In Fenglong'ao, Han Youshan had already slashed twenty-seven times. Every single slash had been delivered with a leap into the air, executed in an exceedingly flashy, chaotic mess. Eleven of the slashes had been parried and deflected back, while six had been dodged.
From start to finish, Jiang Longchi hadn't corrected him once.
These twenty-seven slashes had been delivered without pause.
Because whether deflected or dodged, every time he landed, Han Youshan would instantly spot an opportunity to strike that was drop-dead gorgeous—perhaps even more gorgeous than his wife in her youth. These openings guided him to chain into the next strike each time, attacking again and again.
"Tsk, I could die of envy!" Zhao Heshan sighed faintly. In his left hand was a chicken leg, and in his right was half a cup of rice liquor. He lowered his head, raised the cup, and took a sip.
Although he knew this was a rare opportunity, Zhao Heshan didn't watch very intently. Because it was useless—just watching was of no use.
This training was infused with General Jiang's fundamental understanding and instinctive habits regarding source energy combat. The force, angle, and rhythm with which he parried every single blade bore the exquisite details and essence of a peak combatant... But these things, in the contact of blade against blade, had to be experienced and felt firsthand to slowly absorb even a sliver.
The general logic of this training was: I feed you moves, teaching you how to strike me down to every last detail. Even though you still won't be able to hit me in the end, it will be more than enough when you slash at others in the future.
Of course, Jiang Longchi might not have thought about it that way at all; he might simply have found it fun.
The twenty-eighth strike... Han Youshan landed and planted his feet, unable to go on, hunched over and panting heavily.
Although the ensuing opening to strike was still gorgeous and alluring, the source energy surge in his body could no longer keep up.
"How is it? Tired, huh?" Zhao Heshan called out as he looked up. Suddenly, his gaze froze. He blinked and leaned back slowly.
His brow furrowed and then smoothed out, Captain Zhao's expression turning into one of utter confusion and incomprehension.
He didn't even stand up.
"Can't do it. The surge broke for a second, and now when I try to muster it again, no strike feels right anymore." After Han Youshan finished speaking, he coughed twice and turned back to look at Jiang Longchi.
The old monk hadn't moved his feet once.
"How about you take a swing at me instead?" Curiosity piqued, Han Youshan ventured to ask.
Jiang Longchi looked at him. After two seconds, he said, "Fine."
The moment the words left his mouth, the old monk moved. His monastic robes billowed with a whoosh, sand and gravel flew from the ground, and he charged at Han Youshan like a flash of lightning.
This! Looking at the source energy intensity of this strike, this speed, and this posture...
*I'm done for!* In his panic, Han Youshan wanted to dodge, only to find he didn't even have a chance to evade. *Disaster! I forgot to remind the old man how terrible I am!*
Jiang Longchi's strike belonged to an entirely different tier of combat. There was no way Han Youshan could parry it.
Nor did he have time to speak.
It was too fast. Jiang Longchi's figure arrived in an instant. Roughly five or six meters in front of him, the old monk suddenly leaped into the air, and with a roaring rush of wind, the long blade came cleaving down...
*Schwing!*
...
The men from Pure White Purgatory had looped around from the other side of the mountain. They were confident they could easily cut down the stationed Azure squad and the few Stream Vanguard members remaining in the village, but they feared making too much noise would give Han Youshan and his wife a chance to flee.
So they chose not to act rashly, creeping forward instead until they were spotted or reached an ideal distance before launching a direct assault.
In truth, Zhao Heshan had faintly sensed people over here just now, and the guard squad members on hidden sentry duty had also reported the enemy presence over the communicator.
Yet neither Zhao Heshan nor his squad members made any move, feeling only a brief tension. In a daze, they found the whole situation utterly bizarre; aside from watching, they had no idea what they should do.
"Do they need help?" the squad members asked over the communicator.
"Well, probably not. Gather around to watch, and pick up a first-class merit while you're at it," Zhao Heshan replied.
And so, Pure White Purgatory's men smoothly approached. Due to the mountain slope's angle, the first thing that came into their view was the side of Han Youshan's back.
Naturally, they could recognize that this was Han Qingyu's father.
A two-hundred-man lineup, including three top-tier combatants, one of whom was a peak top-tier. To boost morale, that peak top-tier was the first to burst forth...
He wanted to decapitate Han Youshan with a single strike, kicking off the massacre.
Charging forward and leaping into the air, he swung his blade.
Abruptly, a bald old monk swung right back at him.
*Schwing!*
That peak top-tier from Pure White Purgatory was dead.
Cut down and killed with a single slash by an old monk.
"What is going on?" Up until 0.1 seconds before his death, and even during the lingering traces of consciousness afterward, he was still bewildered and utterly blank.
And behind him, the other two hundred men were equally dumbfounded.
...When the sound of a blade slicing into flesh rang out, followed by the patter of blood splashing onto the ground, Han Youshan turned around blankly.
Jiang Longchi had already landed, blade in hand.
Before him lay a fresh corpse that had just hit the ground, blood still gushing.
And less than a hundred and fifty meters away stood some two hundred men, frozen like wooden chickens.
