At first, it was merely a rumble that seemed far away on the horizon.
Yet before long, an unbroken chain of deafening booms rolled in from the distance, like towering ocean waves surging toward Wang Ping with an indescribable, terrifying momentum.
Rumble!
The air quivered, and the earth trembled. Scorching blood qi turned all of Longxing County into a furnace, infusing the oncoming blasts of air with blistering heat.
Looking as far as the eye could see, a dense, dark mass filled the road.
Over a hundred constables of the county yamen had turned out in full force. Gone were their usual light garments and sabers, replaced by gear that made onlookers' scalps tingle with dread.
"Beast-face armor, crescent blades... Good heavens..."
"How is this possible? There are no rebel troops storming the city, nor has any decree arrived from the prefecture... For the county magistrate to dare open the armory without authorization, is he planning to revolt?"
"Mad! They've all gone mad!"
In an instant, the respectable citizens and prominent households throughout the city shut their gates tight in terror, each casting out glances filled with wariness, even tinged with outright dread.
For martial artists of Dashun, unarmed combat was not the foundation.
In the final analysis, weapons decided victory or defeat. Even an external-work martial artist holding a divine artifact could butcher internal strength masters like dogs.
Such was the reality before him. Among the county yamen's hundred-plus constables, those who had broken all six barriers to reach perfection in external work could be counted on one hand; the vast majority had breached merely two or three barriers. Yet once they donned full heavy armor and drew horse-chopping broadswords, the situation became entirely different.
What was more, they could form a battle array.
These constables had already trained in the imperial court's standardized martial arts and were equipped with its standardized weapons. When arrayed in formation, the amplifying effect reached the absolute pinnacle.
Wang Ping felt this most acutely.
Within the vision of his spiritual sense, what stood before him was not a contingent of a hundred men at all, but a breathing, moving mountain!
The breath, heartbeat, and pulse of every constable fell into total synchronization. Even the weapons in their hands resonated. In a daze, Wang Ping could almost see a giant clad in armor towering above the battle array, staring down at him as coldly as the Golden-Winged Great Peng curled up inside the county yamen.
"Strength in numbers..."
Wang Ping narrowed his eyes slightly, instantly understanding why Shouchong had not pressed his advantage to storm the county yamen after ambushing and heavily wounding Xu Bingzheng that day.
Because the imperial court's rule had never rested upon a single individual.
The chief constable was dead? The county magistrate was gravely injured? While that certainly shook the court's hold over Longxing County, that was all it did. The chaos was destined to be fleeting.
The court's true foundation was these hundred-plus yamen constables, sustained by the grain and provisions of an entire county. So long as they remained, Longxing County could not fall into chaos.
'External-work martial artists, equipped with superior imperial weapons, mounts, and the art of battle formations, can actually manifest a divine intent comparable to a titled martial master. And this is even after Chen Haoyan died, leaving them without a chief constable to anchor the formation. Otherwise, its power would be even greater...'
Wang Ping slowly exhaled a breath.
'Spiritual sense intimidation... is useless here. It might work one-on-one, but a battle array like this cannot be shaken. The only way is to clash head-on.'
A lone man charging the formation to break an army?
"He is courting death!"
Watching the battle about to erupt at the center of the county seat, an old man offered his assessment without the slightest hesitation:
"There's no way he survives."
"Even if he were a titled martial master, facing an army formation like this would make him no different from an ordinary internal strength martial master. His internal strength will be drained dry before long."
"If he manages to kill more than ten men, that would already count as a feat."
One had to realize that in this golden age of martial arts, only those who wielded genuine privilege and could match an entire army by their own strength were crowned with the title of "grandmaster."
In other words, unless one became a martial arts grandmaster, facing a true martial army—even one on the scale of a county seat, organized into the smallest hundred-man unit—would mean falling into a grueling battle. And if an army numbered over ten thousand, even a martial arts grandmaster would face the peril of death!
"By order of the county magistrate!"
At the vanguard of the battle array, all the constables spoke in unison, their voices thundering as one: "The rebel Wang Ping, serving a demonic and heretical cult, has gathered a mob into an illicit association to plot rebellion..."
"He shall be executed!"
Whoosh!
The unified roar churned up a blast of air visible to the naked eye. Almost simultaneously, the battle array surged forward, every constable charging toward Wang Ping as one.
This movement was like an avalanche.
Over a hundred massive blades were raised high, cold light bristling like a forest before chopping down in rolling waves. In an instant, only blinding blade edges met Wang Ping's gaze!
