A slender waist in a jade sash dancing with heavenly gauze,
A backward glance and a smile outshining the stars.
Reaching such mastery in qinggong was hardly distinguishable from a celestial fairy in flight.
Facing the lunging bamboo pit viper, Yu Xian had no intention of dodging. He kept his gaze raised toward Wanwan as she danced lightly through the air, her bare feet treading upon the bamboo leaves, finally understanding what "martial intent—Stepping on the Moon, Flying Immortal" truly meant.
The next second, the bamboo pit viper "swallowed" him in a single gulp.
The instant he was engulfed, countless bamboo leaves unleashed a frenzied, omnidirectional assault.
However, although the Dragon Shield had fewer scales than there were bamboo leaves, they could teleport instantaneously, effortlessly warding off the strike of every single leaf.
Through the flurry of bamboo leaves, Yu Xian watched Wanwan suspended in midair and called out, "You have one minute and thirty seconds left. Anything you want to say?"
"If I'm really going to die in a minute and thirty seconds, I'd like to hear you call me Big Sister. How about it?" Wanwan did not believe a word he said. Pirouetting atop a drifting bamboo leaf, she looked down at Yu Xian and smiled softly.
The Green Bamboo true qi cultivated through the *Green Bamboo Canon* was laced with deadly poison. As Yu Xian used his dragon scales to deflect the leaves, shattering them into pieces, toxic fumes had already saturated the air around him.
In Wanwan's eyes, Yu Xian was already poisoned. Whether he could even survive the next minute and thirty seconds was anyone's guess.
"Hopeless."
Yu Xian sighed. He said nothing more, simply continuing to watch her dance.
Of course he knew the surrounding air was toxic. The problem for her was that he had spatial bubbles blocking his nostrils; he wasn't breathing the ambient air at all.
Fighting within the city somewhat tied his hands—for instance, he couldn't use bombs. On top of that, Nangong Wanwan possessed immense combat experience and moved with uncanny agility. Even if he wanted to teleport her elsewhere with a spatial bubble, he couldn't find an opening.
Nangong Wanwan had shown remarkable tactical nuance throughout the clash.
For example, she had probed the spatial bubbles with bamboo leaves, and when her langxian penetrated a bubble without popping it, she immediately pulled back, refusing to take the bait.
Even while bantering with Yu Xian, she remained hyper-vigilant of her surroundings.
Even now, while avoiding spatial bubble attacks, she could simultaneously command countless bamboo leaves to counterattack. Her assaults followed strict patterns—striking from varying angles at calculated intervals, coordinating multiple leaves into a dazzling, ever-changing barrage.
Without the Dragon Shield, Yu Xian would indeed have been forced to flee with his spatial bubbles. Her offensive was genuinely formidable and troublesome.
Meanwhile, Nangong Wanwan's theoretical lifespan ticked down relentlessly. Yu Xian suddenly felt a flicker of curiosity: if he didn't lift a finger, how would she die?
One minute left!
Yu Xian kept his eyes on Nangong Wanwan, resolving not to strike the killing blow himself.
*Does he possess some ability to see through destiny?*
Initially, Nangong Wanwan hadn't believed Yu Xian at all. But as the seconds slipped away, an uneasy restlessness crept into her heart. In particular, Yu Xian's curious, assessing gaze made a thought surface unbidden: *Is he waiting for me to die?*
*Hmph, as if I'd die here!*
Steeling her resolve, Nangong Wanwan hurled the langxian in her hand straight into the ground.
She spun in midair, releasing a violent burst of Green Bamboo true qi. The langxian planted in the pavement instantly took root and shot up into mature bamboo, while dense shoots burst through the asphalt, shooting ten meters into the sky within seconds.
What had been a concrete sidewalk was transformed into a lush bamboo grove.
Standing amid the bamboo thicket, Yu Xian looked around with some surprise. He hadn't expected Nangong Wanwan to have such a finishing move in reserve.
"Die!"
Nangong Wanwan couldn't wait any longer. She wasn't going to wait for the poison to take him down; she wanted to end his life with her own hands.
