Chapter 293 – Reunion with Yan Yu, The Fall of Peng Mi - Part 3

Inside the camp, chaos raged across kilometers of tents—soldier against soldier, general against general, king against king.

Jing Ruyi fought like a cornered beast, his crooked blade whirling. One expert after another collapsed, poisoned, only to be dragged upright by some unseen force and hurled back into the fray at his side.

High above, a smiling man, Peng Mi, watched the cat‑and‑mouse game with boyish delight.

“A fascinating weapon,” he called down. “No wonder Gong Lang forged it with his dying breath. Shame to waste it here. Join us, Jing Ruyi, why throw your life away?”

“Join you?” Jing Ruyi barked, hacking at the toxic fog.

“The Five Elements Alliance is already rotten. They should die with the old era,” Peng Mi explained.

“You want my answer?” Jing Ruyi rasped.

“By all means.” Peng Mi spread his hands.

“Kneel, kowtow a hundred times, and I’ll

consider

it,” Jing Ruyi snarled, still trying to break out of the poison domain.

Peng Mi chuckled, unruffled. “So confident in your blade, are you? Then watch while it snaps before your eyes... Goodness, goodness.”

He never moved a step. Instead, the air around him thickened into coils of venom, each tendril linked to the long blade in his grasp, waiting to strike.

“Venom Tide!” Peng Mi gave his blade a casual flick. Waves of emerald toxin fanned out, not toward Jing Ruyi but into the air around him.

Within a dozen paces, the faint green haze deepened to a brilliant jade, and everything inside that ring began to melt. Rock, soil, thick hide tents, even the racks of weapons all hissed and sizzled into blackened slag.

Jing Ruyi stopped wasting corpses on defense and bolted.

Out‑running Peng Mi was a fantasy. The man merely strolled, letting his prey stew inside the poison domain; sooner or later, the venom would eat him alive.

A fifth rank martial artist could survive being hacked to pieces. As long as the heart remained safe, the rest of the body would grow back. But if the Venom Tide dissolved the person completely, even a monster’s vitality meant nothing. This poison was designed to murder fifth rank martial artists.

Peng Mi watched the desperate flight and chuckled. “Poor Gong Lang will be weeping in heaven. You’ve squandered his hopes. Never mind, I’ll hunt down Li Yuan’s spirit artifact too and display the pair together.”

Jing Ruyi clenched his teeth, screaming as flesh sloughed from his arm; two fingers on his dominant hand were already stripped to bone.

“I can make it quick,” Peng Mi offered. “Tell me, who holds Li Yuan’s sword?”

“Just kill me now!” Jing Ruyi answered with manic laughter.

“Well—”

Suddenly, both men froze, glancing sideways.

ZAAAAP!

The air had split with a flash of blinding lightning.

In the blink of an eye, the lightning bolt punched through the poison domain, shearing Peng Mi’s Venom Tide in half.

The venom tried to knit together, but nothing could match that speed. Had the lightning lingered it might have been corroded; instead it pierced and vanished before the poison’s sustained lethality could bite.

What!?

Peng Mi’s scalp tingled. He raised his blade—

BOOM!

The smiling vice cult leader of the Black‑Lotus Cult was hurled from the sky, smashing a crater in the ground.

Warm snow and dust geysered upward. Beneath, wisps of black miasma slithered like hunting serpents. One coil clamped onto his ankle; others wriggled toward his flesh.

A faint weakness pricked him. Sensing more tendrils rising, he shot aloft, only for another icy gleam to scythe in from the left.

His cheek prickled. The lightning ripped his poison again; he parried, too late.

BAM!

A second blow sent him spinning.

“Fourth rank! Are you Qing Hancheng?” he shouted, then frowned at the baleful aura still clinging to him. “No, you’re not Qing Hancheng. Who are you?”

No answer came, only a white blur flickering so fast that even Jing Ruyi and Peng Mi saw nothing but after‑images.

With a snarl, Peng Mi charged, blade flashing.

Minute after minute, the stranger fought him to a stand‑off, feeding him attacks like a sparring partner. The calm unsettled him.

“Venom Sea!”

