Chapter 376 – Settling In, A Battle of the Apex - Part 3

The hunt for Lotus Cult moles was finally easing, if only a little.

Bai Lingshui slipped out of her cellar hideaway and found a new bolt-hole, but her top priority remained unchanged. That was to track down Bubba.

That same day Li Yuan strolled into Silkfloss Province as usual, only to learn that the temple master of the Holy Tree Temple, Qing Hancheng, had publicly thrown down the gauntlet. Fast couriers pinned scarlet challenge scrolls to every city gate, each one screaming—

Qing Hancheng has left seclusion. Any who crave a duel. step forward.

A special message to Bubba, choose the time and place.

The news spread like brushfire, leaping from town to town until every teahouse buzzed with it.

“Well, this is a development...” Li Yuan raised an eyebrow.

That night, back on Cloudpeak Province, he fished out a single strand of Han Tong’er’s hair and consulted one of the whitewood caskets. The casket answered that Han Tong’er knew nothing of this affair and that Bai Lingshui was still combing all over for him.

After double-checking the vial of his own fourth rank blood in the black market ghost domain and finding everything in order, Li Yuan made up his mind. He would answer Qing Hancheng’s challenge.

A duel could be the catalyst he needed for his next breakthrough, and what better mask than Bubba?

He said his goodbyes, packed nothing, then reshaped flesh and bone into the familiar bald, bull-necked giant and slipped into a remote mountain range.

He did not step out right away. Instead he gathered birds, five ninth rank demonic birds and 11 common wild hawks. He linked their souls to his own and sent them drifting outward as extra eyes.

While waiting, a memory from his past life tickled him. Villains in wuxia novels always loved to sabotage the hero’s heart before a grand showdown. Either they’d send a femme fatale to distract the hero, or they’d kidnap the heroine and reveal it mid-fight to send the hero into a blind rage.

The first scheme was pointless. Qing Hancheng wasn’t that brand of moral-paragon protagonist. And the second? The man hardly seemed to have a woman, and even if he did, Li Yuan wanted no part of that particular ugliness.

So he simply rested, meditated, and butchered the odd sixth or seventh rank demonic beast that wandered too close.

𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

When the time felt ripe, he allowed himself to be spotted by a disciple of the White Lotus Cult.

Sure enough, Bai Lingshui arrived in the mountains. She found the hulking brute perched on a cliff edge, beating his chest like an angry gorilla and howling into the wind.

Her followers soon sniffed out the iron tang of blood and discovered piles of mangled demonic beast corpses. Plainly the big oaf had wandered off and vented his grief on the wildlife.

Bai Lingshui drifted down beside him, reaching to pat his shaggy paw. The brute jerked away, still sulking.

“Don’t be angry,” she murmured. “This time I really will let you fight Qing Hancheng.”

“Liar,” he rumbled.

“It’s true,” she promised, voice soft as falling snow. “He’s agreed to the match.”

“Liar.” Li Yuan rumbled again.

Bai Lingshui dipped her voice. “Bubba, I’m not lying. Listen, I’ve heard Qing Hancheng is on the cusp of Third rank. This duel is meant to be the final push for him. You...won’t win.”

It was a sharp, well-researched warning. She’d dug into every rumor since Qing Hancheng’s defection and guessed that the Black Lotus Cult had bargained to lift him into third rank.

“I know you crave strong opponents, but he’s not the only giant out there. Qing Hancheng is one name, but he’s about to break a boundary no one else has touched. If he beats you, he’ll likely kill you. Let me take you south; we’ll look for someone else.”

LI Yuan inwardly sighed.

The White Lotus saintess knows everything while the Red Lotus elder knows nothing.

Still, he’d heard all he needed, and his

eyes

—the five demonic birds and 11 hawks—were already flying toward Flying Swallow Terrace.

“I want Qing Hancheng! Noon on the first day of the month, Flying Swallow Terrace!” The bald brute’s roar shook the cliff.

In truth, Li Yuan planned to scout Qing Hancheng’s combat power first; only if the battle suited his own breakthrough would he step in.

Seeing him about to bolt, Bai Lingshui grew frantic. She didn’t want to see this big oaf run off to his death, so she pleaded, “Fine, let me show you another heavyweight first. If he can’t satisfy you, then we come back for Qing Hancheng. Deal?”

Li Yuan, who’d chatted with the Bai Lingshui within the whitewood casket more times than he could count, saw through the ploy in a breath. He didn’t care for Lotus Cult territory. Why would he travel all the way there when Flying Swallow Terrace was much safer?

Besides, Qing Hancheng posed a danger to Gu Xuejian. She’d treated Ping’an and Yao Jue well, so this was his way of repaying the favor. So, the one he wanted to fight had to be Qing Hancheng.

Bai Lingshui tried to dissuade him again, but Li Yuan didn’t bother arguing. He simply lunged, scooped her up like a sack of rice, and

accidentally

tore out a few strands of her hair.

Her followers yelped, hands darting for weapons, but Bai Lingshui waved them down.

BOOM!

The hulking gorilla became a flesh meteor, ricocheting off ridge after ridge until both figures vanished.

The disciples stared at one another, suddenly masterless.

Li Yuan dumped Bai Lingshui in the marketplace of a safe little township, strode into the busiest street, and bellowed, “Tell Qing Hancheng. Noon, first day of the month, Flying Swallow Terrace! One fight to settle it all!”

