How could the scent of blood drift from people dying inside an illusion?
Without waiting for Fu Shanyue to prompt him, He Lingchuan glided forward with a swift step. Before him, he saw one Shimen caravan worker with his throat slit, while another had a blade driven straight through his chest.
That brief cry had been the man's dying breath.
The killers were two Chiyan people.
While the victims were still bathed in blood and their final breath had yet to fully dissipate, the killers pressed a bead into each wound.
At a speed visible to the naked eye, the two workers' bodies deflated, like hollowed-out burlap sacks or dried plum vegetables squeezed dry of every drop of moisture.
Though surrounded by illusions, this was physically barren wilderness, where the sparse vegetation was too stunted to provide real cover. Thus, the moment He Lingchuan caught the two Chiyan men in the act, they spotted him as well.
Killing two was murder; killing four merely made two pairs. Without needing a word between them, both gripped their bloodstained weapons and charged forward.
He Lingchuan raised his hand and loosed a sleeve arrow at the man on the right, while hurling his own body straight toward the foe on the left.
His opponent bore down aggressively, assuming He Lingchuan was offering himself up on a silver platter. The blade was almost slicing down toward He Lingchuan's crown before He Lingchuan reached to his waist and unsheathed Fusheng.
This strike had been poised to strike from the start. Reflecting the moon overhead for less than half a second, the blade was drawn and then returned to its scabbard.
With a sharp clang, the opponent was severed in two along with his blade.
By now, He Lingchuan had begun exploring how to nurture and store blade momentum—the so-called quick-draw technique. When a fine blade was kept sheathed for long and suddenly brought into the light, its blade qi was at its fiercest in that single split second; one who could command it properly could subdue any foe.
Within Wave Slash, there were dedicated techniques for this, and what He Lingchuan had just executed was the Startled Swan Slash. Before the Battle of Han River, he had killed too few people to grasp it.
On the battlefield, bladecraft had to remain ever-changing, adapting to time and circumstance; every variation had to be mastered.
Over on the other side, Fu Shanyue slowly drew his water-parting spike from his enemy's throat.
He had taken advantage of an opening: the fellow had tilted his head to dodge He Lingchuan's sleeve arrow, allowing Fu Shanyue to close in and seal his throat with a single thrust.
A wounded soldier had to fight with a wounded soldier's cunning.
Glancing over at He Lingchuan, Fu Shanyue could not help baring his teeth. The unlucky wretch cut down at a diagonal had clearly been bolstered by origin power, yet he hadn't lasted a single exchange against He Lingchuan.
That demonstrated a massive gap in strength between them.
Wiping the blood from his weapon against the corpse, Fu Shanyue used the tip of his spike to flick two red beads from the dead workers' wounds.
These two beads were the culprits that had sucked them dry.
"These are blood beads, used to harvest the flesh-and-blood essence of prey." Fu Shanyue chuckled coldly. "No wonder."
"No wonder what?" He Lingchuan crouched down and searched the two Chiyan corpses thoroughly, pocketing anything that caught his eye.
These two had acted like arrogant toughs, but turned out to be dead broke, failing to scrape together even a hundred taels of silver in money and goods between them.
Pah. Paupers in life, paupers in death.
Watching the ruthless greed with which He Lingchuan looted the corpses, Fu Shanyue knew this was truly no upright gentleman.
"They're probably gathering the flesh-and-blood essence of living mortals to keep Fu Shanji alive and delay his death." He smiled with ill intent. "Going by that logic, a mere two people won't be nearly enough. Your caravan has been targeted as meat sheep, you know."
He Lingchuan had not known that these ba used "meat sheep" to refer to edible living mortals. Shaking his head, he said, "You underestimate divine arts. How could the flesh-and-blood essence of a mere dozen or even several dozen mortals delay the worsening of Fu Shanji's injuries?"
Otherwise, Wen Daolun, Zhong Shengguang, and even General Red wouldn't have been left utterly helpless.
After Wen Xing was stabbed, he hadn't even lasted three shichen.
Fu Shanyue shrugged. "Perhaps they have some secret technique?"
The wide world was full of wonders. Since divine arts existed, there ought to be ways to counter them as well, right?
