“Kneel down! Apologize!”
With the flames of the Taoist True Fire blazing around him, Li Mu slapped Yingshan Snow-eagle hard. The fiery flames immediately invaded the old eunuch’s body and started to destroy his bones and flesh like swarms of maggots.
Yingshan Snow-eagle began trembling uncontrollably.
The Taoist True Fire was not only scorching his corporeal body but also his soul. All the tortures known to the world were nothing when compared with that kind of pain.
“You… I am… a Sage. You… shouldn’t have humiliated me like this.” Yingshan Snow-eagle growled, his body twitching and shuddering.
“Sage?” Li Mu laughed coldly and said, “Well, in my eyes, a dog may worth more than you do. Oh no, I shouldn’t have said that. That’s an insult to dogs.”
“You…” Yingshan Snow-eagle uttered, his voice trembling.
Li Mu looked back at the crown prince and said, “What now? Need my help or what? Move your ass here. Get on your knees and repent your sins!”
The crown prince and the others turned pale at once.
“I am the crown prince of the empire. The one people I will prostrate myself before are the emperor and the queen. How can I ever bend my knees before two of my subjects?” Although the crown prince was rather terrified, he did want to maintain some of his dignity at the moment.
Since Ning Jing and his wife were the son and daughter-in-law of Ning Rushan, the Great General in Chang’an, they were undoubtedly the subjects of the Western Qin. Indeed, the crown prince’s refute was justified.
Li Mu countered, “You do know they are your subjects? But you arrested them here, held them hostage, and killed them like it was no big deal. I thought you deemed them as the foes of the Western Qin!”
At that, the crown prince fell silent.
To force Li Mu out, Yingshan Snow-eagle went to all lengths to come up with such a vile plan. Yet, it was the crown prince who approved and executed that plan. It was also him who sent his practitioners off to capture the Ning couple, Bai Xuan, Lei Yinyin and the other hostages.
“This is your last chance. Get here and kneel down.” Li Mu trampled Yingshan Snow-eagle’s face underfoot and demanded with a frosty look.
Yan Ruyun raised his arms while shouting, “The crown prince can’t be disgraced. Everybody, go and kill him! He has consumed most of his source energy when battling Eunuch Yingshan. Now, he must have been a spent arrow!”
Emboldened by that speech, dozens of Executives and experts drove their internal qi in motion and dashed forward. All of them were Celestial Beings with remarkable strength. Before they approached Li Mu, the light generated by their combat techniques and their weapons already swooped upon the target.
Li Mu’s lips curved as he muttered, “So ignorant!”
He straightened a palm and flung it as if it was a blade.
A round curve of the broadsword light shot out.
He intended to crack all the strikes solely with his broadsword.
With the broadsword light charging forward, all the light of combat techniques and weapons were hacked into pieces. Those imperial Executives and experts following close behind them suddenly froze on the deck or in the void. Then, in a series of cracks that sounded like the bursting of bubbles, their bodies were reduced to dust.
Yan Ruyun and the crown prince were horror-struck.
The rest of the experts from the various sects and the imperial Executives all turned a shade of green.
“You call that a spent arrow?”
“Yan Ruyun, it was you who ranted about protecting the crown prince, but how come you didn’t join the fight?”
Li Mu slowly lifted an arm, ready to launch his hand-blade again. “Now that you refuse to kneel down, I’ll send you all to hell!”
Another jet of broadsword light flashed.
The experts of the Western Qin on the opposite went all out to resist Li Mu’s attack. But their casualties were still quite severe.
“Your Highness, run for it!” Yan Ruyun bawled. Then, he wielded the long sword and lunged toward Li Mu. Meanwhile, at his summoning, his cherished golden eagle swooped to the deck and carried the crown prince on its back, attempting to take the crown prince out of the troubled water.
In such a dire circumstance, as the peer tutor of the crown prince and Commander in Chief of the imperial army, Yan Ruyun did have displayed some unyielding integrity. At least, he did not run away to save his own life.
“It’s him. It’s him who killed the Ning couple…” Bai Xuan yelled.
Li Mu’s eyes turned cold.
As his hand raised, a wave of formidable force raced to Yan Ruyun and besieged him. The opaque force then seized his throat. Yan Ruyun’s face grew scarlet. Both his hands clapped over his neck and yanked wildly, but there was no way he could break free.
Inch by inch, Li Mu pulled Yan Ruyun closer.
“I…” Yan Ruyun was aghast. It was his first time that he felt death was so close to him.
“Save your speech. Just go repent your sins before the two in the underworld.” Flames rose from Li Mu’s palm and engulfed Yan Ruyun in a second.
“Ah…” Yan Ruyun howled like a pig being slaughtered. Fiery Taoist True Fire shot out from his mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears. His body and soul were burning.
Yan Ruyun was merely a Celestial Being, who had not refined the Taoist Principles in his body like Yingshan Snow-eagle. So, how could he fend off the Taoist True Fire? In a sea of agony and remorse, the murderer of the Ning couple, the rising star in the army of the Western Qin, turned into a pile of dust and disappeared in the wind.
He never knew he would die for killing a son of a concubine of a general even in his wildest dream.
At the same time, the golden eagle just took off. The crown prince let out a breath of relief as he soared to the cloud. But unexpectedly, from a mountaintop poking out of the cloud, a golden ape three meters in height jumped out. Brandishing a long gold cudgel, the ape smashed the brain of the eagle straight away.
The crown prince yelped in shock. Next, with a furious roar, he drew out a long sword fastened to his waist and cast a jet of sword light.
