Putting power into its waist and legs, it executed a superb sharp turn and gave hot pursuit right on He Lingchuan's heels.
The Feather Guards charged forward as well, several crossbow bolts shooting straight for Dong Rui to turn him into a porcupine.
As if having eyes in the back of his head, Dong Rui bobbed and ducked, dodging them with ease while shouting curses: "Nangong Yan, have you lost your damned mind? You dare try to kill envoys of the Mou Kingdom!"
The act still had to be played to the hilt. Then he nodded toward the green-skinned monkey on his shoulder. "Kill them! If a single one gets away, I'll hold you responsible!"
Finally allowed to cut loose and have at it, the monkey chattered with glee, grinning from ear to ear.
Here, the pseudotiger chased after He Lingchuan, yet He Lingchuan lunged straight for Nangong Yan. He knew Dong Rui spent his life on the run and was exceptionally nimble on his feet; even if he couldn't win, he could protect himself, requiring no worry at all. Besides, the fellow's combat tricks had grown steadily nastier.
The pseudotiger's explosive speed was already startling, yet it stayed three feet behind He Lingchuan, unable to catch up no matter what.
This two-legged creature was actually faster than its four legs!
Seeing its quarry throw himself into the net by heading toward its master and the Golden Feather Guards, the pseudotiger simply turned around to target Dong Rui instead.
Pick the soft persimmon to squeeze—even it understood that principle.
Just then, the ghost ape leapt high off horseback and transformed midair. Its colossal frame completely blotted out the daylight above the pursuers. Panic-stricken, the men scrambled to dodge, but the ghost ape came down like a collapsing mountain, slamming two Feather Guards face-first right into the dirt!
Before either could even scream, over two thousand jin of weight flattened them into meat pies.
The pseudotiger pounced just in time for the ghost ape to block its path. The ape drew out its fine-gold cudgel and smashed it straight at the tiger's skull.
This time, Dong Rui finally didn't stop it.
The two monsters instantly clashed.
One was domineering, the other agile.
After the pseudotiger switched targets, He Lingchuan also closed in on the main Feather Guard force.
The foremost two swung their sabers, but He Lingchuan suddenly raised the round shield in his hand and flashed it toward them.
Under the daylight, the two saw their own reflections in the mirror-smooth surface of the shield. Strangely, their reflections shouted and yelled at them, saying something...
In the blink of an eye, five or six more surrounded He Lingchuan, and they too caught sight of themselves in the mirror shield.
The attacks of these seven or eight men slowed immediately. Murmuring to themselves where they stood, they abruptly spun around to hack at their comrades!
Taken entirely off guard, multiple Feather Guards were struck, slashed by their own men. The unluckiest among them had half his neck cleaved through—who knew how bitter a personal grudge had been harbored between them in everyday life.
With these few suddenly turning traitor, the Feather Guard formation fell into chaos, no longer able to maintain tight coordination.
This was where the Soul-Snatching Mirror got its name. In the past, however, He Lingchuan's opponents on the battlefield had been protected by origin power, so the mirror had limited effect, merely distracting the mind to create tactical openings for its master. It had been a long time since it had successfully turned so many foes over such a wide area and for so long.
Ahehehehe, this precious mirror hadn't grown rusty after all!
"The Shanjin Plain really is a wonderful place!" The weaker the origin power, the more suited it was for stirring up trouble!
Taking advantage of the Feather Guards falling into disarray, He Lingchuan shifted like a swallow darting through rain, slipping past four or five men in succession and closing in on Nangong Yan in the blink of an eye.
He watched with his own eyes as Nangong Yan pressed his ring finger, and a hazy gray shadow suddenly emerged behind him.
In the next instant, the surrounding dozen or so Golden Feather Guards sped up, lunging straight for He Lingchuan.
He Lingchuan had just raised his saber to force back one Golden Feather Guard when wind whistled behind his head as three men simultaneously struck at his upper back, waist, and the backs of his knees.
He Lingchuan sprang off the ground with his toes, skimming away at an angle, but more guards instantly filled the space ahead.
Fluid, tight, orderly.
It felt as if all dozen-odd Golden Feather Guards were a single organism, offense and defense leaning on one another, advances and retreats executed in lockstep, coordinated seamlessly.
Among his past adversaries, only Second Madame Zhu's spider swarm could achieve this, because they were controlled by the spider queen's consciousness and functioned as one.
Aside from that, even the Bega monster-hunting squad led by Yu Zecheng—though composed entirely of elites—could never reach the level of acting as one with their eyes closed.
Otherwise, the battle against the spider sisters and the violent ape would have been far harder.
Yet Nangong Yan could manage it?
Furthermore, these dozen-odd Golden Feather Guards shared another trait:
Their eyes glowed with red light and their faces were expressionless, yet their strength and speed were astounding.