News of the shouted challenge raced through several towns.

The Holy Tree Temple disciples caught wind of it and passed it up the chain.

A few days later, the report reached Qing Hancheng himself.

One look at the description, towering frame, shaved head, and ox-thick neck, and there was no doubt this person was Bubba.

Qing Hancheng nodded, a spark of anticipation lighting his eyes. He wasn’t thrilled about beating Bubba. He was thrilled about what might happen after the victory, the final step into third rank.

He stayed cautious, ordering aides to gather every scrap on Bubba’s past bouts and habits. The data were thin, only that the man hit harder than any fifth rank martial artist.

Still, Qing Hancheng decided to go. He could feel the third rank threshold, only half a step away.

He bathed, burned incense, and seated himself atop the White Bamboo Hanging Bell Tower, quietly waiting for the first day of the new month. The ceremony wasn’t for Bubba; it was for the moment he would cross that final line.

“Don’t disappoint me.” The man in the azure robe with ink-black plum blossoms let a frosty smile curl across his face.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

On the eve of the duel, martial artists, spies, and thrill-seekers flocked toward Flying Swallow Terrace, only to freeze at an impossible sight.

The path to the terrace was gone. Worse, the surrounding mountains had...lost their heads. Every peak had been neatly decapitated.

When they drew nearer they found those missing summits. Each slab of mountainside, dozens of meters tall, had been stacked like toy blocks around the terrace, forming a lopsided wall hundreds of meters high. The only way in was to fly, or smash straight through.

Perched on the growing pyramid of stone was a shaggy-armed, bald giant still hefting fresh mountaintops into place.

Mountains as building blocks, a single man as mason, the sheer scale numbed the onlookers. They halted, stunned.

“Unless you’re Qing Hancheng, stay out!” Li Yuan bellowed.

His eyes swept the crowd and didn’t find anyone above sixth rank. He immediately understood that Qing Hancheng didn’t want witnesses meddling with his breakthrough, and Lotus Cult must have issued the same order. In their eyes he was already a dead man.

Perfect!

Li Yuan finished his barricade, dropped onto a broad ledge midway up the mountain, studied the terrain, then burrowed into the snow-packed ground, aura sealed, leaving only his flock of birds to watch the skies.

The first day of the month arrived.

Snow kept falling, each flake a tiny white blade.

All stragglers were shooed to a distant village; no one doubted Qing Hancheng would emerge the victor.

The Flying Swallow Terrace lay deathly still beneath the drifting snow.

At last, Li Yuan sensed him. A lone figure approached from the horizon.

Qing Hancheng had come.

One of Li Yuan’s airborne

eyes

streaked in for a closer look, but a flash of cold light sent the bird bursting apart before it ever saw its target.

He steered the rest of the flock closer. One after another the creatures detonated, feathers and flesh dissolving into red mist.

Still, in the brief glimpses he caught Qing Hancheng’s combat power—9,316~59,948.

His own combat power 4,530~69,496.

Qing Hancheng’s baseline was higher, Li Yuan’s ceiling higher. The rest would be decided by skill.

He rose from the soil, shook off clumps of earth, and vaulted onto the Flying Swallow Terrace. Sneak attacks no longer mattered; what he needed was a worthy catalyst, and Qing Hancheng was perfect.

Qing Hancheng touched down on the opposite ledge, never suspecting the recent snooping had come from this hulking brute. Such tricks stank of ghost items, whereas the bald giant blazed with raw Yang.

“You called for me. I’m here,” Qing Hancheng said calmly. “But...where’s your weapon?”

Li Yuan chuckled, grabbed a random branch, and waved it like a toy sword.

“You’re a blade wielder, aren’t you?” Qing frowned.

“This

is

my blade,” the big fool declared, brandishing the twig.

Qing Hancheng’s brows knitted. “Your strength is real, but fighting without a proper blade is a waste. Postpone the duel. Come with me. I’ll have a weaponsmith forge you a blade from pure blood crystal. Then we finish this.”

Li Yuan twirled the branch. Suddenly the air around him shifted. The oaf vanished; in his place stood a true master of the blade.

Qing Hancheng stared at the twig for a long moment, then sighed. “You’re extraordinary. I’d rather not see that talent thrown away.”

He lifted a sleeve; from the black-patterned fabric floated a long sword traced with azure and crimson veins. The pattern looked like a dense forest caught in roaring flames. One glance triggered a visceral illusion of being trapped in that inferno, mind screaming to flee.

“This is the Wither Growth Sword, the treasured weapon of the Holy Tree Temple. It’s been carried by every temple master before me.”

Li Yuan blinked.

So only those who’d mastered the Cycle of Withering And Growth could claim the throne of the Holy Tree Temple?

Even Gu Xuejian probably didn’t know that. Clearly Qing Hancheng felt so certain of victory he’d never bothered grooming a successor.

“Branch against the Wither Growth Sword. A bit unfair, I’d say,” Qing Hancheng remarked.

“True,” Li Yuan agreed. He tossed the branch away, finally dropping the persona of the bumbling oaf.

Qing Hancheng watched as the giant brought two fingers together, pointer and middle, making the slightest closing motion.

Those fingers became the world’s peerless edge.

Qing Hancheng’s pupils tightened. He stepped back several paces, cupped his fists, and murmured, “Please.”