Chapter 499: Ten-Thousand-Merit-Points Magical Artifacts in Battle! One-on-One Duel!? The Old Scholar’s Scheme!

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Unrestrained, violent force tore through the air, creating sonic booms as all six arms slammed down heavily.

Clang!

A dragon’s roar echoed as the Jiaoslayer at Li Yanchu’s waist transformed into a streak of icy light. This blade, also a ten-thousand-merit-points treasure, already possessed a measure of consciousness. Now, it became a blade of pure cold, piercing straight through the demon.

Bang!

A tremendous explosion erupted as a shredded hole tore open in the demon’s chest. Its eerie eyes locked onto Li Yanchu with a malevolent, ominous gaze.

“Dig out its eyes,” Li Yanchu said in a deep voice.

Killing the body is less severe than killing the heart[1].

The Eight Trigrams Mirror and the Jiaoslayer relentlessly attacked the three-headed, six-armed demon.

Its wounds bled continuously, yet under the blood-colored Eight Trigrams hovering above its head, the injuries rapidly regenerated. To be precise, the wounds inflicted by the Eight Trigrams Mirror healed immediately, but those caused by the Jiaoslayer did not recover.

The Eight Trigrams Mirror grew nervous. It had long been looked down upon by Li Yanchu, already considered inferior even to Lady Yun. If now it couldn’t even surpass this battered blade, it would be very likely to end up reduced to nothing in Li Yanchu’s hands.

Boom!

A brilliant white light, like a torrential flood, smashed through half of the terrifying demon’s body. Then another white beam struck the Eight Trigrams diagram hovering above its head.

Boom! Boom!

Explosions thundered relentlessly through the heavens and earth.

The Eight Trigrams Mirror and the blood-colored Eight Trigrams seemed to clash with one another; after the first strike, the Eight Trigrams Mirror engaged the blood Eight Trigrams directly in a titanic confrontation.

Boom!

A corner of the blood-colored Eight Trigrams was shattered.

The three-headed, six-armed demon’s aura waned. It couldn’t understand why it couldn’t even get close to this young Daoist’s body and was instead being repelled by these two magical artifacts! What on earth was happening?!

Pftt

!

The Jiaoslayer seized the opportunity, striking the demon’s forehead. With a flick of the blade tip, one of its bizarre eyes was dug out with precision.

“Ah!” The demon screamed in agony.

The eye on the ground, however, kept moving. The Jiaoslayer transformed into a streak of light, pinning the eye firmly to the earth.

Sensing the information transmitted through the Eight Trigrams Mirror and Jiaoslayer, Li Yanchu smiled faintly.

Killing this three-headed, six-armed demon using only these two treasures was unrealistic, but that these two semi-sentient artifacts could damage it to this extent was unexpected.

The demon’s aura alone was at least third-realm, and it was already transcendent.

“Relying on magical artifacts? Show me your true strength in a one-on-one duel!” the demon’s shrill voice roared.

“Fine!” Li Yanchu’s voice boomed like thunder.

Boom! Boom!

Li Yanchu unleashed a single punch on the demon, and his overwhelming blood qi burst outward, like a bomb detonating repeatedly, stacking explosions into an astonishing mushroom cloud.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Li Yanchu stood on the ground, trading blow after blow with the two-meter-tall, three-headed, six-armed demon.

The sheer, terrifying force radiated outward in transparent ripples. His physical and divine strength was beyond comprehension.

“Roar!” The demon emitted a wild, irrational beast-like roar, so violent and brutal that it created a soundwave shockwave.

At this level, the shockwave had no effect on Li Yanchu, but all of the demon’s eyes simultaneously focused on him, producing a chilling sensation as if being watched by a spider’s compound eyes.

For a moment, Li Yanchu felt an unprecedented sense of danger. However, this only stirred his killing intent. The blood and qi coursing through his body had rendered his skin, bones, and muscles in a state of near-indestructibility. He then threw a punch, which was so powerful that the air itself seemed to boil!

