A Part

As the battle raged on, not a single commoner remained within Huizhou County, yet the world-shattering roars of destruction continued without pause. Collapsed city walls, fractured earth, and shocking craters gouged out by residual spell blasts littered the landscape. What had once been bustling, vibrant streets was now reduced to endless rubble and ruin, completely devoid of the city’s former grandeur. *Boom!* Another deafening blast echoed from midair. In response to the explosion, a figure plunged to the earth like a kite with a severed string, kicking up a thick cloud of dust within the dense mist. Yet the instant the dust billowed upward, a tempestuous gust of astral wind erupted from the center, sweeping it entirely away. Taishi Ran’s figure emerged from within. He was in terrible shape. Blood seeped from the skin all across his body. One of his sleeves was torn away, and the arm beneath hung limp and lifeless, its flesh rotting from a virulent poison. Regulating the chaotic Source Qi dissipating erratically within his body, Taishi Ran immediately looked up at the slender, voluptuous woman hovering coldly in the sky. As their gazes met, Lou Ji looked down upon him with eyes devoid of emotion. Coiled atop her slender fingertip was a small green serpent, exuding an aura of terrifying pressure. At this sight, a look of profound helplessness flickered through Taishi Ran's eyes. He had known that a gap in raw strength existed between himself and this Chief of the Black Scales, but he had never imagined it would be this vast. This was yet another spell he had never seen before. Earlier, with the help of Luo Bingli and Fatty Zhou, they had forced out many of the Chief's lethal techniques, yet the spells at this woman’s command seemed virtually endless. The moment he found a way to counter one, she would effortlessly conjure an entirely new spell in the blink of an eye. At this moment, he finally understood why the Chief of the Black Scales was so renowned throughout Great Yan, yet almost no one knew anything about her spells and Dao domain. Because dead men told no tales. And today, he would in all likelihood become one of them. Less than the time it took to finish a cup of tea after Luo Bingli and Fatty Zhou departed, Taishi Ran had been beaten into this wretched state by the Chief of the Black Scales. Thanks to her detachable Dao domain, so long as Lou Ji maintained her distance, it was virtually impossible for his spells to reach her. Meanwhile, it took everything he had just to withstand each of her strikes. Facing this Chief of the Black Scales alone was truly too much for him. Yet this was the only way—the only way to strangle the Great Calamity right here in its cradle! He would hold her back, allowing Luo Bingli to pull away and rush off to slay the budding calamity. Still, the situation was not entirely bleak for him. After an arduous battle, Lou Ji’s Source Qi had been significantly depleted. Those high-power spells that Luo Bingli had countered earlier were likely out of Lou Ji’s reach for the time being. After all, Lou Ji had to conserve enough Source Qi to guard against Luo Bingli turning back. Having embraced his impending death, Taishi Ran tightened his grip slightly. His Dao domain, spanning a hundred zhang around him, began to seethe violently, and a whirling wisp of cyan astral wind coalesced in his palm. Looking down at the spell taking shape in Taishi Ran’s hand, Lou Ji spoke for the first time. Her cold, crisp voice rang across the mist-shrouded space: “I am curious. What could possibly drive you to assassinate Changtian at such a cost?” Hearing this, Taishi Ran gave a faint smile and replied simply, “For the human race.” “The human race?” Lou Ji murmured. Her bloodstained, alluring lips curled into a mocking smile. “To think that Changtian could pose a threat to all of humanity. I am not satisfied with this explanation. “If you still have any tricks up your sleeve, use them now. Otherwise, I’m afraid you won’t be able to fulfill your promise to that woman.” Hearing this, Taishi Ran let out a slow, heavy breath. “No need to trouble yourself, Chief. I am well aware.” “Is that so?” Lou Ji murmured indifferently. Saying no more, she gently flicked her slender finger toward Taishi Ran. With this motion, the small green serpent coiled around her fingertip instantly transformed into a blur, shooting toward him! The tiny green serpent tore through the air, crossing a hundred zhang in an instant. Wherever it passed, a sizzling sound of caustic corrosion trailed in its wake. Taishi Ran caught this detail instantly and reacted without hesitation. Astral winds surged within his Dao domain, and countless blade-like gusts of freezing wind coalesced directly along the green serpent's trajectory. The instant the two collided, the blast Taishi Ran had anticipated never came. The green serpent, which had radiated terrifying pressure, was shredded to pieces by the windstorm conjured by his Dao domain without the slightest resistance. Yet unfortunately, Lou Ji’s spell was far from over. Torn apart by the blade-like gale, the small green serpent split apart, turning into a swarm of countless tiny vipers that