“ARGH!!!” With an angry roar, Xu Yangyi stood up. The clothes on the upper half of his body were almost in tatters. His solid muscle was exposed, stained with blood. He gritted his teeth as he pulled out the rock, maintaining his mind’s feeble clarity. Step after step, he walked to a distant place.

“Oh…” 

Xu Yangyi’s voice was extremely faint and passed through the prismatic clouds. His shout was so soft that it couldn’t be heard. However, he didn’t know the truth behind that giant snake, which had been seemingly chopped into pieces by the fall of Ancientpine’s sword… If one looked carefully, they would discover that it was actually composed of many meter-plus-long snakes! Thousands upon thousands of serpents!

Here and now, neither Ancientpine nor Titanspirit had paid attention to this unyielding bellow, but the thousands of snakes on the battlefield all reared their heads and looked to Xu Yangyi’s direction!

Behind them was a massive black sword, black qi curling upon it. The entire blade had sunk into the ground, leaving only the hilt behind! A hundred-meter-long sword scar cut straight across Nanzhou, a shocking sight to behold!

Without wasted words, the snakes quickly ebbed away like a tide. All of them were heading towards Xu Yangyi’s direction!

“Want to run?” Ancientpine sneered, and both his hands formed a seal. A ruthless trace appeared on his face. “Shadow Manifestation Secret Art… Flickering Light, Sweeping Shadow!”

In the next second, hundreds of shadows surged out from under his feet! Each one was not human, but instead a kind of animal!

Sparrows, birds, dogs, fish… They were all around, everywhere!

“Hiiisss!”

“Chirp chirp!” 

“Woof!”

Presently, there were all kinds of wondrous oddities, so many that they even thinned the world-shaking explosion moments ago. Titanspirit’s expression became truly solemn, however. 

He knew… that this one of Ancientpine’s supreme moves!

Within the Core Formation ranking, when Ancientpine used this move, his power was at the level of Daomaster Cloudcrane when Cloudcrane was at the same boundary. Ranked seventh!

This was a move to decide victory or defeat!

Bemoaning the situation, Titanspirit sorrowfully looked to a distant place and shook his head. “I hope you guys can avoid this calamity…”

“Old Man Ancientpine is going all in… I’m afraid that Nanzhou City won’t exist anymore…”

The shadows were fast… but the snakes were even faster!

Closer… closer… right in front of her!

Hiddenscent’s consciousness was stored in each snake. She could sense that the one she wanted to kill was before her!

She didn’t know why, but a man’s voice was chanting in her mind, saying: 

Kill him… Completely erase him… 

She was unable to refuse this voice. Like when she had just only been born, she heard her father’s voice.

“HIIISSS!” Roaring shrieks rang out. She didn’t engage with the two Dao Masters. The serpent horde transformed into ten thousand shadows and raced forth like lightning!

Nonetheless, one snake among them suddenly turned around! Something… was approaching from behind!

Such power… Core Formation spiritual force fully unleashed… This… This rhythm that would destroy all of Nanzhou City! Very soon, she saw the bright clouds behind her all begin to seethe!

While they were originally on the ground, they now rocketed straight into the sky! As if some demon-god was dashing within, a pitch-black shadow swooshed in the next second. It brought forth sunlit clouds that filled the sky and reflected a blackness of death. Like a piercing arrow loosened from a bow, it rapidly charged over.

Ancientpine… perhaps in this moment he could no longer be considered human.

Daomaster Ancientpine was cloaked in lingering shadow. Even in the sleeves of his gown, he towed forth almost a thousand meters of black qi, hundreds of meters in the sky above. Yet the lower half of his body was like an ink painting, rippling with waves in the air. With a gentle tap, he immediately advanced a hundred meters!

“The many subtleties without gate is to speak of the master of mystery…” Ancientpine’s face was devoid of sorrow or joy. His hands stretched out and closed, and both his left arm and right arm swung out. His index fingers were pointed to two sides, and two dozen-meter-sized Taijis were slowly spinning at the tips. With each spin, the surrounding space cracked by a shade.