Yet it was an indisputable fact that the Shimen caravan was in grave danger. It hadn't been convenient for the Chiyan people to act in Tongluo County, but what was there to fear out in this barren, ruined city?
He Lingchuan fished out the whistle on the caravan worker's body.
This whistle was used to sound an alarm. Once blown, everyone would rush back to Second Master Shi's side as fast as possible.
Yet before He Lingchuan could blow it, Fu Shanyue waved his hand to stop him. "Don't blow it, or Second Master Shi and Taozi will be done for immediately!"
Second Master Shi and the little witch child were still in the ruined armory, right across from Uncle Da!
Uncle Da believed life and death were entirely in his grasp, so he might not have moved against them yet. But the moment the alarm whistle sounded, he might erupt into violence on the spot.
To capture the bandits, one captured their leader. Once Second Master Shi was taken down, the entire caravan would inevitably collapse into chaos.
Realizing Fu Shanyue was right, He Lingchuan stowed the whistle and hurried back.
After rushing more than twenty paces, He Lingchuan suddenly said, "Careful. Uncle Da is heading this way."
Fu Shanyue's heart tightened.
He had suffered several times under He Lingchuan's long-range surveillance capabilities, so he knew this warning was no empty shot in the dark. He said, "Slow your pace."
Fu Shanyue rolled outward, coming to a stop directly behind a tree as thick as a large bowl.
Elsewhere, this would only be considered a sapling, but in this valley, it was already a tall one among dwarves. Its thin, scrawny shadow was nowhere near enough to conceal a grown man.
Yet with that single roll, Fu Shanyue managed to vanish completely into the tree's shadow.
He Lingchuan gave it a deliberate second glance: there was no one behind the tree, nor on the ground.
Some kind of escape art?
If he had passed by without knowing beforehand, he probably wouldn't have noticed either.
If this fellow didn't have a few exceptional tricks for staying alive, how could he have moved with such ease under the vicious hunt led by Uncle Da and the Chiyan people?
He Lingchuan steadied his breathing and relaxed his muscles. Otherwise, a tense posture would easily give him away to an enemy preparing an ambush.
Soon, however, the silhouette of a ferocious tiger appeared directly ahead.
Uncle Da had arrived.
He was sprinting at full tilt on all fours, charging straight toward him.
"..." Not even bothering to pretend to set an ambush? He Lingchuan felt a flicker of exasperation.
Yet the terrain here was vast and the vegetation sparse, and the absurdly bright moonlight left no creature anywhere to hide. Uncle Da probably hadn't felt like wasting the effort.
A distance of thirty zhang took only a couple of bounds for the beast. He Lingchuan felt a violent wind crash against his face.
The wind follows the tiger—the saying held absolute truth.
The tiger's form even dragged an afterimage through the air. In terms of speed, the pair of tigers He Lingchuan had encountered at Three Hearts Plain weren't even worthy of serving as his footstools.
Although He Lingchuan had remained seated the entire time in the ruins earlier, lounging even more lazily than the others, Uncle Da's spiritual instincts had nonetheless told him this fellow posed a threat far exceeding any other mortal in the caravan. Thus, he had come to handle the matter personally.
So in Uncle Da's eyes, capturing the leader didn't mean targeting Second Master Shi—it meant targeting him.
Did this count as taking the enemy seriously in strategy while holding them in contempt tactically? He Lingchuan hardly knew what to say. Uncle Da, however, had no intention of exchanging a single word with him. Using his final leap from the sprint, he pounced with a lethal swipe of his claw.
At the same time, a low roar erupted.
A tiger's roar was naturally soul-shaking. Most tigers that cultivated into demon bodies enhanced this innate gift, and Uncle Da was no exception. This low roar swept through a fan-shaped expanse ahead, instantly blasting loose weeds, dirt, and sand into the air. The powerful sonic shockwave struck straight at the prey's mind and heart, causing the heart chambers to violently contract and inducing dizziness, tinnitus, bodily stiffness, limp limbs, and acute chest pain; it could even rupture the cerebral blood vessels of ordinary prey.
On the way over, he had already killed a man without even needing to use his claws—the man had been roared to death on the spot, bleeding from all seven facial orifices as he collapsed.
