Book 14 Chapter 5 – Songs of Chu on All Sides[1]

Xu Ziling nearly cried out in surprise.

Because the instant he raised his true qi, the yongquan acupoints on the sole of both feet left and right turned one hot one cold: the cold qi from his left yongquan acupoint burst straight toward the Du meridian on his back, via wei zhen, passed through ni wan, followed the Ren meridian and downed to his dantian. The hot qi from his right foot was flowing on the opposite direction; upstream the Ren meridian, passed through the zuqiao acupoint between the eyebrows, through niwan and down Du meridian, and entered the dantian from the weiban acupoint on his backbone.

The most amazing thing was that when the two different streams of hot qi met with each other at the niwan, immediately the two streams became a vortex: one along the other inverse, the two streams flowed swiftly in opposite direction within the meridians.

Every time the flow arrived at certain acupoint, the true qi unexpectedly coalesced and expanded just like a whirlpool, making each acupoint inside him become like a storehouse of true power.

His dantian thus became like the headquarter where his main force resided, while his thirty-six main acupoints became like the positions where his smaller squadrons were stationed.

This has never happened before.

Even during training with Kou Zhong, where the yin and the yang converged, it was merely yin hidden amidst the yang, and yang contained within the yin; unlike right now where the yongquan on his left foot was able to automatically absorb abundant innate yin qi from between the Heaven and the Earth.

The only explanation was that the fantastic power of the Jade Annulus of He Can has thoroughly transformed his meridians, and not simply, as Ba Fenghan said, ‘enhanced’ it.

If formerly the meridians were like trickling water from a brook, currently it has become surging and rolling large river.

This kind of ‘shedding one’s mortal body and exchanging one’s bones’ feeling was truly hard to describe.

The sensitivity of all his senses was raised exponentially.

Any sound within a hundred zhang radius around him could not escape his hearing. Even his skin was sensitive to the changes in the air induced by Fu Zhen, Fu Yan, two men’s movement.

An enormous momentum emanated from the two men’s bodies. Its strength was not evenly distributed; rather, it followed the movements of their thoughts as they were constantly looking for any gap or weak point on Xu Ziling’s body that they could exploit; therefore, the intensity of the momentum was also constantly changing.

He had never experienced this kind of clear understanding of what is true and what is false of the opponent; it was just like a somewhat blind person who suddenly gained his eyesight back.

In that same instant, he also sensed another enemy was hiding somewhere behind the wall to his left, waiting for him to escape before carrying out a surprise attack.

His entire mind was crystal clear; nothing could escape his perception.

In this instant, he knew that Fu Zhen’s long-handle axe would be the first to attack, and then Fu Yan’s strange-looking beak sword would follow.

These two definitely had overbearing martial art skill; when they appeared just now, their aggressive momentum immediately enveloped him, so that he was unable to get away.

If it was before his meridians were transformed, they definitely had the strength to kill him, but now he had utmost confidence that if he wanted to escape, he would have no problem. The only question remained was how to deal with the third enemy’s sneak attack.

Thinking to this point, Fu Zhen and Fu Yan had already pressed on to within ten paces of him.

Qi power stormed in, murderous aura filled the air.

The two enemies roared at the same time.

The long-handle axe rose up to the air; it turned into a flash of lightning swiftly chopping down on his neck. A powerful, without equal, qi power had already split the air toward him.

Assuming a horse stance, Fu Yan’s beak sword, following a weird attacking path, struck from an approximately a zhang away. It appeared capable of attacking any part of him, in accordance with the variety of fantastical changes unique to unconventional weapon’s characteristic.

The Two-Malevolent of Changbai dared to stand in opposition to Wang Bo; they were indeed not ordinary men.

For a moment murderous aura filled the air.

These two brothers’ eyes shot cold rays as they hatefully stared at Xu Ziling. If it were someone else with comparably weak mental strength, merely their stare would be enough to turn his heart and guts cold, his fighting spirit gone.

Xu Ziling was well-aware that based on his current skill, which had advanced by leaps and bound, he could overcome one of them, but under normal circumstances, there was no way he could resist both of them at the same time, not to mention there was another martial art master lurking nearby, waiting for an opportunity to attack.

Any one of these two brothers from Fu family was top ranking martial art master who was able to stand on his own; otherwise, Shen Luoyan would not have trusted them to take care of him.

His brain traveling at the speed of light, Xu Ziling swiftly, beyond human understanding, flashed several times.

Fu Yan’s figure snapped immediately; his eyes shot a disbelieving expression, his momentum and confidence weakened somewhat.

Turned out with every flash, Xu Ziling was able to meet every single one of Fu Yan’s beak sword’s attacking paths.

The most shocking thing was that Xu Ziling seemed to have the foresight: he had just made the change, Xu Ziling already made a very subtle shift, so that his offense immediately lost its biggest threatening force. More astonishing yet, when Fu Yan altered his offense accordingly, Xu Ziling was one step ahead in staggering away a little. This situation happened several times in a row, so that Fu Yan was unable to do anything, the same helpless feeling when one tries to catch a loach, which keeps slipping out of his hands.