From how mercilessly they fought, they clearly intended to slaughter He Lingchuan and Dong Rui at all costs.
Why had Nangong Yan rushed out to kill them the moment they left the Bo Kingdom?
What had happened back in Bo?
He Lingchuan called out, "Murdering Mou envoys—you won't get away with this, Nangong Yan!"
Nangong Yan laughed loudly. "Look where you are!"
Where? He Lingchuan glanced in the direction of the border gate, understanding dawning on him.
They had already left the territory of the Bo Kingdom, which was why he dared strike?
Looking at Nangong Yan again, He Lingchuan noticed his eyes were normal, but the shadow behind his back seemed to possess a pair of glowing red eyes that were glaring fixedly at the enemy.
"If you intend to silence witnesses, don't blame me for killing." He Lingchuan suddenly snapped his fingers. Immediately, a colossal figure loomed at the mountain pass behind the Feather Guard forces:
Gold-armored bronze automaton, step forward!
When sprinting through the pass, he had tossed the puppet behind the boulders. Now, with a single command, the gold-armored bronze automaton rose up, cutting off the retreat of Nangong Yan and his guards.
After all, there were a hundred and thirty to forty pursuers. He Lingchuan despised their combat strength, but remained wary of their sheer numbers.
When the enemy swarmed, appearing strong against their few numbers, it was the tensest moment for his side; naturally, he needed the big brute to break the deadlock.
The moment it appeared, it snapped two trees as thick as buckets and shoved trunks, crowns, and branches into the crowd like a giant broom sweeping away fallen leaves.
The hundred or so Feather Guards had originally split into two groups to attack He Lingchuan and Dong Rui, but with the gold-armored bronze guard disrupting them like this, their formation collapsed. Many were pinned in the tree branches, unable to break free, and the bronze automaton shoved and rolled them across the ground, leaving them covered in blood.
Two nearby Feather Guards shot arrows at the eyes of the automaton, but it seized them in a single grab and hurled them skyward—they were thrown twenty-some zhang into the air before crashing down.
Another guard managed to hit the bronze automaton's knee with a fiery crossbow bolt. The oil on it ignited upon touching metal or stone, and with a whoosh, half the automaton's body caught fire.
This oil was known as Earthblood, a specialty of nearby mines. After multiple refinings, it was more potent than certain true flames, corroding flesh and bone and impossible to douse with water. It was a common tactic used by the Feather Guards to capture rebels and monsters, and it had never failed.
Had it been the old gold-armored bronze automaton, this strike would probably have ruined several internal components. However, the royal craftsmen of Chiyan who upgraded it were master artisans; its outer armor of hundred-fold forged metal was exceptionally sturdy, fitted with special insulating layers, and embedded with over a dozen formations. As soon as the fire flared, steam billowed all over the bronze automaton, and before long the flames died down, though a large patch on its knee plating was charred black.
During that time, it rammed another dozen or so Feather Guards to death with the tree trunks, using the simplest thrusts, jabs, and smashes.
The commotion it caused was so enormous that Nangong Yan glanced over—or more precisely, the shadow behind him glanced toward the bronze automaton and twitched twice.
Over here, He Lingchuan suddenly swung his saber, severing a Golden Feather Guard's arm—
Though their coordination was precise, their advances and retreats followed fixed rules.
What kind of person was He Lingchuan? After withstanding a few rounds of attacks, he grew accustomed to their tempo and caught on to the pattern of their moves.
The Golden Feather Guards' coordination seemed fluid at first glance, but in truth, they had no autonomous techniques. To He Lingchuan, it was stiff and monotonous, repeating the same few routines over and over.
No matter how effective a routine was, once seen through, it lost all novelty.
Clearly a dozen-odd Golden Feather Guards were attacking, yet He Lingchuan felt as though he were trading blows with only one person—one who simply possessed dozens of hands. The individual initiative of each guard was completely suppressed.
As the severed arm flew and blood sprayed, the Golden Feather Guard didn't utter a sound, pressing the attack as if nothing had happened.
They felt no pain, as if He Lingchuan had merely damaged a wooden dummy.
The Soul-Snatching Mirror cried out, "Hey, these guards are being controlled!"
He Lingchuan thought so too.
The guards' attacks were mechanical and precise, as if executing uniform, linear commands.
As he fought, he asked Nangong Yan, "What the hell is that thing behind your back?"
To his surprise, Nangong Yan froze, his expression changing drastically. "You can see it?" he demanded in return.
Not far away, Dong Rui heard this and immediately looked over.
See what?
Nangong Yan suddenly hurled out a gray spinning top, which spun incessantly upon hitting the ground.
As it spun, several eerie green lights flared from its surface, which then drove the surrounding air into a vortex.