Anyone who had never heard a tiger's true roar could never fathom that bone-deep terror and soul-shivering dread.
Yet He Lingchuan had anticipated it. He had killed plenty of tigers, leopards, and lions over the past few years, and they all liked to let out a roar before attacking. Thus, before Uncle Da even opened his jaws, He Lingchuan thrust the Soul-Snatching Shield forward and entered the state of Stubborn Stone.
This divine ability was originally meant for stealth, sealing all the user's apertures and cutting off all aura.
In other words, once in this state, He Lingchuan was no different from an inanimate boulder. No matter how formidable Uncle Da's tiger roar might be, it could neither penetrate his ears nor rattle his heart, lungs, or mind.
As for the slight physical impact generated by the sonic wave, it was completely blocked by the shield.
He Lingchuan had observed Elder Liang of Chuanyun Pavilion and had been very curious about the Mantra of Silence the man cultivated. When he asked around in Panlong City, the answer he received was that the first one or two sonic blasts released after long contemplation carried the greatest lethal force, while subsequent ones rapidly weakened. He figured this tiger demon operated on much the same principle.
Having failed with his initial roar, Uncle Da went straight to his claws, swatting a paw toward He Lingchuan's temple.
An ordinary tiger's paw strike carried roughly two thousand jin of force, but Uncle Da tripled that figure, easily capable of smashing a human head into a burst watermelon. His paw was tipped with five curved steel claws, each over two inches long; beyond shearing flesh and stripping bone, they were well-suited to disemboweling prey on the spot.
He Lingchuan raised his shield to meet the blow. After blocking just two strikes, both his arms were shuddering violently. It was vastly more strenuous than enduring Meng Shan's attacks, leaving him secretly alarmed by the tiger demon's brute power.
Uncle Da swung blow after blow with left and right paws, striking more than a dozen times, yet every hit was deflected by the shield, producing piercing screeches.
Even so, He Lingchuan was driven back step after step. Even standing upright on two legs to attack, this monster's hind legs generated immense driving power.
Uncle Da's onslaught was astonishingly fast, far beyond what an ordinary martial artist's eyes could track. Had He Lingchuan missed a single block, he would likely have been pounced upon and had his windpipe torn out...
Naturally, Fusheng was not idle either, but Uncle Da's sense of danger was exceedingly sharp; he never clashed directly against this divine weapon.
It was easy to describe, but facing this tiger head-on felt like confronting a tempestuous ocean wave. The enemy's attacks were relentless and seemingly without end; He Lingchuan could not gain the upper hand in either momentum or attack frequency.
This creature was undeniably ferocious—otherwise, Fu Shanyue wouldn't have been beaten half to death by him.
Soon, Uncle Da grew impatient and hooked his claws, attempting to pry the shield aside.
This shield was the second form of the soul-snatching mirror, inherently reflecting about ten percent of physical damage. Uncle Da had struck it over a dozen times, which meant he had suffered that reflected damage over a dozen times as well. As it accumulated, even his thick hide and tough flesh found it unbearable.
It was as though he were putting all his strength into slapping his own face over and over.
Why was killing a mere mortal proving so difficult?
Just at that moment, Fusheng tilted. At this angle, the reflected moonlight grew doubly brilliant, focusing into a sharp beam that flashed right into the tiger's eyes.
Blinding! Uncle Da instinctively jerked his head aside.
Not only that, but the beam of light shot out like a laser, striking straight onto the ethereal battlements of Thousand Stars City.
By now, the King of Yuan had reached the end of his rope. The guards beside him were falling one after another, while more and more enemies scrambled up the city walls.
Looking across the top of the ramparts and down below, enemies were everywhere his gaze fell, while the blood of his own soldiers had already run dry.
The last defender on the wall was torn apart by a jackal demon, blood erupting three feet from his neck as though striking the final resting chord upon this long, hopeless struggle.
With a heavy sigh, the King of Yuan was just about to draw his sword and take his own life when the gleam from Fusheng arrived, illuminating his face.
The intense glare actually caused him to freeze for a moment. He turned his head and looked directly toward He Lingchuan's position!
Chapter 416