Chapter 424: When Illusion and Reality Intertwine

How could someone who died inside a phantom or illusion leave behind the smell of blood?

Fushan Yue did not even need to finish his warning. He Lingchuan had already slid forward in a single swift step, and there it was.

One of the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan hands had had his throat slit. Another had been stabbed straight through the chest. The short, cut-off scream they had heard was the second man’s final sound.

The killers were two men from the Chiyan party.

While the victims were still bleeding, while their last breath had not yet fully scattered, the two Chiyan men pressed a bead into each wound.

The caravan hands’ bodies visibly caved in, shrinking before the naked eye like sacks suddenly emptied of grain, or pickled greens wrung dry until nothing remained but limp husk.

There might have been a phantom city layered over the ruins, but in truth, this was still barren wilderness, meaning that there was only sparse brush, thin grass, and nowhere to hide. The moment He Lingchuan saw them committing murder, they saw him too.

Two kills or four, either way, it made two pairs. They did not even need to exchange a word. With blood-smeared weapons in hand, they charged him.

He Lingchuan flicked his wrist and fired a sleeve arrow at the man on the right, then slammed himself toward the left attacker.

The other man came in ferociously, certain that He Lingchuan had delivered himself right to the chopping block. His blade was already sweeping down toward He Lingchuan’s head when He Lingchuan reached to his waist and drew Fleeting Life.

The strike had been primed and waiting. Moonlight flashed along the blade for less than half a heartbeat, and then it was back in its scabbard.

A single metallic clang rang out.

The attacker, along with his blade, had been cut cleanly in two.

By now, He Lingchuan was beginning to grasp how to nurture and accumulate saber momentum, what was known as quick-draw style. When a treasured saber had been stored in its scabbard for a long time, the instant it met open air, the burst of saber qi was at its most ruthless. If you could ride that moment properly, it decided the fight at once.

The Wave-Cleaving style had techniques built around exactly this. The strike He Lingchuan had just used was called “Startling Swan Slash[1].” Before the Han River campaign, he simply had not killed enough to truly understand it.

On the battlefield, the only way to survive was to master a blade that could change with time and terrain, adapting to the moment.

On the other side, Fushan Yue slowly pulled his twin water piercers free from a man’s throat.

He had taken advantage of an opening. The Chiyan man had turned his head to dodge He Lingchuan’s sleeve arrow and Fushan Yue had surged in and sealed his throat with a single thrust.

Wounded fighters had wounded fighter tricks.

When Fushan Yue looked over at He Lingchuan’s side, his teeth bared slightly. The unlucky man who had been cut down had clearly been reinforced by origin energy, and yet he still had not lasted even a single exchange.

That meant the gap in strength was simply too large.

Fushan Yue wiped the blood from his blades on the corpses, then hooked the tip of one piercer into the gash on a dead caravan hand and flicked out two red beads.

Those two beads were the true culprits; they were what had drained the men dry.

“These are blood beads. They’re used to collect a victim’s blood-and-flesh essence.” Fushan Yue said with a short, ugly chuckle. “So that’s how.”

“How what?” He Lingchuan crouched down and rummaged through the two Chiyan men, taking anything worth taking.

They looked like the sort who loved showing off and posturing, but they were broke enough to be pathetic. Between them, they did not even have a hundred taels’ worth of cash and valuables.

Ugh, poor while alive, paupers even in death.

Fushan Yue watched He Lingchuan’s ferocious looting and instantly knew this was no respectable man.

“They’re probably collecting living people’s blood-and-flesh essence to keep Fushan Ji alive. They’re buying him time, delaying his death.” His smile turned downright malicious. “But if that’s the plan, two bodies won’t cut it. Your whole caravan’s been pegged as a flock of meat sheep.”

He Lingchuan did not know that to these ba, “meat sheep” was slang for “edible living humans.” He only shook his head. “You’re underestimating a deific technique. The essence of a dozen or even a few dozen people can’t possibly be enough to stop Fushan Ji’s wounds from worsening.”

Otherwise, Wen Daolun, Zhong Shengguang, and even the Red General would not have been so helpless.

When Wen Xing was stabbed, he had not even lasted six hours.

Fushan Yue shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got some other secret art or technique?”

The world was vast; nothing was impossible. If there were deific techniques, then there had to be ways to counter deific techniques too.

Either way, the Stone Gate Merchant Caravan was in real danger now. In Tongluo County, the Chiyan people had been constrained. But out here, in a ruined ghost city in the wilderness, what would stop them?

He Lingchuan pulled a whistle from the dead caravan hand.

This was for alarms. Once it was blown, everyone would rush back to Second Boss Shi at top speed.

But before he could raise it to his lips, Fushan Yue waved sharply. “Don’t blow it. If you do, Second Boss Shi and Peach will die on the spot!”

Second Boss Shi and the little cursed child were still back at the abandoned armory ruins that were right across from Uncle Da.

Uncle Da still felt everything was under its paw. It might not have acted yet, but the moment an alarm sounded, it could explode into violence without hesitation.

When you capture bandits, you go for their king. If Second Boss Shi went down, the entire caravan would collapse into chaos.

He Lingchuan agreed. He tucked the whistle away and hurried back.

They had only run twenty-odd paces when He Lingchuan abruptly said, “Careful, Uncle Da is coming this way.”

Fushan Yue’s heart clenched.