continued hurtling toward him! With every gust of astral wind they passed, the serpent-shaped spell divided once more. In the blink of an eye, a single serpent had turned into an ocean of snakes spanning the sky! Taishi Ran’s heart sank. It seemed his counter had been the wrong choice. This spell was clearly designed by Lou Ji specifically to counter his gale-force astral wind Dao domain. Fortunately, it was not too late to remedy the mistake. The aura of his Dao domain shifted abruptly. Several towering, spiraling tornadoes materialized in an instant, barricading the sky in front of the serpent swarm. Just as Taishi Ran had anticipated, the momentum of the multiplied serpent swarm had already waned, and all of them were sucked directly into the tornadoes! Yet before his mind could relax, Taishi Ran felt an instinctive surge of danger. Immediately after, he saw the swarm of serpents trapped within the tornadoes detonate without warning. The violent surge of qi dynamics instantly tore the towering tornadoes apart, and the resulting shower of slime was propelled downward at immense speed by the momentum of the vortex. At the same time, just as Taishi Ran prepared to flash away and evade the falling slime, he realized with a shock that his body had fallen into a brief paralysis. Quickly scanning his interior, Taishi Ran looked up at the curvaceous figure in the sky, his pupils shrinking abruptly. After Luo Bingli had left, while he and Lou Ji were trading spells in midair, she had somehow managed to slip an unknown toxin into his body without him noticing. The poison was not particularly virulent; otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to miss it. Under normal circumstances, his cultivation would have allowed him to neutralize it in a mere breath. Yet this sudden eruption instantly severed any chance of dodging the descending slime. Lou Ji actually intended to kill him using the minimum amount of Source Qi. Watching the green slime draw ever closer, Taishi Ran let out a silent sigh and slowly closed his eyes. Seeing his reaction from high above, Lou Ji’s delicate brows furrowed slightly. Had this Transcendent resigned himself to death? Or was it... Before the thought could finish, the deluge of slime struck. Wherever it landed, even earth, stone, and rubble were completely dissolved away, instantly pocking the ground with dense clusters of blackened, charred craters. The iron-masked Transcendent himself was thoroughly engulfed by the highly corrosive slime, as a skin-crawling sizzling sound rang out incessantly. Lou Ji was certain the man had failed to dodge, yet no sound came from him—no screams, no groans of pain, nor any curses. A look of doubt flickered in her beautiful eyes. It felt as though he had died far too easily—so easily that it seemed he had held something back... *Hum—!* Just as the thought crossed her mind, a thunderous humming sound erupted from where the man stood. The violent gale unleashed nearly forced Lou Ji’s eyes shut. It was only after she conjured a barrier of Source Qi that she could clearly see the sudden change below. The green slime coating him was blown away in an instant, and to Lou Ji's perception, Taishi Ran's aura had altered, flickering unpredictably between dimness and brilliance. Sensing this, there was no panic in Lou Ji's eyes; instead, a trace of amusement flashed across them. To use that boy Changtian's phrasing, this Transcendent seemed to have entered his "second phase." However, this aura he was now displaying felt somewhat familiar to her. It seemed like... "The Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique?" A soft murmur slipped past Lou Ji's lips as she looked down with a scrutinizing gaze. "To think you actually know such a lost, heretical art." Standing on the ground slick with corrosive slime, Taishi Ran looked up at her and chuckled softly. "Chief Lou actually recognizes this technique?" "A rat in Burial Village also knew this heretical art, though his cultivation fell short of yours." A trace of reminiscence flickered through Lou Ji's eyes, and she asked casually, "You must know the price of employing such an art, don't you?" With an untroubled gaze, Taishi Ran smiled. "Naturally. Against someone like you, Chief Lou, this Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique is my only option." Lou Ji stared into his eyes and asked with mild bewilderment, "I truly find it hard to understand. With your cultivation, if your heart were set on fleeing, even I could not hold you back. Now that your assassination attempt has already failed, is it truly worth staying here to stake your life against mine?" The Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique: a secret art that traded one's life to obtain formidable combat power for a brief duration. The underlying principle was quite simple. Within a given realm, the quantity of Source Qi stored in the dantian far exceeded what the meridians could endure, and not even Saints were an exception. The more devastating the spell cast, the greater the burden placed on the meridians. Meridians had a threshold. Once forced beyond a certain limit, they would shatter. Forcing spells through