Shot Dead

Li Xuanfeng waited for a while, and the two monks had already begun their internal strife. Ever since Ewu had disguised himself as a member of the Situ family, Li Xuanfeng knew that nine times out of ten, a good show was about to unfold. Standing aloft upon his golden shuttle, he waited quietly. Seeing both monks fly north and begin fighting fiercely in midair, Li Xuanfeng raised his left hand and unslung the longbow from his back. Gripping the riser with one hand and taking the string with the other, he cast a cold glance over the distance and unhesitatingly chose Moutuo. “This one is easy to kill, yet easily spooked into fleeing back to their formation. Kill him first.” He exhaled, calling forth his breath, his eyes wide and fierce beard bristling. His dark-gold armor blazed with resplendent light. From the quiver at his waist leapt a Golden Light Profound Arrow forged of refined gold, settling obediently upon the string. The Jingeng Longbow in his hand had long since been reforged in Yishan City and was nothing like it once was. The bow measured eight chi and six cun in length, with horn tips of three chi and five cun—slightly longer than before. Cast in a deep, dark gold, it shimmered with flowing brilliance from end to end. Set upright on the ground, it would stand a head taller than an ordinary man of Zhao. Held level now, it resembled a heavy siege ballista. The Golden Light Profound Arrow was likewise a magical artifact. Roughly four chi long, it lacked intricate carvings, its surface sleek and razor-sharp with graceful contours. Forged and tempered a thousand times by craftsmen in the Southern Border, it was as heavy as an iron ox. *Creak, creak, creak…* Li Xuanfeng drew the bowstring back smoothly, turning the eight-chi golden bow from horizontal to an angled cant. Viewed from afar against the sky, he resembled a great eagle spreading its wings. *Whoosh!* The golden radiance grew ever denser. Li Xuanfeng narrowed his lowered brows, his gaze spanning a hundred li to fix coldly upon Moutuo's hideous face. “Strike!” Li Xuanfeng released his grip abruptly. The golden profound arrow vanished into the air without a trace. He did not wait to see the result, but immediately hooked a second Golden Light Profound Arrow onto the string and aimed once more. *** Moutuo had just wiped the blood from his face when a deep dread seized his heart. Fresh blood erupted from his visage in bead after bead, bursting out relentlessly like droplets of dew. He shrieked: “Save—!” He had barely forced out a single syllable when the four guest elders, having already noticed his abnormal state, were forced to retreat, intending to join hands to preserve his life. But then came a droning hum. *Buzz, buzz…* The elders focused their gaze, only to see that Moutuo's pale head was gone. The cross-section of his neck was smooth as a mirror. Along its rim, numerous thread-like tendrils of flesh shot forth, flailing wildly in the air as though trying to regrow the severed head, yet the instant they extended past the plane of the cut, every one of them snapped off at the root. A Zhao Shakya's vitality could only be rivaled by demonic cultivators. Moutuo flailed his hands in frantic panic in midair; even being crushed to powder beneath Kong Tingyun's golden mountain years ago had not terrified him this deeply. He took two stumbling steps through the air and reached for his neck, but the moment his fingers brushed against the severed stump, they sheared clean off at the base with a wet squelch. *Buzz…* A second droning hum rose into the air. Moutuo vanished, leaving behind only a few drifts of blood mist. Almost simultaneously, statues in several temples on Jindou Island shattered together, crumbling into piles of stone dust. Several infants exploded out of thin air into sprays of blood, splattering the ground with gore. The guest elders and Ewu in the sky were struck utterly dumb. Moutuo had been annihilated in body and soul right before the eyes of these five Foundation Establishment cultivators. For a moment, those fighting forgot to fight, and those fleeing forgot to flee. Ewu felt an invisible tether slowly creeping over his body. With his Eldest Senior Brother Moutuo destroyed in body and soul right before him, the lineage of Qinling Temple naturally transferred onto him. The prize he had yearned for day and night had fallen into his hands without the slightest effort, yet not a trace of joy showed on his face. He muttered blankly: “What is it… What is this… An arrow… It's an arrow…” He coughed, spitting out flecks of bloody foam, and felt his face sting as though slashed by blades. Dense beads of blood seeped across his left cheek. Having no time to lament, his hands formed incantation signs to cast an art, unleashing a hundred golden beams. His strength had already surpassed Moutuo's, and now that Moutuo was dead and the temple's lineage had passed to him, his power was bolstered by another thirty percent. Yet he had long been scared out of his wits. Encircled by a hundred golden rays, he rode the wind through the sky as though running for his very life. The guest elders of Jindou Island were both alarmed and terrified. The person they had been ordered to protect had been obliterated right before their eyes; how could their feelings be anything less than a tangled mess? Looking at the mist of blood in the air and Ewu fleeing eastward with reckless abandon, one of them said: “That monk has many life-preserving arts… Perhaps he has already resurrected on the island.” Another shook his head, terror written all over his face. “Do we still pursue?” They exchanged glances, reading the dread in one another's eyes. In silence, they rode the wind to give chase toward the north, yet at a pace so sluggish they might as well have been admiring the scenery. *** Ewu had fled barely two li when a chill overtook his entire body. Hearing a sharp hum beside his ear, he dodged desperately to one side. A tearing agony tore through his arm. Glancing down, he saw a bloody hole had pierced through his palm. To a Shakya cultivator, such an injury was practically nothing. Shakya cultivators cared little for physical form; their flesh could be kneaded and replaced at will. Ordinarily, a gentle stroke would suffice to seal the hole in his hand. Yet now, the wound dripped with fresh blood, throbbing with a numbing sting and showing no sign of mending. Ewu's pupils dilated, and panic seized him. Li Xuanfeng's strike was extraordinarily powerful. Ewu had faced formidable enemies before, and spells wielded by direct disciples of immortal sects often carried such might… But what truly terrified Ewu was something else: *Where is he?* This attack was swift to the extreme, as though traveling straight through the Great Void, boundless and without end. Ewu could not even discern which direction it had come from. In fleeing with all his might, was he putting distance between them… or hurtling straight toward him? The unknown was far more frightening than raw power. He could not even see his enemy's shadow. How much did an attack like this cost his opponent? How long was the interval between shots? And just how far did the attack range extend? Ewu knew none of it. He felt only a creeping cold along his spine as drops of blood began to seep from his chest. “He is toying with me, damn him!” A flash of realization struck Ewu. Forming fresh hand seals, he summoned the three-headed, six-armed apparition behind him and shouted: “Empowered by the Supreme Dharma: Jieti Golden Body!” His skin flared with brilliance, shifting from red to a dazzling gold like solid, impenetrable brass. Tiny incantation runes emerged, dancing and leaping across his flesh. *Spurt!* Yet in the very next instant, he spat out a mouthful of pale-golden blood, a mist of gold scattering through the air and shimmering bizarrely in the sunlight. Ewu's chest was hollowed out, leaving behind a hole the thickness of a forearm through which the crimson-tinted green sea could be seen behind him. Bolstered by the golden body, he caught sight of the golden shadow for the very first time: A golden, slender phoenix-like arrow, luminous, translucent… and brimming with flowing radiance. Forcefully suppressing the terror in his heart, he touched the wound lightly, finally gleaning an understanding: “So that is its power. Before the Maha perished, this dharma body might still have held it off… What a pity.”