Tian Ji's horse race was a fine story—entertaining, instructive, and a textbook example of the weak defeating the strong. After Xu Yuan's flurry of maneuvers, a similar dynamic had roughly formed within the prefectural city.
After all, exactly three combatants remained on the sect faction's side.
Yet reality was far crueler than any fable.
All three of the sect's fighters were top-tier thoroughbreds, while on Xu Yuan's side, aside from his maternal uncle, the lineup was a chaotic menagerie of mules, donkeys, and beasts of burden.
Still, at least there was a fight to be had.
Feng Jiuxuan was slightly stronger than the White Emperor.
And while Linlang and the two Saints were all workhorses, backed by the government office's grand formation and the military array, their odds against the hunchbacked elder—that first-class steed—were reasonably solid in a five-on-one contest.
The sole blemish on the plan was that someone had slipped through the cracks, and Xu Yuan, a pack mule himself, had to step up and plug the breach.
Xu Yuan had always possessed clear self-awareness. Though he had spoken fine words—determined to keep up appearances even in defeat—asking him to fight Tianyuan?
How should one put it?
It was...
utterly hopeless.
Hopeless or not, he had laid this trap with his own hands; even if it brought him to tears, he had to bite the bullet and see it through.
Looking on the bright side, he was something of a gimmick boss himself right now. Winning was out of the question, but holding Tianyuan back was not entirely beyond hope.
Probably.
*Boom—*
As his body was slammed into the earth, every single cell in Xu Yuan's body screamed in terminal warning.
In the first breath, relying on the "absolute defense" he had crafted around Void-Stepping Slash, Xu Yuan traded blows with Tianyuan on roughly equal footing.
In the second breath, Xu Yuan realized Tianyuan was a pure caster—an absolute mage—and trading blows had merely been her way of deciphering the mechanics behind his "absolute defense."
In the third breath, she cracked his mechanics.
And then,
he was instantly taken down.
*A total failure...*
Lying in the crater, staring through the swirling dust at the woman in white standing aloof and high above, Xu Yuan truly tasted the power of this world's supreme Saints for the first time.
It was like watching a professional tournament in his past life and thinking everyone on stage was a scrub, convincing himself he could do better, only to get onto the field and discover he wouldn't even survive long enough to surrender at fifteen minutes.
Spitting out a mouthful of blood, Xu Yuan pushed himself up with trembling arms. Throughout this, Tianyuan did not strike again. She merely glanced down at him with pale golden eyes before flying straight toward the government office.
Xu Yuan knew this was part of the tacit understanding between Tianyuan and Tianye, and one of the reasons he had dared to challenge the Pavilion Master of the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion in the first place.
Watching her figure recede into the distance, Xu Yuan drew further upon the power within the markings that shared his origin, rapidly collating the intelligence gathered from the brief clash.
In theory, his Void Flash was an impossible puzzle for cultivators of the current era. As long as his origin qi reacted with his black qi, he was virtually invincible until his mana bar was drained dry.
Unfortunately, the gulf in cultivation between him and Tianyuan was simply too vast. Even though he could draw on the markings' strength around his body to match Tianyuan's speed and take the brunt of her spells to a degree, it could not alter the reality of his Flesh Fusion cultivation.
Tianyuan's method for dismantling Void Flash was surprisingly simple: Xu Yuan's black qi merely coated the exterior of his body, so she had teleported her spell straight into his interior and detonated it, calibrated with surgical precision to leave him entirely incapacitated.
*Cough...*
Hacking up another mouthful of bright crimson blood, Xu Yuan wiped the corner of his lips with the back of his hand. If the fungal carpet were not forcibly knitting his injuries together, he really would have ended up as Tianyuan intended—lying here like an immobile spectator until the entire affair concluded.
Still, as an adversary, the Heavenly Yan Art was genuinely a cancerous technique. Anyone who mastered it was essentially a flawless, all-around monster.
They knew a bit of everything.
"You still intend to go?"
Tianye appeared silently beside Xu Yuan.
Xu Yuan quietly mended his internal injuries, offering no reply.
Tianye's gaze was calm and deep, the flippancy gone from her voice as she stated a simple fact:
"The cooperation between her and me has its limits. If you go again, Tianyuan truly will kill you."
"You want to persuade me to leave too?"
Xu Yuan asked unexpectedly, his tone equally level. "Is it because your objective has already been met?"
"You could say that."
Tianye did not deny it. She cast her gaze across the prefectural city, where beacon smoke rose on all sides. The battle around Linlang had already reduced the northern sector of the city to rubble.
"As things stand, I see no opportunity to turn the tide of battle. Remaining here is nothing more than dying in vain. Of course, if Tianyan burns her life force, there might be a slim chance of victory, but that depends on the Saint outside the city. If that person matches Tianyuan and the others in strength, this city will ultimately fall."
"Perhaps."
Xu Yuan gave a noncommittal response, then abruptly asked in a low voice, "You're being so careful to restrain Mu Nuo. Is it really that dangerous?"