This was merely the first round. Although the strikers channeled the power of the entire battle array, only a dozen or so men actually struck, with scores more waiting behind. Even if Wang Ping unleashed his full might to block this round of chops, the next wave would take over immediately, offering him not a shred of breathing room.
This would continue for roughly ten rounds.
By the time ten rounds had passed, the strikers from the first wave would have already recovered their strength to step back into the rotation, creating an endless, inexorable cycle.
'The first clash will decide life and death.'
Stabs of pain born of crisis prickled across his entire body, yet Wang Ping grew ever calmer, his breathing steady and drawn out.
'In a rotating chopping formation like this, the longer it drags on, the worse off I am.'
'Because they outnumber me and rotate constantly, the force of their strikes won't diminish in the least. But I am all alone; my stamina and internal strength will run out eventually.'
'Therefore, the only way to break the array is to erupt on the very first strike with power beyond what the formation can withstand, cutting off their ability to rotate.'
With that thought, Wang Ping raised his foot and stomped violently onto the ground.
In an instant, the earth shook and mountains trembled!
With Wang Ping at the epicenter, great swaths of soil tore into the air. As his footsteps rose and fell, the ground surged like crashing waves!
The constables closing in on Wang Ping had clearly never expected the ground to violently heave beneath them. Their footing buckled in an instant, and the seamless formation wavered. The forest of blade light scattered apart, and though it quickly knit back together, a momentary flaw was laid bare.
"Heavenly Demon Disintegration Art!"
Wang Ping strode forward. As the long saber left its sheath, his brow was stained with a layer of blood. His newly formed cultivated body detonated with a roar!
Then, a flash of blade light.
Military strategy, Yanluo's Summons!
The demonic blade, pushed to the absolute extreme of speed, shattered the limits of visual perception. The blade light took on the form of a dazzling, blinding streak of fire.
Amidst the expanding firelight, earth-shaking blade cries rang out without pause, churning mist and clouds into the apparitions of underworld soldiers and ghostly generals. It crashed ruthlessly into the opening exposed in the yamen's battle array. The entire strike flowed like running water, slicing clean through the mountain-heavy formation with effortless ease!
The sight struck every onlooker dumb.
For what unfolded before them did not look like a lone martial artist charging a military formation at all; it looked like two well-matched armies colliding on a narrow path!
Heaven and earth fell dead silent.
Only after a moment did the onlookers realize that this quiet was no ordinary stillness—it was the profound silence where great sound transcends hearing, an anomaly born because the cry of the blade was simply too colossal!
Moments later, the sounds of falling bodies, agonized shrieks, and the clashing of iron gradually surfaced from that bizarre quiet. The once-seamless battle array collapsed with a crash. The divine intent of the array, previously imposing as Mount Tai, unraveled with it, leaving only a single silhouette tearing through at will.
"In-incredible..."
The old man who had just declared Wang Ping was courting death now held his breath. He instinctively clenched his fists, staring fixedly at that figure.
Just where did this man come from to possess such savage valor?
"Could he be a martial arts grandmaster... No, impossible. If he were truly a grandmaster, he could easily suppress a mere hundred-man unit without shedding a drop of blood."
"What a fiercely brave fellow!"
For a time, many onlookers grew flushed with excitement. After all, standing against a thousand men, charging formations, and breaking armies—what martial artist had never dreamed of such a spectacle?
Yet they quickly regained their composure.
Because within the battle array, Wang Ping was far from unscathed.
In fact, the opposite was true. With every step forward, he left a pool of blood behind him, and another deep cut exposing bone opened across his flesh.
A battlefield brawl was not the same as a duel between martial artists.
In the latter, one could dodge and weave. In the former, there was no room to evade whatsoever. One could only endure blow after blow until one could take no more and died. It was that simple.
Squelch!
A constable braved Wang Ping's blade light, paying the price of half his heavy armor shattering as he spat blood and flew backward, yet managing to carve a gash across Wang Ping's chest with his crescent blade.
Trading wound for wound.
This was the advantage of weapons and armor. Clad in heavy plate, a mere external-work martial artist dared to trade blow for blow with him, without even being guaranteed to die.
Wang Ping had no opportunity to follow up with a finishing strike. The moment that constable was flung back spitting blood, even more men lunged forward like wolves and tigers. Relying on their sturdy armor and superior numbers, they steadily ground down his internal strength and stamina, while four veteran constables who had perfected their external work watched from a distance.
'Waiting until my internal strength is exhausted before stepping in to mop up?'
He had to admit the tactic was sound. He could always heal his physical injuries using Qi Restriction, but the expenditure of internal strength was an inescapable reality.
Wang Ping's gaze darted around. He could already glimpse the eaves of the county yamen, yet he was pinned down at the final street intersection, unable to advance further.