She swooped down from above, grabbing a bamboo stalk and spinning around it before flitting to another, spinning like a pole dancer.
Darting between the stalks, she constantly shifted angles, snapping off branches and hurling them at Yu Xian, only for the Dragon Shield to turn them all aside.
Finally, wielding another langxian, she plunged from above like a celestial fairy descending from the heavens, thrusting the weapon straight toward Yu Xian's forehead. Simultaneously, the branches previously deflected onto the ground transformed into razor-sharp fangs, launching a synchronized strike at Yu Xian from below.
Higher up, countless bamboo stalks bent like bows, their sharp tips aimed directly at Yu Xian.
To be honest, the sight gave Yu Xian the distinct sensation that the whole world was turning against him. In his mind, he counted down: *Three, two, one...*
Nangong Wanwan was barely eighty centimeters away. Just as her theoretical lifespan reached 1, she triggered the Dream Butterfly on Yu Xian's body.
In that final second, she saw all her attacks land cleanly on Yu Xian, bamboo skewering him through and through, leaving his body riddled with holes in a gruesome death.
In reality, the exact opposite occurred.
Because of that split-second lapse in concentration, the langxian in her hands was deflected by the Dragon Shield's scales.
Under the colossal recoil, the weapon's sharp tip snapped off. The broken shard ricocheted at blinding speed, impaling her right between the eyebrows, its tip bursting out through the back of her skull.
Given the strength of her mental power, the odds of triggering Dream Butterfly should have been minuscule.
Her mental power was far higher than Yu Xian's. While she wasn't completely immune to Dream Butterfly, under normal circumstances it would have been nearly impossible for it to distract her.
Yet this was destiny.
In the final second of her life, she triggered Dream Butterfly, and in that fleeting distraction, she killed herself.
*Thud.*
Nangong Wanwan's body crashed heavily to the ground, her unblinking eyes wide with utter disbelief—a death without peace.
"Auntie, was this a coincidence, or an inevitability?"
Looking down at Nangong Wanwan's corpse, Yu Xian felt a chill down his spine and quickly asked Zhenwo Changjing.
Even though he knew she was going to die, this demise was absurdly anticlimactic. A Transcendent this powerful had ended up blowing her own head off with her own weapon just because of a momentary distraction.
Looking at Nangong Wanwan with pity, Zhenwo Changjing replied, "Looking back from the future, this was an inevitable occurrence. There is no need to dwell on it."
*Inevitability.*
Yu Xian suddenly thought of his Super Smell.
When he traced past events with Super Smell, everything that had already happened was fixed in stone—that, too, was a form of inevitability.
The theoretical lifespan shown by Appraisal was likely viewed from the perspective of the world as a whole, looking backward from the future. In that light, everything occurring in the present was naturally predetermined.
Perhaps the manner of Nangong Wanwan's death had been set in stone all along.
"Do not harbor blind optimism, and do not test fate. That is my advice to you," Zhenwo Changjing warned as she noticed Yu Xian lost in thought.
Yu Xian gave a self-deprecating chuckle. Just a moment ago, he had indeed toyed with the thought: if Appraisal determined the exact minute and second a target would die, why bother fighting at all? Wouldn't it be easier to just hide somewhere and watch them die?
Clearly, Zhenwo Changjing had seen right through him, prompting her admonition.
"Auntie, do you think I should revive her?"
Pushing aside those stray thoughts, Yu Xian looked at Nangong Wanwan's corpse on the ground and asked Zhenwo Changjing.
Mainly, Nangong Wanwan was remarkably capable. Although she was only at the Wolf rank, her actual combat ability was easily at the Tiger rank. Geniuses whose combat mastery so vastly outstripped their evolutionary rank were exceedingly rare; among everyone he had met so far, he had only encountered two.
The problem was that Nangong Wanwan deserved to die. She had killed countless people. Wouldn't reviving her simply be letting her off too lightly?
That was the dilemma troubling Yu Xian now.
Chapter 158