As he spoke, he glanced at the ominous creature dangling from her hand.
Mu Nuo remained forcibly subdued with eyes shut. Presumably, Tianye had not fully extracted the ghost willow yin origin from within it, keeping the child pinned in a berserk state.
The corners of Tianye's crimson lips curved slightly.
"Ever since I revealed myself, I have never once lied to you."
Xu Yuan pondered for a moment, then asked, "So when we first encountered the White Emperor and the willow ghost blade was snatched away by Mu Xingyi in the chaos, that was intentional on your part as well?"
Back then, Xu Yuan had assumed Madame Wan and Mu Xingyi had acted too swiftly, and that the White Emperor had kept Tianye too occupied to intervene, granting them an opening. But having witnessed the couple's true strength with his own eyes, he realized that had Tianye genuinely wished to keep the blade, there was no way they could have escaped.
After a brief pause, Tianye still chose not to deceive him.
"Yes. From the very beginning, I deliberately let the two of them leave."
Xu Yuan nodded faintly. "So you truly value this brat so highly because of the Calamity?"
Tianye did not answer. She merely watched him in silence.
*Not talking, then...*
Xu Yuan exhaled softly and slowly climbed out of the crater, pouring his spiritual vision into the markings to lock onto Tianyuan's aura once more.
Seeing this, Tianye knitted her brows slightly, yet remained silent.
Noticing her reaction, Xu Yuan asked with mild surprise, "You aren't stopping me? These markings are sealed with your Dao charm. If you wanted to, you ought to have a way to counter them, wouldn't you?"
Tianye appeared remarkably composed. Shaking her head, she said coolly, "Don't you think such clumsy attempts at fishing for answers are a bit beneath the two of us?"
Xu Yuan scoffed, a faint, wry smile touching his eyes. "You sound just like Tianyuan right now. Are you suppressing something?"
"..." Tianye said nothing.
A few breaths of silence passed.
"If only I were strong enough to hold Tianyuan back. If I could stall her, the plan could proceed. But sadly, I'm too weak."
Taking a deep breath, Xu Yuan clenched his fists slightly and looked up at the sky. After a moment's pause, he spoke with a wistful chuckle:
"You're right. At this stage, no hope of turning the tables remains in sight.
"The sect's Saints are too formidable, and they prepared far too much. Even though I've pushed myself to my absolute limit, the situation has slipped completely out of control.
"It really... it really is hard to imagine how Li Yaoxuan and my old man walked through such desperate straits back then, step by step, to reach the point where they could rival the sects as equals."
At this point,
Xu Yuan paused, then glanced sideways at her and asked, "Tianye, how do you think they pulled it off?"
"..."
Listening to his words, Tianye had assumed he was preparing to give up and flee, but his tone had abruptly shifted at the end.
Without waiting for her reply, Xu Yuan answered himself:
"I think they bet their lives. They cut off every retreat, went all-in, made no compromises, took no steps backward, and charged forward on the wager that they would win."
Tianye pondered for a breath, her azure-gold eyes carrying a trace of scrutiny.
"It seems you still have a trump card. But it looks rather dangerous, doesn't it?"
"Originally, I wasn't certain it would work. That's why I made a point of confirming it with you just now."
"..."
*Confirming?*
*Confirming what?*
Tianye's thoughts raced. Then, as if realizing something, her golden pupils flicked down toward Mu Nuo in her hand, and the Dao charm of the Aeon Art surged to life.
Yet before she could act,
Xu Yuan's voice rang out, steady and clear:
"Tianyan, help me restrain Tianye."
*Buzz—*
The condensing Dao domain collapsed, and the young girl froze in place. Her slender, graceful figure trembled faintly, as if an internal struggle were underway.
Yet the trembling lasted only a fleeting instant before subsiding.
Tianye had evidently conceded.
While the girl remained immobilized, Xu Yuan strode over to her side, reached out, and wrenched the ominous ghost infant from her grasp. He studied its closed eyes and slumbering visage for several breaths, then looked up with a smile.
"It isn't our first time scheming against one another, so you ought to understand me, right?"
Tianyan's body made no response, but Tianye's voice resonated within Xu Yuan's mind:
"Tch, a madman after all..."
This time, her voice was no longer serene; it had regained its customary flirtatious edge:
"You want to wake it? You possess no means to control this little ghost. If it awakens, its first instinct will still be to devour you. What exactly are you trying to do? Every scrap of intelligence you gathered along the way should be known to me as well..."
Here, Tianye's tone took on a morbid excitement:
"No... wait. Brother Xu Yuan, you've always seemed to know a great deal about the future. Is it something from that?"
"..."
Ignoring Tianye's muttering, Xu Yuan glanced toward the battle between Feng Jiuxuan and the White Emperor. Just as he looked up, he met his uncle's gaze.
Their eyes locked for only an instant,
and Xu Yuan saw Feng Jiuxuan give him a slight, subtle nod.
