The crimson smoke and clouds were still burning along the horizon. Liu Hanyan leaned back against the gnarled old tree root, clutching Yue Tingyun’s icy hand; his breathing was already extrely faint.
The deathly silence in the woods had been shattered by the blast of that signal arrow, yet it quickly sank into an even more suffocating state of waiting.
"Cough, cough... those running dogs of the Prince Mansion... move so damn slow..." Yue Tingyun forced his eyelids open, his voice as thin as a mosquito’s buzz, still not forgetting to sneer.
"Shut up! Save your strength!" Liu Hanyan hissed, but her ears stayed keenly attuned to any disturbance in the forest.
At that mont, a sound like dry leaves being lightly crushed ca from the dense fern thicket to their left. It wasn’t the wind, nor a beast. Every hair on Liu Hanyan’s body stood on end! She jerked her head up, only to see, from within that patch of shadow, a gaunt figure slowly erge.
It was Wu ng!
There was no expression at all on his face; in those cloudy eyeballs, there was only the indifference reserved for a corpse. He didn’t even look at Liu Hanyan—his gaze locked directly onto the barely-breathing Yue Tingyun.
His withered right hand slowly lifted, purple-black miasma coiling around his fingertips. Soundless, like a ghost co to claim a life, he stepped out of the ferns in one stride, his target clear, reaching straight for the Heavenly Spirit Cover atop Yue Tingyun’s head.
Now that his tracks were exposed, he would completely end this trouble and erase the last traces.
Liu Hanyan’s eyes nearly split; without even thinking, she was about to throw herself forward to shield Yue Tingyun.
Yet fast as she was, Wu ng was faster; that withered claw was already upon them.
Chi.
A sound extrely faint yet razor sharp, like cloth being sliced open in an instant by a keen blade, tore through the congealed air without the slightest warning.
It didn’t co from outside the forest, nor from the sky, but seed to erupt from the very void between Wu ng and Yue Tingyun.
A beam of deathly white Sword light, condensed to the extre, slashed out like cold lightning ripping through the night, like a startling arc from beyond the heavens—there for a blink, then gone.
"Urgh—ah!" Wu ng let out a short, shrill scream. That claw-like right hand, along with half his forearm, was neatly severed by that strand of Sword light. The cut surface was smooth as a mirror, and no blood spurted out right away—threads of Sword Qi, like little snakes, scrambled inward, churning within the wound.
He hadn’t even seen where the Sword ca from, nor who had struck. In an instant, his mind held only one thought: run! Flee, no matter the cost!
Wu ng was indeed an old demon with years of experience; his survival instinct crushed everything else. He forced himself to endure the agony of his severed arm; his left hand tapped several points at the stump to staunch the bleeding, while his body flew backward like a torn sack hit by a heavy hamr, crashing through several shrubs, then bolting without hesitation toward the deepest, darkest part of the dense forest.
Liu Hanyan was completely stunned. She stared at the severed hand on the ground, then at the direction where Wu ng had vanished, as if she had just woken from a bizarre and grotesque nightmare.
......
Deep in the dense forest, in a hidden nook wrapped by the aerial roots of a huge banyan tree.
Wu ng leaned against the clammy tree trunk, panting heavily. The agony from his severed arm and the blood loss made his vision go black in waves.
That Sword... the Prince Mansion! It had to be an expert from the Prince Mansion!
"Fourth Rank—at least Fourth Rank..."
The elders of the Demon Sect were mostly at the Sixth Rank; only the outstanding few could touch the Fifth Rank, and Wu ng had once brushed against that bottleneck. But ever since he betrayed the Sect and fled, his realm had been stagnant.
Precisely because he had touched that bottleneck, he knew all the better that the gap between Fifth and Sixth Rank was already like a chasm, while between Fourth and Sixth Rank was a divide between heaven and earth.
A trace of despair flashed across Wu ng’s eyes, finally hardening into mad resolve.
Fortunately, he wasn’t a pure Martial Artist, but a mber of the Ming’an Divine Sect, and at this mont he still had one path left—the Fujie Summoning Spirit Secret Technique.
He suddenly bit through the tip of his tongue; the stabbing pain snapped his mind to attention. Trembling, he used his remaining left hand, dipped it in the black-red blood seeping from his severed arm—blood mixed with the force of his Poisonous Palm—and shakily drew an extrely complex talisman, its lines bearing a thick exotic flavor.
"Light and darkness spring from the sa source... life and death follow the sa path... with my essence blood, I offer to the Ming Venerable, to reach the heavens and touch the nether..."
His eyes quickly rolled back, turning white; wisps of white smoke rose from his Heavenly Spirit Cover, as if he were communicating with so existence.
Divination was a Secret Technique practiced by all ranks within the Ming’an Divine Sect.
Wu ng’s voice grew hoarse and broken as he spat out a few words:
"Summon... summon... summon spirit."
The next instant, the whites of his eyes turned back to black. Once his consciousness fully returned, he dared not waste even a breath. He again dipped into the blood of his severed arm and drew a series of interlocking Summoning talismans, circle within circle, nested together.
Wu ng gathered every shred of focus and intoned another chant: "Let the turbid breath slip the chains of the bones, wind upon wind, the clear soul is freed; of light, Fire, and water the three constants, of seven wheels and ten illuminations the joy, the Seal turns within the garden of the twin sons..."
As he reached the final line, a strange gleam flickered in his eyes, and he spat out the True Words, "Yan, Wa, Man, Xi, Di, He, Si, Xi."
The talismans on the ground flared to life—not with blinding light, but with a profound darkness. Two streams of Qi, one black and one white, utterly opposed yet bizarrely lded together, rose from the talismans like living things, coiling upward to form a vortex.
Wu ng held his breath and steadied his Qi, forcing himself to remain calm. Only now did he seal his acupoints to stop the bleeding. Staring at the vortex, the fear from before largely dissipated, replaced by a trace of peace and fanaticism.
Judging from its aura, in life it too was... Fourth Rank?
In the region of Gaoliang Mountain, there was actually a soul that had been a Fourth Rank expert in life!
Without Divination, even if he had died with his head and body parted, he would never have known that here of all places there lay a master who had been Fourth Rank in life, whose soul had not yet returned to the underworld. Wu ng’s face burned with feverish fervor, his excitent hard to conceal.
At the center of the vortex, a crack slowly split open. Thick Yin energy seeped out from within, and then a faint, translucent human figure slowly "floated" out of the vortex.
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