Even if by some fluke he broke through, he would still have to face the combined assault of several veteran constables of perfected external work, not to mention Magistrate Xu Bingzheng lurking behind them like a tiger watching its prey.
'Peril on all sides.'
Wang Ping remained calm. In the end, he even deliberately abandoned using Qi Restriction to heal his wounds, for he realized that these grave injuries were precisely where his chance of victory lay.
Yes, victory, not survival.
Since he had come, he had never intended to walk away alive. From the very beginning, he had come seeking victory, and now he saw a sliver of hope to achieve it.
Because he was on the verge of death.
At this stage, differences in raw strength ceased to matter. What mattered was that he was nearly dead while everyone else still had long lives ahead of them. Who would dare risk their life against him now?
Why hadn't the veteran constables of perfected external work made a move? If they had charged at the very forefront of the array regardless of their safety, he might have been dead already. Yet they had not. They preferred to watch their comrades suffer grave wounds and die, choosing to hide at the very back until his internal strength and stamina were depleted.
"Heh."
Wang Ping sneered, sweeping an arrogant gaze across the field. The formation he had pierced through had already knit back together, encircling him ring upon ring to trap him in the center.
"The matter is settled!"
Inside the county yamen, reclining on a couch surrounded by the pervasive scent of medicine, Xu Bingzheng suddenly sat up. His gaze turned icy, and a faint smile touched the corner of his lips:
"A reckless fool's courage ends here."
"I was fretting over how to capture you, yet you threw yourself right into the net. You've saved me considerable effort and spared me wasted time."
With that, Xu Bingzheng's voice suddenly swelled with booming resonance:
"Slice him to pieces!"
At his command, the battle array stirred again. Yet unlike the beginning, the formation, once as imposing as a mountain, had grown thin and hesitant.
For one, Wang Ping's strength had far exceeded expectations. Having executed the Heavenly Demon Disintegration Art, his internal strength had multiplied several times over. After breaching the array, his slaughter had already cut down nearly thirty of the hundred constables. Many were grievously wounded, their agonized howls still echoing outside the battle lines.
That alone served as a tremendous deterrent.
Second, it was just as Wang Ping had anticipated: not an inch of his flesh remained intact. Blood poured from him like a fountain. Seeing that he had little time left to live, why throw one's life away?
Wait patiently. Once he dropped dead, they could claim their bounty in peace.
A battered ship still had three jin of nails left; if they rushed up to fight him now and he dragged them down with his dying breath, what an unjust death that would be.
After all, with the meager stipends they drew each month, why risk their lives?
For a moment, though Wang Ping was trapped in a lethal predicament, no one pressed the advantage. Instead, they encircled without attacking, granting him the crucial space to catch his breath.
The next instant, Wang Ping finally cast aside his saber. He unslung the Black Hornless Dragon Bow from his back, gripped it in his hand, and drew an arrow with the other, nocking it against the string.
"Phew..."
Exhaling his breath completely, the final remnants of his cultivated body shattered within him. In exchange, he reclaimed internal strength at its absolute peak—even surpassing it!
He drew the bow and nocked the arrow.
The internal strength wrung out through the Heavenly Demon Disintegration Art took on a bloody hue, pouring entirely into the arrow's tip.
Without a word, the final bottleneck of the Cloud-Piercing Sky-Shaking Bow, which he had studied meticulously with Madam Su for days, shattered cleanly. It brought Wang Ping to a sudden realization of the archery technique's true essence: an arrow nocked upon the string had to be released. What this archery technique pursued was the resolute mindset of an arrow leaving the bowstring.
An arrow once released was never meant to return!
Cloud-Piercing Sky-Shaking Bow, grand perfection!
In an instant, heat welled up in both of Wang Ping's arms as he drew the bow. The internal strength on the arrow tip flared with ever-greater brilliance and splendor.
Military strategy, A Single Arrow of Frost.
Military strategy, Array-Breaking Tiangang.
Wang Ping drew the bowstring with unhurried ease until the Black Hornless Dragon Bow let out an overburdened dragon roar. Only then did he aim straight toward the county yamen from afar.
Throughout the entire process, not a single person stepped forward to stop him.
Because everyone could see that this was his final strike. Whoever dared to stand before this arrow would be nothing more than a scapegoat.
Thus, as Wang Ping made his move, the battle array trapping him in the center made no attempt to bar his way; instead, they willingly parted to yield a path. Not only did the surrounding onlookers stare slack-jawed at this scene, but even Xu Bingzheng, who had been brimming with confidence, blanched in sheer horror, bolting upright on his bed!
Chapter 31