First three to five feet, then thirty to fifty feet—
In just three to five breaths' time, the spinning top condensed into a land whirlwind!
The tornado shot toward the sky, expanding to fifty feet in diameter before stopping, its shape stabilizing.
At the same time, it sucked in everything around it with wild abandon.
The wider the diameter, the stronger the suction.
By the time it fully formed, the radius of the wind field reached an astonishing fifty-some zhang. It truly blotted out the sky and sun; the entire battlefield turned a murky gray, daylight completely shut out.
The wind howled like weeping ghosts, and within the whirlwind, He Lingchuan even glimpsed dark gray shadows that seemed tangible.
Yet they did not seem like living creatures.
A person couldn't even stand steady in the gale.
Even a heavyweight like the ghost ape was caught unawares by the gale and bowled over onto the ground; the large tree in the bronze automaton's grip caught the wind, dragging it into a backward somersault.
Dong Rui's slight frame was even less capable of enduring it; his cheeks were blown sideways.
Cursing aloud, he was tossed to and fro by the gale, forced to hug a large tree just to anchor himself.
Yet a hazy gray radiance glowed from Nangong Yan and the Feather Guards, allowing them to move freely in the storm!
The wind seemed to have no effect on them at all—not even a strand of hair fluttered.
"That's crossing the line!" Seeing a guard swing a saber at him, Dong Rui muttered a complaint and let go, getting swept twenty feet away by the wind.
The ghost ape lunged forward and caught him right in its hand.
Braving the storm, Dong Rui rummaged through his storage ring for a long while. "Where is it? Where is it? I distinctly remember putting it here!"
Just then the pseudotiger lunged again. The ghost ape hoisted its master onto its back—it had four arms anyway—and resumed swinging its cudgel to bash the tiger's head.
However, the storm severely hindered its movements. The ghost ape simply put away the cudgel and fought barehanded.
It howled twice at its master, meaning that countless ghostly shadows in the wind were swarming over its body.
As the Feather Guards and the pseudotiger attacked the ape together, Dong Rui finally found what he was looking for. He pulled an object from his storage ring and slammed it heavily onto the ground:
"Come forth, Wind Lion Lord!"
It was a small stone stool that usually served as a seat in his garden on Alfalfa Island, but its underside was inscribed with a wind-anchoring barrier. Learned from the Piaomiao Sect, this trick had played a tremendous role in weathering hurricanes in the Yangshan Archipelago.
Dong Rui had brought it along on this trip just to conduct experiments, never expecting it would come in handy here.
The moment the Wind Lion Lord came out, the wind within a radius of fifty feet dropped drastically, turning into a gentle breeze brushing against their faces.
This thing could withstand even the astral winds beneath the earth, so a tornado kicked up by a spinning top was nothing to it.
The pseudotiger lunged to bite the ghost ape's neck, not anticipating that while the ape had been teetering a second earlier, it stood firm the next. A palm larger than a millstone clamped around the pseudotiger's head, slamming it into the ground and grinding it mercilessly.
Only now did Dong Rui have time to worry about He Lingchuan. After all, his partner was facing Nangong Yan and the Golden Feather Guards directly, bearing the brunt of the pressure. "Hey, He—"
He had intended to ask if He Lingchuan could hold out, since He Lingchuan wasn't within the Wind Lion Lord's barrier.
But when he turned around, He Lingchuan was fighting the Golden Feather Guards without issue. Though his clothes flapped wildly, his movements were hardly hindered by the raging wind!
Eh? The kid always manages to surprise people.
The woods were dim, and debris filled the tornado, making the faint red glow on the surface of He Lingchuan's body inconspicuous.
Origin power!
The spinning top was merely a magic artifact, and the yin tornado was the supernatural ability it released.
Yet before the origin power of the Gale Army, the tornado's effect on He Lingchuan became quite limited.
Daylight was blotted out by the storm, and ghostly shadows flickered within the tornado, intending to ride the wind and pounce on him. An ordinary person couldn't see them, but would feel their body grow heavy and sluggish as if weighted down by hundreds of jin—that was the shadows clinging tightly to their limbs.
Yet the moment origin power surged around He Lingchuan, the ghostly shadows shrieked and fled, not daring to draw near.
Watching this scene, Nangong Yan found it unbelievable.
"Who on earth are you?!"
Could the origin power of the Mou Kingdom manifest in an individual thousands of li away?
Even though origin power in the Bo Kingdom was faint, he knew this made no sense!
He Lingchuan couldn't even be bothered to answer.
He hadn't brought a Wind Lion Lord and couldn't rely on a barrier like Dong Rui, so he could only channel origin power to dampen the wind.