Escape was impossible; Peng Mi poured power into the spirit blade, his poison domain darkening to a murderous forest‑green.

At that instant, the white blur transformed into a bolt of lightning again. It split the poison domain and burst out the far side.

Peng Mi’s reflexes were legendary; he dodged, yet this streak was faster than any before.

A line opened across his left cheek.

At first, only a few lazy drops of blood dripped like a leaky tap. Then the tap became a pipe, then a pressurized hose. The muscle rippled beneath his skin, bubbling like water under a boiling lid.

Blood spurted, sucked outward, dissolved by his own venom, but the draining force did not stop.

The white blur wheeled, another flash of thunder‑steel.

Peng Mi clamped a hand to the wound. Controlling muscle was child’s play for him; sealing a cut should have been easy...

The moment he tried to seal the cut, Peng Mi discovered the shadow blood was bleeding out far too fast. No sooner had he pressed the wound shut than the lightning was in his face again.

“Who—?

who—

WHO ARE YOU!!?!?”

Peng Mi hung in mid‑air like a great green eggshell while the bolt zipped back and forth inside.

Down below, Jing Ruyi stared, dumbfounded.

The spirit artifact flashed from the viridian haze. But no matter the trick or move, every attempt to fend off that single white blur failed.

Klang! Klang!

Even a petal from Peng Mi’s own black lotus was swatted aside.

𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮

Wounds piled up. He had to heal each gash the instant it opened or blood would pour away. Bit by bit, he gave up every extra trick, first abandoning his puppets then his poison domain itself. In the end, all he did was run, sewing himself together as he fled.

How many cuts now? Dozens, hundreds, thousands? He couldn’t tell. The blur followed at a lazy pace, always fast enough to keep him in reach.

Between two flashes, Peng Mi finally caught a glimpse of his tormentor. The attacker was Gu Xuejian, deputy temple master of the Holy Tree Temple.

Impossible! She should be beneath me,

he thought in utter disbelief. Then, he saw the sword in her hand. Black and white, day and night, holiness and damnation coiled in a single sword—a pinnacle spirit artifact, gazing down on the world like a god among weapons.

For one heartbeat, Peng Mi missed a stitch. Blood spurted from his back and rushed toward that sword. Lightning cut again; more wounds, more crimson threads streaming into the sword.

Gu Xuejian’s cheeks grew rosy, her eyes brighter, her aura towering by the breath.

At last, Peng Mi stopped, dropped to the ground, and shouted to the sky, “Name your price and let me live!”

Gu Xuejian tipped the sword. “Weren’t you hunting Master Li’s masterpiece?”

“That’s impossible!! This...this was forged by Li Yuan?”

He had taken it for some lost treasure on par with the weapons stored in the Great Zhou Treasury. Yet the Son of Heaven had never opened those vaults.

“You butchered our fifth ranks,” Gu Xuejian said, leveling the sword. “Tonight, the blood debt will be paid.”

She dived. Deadly and effortless, the sword drank. Fourth rank vigor meant as long as a single drop of blood survived, Peng Mi could be reborn, but the sword drank

everything.

He ran. She followed.

Time stretched. His body became a sieve; rivulets of gore hung in the air like bizarre lotus fibers, all converging on that sword.

In desperation, Peng Mi burst apart, splattering onto stone, earth, and treetops, hoping one drop would escape the drain.

Gu Xuejian landed softly, hunting, pulling every bead of blood into the sword until nothing remained.

Then, she picked up Peng Mi’s verdant long blade, studied it, and tossed it to Jing Ruyi, who staggered over and bowed.

“Store it. Take it home.”

“And you, Deputy Gu?”

“Me?” Gu Xuejian looked south. “Killing Peng Mi nudged me into fourth rank. I’ll walk the southern lines to consolidate my cultivation...and raise a tomb for Li Yuan in Gemhill County. Let’s say he made it home, after all.”

She rose into the night. With every foe she cut down, crimson tendrils laced through the night sky toward her sword.

Tireless and growing ever stronger, Gu Xuejian was far mightier compared to when Li Yuan first laid eyes on her.