"Excuse me, Fellow Daoist, do you know those two bald youths in the mud pit?" Tao Yaoye politely asked the hook-nosed boss.
At the same time, she was somewhat puzzled. She didn't remember Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou being bald.
What kind of accident could turn someone bald?
Tao Yaoye fell silent for a moment. Then again, with those two around, no accident would surprise her.
Thinking that Tao Yaoye and Man Gu had traveled thousands of li seeking vengeance, the Five Heroes of Eagle Mountain hastily shook their heads and said they didn't know them.
"We just arrived as well and don't know the two bald young heroes. We've only heard that one of them is named Lu Yang, supposedly a Buddhist who is proficient in the Arhat Fist. Anyone struck by his Arhat Fist loses all their hair."
Tao Yaoye: "..."
When had Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou become Buddhists?
Which Buddhist sect could be so blind as to take in those two?
As far as she knew, the abbot of the Hanging Temple clamored every day about subduing that vile beast Daoist Buyu.
Man Gu pondered for a moment and grasped the deep meaning behind the actions of Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou: "When traveling outside, one must conceal one's identity. Brother Lu and Brother Meng know that their conduct is ostentatious and could implicate the Dao Seeking Sect. Therefore, the two of them shaved their heads to show their resolve and posed as Buddhists!"
Man Gu felt that Eldest Senior Sister was truly worthy of her title. When she sent them to Demon Quelling Pass to learn from Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou, she must have already foreseen this scene.
Look at that—they had learned quite a lot the moment they met.
"Do you two know them?" Seeing the strange expressions on Tao Yaoye and Man Gu's faces, the hook-nosed boss suspected that they knew each other.
"My name is Tao Yaoye, this is Man Gu, and the two in the mud pit are Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou. All four of us are disciples of the Dao Seeking Sect," Tao Yaoye explained.
"The Dao Seeking Sect?!" The Five Heroes of Eagle Mountain paled in shock. They never imagined Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou would possess such an astounding background.
On second thought, it made sense. The two young heroes could defeat the successors of first-rank sects with ease; the power backing them naturally far surpassed a first-rank sect.
Even so, hailing from the Dao Seeking Sect was truly terrifying.
What was the Dao Seeking Sect? One of the Five Great Immortal Sects, with a history spanning one hundred and twenty thousand years, having existed even longer than the Great Xia Dynasty. Its heritage was unfathomable, and rumors even held that the Dao Seeking Sect possessed transcendent strength and stood at the head of the Five Great Immortal Sects!
The strongest sect!
The hook-nosed boss breathed a sigh of relief. As long as they weren't enemies seeking vengeance, that was good.
Only then did he explain that the five of them were guides hired by Meng Jingzhou, and that Lu Yang and Meng Jingzhou had come here to vie for the Twin Conjoined Lotus.
"Core Formation, I see," Tao Yaoye nodded. She and Man Gu were only a sliver away from late Foundation Establishment, and they had also come to the dense forest to search for an opportunity for Core Formation.
"Could it be that Senior Brother Lu wanted to find an opportunity for Core Formation amidst battle, and thus deliberately incited public wrath to draw everyone into besieging him?" Tao Yaoye looked at Lu Yang suspiciously. That seemed the most likely explanation.
Lu Yang was under immense pressure right now.
He had come here purely to seize the Twin Conjoined Lotus, and using Arhat Fist was legitimate self-defense.
He hadn't anticipated that after unleashing a sequence of Arhat Fist, he would have to face the wrath of nearly a hundred late Foundation Establishment cultivators, along with more than a dozen Golden Core stage cultivators.
Meng Jingzhou was deeply moved. Earlier, when he asked Lu Yang to help, Lu Yang had actually broken character and actively drawn all the aggro. Now, no one was paying any attention to Meng Jingzhou.
How loyal!
Lu Yang calmly tried to explain, "Fellow Daoists, I believe there may be a misunderstanding between us. I have a friend who is skilled in artifact crafting, and crafting wigs is no trouble at all for him. Once this matter is over, I can take you to find him..."
"Go die!" The crowd didn't listen to Lu Yang's explanation in the slightest and swarmed toward him.