shattered meridians meant that before an enemy could even strike, one would likely suffer qi deviation, self-destructing and dying on the spot. The Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique, however, bypassed this limitation. Through a specialized secret art, it forcibly hardened the meridians for a brief time, allowing them to channel massive amounts of Source Qi without damage. To put it simply, an ordinary Transcendent pacing themselves to protect their meridians would require two to three quarters of an hour of continuous casting to deplete the Source Qi in their dantian. Under the effects of the Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique, this timeframe could be compressed to half a quarter of an hour, or even less. Casting spells within half a quarter of an hour that would normally take three quarters to unleash naturally multiplied their destructive power many times over! Yet no perfect spell existed in this world. The hardening of meridians granted by the Deadly Wandering Heaven Technique was strictly temporary. Once the technique's duration ended, the resulting backlash would shatter every single meridian into pieces. And this man before her had resorted to such a wicked art without a shred of hesitation. Seeing that she showed no intention of striking immediately, Taishi Ran smiled and countered, "You must have heard Daoist Fu's voice transmission earlier, didn't you, Chief Lou?" Due to the obstruction of the black mist, qi dynamics could not be locked onto, so Fu Qinggeng had not transmitted her message secretly into anyone's ears; instead, she had projected her voice across the entire city. Naturally, Lou Ji had also heard that an unexpected change had taken place on Changtian's side. She replied evenly, "Had I not heard it, I would not be idling here chatting with you. Since he can kill two Transcendents in an instant, that woman won't be threatening Changtian anytime soon." Taishi Ran chuckled casually, indifferent to her words. "Since you heard it, why ask such a question, Chief Lou?" A peculiar look surfaced in Lou Ji's eyes. "For the human race?" "Naturally," Taishi Ran replied, his lips curving upward. "If sacrificing my solitary life can strangle the Great Calamity right here, then I, Taishi Ran, consider my death well worth it." At this point, Taishi Ran glanced back toward the depths of the black mist and said in a low voice, "Besides, I promised her that after this mission, I would repay her with my life. But now it seems my life can be spent in a far more worthy cause." "The Great Calamity..." Lou Ji's eyes narrowed slightly, completely disregarding the latter half of his sentence. She chuckled darkly. "The Great Calamity? Is your Overseeing Heaven Pavilion no longer bothering to maintain its facade?" Taishi Ran shook his head. Raising his hand slightly, a spiraling vortex coalesced in his palm in an instant, threatening to shatter the surrounding space. Smiling gently, he said, "Chief Lou, "before I die, I will obliterate everything: the traces of the spells, Old Man Tian's corpse, Daoist Fu's corpse, and... my own body. "You will find no evidence whatsoever from this assassination. All the world will know is that Xu Changtian of your Prime Minister's Manor has become a monster—a monster capable of threatening the entire human race." "Hah!" Lou Ji sneered. She stared at the vortex in his hand for a few breaths, then glanced down at Huizhou County, which was no longer recognizable as a city, and murmured coldly: "Setting aside whether you can even transmit this message outside, your Overseeing Heaven Pavilion claims endlessly to act for the human race, yet are the commoners down below not human? Were it not for you people, they might still be living in peace and prosperity." "Chief Lou, we do not protect any single faction, nor any single individual, but the entirety of the human race." Taishi Ran shook his head, staring into Lou Ji's eyes as he spoke softly, "Sacrificing a hundred to save a thousand—for someone like you, making such a choice shouldn't be difficult, should it?" Lou Ji smiled gracefully. "Indeed, that is not difficult at all." "Heh." Taishi Ran let out a dry laugh, his tone growing solemn. "Chief Lou, given your status, you must know what catastrophic disaster the aberrant ghosts brought upon humanity ten thousand years ago. You heard Daoist Fu's words just now. Do you truly believe that monster is still the Xu Changtian you once knew?" Lou Ji raised a brow, amused. "Are you trying to persuade me?" Taishi Ran looked into her eyes and said, word by word, "Duke Xu's lifelong aspiration has been to forge an era of peace and prosperity, yet Xu Changtian, as the Great Calamity, is the genesis of catastrophe." Lou Ji fell silent for a brief moment, then said softly, "You speak the truth. Xu Yinhe's ideal is indeed so." At this point, her tone shifted. Folding her arms across her chest, she tapped a slender, jade-like finger against her fragrant cheek. Her beautiful eyes curved, her smile turning bone-chillingly grim: "However... "if Changtian is indeed the calamity, then let me, Lou Ji... no, let our Chancellor's Manor become a part of this calamity as well."