The noisy crowd fell silent. The old man in embroidered robes was dumbfounded. He had clearly maintained his guard the entire time, so why was he unable to dodge it?
The protectors looked at one another, also surprised. The strike earlier was so powerful that probably even they could not dodge it. They could not help but recall Hou Hongtao’s death.
This man’s strength was always so unfathomable. Normally, he did not seem particularly powerful, but he could always crush all enemies with ease when it mattered.
Li Qingshan lowered his right hand and dispersed the colourful light. He called out, “Li Qingshan be the one who killed him!”
Immediately, a tremendous wave of cheers rang out from behind.
He no longer possessed a weapon, but the guards of the Ma family all backed away when he advanced, their faces filled with fright. They actually allowed him to reach the old man step by step. He said, “Enough, just stop trying. Don’t make me finish you off!”
The old man pointed at Li Qingshan. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but blood spurted out immediately. He passed away there, dying in regret. The golden blade fell out of his hand.
Li Qingshan extended his hand and caught the blade by the hilt. He swung it conveniently and smiled. “It’s a little light, but this still suits me better!” Then he shed his damaged, heavy armour. With that, his bearing changed, now on full display and radiating with murderousness.
“Grandpa! Grandpa! You can’t die!”
A beautiful woman rushed over without any regard, throwing herself beneath the old man and sobbing away in misery. She was one of the Ten Great Beauties of the World. Coupled with the fact that she was grieving right now, basically everyone who saw her would feel saddened.
Suddenly, she looked back with her eyes filled with hatred, swinging her blade and lunging towards Li Qingshan. “Give me back my grandpa!”
With a flash of gold, a beautiful head rose up into the air, her face still perplexed and confused as if she struggled to believe someone could bring themselves to attack her. Blood spurted a meter into the air from the neck as the headless corpse stumbled a few more steps before collapsing.
“Heh, your bladesmanship sucks!”
Li Qingshan sneered. If she wanted to kill, then she had to be aware that she could be killed too. Speaking of which, he was currently submerged in the delight of swinging a blade that he had not experienced in a very long time, so he completely failed to notice whether the woman was beautiful or ugly.
“You animal! Everyone, let’s get him together! Kill this demon!”
The woman was clearly extremely spoiled in the Ma family and had countless admirers. After seeing him behead her in a single stroke, everyone became angered.
“Now that’s a question. Am I exactly an animal or a demon?”
Li Qingshan extended his hand and caught the woman’s falling, spinning blade. Since the quality was no good, then he would make up for it with quantity!
With a mad laugh and two blades in hand, he extended his long limbs and began to spin. The flames of the blades turned into a tornado, rampaging through the crowd. Wherever he went, limbs were thrown into the air, and a great number of heads rolled across the ground.
This was the savage dance unique to the tiger demon. It growled and bounded around, grinding its teeth and drinking blood, devouring life by the mouthful.
“W- what is this bladesmanship? The Ma family’s bladesmanship is basically nothing compared to it. Even father’s Seven Slaughters Blade Style probably comes nowhere close! I’ve never heard of the name Li Qingshan before. Don’t tell me he’s also obtained the power from the daemon star?”
A pale, skinny man leaned against the railing on a tall building in the distance, watching this dumbfoundedly. He carried a long bundle on his back, which was clearly a weapon like a sword or a blade. However, he kept it wrapped and hidden for some reason. At this moment, the bundle trembled away.
Suddenly, he stood up and called out, “Hero king, let me lend you a hand!” Then he leapt out of the building.
Li Qingshan glanced at him in surprise. With his sneers and jokes alone, he had actually managed to convince someone he was not familiar with into helping out.
The man was young, but he had broken through to the innate realm. He unwrapped his bundle and drew out a long blade. The blade was pitch-black like ink, without the slightest shine, but it abruptly produced a beam of light several meters in length. It slashed through three masters of the Ma family in a single stroke. His pale face was filled with hysterical and maddening killing intent.
“Nice blade!” Li Qingshan said. When it came to this world, the two blades in his possession could both be considered as treasured blades, but they were already heavily damaged.
“The Demonic Blade of Seven Slaughters! This kid is the successor of the Demon Lord of Seven Slaughters!?”
There were many people from the martial arts community in the city, spectating the battle here from afar. They had watched the battle until they became absolutely frightened and dazzled. There were so many renowned masters here, yet they had all been cut down with such ease. Some of them had even died to the hands of regular soldiers with almost no martial arts.
Upon seeing the blade, many people immediately recognised it. In comparison to the hero king Li Qingshan, the Demon Lord of Seven Killings was infamous throughout the world, and he had also risen up after the arrival of the daemon star. He had caused a slaughter in the martial arts community.
With the arrival of the daemon star, the world would fall into chaos. It was true!
They could not help but think of the same thing as the skinny young man. This man called Li Qingshan must have obtained power from the daemon star, which was why he possessed such violent murderousness.
The Ma family had lost their leader, and the innate masters had suffered heavy losses, so the two protectors no longer had to force their way through the ranks of the enemy anymore. They unleashed their ingenious swordsmanship, turning into two streaks of light that darted about in the crowd, especially finding and assassinating enemy masters.
The army under Gu Yanying’s command had suffered quite a lot of losses too, but their morale only grew stronger, and the snake in the air consolidated. It glanced down with its cold snake eyes, flickering its bright-red tongue like it was about to swallow them whole.
The setting sun dropped below the horizon. Blood replaced the sunlight, dyeing the ground red.
The white horse under Gu Yanying had almost been dyed red as well, gasping away for air.
The Ma family was unexpectedly tenacious as if everyone had entered a frenzy because of this battle that they had never witnessed before. Gu Yanying glanced at the frosty sky. Was it the will of heavens at work again?
It must have influenced them while they were unaware, achieving even greater effects when everyone was in disarray, or the enemies would have dispersed a long time ago.
However, this was good. If these people all fled into the city and began fighting on the streets, they would not be able to assemble such a large military formation. That way, even ten soldiers would not be the opponents of a single martial arts practitioner, so who knew how much trouble they would have to deal with. They were better off destroying them in one fell swoop.
She was not worried about defeat at all. Li Qingshan and the protectors were rapidly closing up their differences in terms of quality. If it all came down to numbers, then she had even more soldiers to flood the city right behind her, all people they had recruited afterwards. There were a large number of them, but they had not undertaken a lot of training and were not armoured, which was why she left them at the back of the army in the beginning. They could not add much to the battle right now in terms of individual strength, but they could strengthen the army’s aura. The gushing army qi consolidated the huge snake even more until it completely took shape.
Seeing how Li Qingshan and the two protectors had basically cleaned up most of the mainstays of the Ma family by now, Gu Yanying swung her metal fan, and the snake reeled back before lunging forwards again, swallowing several dozen guards in a single gulp.
“I- it’s not an illusion!” “It’s a snake daemon! It’s a huge snake daemon!”
Faced with something well beyond their imaginations, the Ma family’s morale immediately collapsed. They all turned around and fled.
The battle turned into a pursuit, and Li Qingshan charged at the very front. He paid no regard to any moral codes of the jianghu, killing whoever he got his hands on without any mercy at all. He was completely doused in blood. The flashes of the blades followed his mad laughter, leaving everyone who heard it trembling and everyone who saw him stricken with fear.
At this moment, the final smear or red vanished in the west. The dark night descended completely.