Lu Yang possessed extraordinary combat prowess and could even defeat a late Golden Core stage cultivator, but facing such a vast number of cultivators, he still felt his strength had its limits.
While Lu Yang felt his strength was limited, those besieging him thought his power was unfathomable. The guy was clearly only at late Foundation Establishment, yet when besieged by cultivators of the same realm, he handled it with ease. Even a Golden Core stage cultivator couldn't manage that, could they?
"Shrinking the Earth!"
Lu Yang executed Shrinking the Earth to Inches and made to flee.
"He's using the Earth Escape Technique!" Someone in the crowd adept in earth-attribute arts instantly called out Lu Yang's skill.
Without another word, the others attacked the ground, blasting Lu Yang right back out.
Struggling to fend off enemies from all directions, Lu Yang inadvertently caught sight of Tao Yaoye and Man Gu standing by the lakeside, as if seeing his saviors.
"Junior Brother Man, hurry and save me!" Lu Yang shouted at the top of his lungs. "Junior Sister Tao, help from the shore!"
Seeing this, Man Gu jumped into the mud pit to rescue Lu Yang.
Meng Jingzhou broke through multiple obstacles as well and arrived at Lu Yang's side.
At this moment, the Immortal Cult trio reunited, bursting with boundless combat power.
"You both know what to do, right?"
Lu Yang acted as though facing a formidable foe, and Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu nodded as if sharing a tacit understanding.
"Combine!"
All three shouted in unison, reenacting their combined battle technique.
Except this time, Lu Yang was the core, hoisting Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu.
Seeing this sight, the crowd hesitated for a moment.
They had never seen this fighting style before!
Tao Yaoye on the shore paused for a moment.
She had never seen this posture before either.
And Senior Brother Lu had told her to help from the shore—what was she supposed to do?
Lu Yang gave a cold snort as a surge of sword qi infused the surfaces of Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu's bodies. The two instantly became exceptionally sharp, like two sharp swords.
"Let them see what we're capable of!" Lu Yang bellowed.
As an owner of the Sword Spiritual Root, Lu Yang hadn't used a sword earlier out of concern that the Green Blade Sword was too potent and might kill someone. Now that he had Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu in hand, he had no such worries.
These two were virtually blunt instruments; coated with only a layer of sword qi, they wouldn't accidentally kill anyone.
The dual-sword technique Lu Yang had trained diligently for several months finally found its use. Brandishing Meng Jingzhou and Man Gu like a small spinning top, he spun in circles in the mud pit.
Anyone swept by them went flying horizontally, with even the Golden Core stage cultivators concealed among them being no exception.
After the Immortal Cult was destroyed, the three had returned to the Dao Seeking Sect and practiced how to spin. This time, they spun for far longer than they had in the Immortal Cult!
"Stay away from them! This move won't last long!" Duan Hongchen, the Heaven-Questioning Saber, possessed abundant combat experience and saw right through the flaw in this technique at a glance.
Indeed, although the three had practiced bitterly, spinning for too long was simply unsustainable.
"Senior Brother Lu, I'm about to throw up," Man Gu transmitted his voice to Lu Yang.
"Me too," Meng Jingzhou said.
"Trust in Junior Sister Tao," Lu Yang responded calmly.
Seeing this, Tao Yaoye understood what Lu Yang meant.
She opened her red paper umbrella, held two fingers upright before her lips, softly chanted an incantation, and opened an illusion barrier.
An illusion capable of affecting perception enveloped the mud pit.
Illusion was her greatest specialty.
However, her target was not the enemies, but the trio of Lu Yang and his companions.
The trio, who had been dizzy and nauseous, immediately felt their bodies lighten, as if they could no longer feel their surroundings, and their dizziness vanished.
Lu Yang deliberately refrained from executing his cultivation method, the Art of Illuminating the Heart and Seeing Nature, allowing himself to remain within the illusion.
In reality, Lu Yang's trio continued fighting, except now Tao Yaoye was using the illusion to manipulate their bodies while their consciousness was isolated from the outside world! They couldn't feel the physical sensations of their bodies!
That way, there would be no problem with dizziness!
From this moment on, the combined battle technique had no more flaws!
Chapter 254