Chapter 136 – Taming General Mammoth, Advancing to The Sixth Rank - Part 2

Even as Zhao Xiantong spoke, Li Yuan felt a chill, watching the ghost in human form.

At that moment, Zhao Xiantong behaved exactly like a living person—sharp enough even to spot the small verbal trap Li Yuan had laid. He was just like Ming Shu before him. Yet in truth, both were already ghost-servants, driven by a single goal—to lure their killers, or those they hated most, into the mass grave.

But as soon as they entered that grave, the human mask would vanish. So, was Zhao Xiantong still human, or was he merely a copy? Or something else altogether? If ghosts like him could hide among the living, who could possibly tell them apart?

While Zhao Xiantong argued with Li Yuan, General Mammoth stood tensely by his side, his pupils narrowed. His bronze skin seemed to grow even harder, though no one would notice at a casual glance. The atmosphere hung heavy with tension.

Suddenly, Zhao Xiantong let out a rasping shout, “General, believe me! Let’s join forces and capture this foreign sixth rank cultivator!”

General Mammoth stomped hard on the ground, fracturing the brick road beneath his feet. With a feral grin, he roared, “If I’m not to trust you, should I trust some stranger instead? Let’s take him down!”

A smirk lit Zhao Xiantong’s face. “Exactly!”

In response, Li Yuan flicked the cylinder in his hand, and with a metallic clang, the Dragon-Fanged Spear extended to its full length.

“Attack!” General Mammoth barked.

With that single command, the ground trembled as if a giant serpent turned beneath it. Paving stones erupted and flew like dancing butterflies in a swirl of dust.

In that momentary chaos, both Zhao Xiantong and General Mammoth streaked forward as swift afterimages.

Yet they each moved in a different direction. Zhao Xiantong lunged toward Li Yuan, while General Mammoth darted the other way.

The iron-faced, bronze-bodied warrior bounded off and disappeared in a few agile leaps, flipping over a courtyard wall into a local residence. Once inside, he crouched low as his bones made a series of crackling sounds. It was a bone-shrinking skill.

Shrunken down, General Mammoth slipped into a small water jar in a storage room, quieting his breath as he spread his senses outward to gauge the situation.

Sixth rank cultivators, a ghost domain at the mass grave—there was far too much at stake, and he needed time to figure out his next move.

Let those two fight it out,

he thought grimly.

He was still mulling things over when he heard the faint flutter of wings overhead, enough to make his muscles tense. But he stayed hidden.

Meanwhile, Li Yuan’s spear shot forward and easily impaled Zhao Xiantong, pinning him straight to the street. Hovering over him, Li Yuan demanded, “What

are

you?”

Zhao Xiantong reached up, clawing at him. Li Yuan gave his spear a hard twist, its razor-sharp edges flaring with a strange light. In one fluid slash, Zhao Xiantong was cleaved in two.

An inhuman shriek tore through the air, and his body melted like hot wax. Dark holes yawned across his flesh and then collapsed into nothing, vanishing into the damp earth along with the rain.

Li Yuan exhaled softly. “As I thought. Out here, they can only imitate a living human; no trace of a ghost-servant’s true power.”

He watched in silence, then hoisted his spear and dashed off like a bolt of lightning, vaulting over a wall and into another residence. The instant he landed, General Mammoth climbed out of the water jar, his frame crackling as it returned to normal size.

Inside the residence's house, a woman tried to crack open the window to peek out, but the man behind her quickly pulled her back, and they both huddled in their bed, too frightened to see what was happening.

“Are you the Blood Blade Patriarch?" General Mammoth asked, eyeing the masked man before him. "I heard a finch’s wings. The finch is in the sky; I’m on the ground. No wonder you found me so easily.

"That has to be the same white finch from Antelope Pass last winter. And in Gemhill, Flowerpath, and Southsky, there’s only one well-known sixth rank cultivator. It wasn’t hard to guess.”

Li Yuan asked, “Why did you run?”

“Because I don’t believe a word you said to him.”

“So you’re convinced you can’t beat me?”

