But people rarely conjured their manifestation, as it drew power from one’s bones and exposing them to the world’s essence energy. Although doing this increased one’s qi exponentially, it also exposed their purest energy to the contamination of the outside world, and it could take one day to months to purge the contamination. The more one used the phenomenon, the more their cultivation would be delayed.
But he had no other option. A fake layer two Bone Baptization Realm cultivator was pushing him down, and his pride wouldn’t allow him to hold back anymore.
“I was waiting for this.” Li Wei sneered, and his sword shone with a strange light. A strange array was activated, and it felt like it was absorbing his energy out of his own sword. The qi in his dantian was vanishing rapidly, and his manifestation cried out in pain.
Tiang Fu leaped backward. “Motherfucker, what kind of devilous array is that?” He panted heavily. Retreating in the middle of his attack had cost him an internal injury in his right hand. Holding his right hand with his left, he glared at Li Wei who smiled like a devil. No, he was a devil.
“Did you like my gift?”
Tiang Fu suddenly realized his manifestation had vanished from behind his head, and he didn’t feel any new energy rushing into his dantian. “You bastard, what did you do with my manifestation?” When he tried to summon his manifestation again, only a thin red light came out. It was as pale as a person with all their blood sucked out. No, it was paler. “Fuck you, motherfucker.” A thick layer of sweat formed on his forehead. Somehow this trash had damaged his manifestation, and he would need to spend an immense amount of time to push out the impurities that had gathered. It would slow his cultivation for months.
This was a bitter shock to him.
“Did you like my present?” Li Wei chuckled, pointing his sword at Tiang Fu.
Tiang Fu’s blood boiled. He couldn’t take this insult anymore. He had to kill this guy. Pulling a small blood-colored pill from a jade box, he gulped it down. It was another precious pill he had received from his father in the secret organization, and it would restore his strength and heal all his injuries instantly, but it would make him weak for the next three months. There was always a trade off, and today he was ready to accept it as long as he could kill Li Wei.
Li Wei frowned. A deep frown this time. He felt like stomping his foot on the broken martial stage and running away like Fei’er used to do after his teasing. Once again, that bastard Tiang Fu had pulled another trump card. This time, it was a Blood Healing Golden Pill, a Gold Grade healing pill. What kind of fucking deep pockets did he have? How could he pull out trump cards one after another? He was like a protagonist from a novel loved by the author, pulling out a trump card every new page.