Ye Chen made his move first. He swung his sword and released a thick stream of white light, which struck the ghost guard’s body. However, that stream of sword light only left a bone-deep wound on that man’s body, and failed to go any further. From under the ghost guard’s skin, a layer of blood-red light emerged, that had not only stopped the sword light from further affecting him, but also immediately devoured the sword light.
The attack launched right after Ye Chen’s was Xu Jing’s [Devil-Slaughtering Punch]. Waves of eye-piercing golden light flashed across the air and clashed against that blood-red light, letting out muffled sizzling sounds.
“Purple Qi, Great Monument Suppression!”
That bridge-like, enormous stream of purple Qi rushed back into Luo Hanshan’s body. After that, Luo Hanshan burst out with a loud roar and crossed his fingers, throwing a heavy punch in the air directed towards that ghost guard. At the exact same moment, the bright shining purple monument roared down from the air, it seemed to be capable of shattering the layer of blood-red light and smashing that ghost guard into nothing.
Boom!
But, the purple monument was shattered instead.
The ghost guard’s skin began cracking, and the blood light darted out from those cracks. It was thick and dense like lava streams that gushed out of the ground. Flushed by those streams of blood-red light, the purple monument immediately broke into a few pieces, and then turned into pure Yuan Qi.
Boom!
This thunderous boom didn't come from the broken monument, instead, it came from the mountain itself. Signs of breaking had already shown up after that area had been blasted by those four bombs. And just now, the same area was once again struck by the sword Qi, fist power and the purple monument continuously, so it finally collapsed. Along with the ghost guard, a small part of the mountaintop fell down, and soon disappeared.
In the next moment, sky-shaking, thunderous booms suddenly rang out. Along with them, the entire mountain toppled towards one side. Obviously, the ghost guard detonated himself in the air, collapsing the entire mountain, how powerful was that!
Ye Chen, Xu Jing and Luo Hanshan instantly leapt into the air. Fortunately, all three of them were able to fly for a short while. Looking down from the air, they saw that the mountain had completely collapsed while airwaves rushed around fiercely in a random manner. Countless gigantic rocks completely buried the ghost guard, and piled up into a small hill.
“So close. I didn’t think he could use the Blood Devil Disassemble Magic, created by the Blood Devil himself.” said Luo Hanshan as he let out a long sigh of relief. It was only luck that had helped them survive this.
“The Blood Devil? Was he also one of the Nine Evil Cult’s one hundred and eight great ghost warriors?” asked Ye Chen.
“He indeed was. The Blood Devil was ranked higher than the Ghost Artist among the one hundred and eight. Fifty years ago, he was a core disciple of the Evil Blood Martial School, he then betrayed the Evil Blood Martial School and joined the Nine Evil Cult. He was extremely powerful, and came to be known as the Blood Devil.”
Ye Chen didn’t even want to imagine how powerful the Nine Evil Cult used to be. Each of the one hundred and eight great Ghost warriors were already insanely powerful, and above them, those higher level commanders must have been even more terrifying. But, no one knew how many of them had died and how many had survived. As for those who had managed to survive, no one had any idea whether they were planning to raise again like the Ghost Artist or not.
“Retreat!”
The ghost guard leader saw that the ghost guard had been smashed by the collapsed mountain, he realised that he could not harm this couple of Sky Cloud Martial School’s people in their current situation. Therefore, he threw another punch towards the Head Elder as he gave out the order to retreat.
Woosh! Woosh!
The remaining two ghost guards were both elite warriors. Even though they failed to defeat the Head Elder and the Fourth Elder, they could still run away pretty easily. Within a single moment, they had already moved miles away.
The Fourth Elder intended to chase them, but he was stopped by the Head Elder.
“Don’t go. They can’t do anything to us at this moment, besides, we can’t kill them anyway.”