"Maybe I can, maybe I can't." General Mammoth gave a small shrug. “You took out Zhao Xiantong pretty quickly. But until we’re fighting for our lives, who can say who’s stronger? After all, everyone who's been around in the jianghu long enough has got an an ace or two under their sleeves.

"Blood Blade Patriarch, do we really have to fight to the death? We’re both sixth rank. We ought to just sit down for some tea, chat about the future.”

“You’re mistaken,” Li Yuan said calmly.

“Oh?”

“I’m not the Blood Blade Patriarch. My name is Mister Wood.”

“But I heard talk of your weapon. You didn’t completely wipe out the Fragrant General’s army; some lived to spread tales about your blade...”

Li Yuan chuckled. “Then you must not know my senior brother and I use the same weapon. He favors the blade side; I focus on the spear tip.”

General Mammoth narrowed his eyes. “So what grudge do we have that’s worth fighting to the end?”

“We don’t share a path,” Li Yuan replied, “but we’re too close for comfort. I’m not about to stand by while your men run wild.”

“I see,” General Mammoth said with a laugh. “Doesn’t matter what I say, does it? You truly plan to fight me? You sure I don’t have a trump card of my own?”

Li Yuan glanced at the faint numbers hovering above General Mammoth’s head, reading 539~544, then glanced at the numbers by his own side, 505~905.

Without another word, he ignited a drop of shadow blood. Power erupted around him, a palpable aura of pressure.

Holding his Dragon-Fanged Spear tightly, Li Yuan suddenly snapped forward. In a flash, he closed the distance to General Mammoth, the spear bending like a drawn bow.

The spear struck!

But General Mammoth’s own shadow blood ignited at the same moment. He dodged as lightly as a leaf on the wind.

When the spear came thrusting in, he deftly shifted to the side, blocking the spear’s shaft with his left arm.

Then, stomping twice on the ground, he fired off his right fist in a streak of lightning—a single savage blow aimed squarely at Li Yuan’s face.

The moment before the fist connected, the scorching rush of power cracked the air like a string of firecrackers or a rolling thunderclap.

Li Yuan spun, angling the side blade of the Dragon-Fanged Spear down toward General Mammoth’s left arm.

General Mammoth's arm, reinforced by shadow blood, felt as solid as iron. An eighth rank blood veil was like paper; at sixth rank, it was iron armor.

A piercing screech erupted, as though a blade were grinding against a steel shield.

The spear’s blade cut across General Mammoth’s arm, then vibrated at high speed—its keening pitch rising louder and sharper by the second.

Flipping his palm, Li Yuan drew the blade in a wide arc, slicing toward General Mammoth once more.

Ultimate Skill, City Toppler!

The general’s pupils shrank. He had planned to follow up with an attack of his own, but at the sight of that devastating strike, he hastily retreated instead.

He crashed through the residence's front doors, smashed through the alley wall beyond, and kept barreling through row after row of humble homes as he fled.

BOOM!

Li Yuan ignited another drop of shadow blood, boosting his speed and strength again. General Mammoth ran, and Li Yuan gave chase.

Mid-flight, General Mammoth suddenly whirled around and lunged at Li Yuan, flicking out a flash of green; a single poisoned needle.

With both men moving at high velocity, Li Yuan had no chance to dodge.

Seeing this, General Mammoth’s eyes lit up...until the needle struck Li Yuan’s left cheek and bounced harmlessly away.

The next instant, Li Yuan drove his spear forward, shattering General Mammoth’s blood veil and punching through his abdomen, pinning him against a towering old tree.

The trunk shuddered like it had been slammed by a massive hammer, its branches rattling and leaves cascading down.

General Mammoth felt the raw, unstoppable power in that spear tip. All his defenses were futile in the face of such force. He flipped his right hand, about to draw his ancestral seal.

“Don’t move,” Li Yuan warned, voice calm. Then, with a nod toward the general’s twitching fingers, he added, “You’ll lose that hand.”

At that, General Mammoth gazed at the fearsome man who’d charged him with such brutal intensity, sighed heavily, and let both arms fall to his sides.