—What the fuck was wrong with this world? Even when it came to eating people, did they really have to feel superior just by comparing who was less rotten?!
Taking a deep breath, An Jing felt a fury rising from the very depths of his heart... alongside a wave of heat surging within him. "If you didn't eat people, if you just wanted to rebel, I definitely would have joined you...
"I would have joined you without hesitation to turn heaven and earth upside down, overthrow this dynasty, and forge a new world!
"But now, between two man-eating dragons, I refuse to choose either!"
In truth, An Jing's original plan had never really been to "escape."
Even with the Sword Spirit and another world to explore, An Jing had never truly intended to abandon Suspended Fate Manor or the Demon Sect.
His strength, his Destiny Pattern, his divine abilities—all of them were bargaining chips.
Just as Manor Lord Yao had said, An Jing and Manor Lord Yao shared an unspoken understanding. Manor Lord Yao would indulge An Jing's antics, and in the end, An Jing would choose to join the Demon Sect in exchange for the lives of everyone—including the children who were imprisoned in cages and had not yet died.
All the Children of Calamity of this batch were meant to be An Jing's inner circle, his personal retinue. That was the true meaning of being the champion.
Since An Jing was such a peerless genius, he had the right and freedom to be willful, to rage, and to vent his fury. He had the right to dictate who would be eaten and who would not!
To slaughter on heaven's behalf, to hold the power of life and death—that authority was An Jing's true reward!
Perhaps in the past, many genius Destiny Bearers just like An Jing had made the exact same choice. After venting their rage, fear, sorrow, and bewilderment, and after seeing through the true nature of this world, they had ultimately chosen to accept that power, becoming members of the Tianyi Divine Sect and rising into its upper echelons.
In fact, it could even be said that if the Demon Sect had told An Jing and the other children in advance that the vast majority of those eliminated would die, that they would become the power propelling the survivors forward, companions aiding their march toward greater heights... if they had merely reframed it from another perspective, embellishing death, turning passive slaughter into self-sacrifice, and turning the Great Medicine into a hopeful contribution...
Would he still have rejected the Tianyi Sect?
Such blatant, grand-scale cannibalism... if only it were beautified a little more...
He shook his head. He would dwell on it no further.
Here and now.
An Jing did not refute Bai Qinghan, nor did he care to argue with Manor Lord Yao. "I have no desire to argue with either of you. Words without action are meaningless."
Amidst Manor Lord Yao's startled, ecstatic cry—"You've mastered a divine ability as well?!"—and Bai Qinghan's slightly wavering gaze, An Jing closed his eyes.
He remembered the stewed meat in the refugee camp. He remembered the medicine vats of Suspended Fate Manor. He remembered the corpses scattered across the ice and snow of the Northern Frontier. He remembered the skulls floating in the medicinal sludge, the empty husks suspended in the dungeon.
—Must this world truly be like this?
He ground his teeth, wrath flaring violently within him.
It was not merely anger directed at the Demon Sect, but fury at the past that had created this present, fury at everything that had brought about this day.
—I will never accept this!
When he opened his eyes once more, An Jing's gaze was pitch-black and somber. Only in the center of his pupils did threads of gold and crimson glow, like dying embers in a hearth, flickering with faint sparks amidst the dark.
He reached out, curling his fingers in the empty air. Crimson light surged from the meridians of his arm, coalescing rapidly.
An Jing grasped the void, and in his previously empty right hand, a sword appeared once again!
A fiend sword with blood fiend as its blade and metal fiend as its spine!
—Coalescing fiend into form, condensing qi into a weapon!
"Now."
Gripping the crimson fiend sword tightly in hand, An Jing sighed no more, hesitating not in the slightest.
His eyes held only the purest killing intent and wrath. "I will let my sword do the talking."
An Jing moved.
Paying no heed to Bai Qinghan, he pounced like a ravenous tiger, lunging straight at Manor Lord Yao. In the very instant of his leap, his sword hand twisted inward at the wrist, executing Armor-Penetrating True Jin to thrust straight forward.
Wherever the crimson sword tip passed, the air was pierced with a howling shriek. Such momentum made it seem less like a sword and more like a great spear meant to breach ironclad city walls and impale all who stood in its way!
"Boy, don't think mastering a divine ability makes you my match!"
Emerald-green fiend fire ignited in Manor Lord Yao's eyes. Seeing An Jing's talent, he felt both delight and wrath. Too many infuriating disasters had struck today: first An Jing leading the youths in revolt, then the Red Armored Guards' ambush, and even a traitor within the manor who had drawn Real Man Xuanjing into the fray.
Fueled by this anger, he sneered coldly and reached out toward the air, plucking an iron saber from an instructor with a casual grasp.
Infusing emerald-green toxic fiend into the blade, vivid jade patterns immediately seeped across the metal. With a twist of Manor Lord Yao's wrist, the jade-patterned saber fluttered forward like butterfly wings, its form nearly invisible to the eye.
Clang!
Blade clashed against sword, and the power of both combatants erupted violently.
An Jing was blasted ten feet backward. A visible shockwave billowed through his clothes, and the sharp shockwave even carried grit that scraped across his face and body, drawing thin streaks of blood.