The enormous Taijis and the withered, old man now seemed like descending gods, incomparably awesome!

“Shadow Manifestation Secret Art…” Ancientpine observed the tide of snakes below that torrented restlessly like the Yellow River. His voice was apathetic, and his left index finger tapped out. “The Gate Of Many Subtleties.”

Crash!

 In front of him, an ancient door with black qi curling on it appeared out of thin air and opened with a bang. In this twinkling, the world seemed to cease breathing.

“Heavens…” The Crimson Rakshasa’s lips were trembling, and her face was deathly pale. Even so far away, she could sense the qi on that side of the sky. A qi that could overturn rivers and seas, even seemingly going beyond the nuclear warheads of the past. It exploded with a rumble!

Hum…

 Only a single ray of black qi went through the world. Above heaven and below earth, the qi built a long, shiver-inducing bridge!

“Fellow Daoist!” The voice of Titanspirit’s massive frame was like a great bell. “Don’t you want to save Nanzhou?!?!”

Ancientpine’s face was serene like a lake. “A city in exchange for a Core Formation Greater Demon. I am willing to part with it!”

“Then what about the clans here?!”

“To sacrifice one’s life for the nation, until one’s dying day!”

Swoosh swoosh swoosh!

 In the next second, Ancientpine’s hands joined, and a halo of abyssal black light fired out from the door!

In moments, a second followed… a third! One became two, two became three, and three became legion!

Black fireworks exploded in the night. In the places the black light touched, irrespective of buildings that were almost a hundred meters tall or cranes that hadn’t been taken out from withdrawn construction sites, all was instantly bisected! The cut was smooth like a mirror. And yet the black light didn’t stop at one halo. The giant door appeared to chime, and endless black halos erupted from inside!

Crack crack crack!

 Nanzhou’s ground was seething!

Slash marks of extreme terror instantly sliced up the provincial capital’s western region in a chaotic mess! Moreover… the scars were still frantically spreading ahead! Straight in front of the snake horde!

On the road, everything—regardless of buildings and ground—had become fine powder! All that was left was a horrific ravine that was dozens of meters deep and several hundred meters long!

In the blink of an eye… Nanzhou City was changed beyond all recognition!

Ruuummmble!

 Numerous buildings collapsed, an unseen reaper of black devastating all of Nanzhou. In the end… the attack reached the snakes and slaughtered them into a bloody mess in the next second!

“HIIISSS!” A wretched scream came from the snake horde. Some packs of snakes behind didn’t even react before turning into fleshy pulp! The black light was like a bulldozer, though. While it wouldn’t wipe out the several thousand meters of snake, it wouldn’t give up no matter what!

CRACK CRACK CRACK…

 Many breaking noises echoed behind him. Xu Yangyi clenched his teeth and glanced back. His heart grew a fraction colder. Behind the endless snake horde… the unseen reaper was razing everything on the ground!

Rumble… 

A skyscraper was evenly cut in two. 

Crack… 

Nanzhou City’s landmark TV tower transformed into three segments in the black light.

“Damn!” He turned his head and exhausted all his strength to leave, however, his legs wouldn’t obey him!

Walking was difficult for he who had lost too much blood. His vision was starting to swim! What was there to even say about running?

“Hehe…” He did his utmost to run, and a bitter smile appeared on his face. “Could it be… that my life is really going to end here?”

It was now that he suddenly felt that his camouflaged trouser leg was being bitten by something.

At some unknown time, a fat husky had appeared beside his leg. Without a second word, Mao Ba’er took Xu Yangyi’s leg and placed him on his back. Mao Ba’er turned his head and howled, and three black-and-white dog heads revealed themselves under the moon. As if he had gone insane, the husky ran!

“Thanks,” Xu Yangyi said on Mao Ba’er’s back. His voice was like gossamer.

In an instant, blood completely dyed a patch of fur on Mao Ba’er’s back.