Had this yin tornado been unleashed by Fu Shanyue's Wind Demon, origin power would have struggled to completely negate its effect on He Lingchuan. However, this whirlwind was driven by malicious yin energy; origin power not only weakened supernatural arts, but also subdued evil spirits!
Not to mention the damage Fusheng's saber gang could inflict on so-called formless, shadowless entities.
By a stroke of sheer luck, the yin tornado's impact on He Lingchuan was negligible.
Still, he had projected origin power outward, and any outsider who learned this secret—
Had to die!
This Chief Supervisor Nangong was truly seeking his own doom.
"Kill them all. Leave none alive!" The eyeball spider was tucked in He Lingchuan's lapel; he didn't need to shout for Dong Rui to hear him.
"Got it!" With the yin tornado suppressed by the Wind Lion Lord, Dong Rui tapped his backpack.
The pack stirred, and something darted out, disappearing with a swish so fast the naked eye could barely track it.
The Golden Feather Guards had mostly gone to besiege He Lingchuan, along with over forty Feather Guards—after all, Nangong Yan found him the most offensive—while the remaining fifty-some attacked the violent ape and Dong Rui.
The ghost ape was busy thrashing the pseudotiger and had no time for these pests, who thrust their spears at the ape's ankles, knees, and other spots unprotected by bronze armor, while shooting arrows at Dong Rui.
The moment the tiny shadow from the pack appeared, three Feather Guards collapsed on the spot.
One had his eyes gouged out, and another was pierced through the heart.
As four others closed in, the ghost ape suddenly lowered its head and spewed a torrent of cyan flame at them.
Origin power in the Feather Guards was feeble, making their resistance to demonic arts poor. Caught directly in the blast, they immediately rolled on the ground, wailing in agony.
The violent ape's cyan flames corroded flesh and bone and could not be quenched by water; unless one sliced off a layer of facial skin, it could not be put out.
Yet terrifying though the cyan fire was, the Feather Guards feared the elusive, invisible killer shadow even more. With that thing lurking, their strikes grew timid and hesitant.
One of the Feather Guard squad leaders roared in fury, "Kill that beast tamer! He's the one behind all these tricks!"
The words had barely left his mouth when he clutched his throat, for the shadow had darted straight into his mouth!
Two breaths later he collapsed, weapon cast aside, writhing in agonized screams.
Without the guards harassing it, the ghost ape focused entirely on the pseudotiger. Its movements weren't as agile as the tiger's, so it simply relied on sheer overwhelming force, letting the beast pounce and gnaw as it pleased.
It could endure countless attacks, but the pseudotiger could not.
Soon, the opening the ghost ape was waiting for arrived: upon landing, the pseudotiger stepped onto a snapped tree trunk, its hind leg slipping, and failed to leap away in time.
Oh, an opening! The ghost ape bore down with all its weight.
With its immense bulk, crashing squarely onto the pseudotiger nearly snapped the creature's ribs. The tiger's four legs clawed frantically at the earth, plowing deep furrows in the sandy ground, but it could not squirm out from underneath!
Having finally pinned the pseudotiger, the ghost ape held back no longer. Seizing the upper and lower jaws with both hands, it yanked violently in opposite directions!
Knowing death was upon it, the pseudotiger resisted with all its might, but could not match the giant ape's innate godlike strength. Its jaws were pried wider and wider, bit by bit.
Until a crisp crack rang out!
These monsters were terrifyingly formidable—they had even killed Lord Nangong's pseudotiger! Not to mention that in this short span, that unseen gray shadow had slaughtered another dozen men.
What in the world was that thing?
With their origin power so faint, the Feather Guards couldn't track its movements, which only magnified their terror. Several guards in the rearmost rank exchanged glances, shifted their footwork, and quietly slipped away.
How much copper did they even earn on duty? Was it worth fighting to the death like this?
Once some fled, the rest lost all will to fight.
In the blink of an eye, seven or eight Feather Guards had slipped away, all trying to flee through the mountain pass.
Dong Rui blew two whistle notes, and the glimmer of light burrowed out from the chest of a corpse, shooting off in hot pursuit of the deserters.
Dong Rui had traveled north and south for years and dealt with many armies, especially growing accustomed to the drills of the Yangshan Guard. Guards like these weren't lacking in discipline or fighting spirit, yet their combat prowess left much to be desired, which surprised him somewhat.
Usually, he traded blows with opponents rich in origin power. Dropping a tier so suddenly, he found himself quite unaccustomed to it.
He patted the ghost ape's shoulder and pointed toward He Lingchuan. "Go help."
He Lingchuan had said: leave none alive.
Two Feather Guards had managed to bypass the gold-armored bronze automaton and were nearly out of the pass. But from the woods ahead, a figure suddenly darted out, running headlong into them.
With a sweep of his blade, he cut down both guards in succession.
Jin Bai had arrived.
Chapter 1116