Being the focus of the royal family, the crown prince had acquired impressive martial cultivation. By then, he was already a first-stage Celestial Being Realm. Though he sort of panicked when being raided like that, he reacted quite swiftly.
But to his horror, that golden ape could duplicate himself. After a series of multiplication, a throng of apes was conjured up in a trice. As they galloped toward him, the crown prince was under the impression that he had barged into a den of apes.
He raised his sword and performed a set of swift and fierce sword styles.
Numerous apes were cut in pieces.
However, just as he thought he could cut some loose, a cudgel banged right in the back of his head and sent sparks flying.
Feeling like being hammered in the skull, the crown prince saw stars before his eyes and foamed at the mouth. In midair, he wobbled for a moment and his pupils rolled upward. Next, his wrist and knees gave way and he fell freely…
A stealthy ape materialized from behind him, grinning. Then, it scooped up the unconscious crown prince and leaped to the opposite mountain. After a few more leaps, it landed on the Flying Whale Shuttle.
Li Mu nodded at the ape.
That animal had once successfully coaxed Li Mu into a trap and almost tricked him. So, how could it have difficulty in dealing with a royal prince who had little experience in real battles despite his outstanding cultivation?
“You… Well… Just kill me…” Yingshan Snow-eagle said in a broken voice. His body was convulsing. The Taoist True Fire had seeped into all his limbs and bones. Pain beyond description was burning his organs.
Li Mu directly grabbed his head and heaved him off the floor before pressing his head on the deck in front of the bodies of the Ning couple and thrusting against the floor, which broke the floor and left a hole in it.
A thud sounded.
“Kowtow! Repent!”
Gripping Yingshan Snow-eagle’s head tightly, Li Mu banged it against the floor over and over again.
“You… can’t… humiliate me…” Yingshan Snow-eagle hissed, unable to move at all.
Li Mu spat, “If humiliating you could bring them to life, I would let you know what real humiliation is. What I’m doing is just make you apologize for your detestable behavior.”
As those words died away—
The Taoist True Fire Li Mu was holding in his palm broke out. It wrapped Yingshan Snow-eagle in and started to refine his body frantically.
Sensing the befall of death, Yingshan Snow-eagle suddenly thrashed more violently and howled, “No! Li Mu, stop! Listen to me! There is still some wriggle room to settle this amicably. Don’t kill me…”
He was abruptly scared by death.
The longer one lived, the more eager he was to keep his life going.
The more people one killed, the more aware he was of the horror death could summon.
In truth, Yingshan Snow-eagle was already more than 1,000 years old. He kept killing people and devouring their blood and essence to extend his lifespan. In the past five centuries, he had become half-human half-ghost, who had to rely on people’s blood to keep breathing. Yingshan Snow-eagle had no regard for anything else. All he ever wanted was to live on.
A hint of astonishment flitted across Li Mu’s face. A sneer involuntarily played around his lips. “You fear death as well?”
“Which man doesn’t fear death?” Yelled Yingshan Snow-eagle, struggling desperately. By that time, he had completely put away his esteem as a Sage. “I’ve just seen the hope of being immortal, of venturing to the far universe. I can’t die…”
“You have to!” Li Mu countered callously.
Yingshan Snow-eagle uttered, “I have to die for those ants? Let say, Li Mu, I have an offer for you. If you let go of me, I will pass on the secrets of the Extra-terrestrial Devil and the truth of immortality to you. With your current cultivation, you will certainly live for at least 10,000 years. You will be able to go beyond this planet… And I even could ask the divine master to take you in…”
“What a load of crap!” Li Mu seized Yingshan Snow-eagle’s hair and pulled him up, forcing him to face the bodies of his victims— the Ning couple, the innocent folks living in the Pig-Herding Alley, the more than 10,000 dried-up imperial soldiers. Then, he remarked, “Have you seen it? None of those men wished to die, but you killed them all. Now, you tell me you don’t want to be killed. Can you think of a reason that I should spare you? The secrets of immortality? No, I’ve got them. The path to the universe? Well, I will blaze one myself. So, you go now. Redeem your crimes!”
After that, the orange Emperors’ Fire gushed into Yingshan Snow-eagle’s skull.
“Ah! You’ll regret this! The divine master has been among us. The entire land will be his backyard… Your Majesty, avenge me… Ahhh, I don’t believe this. I don’t want to die…” He let out a shrilling cry.
At last, the Emperors’ Fire burnt out the Taoist Principles inside Yingshan Snow-eagle and refined his soul as well as the sinister dark force.
The Emperor’s Broadsword, the god of killing, just met his downfall like that.
To Li Mu’s surprise, he saw Yingshan Snow-eagle’s soul had mutated. Having been encroached by the evil power, it already became pitch dark. His true self had been lost. And his soul had served as some nutrients that fed a cyan little person inside. That scene was pretty much the same on the day Huang Shengyi died. But at that time, Huang Shengyi’s soul had not been penetrated so deep.
That cyan little person appeared to have also sensed the descending of death. It flailed, bawled, and roared at Li Mu rather beside itself. But eventually, it was swallowed by the orange Emperors’ Fire and refined to dust.
The blood-curdling shrieks the cyan little person let out before it died were rather unnerving.
Anyway, in the end, it was destroyed.
Yingshan Snow-eagle was reduced to a heap of dark ashes.
Afterward, Li Mu marched to the unconscious crown prince, dragged him over, and compelled him to wake up and said, “It’s your turn now…”
