Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The sword and the saber were clinging together in a stand-off. Neither could move forward; it was as if the two had melded together.
“Attack!” Old Man Mu shouted. The Dragon King and Wild Horse were competing in terms of internal energy. This was the best, and might even be the only opportunity to kill the enemy. Of course, he would not launch an attack because he had neither the ability nor the courage to do so.
With a sword in her hand, Lotus stared at the two who were standing motionless next to her and turned a deaf ear to Old Man Mu’s reminder.
Han Fen didn’t realize the danger and wanted to step forward to make a move, but she paused under the Master Commander’s glare.
“Lotus, you…” Old Man Mu cried out in surprise, feeling that something was wrong.
The saber and sword resumed their movements. To be specific, Wild Horse’s sword was moving forward and pressing against the Dragon King’s saber. It was a bit slow at first, but soon sped up with indomitable momentum. The collision of the sword and saber made a harsh, grinding sound.
Gu Shenwei cried out in a muffled voice, dropped the saber, jumped back, and spat out a mouthful of blood after landing. He had been stabbed in the chest but wasn’t bleeding much.
The Five Peaks Saber had fallen from its master’s hand for the first time since its creation.
Old Man Mu was dumbfounded. Wild Horse’s sword move wasn’t lethal, but the Dragon King was obviously internally injured. But the Dragon King had both the Daoless Divine Power and the Sumeru Mustard Divine Power, so his internal energy should be stronger than Wild Horse’s. How could he have been utterly defeated? Could it be possible that the Death Sutra was not just a sword manual but an internal energy one?
A lot of doubts flashed through the crowd’s mind. Old Man Mu was the first to wake up from the shock, as he cried out and disappeared behind dozens of legs.
Astonished, Shangguan Fei grabbed the guard of the Heavenly Mountain Sect and desperately commanded, “You… You have to protect me. My mother will give you…”
“The Dragon King is not dead yet,” said the guard coldly.
Shangguan Fei looked carefully at the Dragon King again. Sure enough, although the Dragon King had vomited blood, his face was a bit redder and looked much better than usual. And now, he was standing very steadily. At the same time, he started walking towards Wild Horse.
Wild Horse had won this round, but his condition looked very bad. He seemed to have been fooled and showed none of the Ceasing and Arising Swordmanship’s demeanor at all.
Old Man Mu stuck out his head from behind Han Fen, glanced at the field, and suddenly laughed out loud. Then he walked out and loudly said, “The Dragon King has really made a smart move. Little Wild Horse, this time you have to admit your failure.”
Han Fen scratched her head and asked, “What was the Dragon King’s move? His saber was knocked way and he vomited out blood.”
Old Man Mu glanced the Dragon King and knew that he could explain. “What the Dragon King spat out was blood stasis. He had a foul Qi in his body that always threatened to make him undergo Qi deviation. He has tried to rid himself of it through many means, but they all failed. He wanted to use an external force, but not too many people have a powerful enough internal energy. Unexpectedly, Wild Horse has done him a great favor today. Haha, Dragon King, am I right?”
“Almost,” Gu Shenwei said as he stood bare-handed, opposite Wild Horse, his saber landing at Wild Horse’s feet. “I feel much better now.”
The Death Sutra had a hidden effect. If it couldn’t kill the enemy, then it might cause the enemy to temporarily lose their internal energy. Wild Horse had suffered from it before when he had had no choice but accept Shangguan Ru’s pardon and flee into the prairie like a drowned rat.
Gu Shenwei didn’t realize what had happened until a long time later. But he had rarely used the pure Death Sutra Swordsmanship in recent years, and naturally, he hadn’t come across it again. But today, he tried it on himself.
After all, the Death Sutra was a set of sword techniques. It couldn’t improve the practitioner’s internal energy, but it could be used to control one’s internal energy and stimulate one’s latent talent. With ordinary martial arts skills, one could exert 70% or 80% of one’s full internal energy. The so-called ‘full strength’ was nothing but an exaggeration. But the Death Sutra Swordsmanship could force its user to exert their real full strength or even more.
As a result, although Wild Horse’s internal energy wasn’t as strong as the Dragon King’s, he was stronger in a real fight when he used the pure Death Sutra Swordsmanship. Gu Shenwei had kept stimulating Wild Horse and ‘helped’ him improve his swordsmanship faster so that his sword move would carry much more internal energy.
And Wild Horse had done it. He had found the way and entered a whole new realm. The internal Qi that he had instilled into his sword had instantly unleashed a power that was severalfold his own, and it had crushed and crashed through all the resistance along the way and launched a mighty blow. The only thing he didn’t expect was that the Dragon King would use that frosty Qi of his to take the blow.
If the frosty Qi could think, it would also be surprised that its master, who usually used it as a means of attack, would suddenly use it as a futile means of defense.
Just as Old Man Mu had guessed, Wild Horse had defeated the frosty Qi in its entirety. Gu Shenwei had finally rid himself of the foul Qi that he had accumulated through the years. This was a risky treatment method. He wasn’t even sure if the hidden danger of Qi deviation would be completely eradicated or not, but he felt great at the moment.
Gu Shenwei had lost his Five Peaks Saber, spat out a mouthful of blood, and was internally injured, but he still felt relieved. For many years, the frosty Qi had been like a vicious wolf sleeping next to a lamb and tricked its food from time to time when it woke up. Occasionally, it would help the lamb fight off some other beasts, but it would eventually swallow the lamb whole when it grew up.
Gu Shenwei had gotten used to the existence of this evil wolf, but his stress had dissipated until today, when the wolf was driven out by an even more violent power.
The only thing he was worried about was that the effect might be temporary and that the frosty Qi would make a comeback.