Tianye clearly noticed this as well, and her voice carried puzzled hesitation:
"You didn't lie to Tianyuan earlier. Why couldn't the Heavenly Yan divine soul hear that voice transmission?"
The fungal carpet had almost fully repaired the internal damage, so Xu Yuan answered in a quiet, composed whisper:
"Voice transmission relies fundamentally on wrapping sound in origin qi or intent soul to reach its destination. The Heavenly Yan divine soul can penetrate both. My qi is unique; I was simply limited by my cultivation and couldn't construct a membrane thick enough to block divine soul penetration. The markings you gave me filled that exact gap."
Humans were creatures of habit. When the Heavenly Yan divine soul penetrating voice transmissions had been accepted as immutable truth since antiquity, people would refuse to believe it even if someone told them to their face that it could be cracked.
It was true of Tianyuan, and it was true of Tianye.
Before she could speak again, Xu Yuan had already vanished with Mu Nuo, leaving the young girl standing alone where she was.
After a long silence,
Tianye's ethereal voice carried a laugh:
"Little Sister Tianyan, do you realize what you just did?"
"..." Tianyan remained silent.
"Not speaking?"
"I can roughly guess what you intended to do," Tianyan replied suddenly.
"Oh? If you can guess, then you must know that because of what you just did, a Calamity that was about to become controllable has slipped out of control again, hasn't it?" Tianye's tone was entirely nonchalant, though tinged with mild grievance.
Tianyan paused briefly before her cool voice sounded once more:
"If a Calamity were controllable, it would not be a Calamity."
"Hmph, a little girl from a broken lineage after all," Tianye scoffed softly. "A Calamity cannot be controlled, but it can be guided."
Then, as though recalling something, Tianye chuckled musically:
"Never mind. This was my own miscalculation. But I suppose it was an inevitability. After all, I was the one meant to answer the Calamity twenty thousand years ago, not now."
"..." Tianyan offered no reply.
***
The hunchbacked elder looked at the uninvited guest crashing into the fray, a faint trace of helplessness flickering in his eyes.
A burning Linlang and insect man, an already semi-ethereal ghost saint, array soldiers and Heavenly Divination array patterns primed in the sky with drawn bows—and now, an additional Xu Changtian and a ghost infant.
While as a senior of the Great Yan he didn't mind shouldering more responsibility, this was getting rather excessive.
Asking an old man like him to fight seven opponents all by himself?
Still, now that the guest had arrived, the hunchbacked elder could hardly serve tea and show him the door. He might as well offer the junior a few pointers.
With that thought, the hunchbacked elder locked his gaze onto the young Xu. Wherever his eyes fell, fierce flames erupted without warning. As long as one was caught within his Dao domain, unless defended by saint origin, the scorching fire would consume everything.
Yet to Qin Ke's surprise, though that brat Xu Changtian caught fire, his body flickered at high frequency, slipping free from the unquenchable blaze with every single flash.
"..." Qin Ke stared.
It was a visually bizarre spectacle that caught Qin Ke off guard for an instant. But it was only an instant, after which a dry smile pulled at his parched lips.
He understood the mechanics of the art now.
No wonder that useless Mu Xingyi couldn't take him down.
The hunchbacked elder gave a raspy chuckle:
"Boy, Tianyuan might stay her hand because of some schemes within the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion, but this old man has no such reservations..."
Before the words had finished leaving his mouth,
the hunchbacked elder's brow furrowed involuntarily, for he realized the young Xu had no intention of fighting him.
After a few rapid flickers wrapped in the blazing flames, the youth dashed straight toward Linlang.
*What is he doing?*
Qin Ke instinctively concluded that the youth, seeing the situation was hopeless, intended to flee with Linlang.
If Xu Changtian could teleport while dragging the ghost infant, he could likely do the same with Linlang. He had to keep him from making contact with Linlang's body.
Swiftly calculating the intelligence on Xu Yuan's techniques, a ball of blazing fire erupted without warning, engulfing Linlang's colossal form and giving Xu Yuan no opportunity to reach it.
Yet at that exact moment,
*Hum—*
Across the heavens, a brilliant sword light sheared through the cloud layer, severing every dragon silhouette. The reflected radiance cleaved the firmament in two!
Sensing that Tianye had been immobilized, Tianyuan, alongside the White Emperor who had just been forced back by Feng Jiuxuan, sent voice transmissions almost simultaneously:
"Qin Ke, Xu Changtian's targets are Mu Xingyi and that yin ghost!"
"Qin Ke, Feng Jiuxuan is heading your way!"
"..."
In absolute silence,
Xu Yuan materialized before Mu Xingyi and Madame Wan, still dragging Mu Nuo. Sweeping his spiritual vision over Madame Wan's condition, he let out a quiet laugh.
"It seems...
"...you are already prepared to sacrifice yourself to feed your child, Madame Wan."
Chapter 671