Chapter 243
“What's the big deal?!” a cultivator retorted. “At least they didn’t take our lives, did they?”
“Go to hell!” Yu Ling Zhenren clenched her fist, and the vast network of vines suddenly tightened.
Clang—!
A sword was drawn.
Silver light flashed and intertwined, and the vine net instantly shattered into pieces, the edges as smooth as a mirror.
A flicker of surprise crossed Yu Ling's eyes, but she quickly regained her composure.
The ancestor of the Sword Pavilion was not so easy to kill; that was only to be expected.
She formed hand seals with both hands, chanting incantations.
The air around them twisted, and the moonlight became hazy and disorienting.
“An illusion?” Chen Huai'an's voice was calm, like a still pond.
His cold, dark eyes scanned the surroundings, where the cityscape gradually blurred, replaced by an endless sea of vines.
The vines transformed into a massive python, flicking its tongue as it slithered through the waves, constantly changing direction, drawing closer to his position. Countless tendrils hung from the sky, while spikes erupted from the ground, suffocating the entire space with a dense mass of vegetation.
Yu Ling Zhenren stood atop the surging sea, her figure multiplying into hundreds, wielding a vine whip, her gaze icy.
“This
Before Yu Ling could finish her sentence, a glint of cold light flashed in Chen Huai'an's eyes.
“Just a bunch of flashy nonsense.”
He couldn’t see through the illusion of the Dongxu Sixth Realm, but it didn’t matter.
Even if it was a world of the Dongxu First Realm, so what?
With his mastery of Yin-Yang Sword Intent combined with the Qinglian Sword Classic of the Holy Sword Technique, he could shatter this illusion with his perfected Fifth Realm cultivation!
The phantoms of various sword cultivators merged with Chen Huai'an, ultimately freezing in a posture of drawing the sword.
“Casually sipping wine at Xianling, I draw my sword across my knee!”
As the words fell, the sword was drawn.
Before Yu Ling Zhenren could even see Chen Huai'an's movement, she felt the entire sky dim for a moment.
In the next second, a brilliant sword light erupted from the figure clad in dark robes.
The pale sword energy cut through the heavens and the earth, like a white streak drawn across the ink, and the illusion shattered in an instant.
All of Yu Ling Zhenren's avatars dissipated under this single strike.
Only her true self remained, standing in place, eyes filled with horror.
“How… how is this possible... with just one sword...”
In the blink of an eye, the dark-robed swordsman had closed in on her.
Yu Ling Zhenren immediately attempted to pull this ancestor of the Sword Pavilion into her small world—though it risked the collapse of her small world and damage to her foundation, it was still a trump card of the Dongxu realm. However, she found her body moving at a snail's pace; her once-proud spiritual energy could not keep up with her brain's reactions.
Even her life-saving treasures could not be activated, leaving her helplessly watching as the sword light approached.
No…
Perhaps it wasn’t that she was too slow to react.
It was that her opponent was just too fast.
An extreme speed.
Chen Huai'an twisted his wrist, the sword blade tracing an arc under the moonlight, aimed directly at Yu Ling Zhenren's brow.
“You… are going to die.”
The tip of the sword flashed with a cold gleam, lightly tapping Yu Ling Zhenren's forehead.
The necklace of magical artifacts around her neck flickered with a radiant light before shattering, and her spiritual shield, barely formed, was crushed to dust by the sword intent. A hundred meters behind her, the Zui Xian Tower exploded into pieces under the raging sword energy.
A straight sword scar cut from Yu Ling Zhenren's heel to the city gate.
Chen Huai'an sheathed his sword, and Yu Ling Zhenren fell to the ground, her eyes wide open in death.
Moonlight poured down like water, quietly illuminating the surroundings, as everyone stared in stunned silence at the figure in dark robes beneath the moon.
“Junior, Dan Bai, thank you for saving my life, senior!”
Dan Bai knelt, bowing deeply.
If it weren’t for this ancestor of the Sword Pavilion intervening today, she would have surely been captured by the Yaochi.
In that case, her mother would have been reduced to a mere tool for refining the Hunyuan补天丹 (Hunyuan Pill) in the Yaochi Sacred Land.
She might die, or she might be controlled, but she would have no chance to rescue her mother.
“You are Dan Bai?”
“Yes, junior is,” Dan Bai replied, lowering her head.