The void seemed torn apart by a hurricane as his vast, scorching blood qi struck the three-headed, six-armed demon directly.

Boom!

In that instant, heaven and earth trembled. A murderous aura surged violently, and the demon’s body was shattered by Li Yanchu’s ocean-like, blazing blood qi. Not a trace of bones remained.

This was the vast, surging blood qi comparable to that of a third realm cultivator. Even if the demon had condensed the bloody Eight Trigrams and its own sinister aura, it still couldn’t withstand this punch, as the blood qi blasted forth like a raging furnace.

The demon’s entire body vanished, but those eerie eyes stubbornly survived Li Yanchu’s assault. Two grotesque eyes now stood out sharply amid the ruins.

Bang! Bang!

Li Yanchu pursued and shattered each eye with a single punch. He then approached the Jiaoslayer, reaching for the last remaining eye.

“You can’t even take down my magical artifacts, and you still want to fight me? Idiot!” Li Yanchu sneered.

He crushed the ghostly eye outright, its complex gaze filled with hatred.

Even the Spirit-Refining Formation , which had trapped Master Yuanjue, a half third-realm cultivator, and a host of peak Yin Spirit-level malevolent spirits, could not withstand Li Yanchu’s overwhelming blood qi. His incredible strength and explosive power were simply terrifying.

The surrounding terrain seemed ravaged by a natural disaster; the earth cracked, forming one deep pit after another.

***

“What the hell is this eye?!” Li Yanchu frowned.

He felt no blessing of merit points descend upon him; this thing was far from dead. Since the formation was designed to extract living blood essence, what about the blood elixir?

This evil spirit was unlike anything from the human world. It resembled the subterranean yin embryo he had seen in the Chu River Dragon Palace cave. The ominous aura was very similar to the demonic presences of a Blissful Land.

***

Meanwhile, on a small hill in Dongyang County, an old Confucian scholar stood beside an ancient tree, eyes fixed on the scene. He wore a strange bronze coin, which concealed all of his spiritual presence. Now he exercised a form of clairvoyance, aided by a Great Confucian character talisman.

Confucian Daoist cultivators could subdue demons with written characters, possessing all manner of incredible abilities. It was said that at the highest level, whatever they spoke became reality.

Though, of course, this might have been Confucian cultivators bragging.

Li Yanchu actually possessed two such talismans as well, which were gifts from the soldier who had once disguised himself as the handsome youth Lu Li with Heaven Official’s Blessing. They were extremely powerful for exorcising demons, but Li Yanchu, at the peak of his martial and magical skills, had never needed to use them.

The old Confucian scholar shook his head and sighed, “Failed again.”

A look of helplessness appeared in his eyes.

“If this keeps up, the Young Prince’s trust in me... won’t be completely gone, right?” The old Confucian scholar spoke with some concern.

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

He took out a glass bottle from his chest pocket. Inside the bottle was an eyeball, spinning continuously and staring at him with unrelenting focus.

The eyeball seemed to radiate some strange power outward, but the old scholar remained completely calm. He knew that by empowering the glass bottle with a very powerful formation, it was enough to suppress this yet-to-mature strange eye.

1. “Killing the body is less severe than killing the heart” (shā rén zhū xīn) is a Chinese idiom. Literally, it means that instead of taking someone’s life, it is even more devastating to expose or condemn their hidden motives, thoughts, and intentions, breaking them down mentally and emotionally.

This idea originates from the phrase “赦事诛意” (“forgive the act but condemn the intention”) in the

Book of the Later Han

, specifically the biography of Huo Xu. The idiom emphasizes holding someone accountable for their underlying intent rather than merely punishing their outward actions. It often refers to using sharp words or incisive actions to strike directly at a person’s deepest flaws or concealed motives, shattering their pride and spirit, and causing profound shock and reflection. ☜