*Gulp!* Han Youshan's legs went weak, his throat turned dry as dust, and he nearly fainted... But he forced himself to hold on. *I am Major Qing's father!*
Jiang Longchi slowly turned to look at him. He pointed his blade up into the air, then at the corpse. "See that? When facing someone you can't beat, don't go jumping around recklessly, understand? Otherwise, you die."
This was the first time he had corrected Han Youshan's mistakes, and the first time he offered verbal guidance... No, guidance through reality.
"Yeah... I understand." Han Youshan looked dazed, but gave a forceful nod.
By the time he looked up again, Jiang Longchi had already turned around. Raising his blade toward them, the monk asked, "So will you kill... accompany me in delivering their souls to the beyond? Or will you stand here and watch me deliver them?"
The two hundred men opposite: "..."
Han Youshan: "..."
Major Qing's father looked down at the blade in his hands, looked at the corpse on the ground and the spurting blood, and then looked at the crowd opposite... A fierce mental conflict raged within him, but he kept his mouth shut.
Aside from being Major Qing's father, Han Youshan was ultimately just an ordinary mountain villager.
Naturally, he wasn't stupid. He knew these people were here to kill him, and in all likelihood, they were his son's enemies.
And so, the clearing fell into an eerie silence.
"Who? Who is he?!" Utter terror and suffocating pressure drove another top-tier from Pure White Purgatory to finally break down, roaring out recklessly.
Because judging from that single slash just now, this monk was clearly no ordinary super.
There were not many such people in the entire world.
He tried to guess, tried to think, but his mind was in chaos, unable to pull up a single clue.
"..." *Right, who am I?* That question puzzled Jiang Longchi for a moment. He glanced over at Zhao Heshan, thinking to himself that this fellow seemed to know who he was.
Zhao Heshan stood up, his source energy surging. "Form ranks!"
At both sides of the mountain pass, all members of the Azure guard squad stood up in full combat gear.
"Well, you won't be getting away anyway... His name is Jiang Longchi. Azure Huaxia Front, Sole Witness Legion, General Jiang Longchi." Zhao Heshan paused, his gaze sweeping across them before he continued, "If your knowledge is truly so limited... he was once one of the Twin War Gods of the Huaxia Front, a peak human super."
In truth, the latter half of Zhao Heshan's statement had only one meaning: in the history of the Huaxia Front, he was once second only to one man.
Of course, he had high emotional intelligence and wouldn't say that in front of the old man. Especially when the old man himself was learning of it "for the first time," and that very fact had been what he resented most back in the day.
That extra sentence turned out to be superfluous.
Because among the two hundred men of Pure White Purgatory, not all were completely ignorant. In the stories circulating through the source energy world, there had always been a famous legend regarding Jiang Longchi:
Over thirty years ago, Chen Buer and Jiang Longchi walked the ice plains together—just the two of them—and attacked Snow Lotus headquarters.
In that battle, Chen Buer preserved his strength to face Ne and never made a move. It was Jiang Longchi alone, with a single blade, who carved through eight hundred li of ice plains, fighting his way all the way to Ne's face, and even wounded him.
After that battle, Snow Lotus's headquarters was relocated and rebuilt, and it never again existed openly—not even an approximate region was ever disclosed again.
"Run!" The battle formation of Pure White Purgatory, its morale already flagging, completely lost its last shred of fighting spirit and delusion.
Accompanied by that roar filled with despair,
all two hundred men erupted with source energy and scattered in flight. Like a newly crushed ant nest, the battle formation ballooned, dispersing outward in every direction.
They knew they couldn't run together now; running together meant dying together. The directions they chose went everywhere.
*This way, at least some of us can survive, right? He's just one man, and they have so few.* Everyone thought the same, hoping they would be the lucky ones in the end.
Even in this situation, Zhao Heshan still didn't move, nor did he order the squad soldiers to intercept them.
"You underestimate a peak human super far too much," Captain Zhao muttered faintly under his breath.
At the same time: "Kill! Ah... fuck your mothers, take this!" The war cry and curses came from a single person.
Someone was charging.
Han Youshan was charging. Thinking along the same lines as the Pure White Purgatory men, he felt Master Longchi alone wasn't enough, and that the Azure squad had too few people. They would most likely all have to fight, and if that was the case, he couldn't just stand by.
*I'm Major Qing's father! I can't wimp out!*
Han Youshan threw caution to the wind.
And then—*BOOM!*
A blast of ferocious energy slammed down like a crash of muffled thunder, shaking the entire Fenglong'ao a few times in response.
Jiang Longchi had struck.
Before Pure White Purgatory's battle formation could fully expand, this peak human super—who had just learned who he was and would in all likelihood soon forget again—raised his blade and brought it slashing down.
When everything finally settled back into stillness...
In the entire area his blade had targeted, the mountain woods, vegetation, and clothes-drying racks had vanished completely. There were no rocks left on the ground, not even the tiniest pebbles—only a thick layer of ultrafine gray dust.
Han Youshan, who had just been charging all by himself, stopped in a daze, staring blankly at the scene before him.
There, a hundred men lay dead.
A hundred men knelt in surrender.
Chapter 755