“Damn! Such a refreshing fight! These two should be top-grade ghost guards of the Ghost Corpse Mountain, am I right?” The Fourth Elder had passionately fought for quite a while, and now his blood was still boiling. It seemed like he could immediately take part in another great fight.
“After eighth August, you can have as many fights as you want. I’m just afraid that you would be sick of battles by then.”
“Never!”
While talking, they rushed towards Ye Chen and the other two disciples.
Seeing that all three of them were safe, the Head Elder sighed in relief. He nodded and said, “Good, since you have all survived such a difficult fight, after we get back you will certainly see improvements with a little bit of work.”
“Head Elder, what is this about? Is the Ghost Corpse Mountain planning on launching attacks on all top-ranked institutions?”
“Not yet.” responded the Head Elder, “I assume that right now they’re only trying to weaken us. However, I can’t be sure about how long this situation would last. Maybe in a year or two, the Ghost Artist will recover to his peak level and that will be the time when a great war starts.”
“A year or two? So quick!” Lou Hanshan frowned and said.
“Don’t worry too much,” said the Fourth Elder with a grin, “Even if the war starts, we won’t be alone. The Emerald Martial Palace is much more anxious than us. Besides, we don’t have to be afraid of them even if they are stronger than before. After all, all the top-ranked institution have Grand Elders behind them. Once these institutions fall into a deadly crisis, those Grand Elders will make their move.”
Grand Elders!
Ye Chen’s eyes popped out. Judging from the Fourth Elder’s tone, these Grand Elders sounded even more powerful than the leader himself, could they be Astral Reaching Realm martial artists? No wonder the Ghost Artist did not dare to directly attack the few top-ranked institutions, and had instead been perfectly hiding all along, he should probably be afraid of their combined attack.
They had never forgotten about the Wind Vulture, they went down together and searched for it.
Beside a pile of rocks, the Wind Vulture lay on the ground with a horrible, bloody wound on its body. It was trying to struggle back up from the ground, but its injuries were quite severe. This made it fail quite a few times.
The Head Elder sighed and took out over ten bottles of liquid medicine from his storage ring. He unplugged all those bottles, then activated his Zhen Qi, and mixed all the liquid medicine together, he then poured it evenly on the Wind Vulture’s wound. Visibly, the bleeding stopped and the broken muscles began squirming, they seemed to be growing back.
“We can’t stay her for long, let’s first find a place to stay, we will wait for the school to send us another Wind Vulture.”
As he was speaking, the storage ring on the Head Elder’s finger sparkled, and right after that, a wooden crow appeared in his hand. That crow was made from hundreds of tiny pieces of black wood, and it appeared amazingly lifelike. It had a pair of bean-sized beady eyes that were shining like gemstones.
The Head Elder quickly pressed a spot on that crow’s body, and instantly a groove-shaped hole appeared on the crow’s belly. The Head Elder then put a milky white stone into that crow’s body.
If Ye Chen was not wrong, that piece of stone should be a mid-rank spirit stone. It was rare and extremely precious, it equalled fifty pieces of low-rank spirit stones.
The spirit stone supplied energy to the wooden crow, which allowed the crow’s eyes to suddenly shine. It then began intensely flapping its wings and rose into the air, and then darted in the direction of the Sky Cloud Martial School.
Seeing Ye Chen’s confused face, the Head Elder smiled and explained, “This is a puppet crow, one of the works made five-thousand years ago by the powerful rank 5 institution, Puppet School. This crow can fly around thirty-thousand miles a day, it is only slightly slower than the Wind Vulture. The source of its energy is spirit stones, but it has to be mid-rank spirit stones. All kinds of low-rank spirit stones could only support it for a short while.”
“Does it know the way back?” asked Ye Chen.
“Classified.” responded the Head Elder while shaking his head.
These five people temporarily settled down in a city, thousands of miles away from the collapsed mountain. Three days later, people from the Sky Cloud Martial School arrived. Not just one or two people, a whole batch of inner elders rode on four Wind Vultures and arrived at the place they stayed.
