Shortly, Tiger King-03’s gaze suddenly needled. In the black night, a tremendous tongue came flipping over. It was approximately several meters long, and it directly struck the body of a speeding black shadow. With a heavy sound, the black shadow suddenly dropped to the ground. The distance from her position… was only 2,000 to 3,000 meters away. This distance...

Tiger King-03 painfully shut her eyes.

On this night, among the three specialist scouts of the three C-rank legions, the Heaven Listener Legion, Wind Trace Legion, and Tiger King Legion, at the minimum, two of them were going to be captured alive!

However, in the next second, her pupils nearly went slack, because Xu Yangyi had fished out a talisman from his pocket.

Spirit Traversing Talisman! It increased speed by 20% and lasted for ten minutes. She had just used it!

If he had access to the Spirit Traversing Talisman, why didn’t he use it earlier?!

 Tiger King-03 silently smiled in bitterness, watching helplessly as Xu Yangyi raced towards the final black shadow. Clenching her teeth, even if there wasn’t a single one of her bones in good condition, she covered her aching belly. She rigidly grinded her teeth, digging into the ground with both hands and crawling towards a distant place.

Granted that she couldn’t escape too far, it was fine to conceal herself. If the other believed she would sit around resigned to death, then he was looking down on her by far. So long as one person escaped… she had absolute confidence that the branch master’s punishment would come swiftly!

Furthermore… it was essential that she informed everyone that the target was a paragon! A paragon on the run! They couldn’t allow themselves to lower their guards in the slightest! A minor squadron would be cleanly eaten up… Only a group encirclement could be used. However, at this moment, a trembling voice passed on into her ear.

“You… don’t move…” Glancing forward, she saw a youth and a hen-holding girl who was leveling a wooden sword with several talismans strung on it at her. The sword tip was wavering, but it was still aimed at her. She was stunned.

“Let… me… go…” Almost exhausting her total strength to say these words, she hacked up blood. “I’ll… give you… guys… a hundred… low-grade… spirit stones…”

The youth shook his head. “Since I started jamming your signal downstairs, there’s no chance that I can let you off… and Mr. Xu’s reward is Dew Congealing Grass. Thirty catties of it.”

“Why the heck are you spewing so much crap! Do you like her, you damn wolf?!” the young girl snorted, “If she runs off, Mr. Xu is going to take good care of you!”

Tiger King-03 painfully closed her eyes. At this moment, the blackness was like a rushing tide. Her final hopes had been dashed away, and even if it was her, she could no longer support herself as well.

She didn’t know how much time had passed when she woke up, but the bright moon was still up in the sky. Merely, her two compatriots were completely covered from head to toe in blood and standing at her side. 

Xu Yangyi hung onto a cigarette, and Li Zongyuan stood at his side. Zhou Tingting, joined by the wolf-demon, was vigilantly using her wooden sword to level it at the three scouts, who were already without any strength to retaliate. 

Each scout’s gaze carried disbelief and the gloom of their defeated confidence. They had traveled the line of life and death countless times and escaped from packs of demonbeasts while besieged on all sides. Yet today, the three of them had completely fallen here. Fallen into the hands of a single person!

Xu Yangyi deeply inhaled a puff of smoke, looking in satisfaction at the three sinister-minded people. Indeed, all he had done was make a call this afternoon. All for him to bait the terribly feeble wolf-demon, Zhou Tingting, and somewhat strong Li Zongyuan. They were his hidden trumps.

Modern cultivation didn’t require a paper crane’s summon. All that was needed was a cell phone. He felt himself falling in love with modern cultivation. As he was arranging everything inside the room, the trio outside had continued to play the hunter, without the slightest trace of awareness. Meanwhile, he had made the toad, wolf, and girl do three things.

First, he would make everyone completely focus on him. As for Li Zongyuan, he had to lay in ambush on the other party’s retreat path. Moreover, he would use his demon form to attack with his strongest blow. All that was requested was this strike.

Second, he had Zhou Tingting contact the wolf-demon to interfere with the scouts’ signal. Furthermore, the wolf-demon was to acquire a Spirit Traversing Talisman for him; Li Zongyuan would pay for it. After the wolf-demon got out of class, he would begin disrupting the signal. Xu Yangyi didn’t ask the wolf-demon about how it was done, so long as there was a result. 

This was because he understood that these scouts were only the front line. The people behind them were the ones that truly wanted to find him. And as for these people, they were positively carrying communication devices. Putting himself in their position, he didn’t think that their first item of choice would be something besides a cell phone.

Regarding other communication measures they wanted to use, it was already late at night.

