“Just wanted to escape Suspended Fate Manor, and instead I run into a three-way power struggle... What kind of situation is this?!”
An Jing let out a long breath, feeling his heart pounding.
Before heading to Another World, he had already witnessed the unsealing of the Extramundane Demon, and the scene of two Divine Hidden Real Men taking action... Beyond a doubt, that was a power far beyond anything he could handle right now.
Neither he nor the Sword Spirit had ever imagined that an Extramundane Demon—an Extramundane Demon of such strength, no less—would be lurking among the Red Armored Guards, seizing the moment to unseal its kin.
What was Great Chen thinking? How could they let an Extramundane Demon slip in?!
“How many days can I stay in Another World?”
Steadying himself a little, An Jing asked. The Sword Spirit, which had been lost in thought all this while, came back to itself and answered at once. “Three days.”
“Three days...”
An Jing closed his eyes and focused. In the Divine Sea, around the broken sword, three points of shining sword-light hovered over him.
The first of them was already gradually dimming—this was the “three days” the Sword Spirit had spoken of.
“Within three days, if I want to return, I can teleport to an area centered on the point where I left Huaixu, with a radius of one li.”
An Jing summed up the current situation. “Only after one full ‘there-and-back’ cycle will your teleportation, Sword Spirit, enter cooldown. It has to recharge through a full day-and-night rotation before it can support another teleport.”
“Yes.” The Sword Spirit prompted, “Which means you’ll have to flee on your own for at least a day before you can enter Another World to take shelter again.”
“That’s a bit troublesome.” An Jing murmured. The Sword Spirit wasn’t offended. “Once you find more of my fragments, my abilities will grow stronger too. A longer stay, faster teleportation, more ways to recharge—my complete form is nothing troublesome.”
“And besides, three days is more than enough. Those Extramundane Demons left long ago; even if they left any contingency behind, they wouldn’t stay in place and risk being discovered.”
“As for the Demon Sect and Great Chen’s people, they should be tangled up with each other—they won’t have the time or energy to hunt you down relentlessly. With your current strength, you should be able to leave this mountain forest, hide your identity, and return to the world of men.”
“Since the Extramundane Demon has already left.” An Jing set his mind working. “Can I go find Great Chen’s Red Armored Guards again? Ye Qi and the others don’t need me to worry about them, but...”
“Perhaps you can, but it’s very dangerous. I don’t recommend it.” The Sword Spirit’s tone turned serious. “To think an Extramundane Demon was lurking within Great Chen. There may not be many great Extramundane Demons like that one, but ordinary Extramundane Demon hosts are far more numerous than we imagined!”
“An Extramundane Demon is like a cockroach—see one, and there’s already a whole swarm hidden away in the shadows.”
“If we enter Great Chen with our current identities, the Extramundane Demons will definitely detect us!”
“The reason I had you leave is precisely because I feared this—who knows whether there are other lesser Extramundane Demons among the Red Armored Guards, waiting to seize you the moment you let your guard down?”
“Mm.” An Jing had actually thought of this too, but with the Sword Spirit’s warning, he understood it all the more clearly. He sighed. “But if that’s the case, then my junior brothers and sisters are in danger as well...”
“There’s no need to worry about that, either.”
The Sword Spirit didn’t think it a bad thing that An Jing worried over people he cared about; on the contrary, it greatly admired his loyal and principled nature.
So the Sword Spirit spoke plainly. “After all, given what your little friends are worth, it’s simply not worth it for a hidden Extramundane Demon to expose itself and act against them—only you and I are worth that much.”
“As expected of us.” With a self-mocking laugh, An Jing—his breath now even—stood up and looked around.
This place was still just as it had been when he left. An underground cavern glimmering with faint light, an ancient, dilapidated iron pavilion, and a scattering of corpses he had already picked over.
“Mm... I’m short on a lot of things.”
An Jing pondered. Last time, he’d only stayed here a couple of hours, and after breaking through to Inner Breath he had left—naturally he hadn’t needed to think much about anything. But this time he had to stay a full three days, so now he had to consider food, air, water, making fire, a safe place to rest, and more.
After all, this place had a monster in it that could wipe out a whole group of gun-wielders in the Inner Breath realm!
The firearms of this world felt considerably more powerful than those from An Jing’s previous life, and the gunpowder wasn’t ordinary gunpowder either.
He himself had killed Manor Lord Yao with just a pistol—though it had relied on a sneak attack and the man’s carelessness, this was merely the standard armament of a team from Another World.
And yet, even with firepower like that, they had still been wiped out here.
These people had all died of Heart-Soul damage, but An Jing wouldn’t be careless. Having Heart-Soul power didn’t mean the monster’s body was weak; he had to prepare for the worst.
“If it really comes to that, I’ll return to the Huaixu Realm.” An Jing thought. “But at the very least, I have to hold out for one night. Otherwise, if I head out now, I could easily be found by the others who haven’t gone far.”
As for now, he needed to rest for a while.
From performing the ritual to slaying the Extramundane Demon, from his duel with Manor Lord Yao to rescuing his companions from the dungeon, and then the unsealing of the Extramundane Demon and his crossing into Another World... on top of the drain left after the Qi-Raising Pill wore off, An Jing was now utterly spent.
He felt as weak as if he’d gone hungry for three days and then run for two hours through the mountains—even bone rubbing against muscle ached, and nothing anywhere in his body felt right.
He desperately needed to find a safe place to recover his strength.
An Jing searched the ruined pavilion and the great hall. There was nothing left inside. The altar that should once have enshrined some patriarch or deity now had nothing but dust, what with the colonnade toppled and even the floor tiles pried away.
The great hall’s crossbeam, however, was still quite solid, a little dirty and weathered—but now was not the time to be picky.
An Jing climbed up onto it, curled into a corner, and forced himself into stillness, regulating his breath to rest and recover.
“After I finish my meditation and breathing, I’ll probably need to sleep for four to six hours to let my body recover on its own. Can you keep watch for me?”
An Jing asked the Sword Spirit. After receiving a certain answer, he circulated the Tranquil Sword Contemplation, tended to his Inner Breath for a while, and gradually sank into a deep sleep.
Just after An Jing fell asleep, a faint trace of spirit light kindled before his forehead, manifesting a silver sword-pattern. At its center a sword-light gleamed, like an eye opening.
“This world... feels very familiar. And it really isn’t an illusion—this world has ‘demonic qi’ as well.”
The clear, ethereal voice murmured to itself, its tone grave. “That monster which killed the entire exploration team should also be some kind of ‘monster.’”
The sword-light tilted slightly downward, as if gazing at the sleeping An Jing. “And this child’s Destiny Pattern really is somewhat strange... Blood Killing Aura, Sword Baleful Aura, spirit aura, Soulsouled Aura—he can take them all in. Even in my own era, there were almost none with a Destiny Pattern like this.”
“So it seems—this is no ordinary Star Baleful Extraordinary Destiny, but one that only comes into the world in times of Great Calamity...”
“The 【Seven Luminaries, Seven Balefuls】?”
After a moment of silence, the Sword Spirit lifted its gaze. “If that’s the case, then fortune and misfortune are hard to foretell... I thought I was the one guiding him, but I may well have been drawn into his Heaven’s Mandate.”
“So be it. Let us see how far I and this child can go.”
It began to keep watch.
Soon, six hours passed.
An Jing woke.
Chapter 53