Yet on the other side, the moment their forces collided, Manor Lord Yao's expression changed abruptly. The jade-patterned saber in his hand vibrated violently, and his entire body was forced into a rapid retreat. Wherever he stepped, bones and boulders alike shattered underfoot, leaving footprints an inch deep!
In that clash of saber and sword, it was actually Manor Lord Yao—a master of the Inner Strengthening Realm—who had come up slightly short in raw power!
"Inner Breath... Inner Breath Like River?!"
Halting his retreat, the old man stared in shock at the jade-patterned saber in his hand, which now bore a visible notch. In sheer disbelief, he demanded, "When did you break through?!"
There was no answer. Before the words had even finished fading, the old man gritted his teeth and stepped forward. An Jing, having just touched the ground, did not hesitate for a second either, stomping heavily onto the earth and charging straight at Manor Lord Yao once more.
Though An Jing only possessed Inner Breath Like River, he was young and robust, with a profound foundation. Manor Lord Yao was advanced in age and his Blood Qi had waned, lacking any strength-enhancing divine marvels, yet he was still in the Inner Strengthening Realm, far surpassing ordinary mortals.
The collision of their immense strength kicked up storms of dust and pulverized stone. Countless flying pebbles whipped into the river, sending plumes of water surging over ten feet high.
The Children of Calamity who had chosen to follow Bai Qinghan shrieked and fled into the distance, not daring to watch the battle from up close.
Witnessing this, Bai Qinghan furrowed her brows slightly. Mystic Yin water arrows circled around her, deflecting the stray shockwaves.
An Jing had locked Manor Lord Yao in close-quarters combat, leaving her no opening to intervene.
In the end, however, it seemed she would not need to.
Amidst the flurry of clashing blades, Manor Lord Yao's gaze focused, activating his divine marvel: Pupil Flame! An emerald-green fiend flame manifested out of thin air, streaking straight toward An Jing with a chilling, ruthless ferocity.
Just looking at the fiend flame sent a stinging pain through An Jing's eyes, yet he forced them wide open, fixing his gaze on the flame's trajectory. Shifting his footwork, he bent backward in an uncanny iron-bridge stance, narrowly dodging the blast.
Yet that surprise attack immediately put An Jing on the back foot.
Having just dodged and righted his stance before his strength could fully recover, Manor Lord Yao struck in earnest with a fierce downward slash. A terrifying burst of power erupted, causing both the crimson sword and the jade saber to be wrenched from their hands after a rapid, jarring clash.
One weapon was merely an iron blade reinforced with Killing Aura, while the other was a sword formed of a divine ability. Clearly, An Jing had suffered the worse blow.
Yet the moment An Jing realized he could no longer hold the fiend sword, he surged his inner breath instead, throwing all his momentum into flinging the loose sword outward.
Into this hurled strike, An Jing poured nearly a third of his inner breath. The crimson fiend sword tore through the air with an explosive sonic boom, turning into a streak of flashing blood light aimed straight at Bai Qinghan!
Seeing the fiend sword flying toward her, Bai Qinghan lightly tapped the ground with her toes and flickered to the side. But the instant the sword struck where she had just been standing, it detonated violently, throwing up a storm of grit and shattered stone.
The young girl narrowed her eyes slightly. She raised a hand, and the mist and frost swirling around her billowed and parted in two, transforming into a pair of ethereal cloud-sleeves that shielded both sides of her body, blocking the barrage of flying debris.
This strike posed no real threat to her, but it prevented Bai Qinghan from paying attention to the main battlefield for several breaths.
Several breaths were more than enough!
At the same time, Manor Lord Yao, having also lost his weapon, stood with his hair and beard fluttering like green fire. A somber Killing Aura surged around him as he pointed a finger through the air toward An Jing—
Divine marvel: Dantian Sea!
Instantly, a wave of Nether Toxic Fiend, surging like an ocean tide, crashed straight into An Jing's face. The vicious, venomous nether fiend engulfed him in an instant, even crawling upward to swallow his entire upper body!
—That is enough.
Seeing this, Deputy Envoy Yao thought to himself that corroding away An Jing's superficial flesh would be lesson enough. After all, he was a genius destined to return to the sect's main mountain; if they made things too ugly, An Jing would only suffer for it later.
Yet in the very next instant, just as Deputy Envoy Yao was considering whether to ease up on his power, thunder suddenly cracked!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A volley of ten thunderous cracks rang out almost simultaneously. Manor Lord Yao, who had been standing straight, suddenly jerked his hands upward. Emerald-green Killing Aura condensed on his palms like polished jade as he unleashed an impenetrable flurry of palm strikes, batting aside numerous metallic projectiles.
Yet the ambush had been too abrupt. In the end, his body shuddered violently, and he looked down at his chest in utter terror.
"What... what is this?!"
There, two thumb-sized bloody holes pierced through his flesh, deep enough to expose bone and reveal the squirming viscera within!
Even an Inner Strengthening martial artist could not fully withstand bullets!
At that moment, An Jing slowly stepped out from the emerald-green nether fiend. The Nether Toxic Fiend had not had enough time to fully corrode the flesh shielded by his inner breath. Aside from a few patches where the skin had been stripped away to reveal raw red flesh, he had sustained no severe injuries.
And in An Jing's hands, faint blue smoke still wafted lazily from the barrels of two large-caliber powder handguns.
—Of all martial arts, behold the twin guns!
Chapter 42