Hopping on the Wind Vultures’ backs, all of them headed back to the Sky Cloud Martial School right that night.
……
Under a waterfall, a silhouette sat with his legs crossed.
That was a young man, with a bare upper body. His muscular back was perfectly straight, and his entire body was surrounded by an unspeakably fierce aura. No matter how hard the waterfall struck his body, he would never bend his body, not even a little bit.
Thunderous roars of the waterfall continued to sound louder and louder, they resounded throughout the entire area that had the radius of a few miles.
Abruptly, the young man seemingly slightly raised his right arm. Following his movement, the waterfall suddenly stopped falling, and instead, curved upwards and rushed to the sky. It roughly transformed into a gigantic sword made of water, shining with a multi-coloured light under the sunshine. It was truly magnificent.
“Go!”
Followed by a resonant shout, the giant water sword surged towards a mountain.
The mountain was punctured along with a thunderous boom. The water sword that rushed there completely shattered, it turned back into streams of water and surged back out of the mountain.
Slowly letting out a breath, the silhouette stood up and turned around.
That was no one other than Ye Chen.
He gave a faint smile. It had been quite a few days since he got back to the Sky Cloud Martial School. During the last couple of days, he had been doing nothing else but cultivating himself under the waterfall.
Finally, he had just achieved some improvement. He thought that he wouldn’t be able to transform a waterfall into a sword with his current power, he guessed that he would require at least Clasping Yuan Realm cultivation to achieve that, as only Clasping Yuan Realm martial artists would have such huge amounts of Zhen Qi within their bodies. However, he managed to do it when he was still only a step away from the true sword intent.
But soon, Ye Chen’s smile disappeared as he let out a long sigh.
“To attain true sword intent is harder than I thought! Without a good opportunity and the right moment, I might be trapped in my current stage for a long time. How on earth should I attain the true sword intent?”
Ye Chen almost felt the existence of the sword intent, it was like a real, precious sword had been placed in a room, and he only needed to lift the door curtain to grab that sword, he could then take it out and make it his own; however, even though he could clearly perceive the existence of the sword and the door curtain, he always felt like he was lost in a dream, and that he could never reach that door curtain. The more he wanted that sword, the more difficult it became to reach that curtain. Sometimes, Ye Chen even felt that all these were not real, and that he never even got close to the true sword intent. But, such thoughts would be denied by him right away. After all, even if all those thoughts were indeed delusions, delusions would never happen without a corresponding reality.
Ye Chen wasn’t too disappointed, he understood that things like the true sword intent couldn’t be comprehended that easily. In the right moment, it would just show up right in front of his eyes. Except for the fact that he failed to comprehend the true sword intent, the rest of his cultivation went perfectly well.
During these few days, Ye Chen had not only stabilised his Late Condensing Reality Realm power, he also digested all of his battle experiences that he gained in the past few weeks. He used those experiences to increase his own battle effectiveness and efficiency. The Hidden Cloud Sword Skill, Tyrant’s Fist and Crane Shadow Steps, he had achieved great improvements regarding all three of these often used martial skills. At this moment, he could launch his attack more flexibly, without being limited by any fixed patterns.
Currently, Ye Chen could have an even fight against Shi Potian, who had mastered two powerful martial arts without even using his ‘Heart Refining’. Without a doubt, this was a huge step forward.
After all, Shi Potian was recognised by the martial world as a Childe-level martial artist, being able to evenly fight against him meant that Ye Chen’s power also reached the Childe-level. In other words, Ye Chen had almost reached the peak grade among all the younger generation martial artists. If he included the ‘Heart Refining’, Young Master North Snow, Young Master Duanmu and the ’North Snow Fast Blade’ Lin Qi probably would be the only three, who were able to evenly fight against him.
Of course, Ye Chen didn’t want to use the ‘Heart Refining’ too often, all in all, personal power was the most important thing.
Translated by: Law
From XianXiaWorld
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