“What a buncha crap!” Mao Ba’er’s eyes were also red. To Qi Condensation cultivators, it was no understatement to call the situation facing them armageddon! Lord knows, wasn’t Nanzhou City, having stood tall for a thousand years, instantly destroyed? Lord knows, weren’t there terrible slashes on the ground? And lord knows… weren’t there a tide of snake shadows behind them?

[1]

There was only death to chase after anyone of these things! 

“Heavenly Net.” But now, Mao Ba’er clearly heard a woman’s voice, like an ice-cold blade, come from the snake horde behind him.

“Bark!” His hair stood on edge in a flash. He said nothing more and increased his speed! He ran so quickly that there were fiery embers on his legs!

The familiar didn’t look behind him. The barely remaining snake horde assembled again and became a great snake that was dozens of meters long! And this snake’s head was unexpectedly pulsing.

“Tch…” So low that it wasn’t heard, a sound of breaking wind echoed, as if something had been spat out from the snake’s mouth. A rumble followed, and the snake was shortly exterminated by the rushing black light!

“That’s her true body!” Titanspirit’s voice was like a great bell, resounding behind Ancientpine. He felt something was off, though… Against the all-out attacks of two Dao Masters, Hiddenscent actually hadn’t dodged or evaded, neither fleeing nor hiding away. Not like she wanted to rush out, but instead seemed to always be searching for something.

Ancientpine was silent. His hands came together again, and a pure and sparkling three-foot-long azure edge suddenly appeared between his two Taijis.

“The demon horde swept all away is to speak of martial truth.” His longsword lightly swept away. In a twinkling, his figure had already vanished from his original position. “Demon Horde Extermination.”

Mao Ba’er sprinted ahead with all his might. All of a sudden, he sensed that something was coming. It was small… but very frightening!

Xu Yangyi forced himself not to pass out. From his point of view, he got a clean look of the entity flying over.

No… it was the thing the giant snake had spat out!

A snake.

A snake that was no less than half a meter. From nose to tail it was azure, and its tongue was bright-red. Under the moonlight, its slitted pupils radiated a heart-chilling sheen.

In the next second, the snake’s mouth snapped wide open! Another snake grew out from the mouth. Shortly, this snake stretched open its mouth again! A new azure snake spat out from this snake’s mouth!

They were getting bigger and bigger! Longer and longer! In less than half a second, what was racing straight at them was an azure serpent that was now surprisingly as thick as a water bucket and ten-odd meters long!

It was relaying itself through the air!

But this time, as the snake opened its mouth once more, what emerged was not a snake.

In an azure orb of spirit light, black hair was first to arch out. Soon, a perfect mien, a naked snow-white body… and a tail like a snake’s tongue grew out from the snake’s mouth.

Swoosh!

 Galloping like wind, racing like lightning!

An ice-cold palm stroked Xu Yangyi’s blood-covered face. From the snake’s appearance until now, no more than three seconds had passed.

“Found you…” Hiddenscent’s charming face revealed a perfect smile before Xu Yangyi. She gently caressed the solid contours of his face. “Truly a pity… you touched that which shouldn’t have been touched… Father wants me to kill you…”

Xu Yangyi didn’t look at her. Here and now, he still had the time to look at the stars in the sky.

Does it all end here…?

There was nothing good to say. He had no regrets. Given a choice again, he would still choose to arrive here. The path he chose was not something to regret or not regret.

Merely… to die at the hands of such a monster truly left one unwilling… 

Hiddenscent’s eyes reflected a middle finger. It swayed, but never once fell.

“This is your special way of greeting?” she laughed. She knew that speaking was impossible with such wounds.

In the next second, her mouth snapped open to an inconceivable degree! The inside was all rows of fine, sharp teeth. Without the slightest hesitation, she tore down on Xu Yangyi’s throat!

1. “Lord knows”. This is a something that I ultimately decided on, since it has the emphasis which I feels fits the situation. The exact phrase is “君不見”, which translates directly to “The lord does not see”. It is used in one of Tang poet Li Bai’s poems to emphasis the importance of whatever it is alluding to.

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