Gu Shenwei directed his yin and yang internal Qi to circulate in his meridians. After a full cycle, he found that it was very smooth. The frosty Qi had completely disappeared, leaving absolutely no trace.
Wild Horse wasn’t injured at all. The frosty Qi had been unable to make any counterattack in the face of a much stronger power and had dispersed before it could even enter the enemy’s body.
He had been exploited. Servant Huan had said one thing but done another behind his back just like before. Wild Horse could no longer contain his anger.
He had mastered the Death Sutra which had brought Servant Huan good luck, understood it more thoroughly, and improved upon it more quickly than anyone else. There was no power in this world that could stop him from killing his enemy anymore.
Servant Huan’s life was, after all, different from that of an ordinary person . He was his enemy and killing him would always bring him a great pleasure that no one else’s death, including Lotus’, could bring.
Wild Horse could kill Lotus without hesitation, but he didn’t hate her. He only hated Servant Huan and the Death Sutra had raised this hatred to the extreme.
He made another sword stroke.
Between him and the Dragon King stood Lotus.
No one knew what the Dragon King thought better than her. Old Man Mu could guess some of the truth afterwards, but she had understood the Dragon King’s intentions from the very beginning. After all, she was the one who had ‘planted’ the frosty Qi within the Dragon King’s body in the first place.
Wild Horse hesitated for a moment. Lotus had the permanent antidote formula of the Blood Coagulation Pill. Killing her was tantamount to burning all the bridges behind him, but the influence of the Death Sutra had seeped into his marrow. Wild Horse, though he hesitated, didn’t pause at all.
Just do it and bear the consequences. Wild Horse believed that if he didn’t vent the killing aura that had accumulated in his heart, he would be the one who died.
The two’s killing auras were well-matched. No one could intimidate the other, so they could only rely on their real sword techniques.
Old Man Mu had already taken action before Wild Horse had made his move. He jumped up, flew over Han Fen’s head, and knocked off a torch on the wall, creating a dark area around him.
The Dragon King had been using surprising ways to deal with Wild Horse, but it had only made the mute’s swordsmanship grow more and more powerful. This couldn’t go on for too long after all. Old Man Mu had to arrange a path of retreat for himself.
As soon as the two swords collided, the torches in the hall went out one after another.
Shangguan Fei was a follower and imitator of Old Man Mu. As soon as Old Man Mu jumped up, Shangguan Fei turned around and also knocked the torch over his head off and snuffed it out. He actually did it a bit faster than Old Man Mu.
In that moment, the disciples of the Waning Moon Hall and Essence Pavilion were in a state of bewilderment, and any stimulation could cause heavy repercussions. Many people standing next to the wall followed suit without even understanding why they had extinguished the torch.
“Eh, what are you doing? Do not put out the torch… Leave one on… I can’t see anything now… Master Commander…” Even as Han Fen exclaimed, the entire hall plunged into darkness.
Seeing was believing, but what one saw might be a delusion. As soon as Wild Horse and Lotus disappeared from sight, their killing aura seemed to greatly weaken and the invisible line that bound the disciples suddenly broke. It was not until then that they finally understood the intention behind extinguishing the torches — they could run away now.
No matter what their initial training method was, they only had one idea in mind, which was “survival.” Unlike Shangguan Hong, who could convert his will to survive into strength, they simply wanted to live and use all their strength to escape.
Although the Dragon King told them that the ultimate end of the Waning Moon Swordsmanship was death, Wild Horse was the real contributor who shattered their sweet dreams. Wild Horse’s killing aura as well as his increasingly powerful swordsmanship hadn’t aroused the disciples’ enthusiasm but instead discouraged them. Wild Horse represented a realm that they could never reach.
The hall was now in complete chaos as everyone tried to rush towards the narrow exit, huddling together. When there was no way forward, many people started swinging the sword in their hands.
“Be careful! Do not kill,” someone shouted. They still remembered Lotus’s words and feared accidentally killing the person who knew the antidote formula.
This reminder, however, was only effective for a very short period of time before it was dispelled with a few more screams of pain. Compared to the immediate threat, the antidote was far out from hand.
Screams were soon heard everywhere but a few people did manage to run out of the hall.
“Stop running about, idiots. All of you, stand against the wall and leave one by one.” Old Man Mu’s voice overwhelmed the screams. Although he had good lightness skills and was very flexible, he was unable to push his way out when over a hundred people were blocking the passage. The main point was that he also wanted to know the result of the duel and was thus reluctant to run away.
“Stand against the wall, stand against the wall!” More and more people shouted this, thinking that it was a good idea. The screams finally abated. Occasionally, one would still ring out, but they were due to a fight for a foothold.
It was strangely quiet and only the sound of breathing could be heard. Han Fen was the first to speak out. “Master Commander, are you alive? Dragon King, are you alive?”
The duel seemed to have either ended, or the two parties were couldn’t find their targets and were holding their breath and waiting for the other side to reveal themselves first.
“Stupid Han Fen. Do you want Lotus and the Dragon King to expose themselves?” Old Man Mu scolded as he pricked up his ears and listened more attentively than anyone else.
“Right, well… Wild Horse, are you alive? You can’t talk but you can stamp your feet.”
Old Man Mu was just about to say ‘stupid’ again when he heard a familiar voice.
“Light the torch,” Gu Shenwei ordered.
Old Man Mu was overjoyed but he didn’t have any matches on him so he shouted, “Quick, light the torch. The Dragon King won, so Wild Horse must be dead.”
Finally, it was an Essence Pavilion disciple who lit the torch that flashed briefly before being immediately extinguished by him.
Within that moment of light, everyone clearly saw that Wild Horse wasn’t dead. He was still standing in the center of the hall and five steps away from him was the Dragon King and Lotus.