It was the very first time that Fu Yan ever experienced this kind of abnormal situation.

Before, at least half of his abilities lay in the special structure of his beak sword and the strange and crafty changes of its attack paths, something that was impossible for the opponent to defend effectively.

However, this time was different: before they even fought hand to hand, the opponent had already grasped the sword path. It has never happened before. Momentarily from being active he was forced to be passive, so that he was at a loss of how to proceed, hence his offensive slowed down.

In this battle of supremacy, the battle line was precisely this sliver of difference.

These past several decades, these two brothers from the Fu Clan had developed impeccable joint-strike technique. As soon as it was unleashed, there should be absolutely no flaw that could be exploited by the opponent.

As soon as the pressure disappeared, Xu Ziling’s momentum increased rapidly. Amidst the tranquil-without-any-ripple frame of mind, he flashed forward to meet Fu Zhen, with his finger pointing out.

The true qi within his body was like a broken dam. The spiraling stream of qi, which relied mainly on the ocean of qi to spin, circulated on the Ren and Du, two meridians one cycle first, before flowing toward the intersection of falun and kanli. By the time it reached the armpit, cold and hot separated. One followed yang yu, the other passed through yin yu, and converged at the palm of his hand, becoming vortices of cold and hot true power that flowed in parallel, each stream of qi power contained thirty-six flying-thallium[?] like vortex, shooting out from his middle finger.

In the meantime, Fu Zhen had also pulled back his qi; because of the sudden decrease in Fu Yan’s momentum, the front line was affected as well, so that they had no room to advance or to retreat.

But he was like riding a tiger where it was difficult to get off, he wanted to stop but was unable to do so, plus he wanted to take advantage of Xu Ziling’s power, which could not surpass his several decades of training. Therefore, he increased his speed instead to charge forward, with his long-handle axe swiftly chopped down. Relying on the heavy and sharp axe head, he wanted to suppress the opponent’s insignificant finger.

Were it a top-ranking martial art master of Wanwan’s caliber, by this time he would have attempted to drag the offensive back a little, to match Fu Yan’s heavy offensive move, hence although Xu Ziling could not be immediately defeated, he would have had a hard time in dealing with them. However, in term of intelligence Fu Zhen has always been known as inferior, therefore, this strategy was actually a big blunder.

When the fingertips were about to make contact with the axe blade, Xu Ziling swayed back in the direction of Fu Yan; his shenfa was as amazing as if it was made by heaven, so confident and at ease, yet also looked casual as if it was a random move.

The axe blade swept down about five cun away from the fingertips.

Immediately Fu Zhen’s soul flew away and scattered. But he was still an exceptional master; hastily altering the chopping motion into thrusting, he simply pulled back the axe and used the sharp pointy awl of his axe head to stab the opponent.

Xu Ziling laughed aloud, knowing that the force behind Fu Zhen’s blade has diminished, while the new force has not been generated yet. Touching the axe head with his fingertips, his true energy shot out like crazy.

‘Bang!’

Two streams of qi, one hot and one cold, flowed into Fu Zhen’s body along the axe under Xu Ziling’s control, separately toward the yang yu and yin yu, two meridians. Like a string of pearls vortices of qi burst in one after another, Fu Zhen immediately suffered major loss.

Another mistake he made that he had already heard about Xu Ziling and Kou Zhong’s unique skill of spiraling energy, and had already drafted a plan on how to deal with it, but he had never expected that the opponent was able to generate two separate streams of qi, cold and hot, in the form of swirling energy balls, which also able to penetrate the true qi protecting his body.

The most formidable part was that the cold and hot, two energies were entirely different, as if two separate martial art masters were attacking him at the same time.

This moment he no longer had the time to think about injuring the enemy. Gathering the power in his entire body, he struggled hard to pull himself away and withdrew.

In his heart Xu Ziling cried out, ‘How formidable!’ When his ‘no stronghold one cannot overcome’ qi power entered Fu Zhen’s body, it immediately encountered a powerful resistance and unexpectedly it was reduced in half; otherwise, just this one finger would be enough to make Fu Zhen vomited blood and sustained internal injury.

The beak sword attack arrived.

[1] Fig. Surrounded by enemies, isolated and without help.

Chapter 5 - Part 2

Letting out a cold snort, Xu Ziling made a back flip. Not only to avoid the ruthless-without-equal sword attack, he also flew over Fu Yan’s head, and pressed both palms down.

Fu Zhen was still being carried away by his backward inertia. His face alternated between red and white, and temporarily was powerless to meet the attack.

Fu Yan’s momentum had already diminished, plus his power was half a notch below Fu Zhen. Seeing his older brother was beaten back by Xu Ziling using only one finger, his courage turned cold, and was secretly thinking about retreating. However, how could he retreat now? Thereupon he had no choice but to brandish his beak sword into a thin disk of sword shadow, while bending down his knees to guard against the attack from above, no longer trying to attack but only trying to protect himself.

Seeing that even in such a bad situation he was still able to maintain a leak-proof defense, Xu Ziling cried inwardly that he was very lucky. If his strategy had not been brilliant, which prevented the two brothers from forming a siege against him, quite possibly this day nex