By the time Fang Shuwen saw off the last Zhujige Pavilion disciple in the main hall who needed the poison expelled, the shouting and clamor of battle outside had gradually receded into the distance.
The main reason these disciples had been gathered together in the first place was that they represented the very pinnacle of Zhujige Pavilion's current fighting strength.
Black Fiend Cult had planned to neutralize their internal force using Qi-Severing Powder and then let Feng Mantian and the others slaughter them. If everything had gone according to their design, Zhujige Pavilion would truly have been annihilated today.
Now, only Fang Shuwen, Zhou Qingmei, and Lu Xiaoqing remained standing in the vast main hall.
Aside from them, only two breathing bodies were left. One was the half-dead Guan Tianyue, and the other was the man whose face had remained concealed beneath a hood the entire time.
Guan Tianyue had been spared only because Xu Chongshan wanted to subject him to endless torture.
The hooded man had been kept alive intentionally by Fang Shuwen.
Fang Shuwen had sensed something strange about this person. His dynamic with Feng Mantian was peculiar; Feng Mantian's martial arts clearly surpassed his, yet Feng Mantian had seemed noticeably wary of him.
Fang Shuwen also recalled something else...
He had once asked Senior Brother Zhang what kind of backing the Black Fiend Cult possessed to brazenly destroy Zhujige Pavilion like this.
Senior Brother Zhang had mentioned an organization.
However, he had not known many specifics about it.
The way Feng Mantian interacted with this hooded man made Fang Shuwen suspect that he might be connected to that very organization.
That was why he had spared the man's life for now.
With nothing pressing to attend to at the moment, he planned to head over and make use of the man's remaining breath to experiment on "a single thread."
The feedback he had gotten using it on Senior Brother Zhang last time had not been entirely ideal.
That technique indeed inflicted excruciating pain, but it also caused tremendous physical damage.
What Fang Shuwen wanted was a method like the Classic of Agony—one that could inflict immense agony while sparing the subject from severe bodily harm.
Otherwise, he would constantly have to worry that a prisoner might die under torture before all their secrets could be wrung out.
Yet just as he was about to make his move, the chime of the system unexpectedly arrived.
[Ding! The quest to protect Zhou Qingmei has been completed! Calculating rewards!]
[Ding! Reward settlement successful!]
[Congratulations to the Host for obtaining the Beiming Divine Art at Great Perfection!]
[Claim immediately?]
"Huh?"
Fang Shuwen stared in astonishment at the prompt floating before his eyes.
Now that Li Nanchen was dead, Feng Mantian was dead, and the Black Fiend Cult forces were being routed and slain, the crisis was resolved. Zhou Qingmei naturally was no longer in mortal danger.
So the prompt had arrived right on time.
The problem was that the quest reward turned out to be the Beiming Divine Art!
The Beiming Divine Art was undeniably formidable. If it had been his first reward, Fang Shuwen would have had no objections whatsoever.
The issue, however, was that this internal art had arrived as his second reward.
He recalled that cultivating this particular technique required crippling all of one's existing cultivation first.
Cripple his Yijin Jing for the sake of the Beiming Divine Art?
Fang Shuwen could never bring himself to do such a thing...
Yet if he were to claim the Beiming Divine Art while keeping his Yijin Jing intact, would there be some unforeseen problem?
"Brother Fang?"
Seeing him take a step and then suddenly freeze, Zhou Qingmei asked with concern and confusion, "What's wrong?"
Snapping back to his senses, Fang Shuwen shook his head.
From his first experience claiming the Yijin Jing, he knew that receiving an internal skill required a moment to guide the qi back to its origin.
Claiming it right now was hardly appropriate.
Since he already knew what it was, he could simply claim it whenever he found some free time later.
With that in mind, he resumed his stride and approached the hooded man.
Pulling back the hood revealed an ordinary-looking face.
At present, however, the man was deathly pale and in terrible shape.
Many of his meridians and acupoints had been shattered by Fang Shuwen's internal force, and his legs had been warped and broken when he was swung like a club into Feng Mantian and Guan Tianyue.
Right now, he looked as though he had more breath leaving him than coming in.
Fang Shuwen patted his cheek, but the man showed no reaction.
Pressing his index and middle fingers together, Fang Shuwen circulated his internal breath. The thread woven from his internal force immediately materialized within his perception.
With a shift of his mind, he slightly reduced the amount of true qi concentrated in the thread before sending it straight into an acupoint.
The hooded man, whose eyes had been tightly shut, abruptly snapped them open and let out a bloodcurdling shriek.
He had been forcibly jolted awake from his unconscious stupor.
Fang Shuwen's interest was piqued, and he demanded at once, "Who on earth are you?"
Only now did the hooded man realize his current predicament. Yet he gritted his teeth tightly and spat, "...Don't even think... I won't tell..."
*This fellow really isn't from the Black Fiend Cult!*
Fang Shuwen arched an eyebrow and dialed up the pressure slightly.
The next instant, the hooded man could no longer endure it and let out another agonizing scream.
Immediately after, fresh blood began leaking from his seven facial orifices.
His already faint aura of life began withering at a pace visible to the naked eye.
Seeing this, Fang Shuwen promptly retracted the thread. "Still not talking?"
The hooded man's unfocused pupils gathered a trace of focus.
His body trembled uncontrollably. Seeing Fang Shuwen press his index and middle fingers together again, he finally parted his lips. Yet the words that slipped out baffled Fang Shuwen completely.
In a voice as faint as gossamer, he gasped out six words:
"Wanli... Jing!
"...Zuoshang... Huang!!"
As the words fell, a deep crimson suddenly flashed across his eyes, followed immediately by fierce flames leaping out from within his body.
Fang Shuwen's expression shifted. Reaching out in a flash, he grabbed the man and hurled him outside the main hall.
With a loud bang, the hooded man abruptly detonated into a shower of fiery sparks, scattering across the plaza before the hall like falling embers.
Fortunately, there were few flammable materials on the plaza; otherwise, a raging inferno would have been unavoidable.
Even so, the sudden turn of events left everyone in the hall exchanging bewildered glances.
"Wanli Jing, Zuoshang Huang?" Lu Xiaoqing murmured. "What does that mean?"
"His words probably weren't complete... Going by just those six words, I doubt we can glean much of anything.
"And why did he suddenly catch fire?"
Zhou Qingmei instinctively looked toward Fang Shuwen.
Fang Shuwen narrowed his eyes slightly. "Those flames came from another stream of true qi. I only detected it the moment it erupted. What I don't know is whether he used that true qi to ignite himself, or if someone acted from the shadows..."
If it was the former, it proved the man was exceedingly stubborn, willing to die rather than leak a single word.
If it was the latter... then the situation was even more perilous, meaning Zhujige Pavilion's crisis had not yet passed and someone still lurked in the dark.
Regardless, Fang Shuwen's quest was already complete.
As for whatever followed for Zhujige Pavilion, a simple warning would suffice on his part.
Right then, the sound of tearing wind reached the entrance of the main hall.
A figure flashed, and Zuo Qingshuang, sword in hand, appeared before them.
"Exhilarating! Those Black Fiend Cult scoundrels—after thirty years, they actually managed to produce so many monsters with copper skin and iron bones! They certainly take more killing than those young cult runts!
"Young Hero Fang, Zhujige Pavilion will host a banquet tonight, and we won't stop until everyone is drunk!
"By the way, what was that burst of fire just now?"
Chapter 44