Third… in case Zhou Tingting’s two-man squad discovered someone who had been defeated, they were to immediately take out their strongest weapon and pressure the other party. They could allow no one to flee.

A so-called plan didn’t require that many complexities at all. The only thing required was the most suitable tactic put into effect at the most opportune time. The guarantee that a single strike would succeed. 

Thus, he would personally make an appearance and draw the opponents’ gazes. Thus, he would bloom with his full spiritual force and suddenly accelerate. Thus, he would explode with his entire cultivation, defeating Tiger King-03 in a flash.

This was all to make the other party pay total attention to him. Tonight, he wasn’t planning on letting one person escape!

Quietly removing his finished cigarette, he used his flip-flops to stomp the butt out. The corners of Tiger King-03’s eyes twitched. It was this foot that had nearly wasted her with a kick. 

“You’re a paragon?” The camouflaged man’s wounds weren’t light, and he said hoarsely, “Even if you aren’t… you’re definitely in the top three…”

“I’ve never fuckin’ seen your name on any list… If I saw it… there’s no way I wouldn’t have gotten it…”

Xu Yangyi didn’t respond but rather nodded. “Are you going to talk? Or am I going to have to help you out?”

“No need…” The slim man had the lightest injuries. He was also the person that Xu Yangyi had specifically left to speak. He gritted his teeth. “I’m Wind Trace-03, she’s Tiger King-03, and he’s Heaven Listener-04. We’re part of the Featherwood Guard’s Mingshui Province branch. We’re subordinate to the top three C-rank legions. These three legions have the best scouts.”

Xu Yangyi laughed, “Not very resistant, are you?”

The slim man grinded his teeth. In their legions, wasn’t it others beseeching them? Even their deputy commander had to treat them with great courtesy! Now, they were actually being ridiculed like this by someone!

Just wait…

 His gaze slowly raked over Xu Yangyi, concealing an unspeakable hatred. 

As soon as we return to the branch, you’ll already be dead.

The branch master’s command was ‘not dead until I see a corpse’.

Calling this to mind, the corner of his mouth faintly turned upward, extremely light, dripping with blood. 

The moment this command appeared, there was no plan from the start to bring you in to see anyone. We might not be enough, but there are also the B-rank and A-rank legions!

“Talk about the legions,” Xu Yangyi raised his chin and said.

“...The Featherwood Guard’s… legions are divided into three ranks of A, B, and C. C-rank is a legion of initial and middle Qi Condensation cultivators. After twenty bounties are completed, or a B-rank one, a legion can advance. B-rank is classified as a late Qi Condensation and initial Foundation Establishment legion. The completion of an A-rank mission permits advancement. A-rank… They’re the most elite legion. There are Qi Condensation cultivators, Foundation Establishment seniors… there are no lack of seeds being nurtured, and there are plenty of teams that in themselves have powerful strength… Mingshui Province has three A-rank legions… The Hidden Dragon Legion headed by Chu Zhaonan, Senior Yu Xizhi’s Buried Flower Legion, and Senior Cao Mingyang’s Crouching Tiger Legion…”

Xu Yangyi’s gaze fluctuated.

He heard a familiar name. That kid… seemed to be getting by pretty well. So in the end, he had elected to join the Featherwood Guard? It wasn’t a Foundation Establishment legion, so it seemed to be a legion of nurtured seeds? Contrary to expectation, Xu Yangyi himself was the most suited to the Featherwood Guard’s promise back then. 

He recalled that Chu Zhaonan’s place of origin seemed to be Mingshui Province. Chu Tianyi was the last provincial governor of Mingshui Province.

“The upper bound of a C-rank legion’s personnel is limited to thirty. After this is achieved, the advancement mission can be taken. A B-rank legion consists of fifty people. A-rank is a hundred. However, A-rank legions are usually not fully staffed. For example, there are only twenty-seven people in the Buried Flower Legion, but each one is an elite…” His gaze seamlessly swept across Xu Yangyi. This was a suggestion not to act against them, otherwise, any one the A-rank legions was capable of squeezing Xu Yangyi to death on a whim.

Xu Yangyi didn’t mind this at all and continued to ask, “Have you heard of a person called Hibiscus?”

“Her?” the slim man laughed grimly, “She met an early end three years ago in the Vermilion Snow Incident.”

Xu Yangyi faintly sighed. Another old friend had passed on to the Western Paradises. At the same time, it caused him to further understand that on the path of cultivation, fortune and calamity were difficult to fathom, like treading across thin ice.

[1]

With a single misstep, there was the possibility of being consigned to eternal damnation.

His gaze flitted across the trio, and a faint wisp of murderous desire quietly emerged. Any error originated from the first minor developments.