“This is my true self—” Chen Huai'an turned around,
Looking at the young girl, no more than twenty-eight years old, a kind smile appeared on his face.
“We are fated to meet!”
…
…
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Chapter 261: Divide and Conquer
In Dan Bai's heart, a true sword cultivator should be carefree, fierce, and aloof.
Just like the ancestor of the Sword Pavilion who had stood before her, shattering the illusion and taking Yu Ling's life with a single sword strike.
Not like the lecherous man before her now, groping Yu Ling Zhenren and Yu Quan Zhenren with a silly grin on his face.
Yu Quan Zhenren had a good figure and maintained the appearance of a woman in her twenties; as for Yu Ling, her old skin was sagging and lacked any tactile sensation—of course, Chen Huai'an's intention was not to take advantage of two corpses; he wasn’t that desperate. He was merely executing what a gamer does best and loves most—looting.
In a grand world ARPG, especially with NPCs and drops, anyone who could resist looting must have spent time in rehab.
“Damn it, two broke losers!”
Chen Huai'an's face darkened as he looked at the hundreds of spirit crystals, three rather mediocre spirit artifacts, and several pills he had just collected.
How could a dignified elder of a sacred land only have a few thousand spirit crystals, a couple of hundred spirit artifacts, and a handful of pills?
The Dongxu realm had cultivated for thousands of years; was this all they had to show for it?
They were worse off than the Sword Pavilion.
Dan Bai took a step back.
She thought she heard the ancestor of the Sword Pavilion cursing.
As a righteous cultivator, one should respect the bodies of the dead.
She wanted to remind him of that.
But thinking of Yu Ling Zhenren and Yu Quan Zhenren's characters, she ultimately swallowed her words.
“Senior Chen, once again, thank you for saving my life. I still need to find a way to rescue my mother. Once I’ve saved her, I will come back to repay your kindness!”
Dan Bai bowed gracefully, preparing to leave Jiang Chi City.
It wasn’t that she was ungrateful; it was just that she felt like a burden.
She didn’t have the audacity to stay by the ancestor of the Sword Pavilion’s side or ask for his help.
He had already saved her life; asking him to help save her mother would be overstepping.
Moreover, the enemy was the Yaochi Sacred Land, with its old monsters in the Ascension stage.
She didn’t want to involve her savior too much, lest she bring disaster upon him.
Just as she lifted her foot, a cold voice rang out behind her—“Wait!”
“Senior?” Dan Bai turned in confusion, only to see a large hand reaching out to grasp her shoulder.
“I told you, you and I are fated.”
Could she let a duck that was almost in her grasp fly away?
Chen Huai'an directly used his power to pull Dan Bai into the small world.
Chen Huai'an and Dan Bai vanished.
A crowd of mortals rushed forward, surrounding the bodies of Yu Ling and Yu Quan, rummaging through them.
“I heard… I heard that eating the flesh of an immortal can grant longevity. Is it okay if I take a piece?”
“Is this what immortals look like? Even after thousands of years, their skin is still so tight!”
“Quick, search if they have any good stuff on them!”
“I got an immortal's clothes! Haha…”
…
The surrounding loose cultivators exchanged glances, shivering in fear.
They had seen the ancestor of the Sword Pavilion looting corpses.
Anything valuable on Yu Quan and Yu Ling had surely been taken.
But they truly hadn’t expected these mortals to be so insane.
“The actions of the elders of the Yaochi Sacred Land are no different from those of demonic cultivators; they would slaughter an entire city of mortals just to force Dan Bai out. Now that Dan Bai has appeared, they still want to kill to silence her… Their current miserable state, being dismembered by mortals, is truly a case of reaping what they sow.”
“Hey? Do you think what the disciple of the Sword Pavilion said in the Zhongzhou Secret Realm was true? That the elite disciples of the sect actually died at the hands of the Sacred Land?”
“Gasp—!” The crowd fell silent again.
Before this incident, they had always thought of the Sacred Land as just that—a sacred place, where the people acted justly and honorably, a benchmark for all cultivators in the Cangyun Realm.
But today’s events had completely overturned their views on the Yaochi Sacred Land.
Those two elders were arrogant and sinister.
They bore no resemblance to righteous cultivators at all.
In contrast, the ancestor of the Sword Pavilion seemed more like a righteous cultivator.
…Except when it came to looting corpses.
“No matter whether it’s true or not, this is not something we loose cultivators should discuss.”
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