“Who had you monitor me?” Xu Yangyi finally asked the question he was most concerned about. “Was it surveillance? Or some other reason?”

“The branch master, Mingshui Province’s branch master, Senior Thousandedge… the regional chancellor…” The slim man looked into Xu Yangyi’s eyes. “He commanded us to bring you back.”

Xu Yangyi laughed, his laughter splendid. He calmly looked into the slim man’s eyes, and the slim man silently looked back. The man was hiding a fact. That fact was the branch master’s command: not dead until a corpse was seen!

The man forced his eyes with his utmost strength not to reveal a billow’s trace. The present moment was equivalent to a battle of courage and wits. He understood that with such strength, this person was quite possibly a wanted criminal! Or perhaps a traitorous cultivator of the demons! 

He had never seen the other, yet this opponent utilised Heavens Law’s Hundred Solutions. There was only a single explanation… Because their enemy’s actions were unable to be publicly announced to the masses, he could only be secretly investigated, and his name stricken from Heavens Law.

The Hundred Solutions was Heavens Law’s symbol. Only those of Heavens Law could study the Hundred Solutions as well. He had an understanding of this kind of traitorous cultivator. It was possible that if he said one wrong word that his head would end up in a different place apart from his body. 

Xu Yangyi looked at him for several seconds, stowing his smile. “Your name?”

“My name can’t be said to a person outside the system.” The slim man pursed his lips and lowered his head. So long as they escaped, and after they returned, what would be awaiting Xu Yangyi wouldn’t just be the three of them! And then there was the entire Featherwood Guard’s Mingshui Province branch! Waves upon waves of tens of thousands of cultivators would plaster Xu Yangyi’s wanted name across heaven and earth!

“Is that so…” Xu Yangyi looked at the moon and laughed. “I originally said that I was going to carve a tombstone for you…”

These words were like a needle, piercing the slim man to get up in an instant and flee. The other two people’s frightened eyes saucered, and they twisted about from head to toe, yet were simply incapable of running! Even in the next second, the trio’s shocked expressions remained. They flailed about in disbelief.

“You… unleashed… your neurons? No wonder…” Before he died, the slim man spoke these words with unwillingness in his heart. He wasn’t resigned to this; he was left terribly unreconciled.

He never would’ve expected that not only was this person a paragon, but moreover had unleashed their neurons. How could such a person… possibly be left nameless on the ranking?!

Even in death, his eyes were open wide.

Powerful spiritual sense was like a blade, roughly opening “the door lock” and wildly delving into the scope of their spiritual senses, stirring all their spiritual senses to shattered pieces! An utter annihilation of the mind!

The scene was quiet. Xu Yangyi indifferently wiped his hands. Besides Li Zongyuan who hadn’t reacted, Zhou Tingting and the wolf-demon looked at Xu Yangyi with ashen faces. They hadn’t imagined that Xu Yangyi would actually take action to silence the trio!

There wasn’t a shred of hesitation. Before anyone could react, the scouts had already become corpses. This was fundamentally equal to him truly taking on the name of a traitorous cultivator!

“They were lying through their teeth.” Xu Yangyi fished out a cigarette, his right hand clenching onto a fine bamboo sword. He sparked his lighter without a change in expression and deeply took a drag. “You know, when I was chasing that woman, her magik artifact attacked me in a way meant to kill me.”

“That bald man.” Xu Yangyi raised his chin towards the corpse on the ground. “Was also using tactics that put his life on the line.” 

“If this Thousandedge ‘requested’ my return, then they would’ve immediately shouted their intent to prevent me from killing them.” A cold edge exuded from his eyes. “Their actions and words were off. There’s only one explanation…” He looked deeply at everyone. “Thousandedge’s true intention isn’t as simple as ‘requesting’ me to return.”

“But rather return with my head.” He stroked his neck and sneered. “Each one of his words just now was to remind me that their backer is great, not someone to act rashly against. Because they understood the conclusion of falling into their opponent’s hands. This was the manifestation of their guilt.”

“Why were they guilty?”

Xu Yangyi’s icy gaze swept over each person’s body and he said loud and clear, word for word, “Because they were concealing the truth. Concealing Thousandedge’s real command!”

“Someone… wants to find me…” he said calmly, “Even if they can’t find me, they want my life.”

“For them, there was just no chance of returning alive.”

1. Western Paradises is a Buddhist term. In Buddhism, there is a concept of “pure lands” These pure lands are said to be where Amitabha Buddha recites his dharma. This western pure land has historically been known as “Sukhavati”. You may read in other novels that some people say “Amitabha Buddha”. The basis of saying this is in order to one day be reborn in this western pure land of Amitabha Buddha.

Previous Chapter

Next Chapter