He had been burned by He Lingchuan’s long-range scouting more than once. He knew He Lingchuan did not give warnings without reason, so he said, “Slow down.”

Then Fushan Yue rolled sideways, cleanly moving right behind a tree as thick as a large bowl.

In any other place, it would have been called a sapling. In this valley, it counted as tall, but its shadow was thin and narrow, so it was hardly enough to conceal anyone.

And yet with that single roll, Fushan Yue vanished into the shadows.

He Lingchuan stared twice.

He’s not behind the tree. He’s not on the ground, either. Is it some kind of concealment technique?

If He Lingchuan had not known better and just passed by, he probably would not have noticed a thing.

And really, if Fushan Yue did not have a few life-saving escape techniques, how could he have kept slipping through Uncle Da’s and the Chiyan men’s brutal pursuit?

He Lingchuan evened out his breathing and loosened his muscles. Staying tensed up might give him away to an enemy preparing an ambush.

But the next moment, he saw a tiger’s silhouette appear straight ahead.

Uncle Da had arrived.

It was running flat-out toward him, all four legs extended, not even bothering to hide the approach.

“...”

Seriously? Not even going to pretend at an ambush?

He Lingchuan was momentarily speechless.

But the land here was wide and bare, the moonlight absurdly bright, leaving living things with nowhere to hide. Maybe Uncle Da did not want to waste the effort.

A distance of about a hundred meters was nothing to it. In the time it took to lift its legs twice, He Lingchuan was already hit with a wall of wind.

It seemed that the saying was true that wind follows the tiger.

The tiger’s body even dragged an afterimage through the air. Compared to it, the pair of tiger monsters He Lingchuan had met on Three-Heart Plain were not even worthy of being its stepping-stones.

All this time in the ruins, He Lingchuan had not stood up once. He had lounged in a seated posture, lazier than everyone else. Yet Uncle Da’s instinct had still locked onto him as the most dangerous human in the caravan, and it had come personally to kill him.

So in Uncle Da’s eyes, the proverbial king of the bandits did not refer to Second Boss Shi but He Lingchuan.

Is this taking the enemy seriously on the strategic level, while still despising them tactically?

He Lingchuan did not even know what to say.

Uncle Da, however, had no interest in conversation. On its final stride, it sprang and came down on him with a single claw.

A low growl rolled out at the same time.

A tiger’s roar was naturally terrifying. Once most tigers cultivated monster bodies, they strengthened that talent further, and Uncle Da was no exception. That low roar swept forward in a fan-shaped wave. Dry grass, loose soil, and grit on the ground burst up and scattered. The shockwave struck directly at a prey’s head, heart, and lungs, making the chest constrict, triggering dizziness, ringing ears, stiffening limbs, weakness, and stabbing pain in the heart.

Against ordinary prey, it could be lethal, enough to rupture blood vessels and snap nerves.

On the way here, it had already killed one person without using its claws at all. The victim had simply dropped, seven orifices bleeding, slain by the roar alone.

Anyone who had never heard a true tiger roar had no idea what it was like, terror that crawled out of the soul itself, making the world shake.

But He Lingchuan had expected it. Over the past few years, he had killed plenty of tigers, leopards, and lions, and they all loved to roar before attacking. So before Uncle Da even opened its throat, He Lingchuan thrust the Soul-Stealing Shield forward and entered the Stubborn as Stone state.

This divine technique was originally meant for stealth. It sealed every acupoint, cut off breath, and presence entirely.

In other words, once He Lingchuan entered that state, he was no different from a chunk of stubborn rock. No matter how fierce the tiger’s roar was, it could not reach his ears, shake his lungs, or rattle his brain.

And whatever physical force the soundwave produced was blocked by the shield.

He had once observed Elder Liang of the Cloud-Piercing Pavilion and grown curious about the Sealed-Mouth Art. He had even asked about it in Panlong City, and the answer he had received was that the first one or two soundwaves after long “brewing” were the strongest, with the rest weakening quickly.

This tiger’s roar likely followed the same principle.

Uncle Da’s first roar failed, and it went straight to its claws, slamming a paw toward He Lingchuan’s temple.

A normal tiger’s swipe might carry the force of roughly a ton. Uncle Da tripled that, carrying enough force to turn a human head into a smashed melon. Its paw was also armed with five curved, steel-like claws, each longer than five centimeters. These were meant not just to slice flesh and strip bone, but to open bellies as well.

He Lingchuan raised the shield to meet it. After just two blocks, his arms were already trembling. It was even harder than holding back Meng Shan, and he felt a jolt of alarm at just how monstrous this tiger monster’s strength was.

Uncle Da hammered at him left and right, unleashing more than a dozen strikes, each one crashing into the shield with a piercing, scraping shriek.

He Lingchuan was driven back step by step. Even reared upright, the tiger’s hind legs provided terrifying forward drive.

The attacks came so fast that an ordinary martial artist would not even be able to track them. If He Lingchuan missed even one block, Uncle Da could pin him in an instant and tear open his throat.

Of course, Fleeting Life was not idle. However, Uncle Da’s sense for danger was too sharp. It refused to hard-clash with the divine blade.

It was easy to describe, but fighting it head-on felt like standing before a storm tide. The tiger’s assault was continuous, relentless, seemingly without end. Whether in presence or sheer tempo, He Lingchuan could not seize the advantage.

This thing’s vicious to the extreme. No wonder it managed to beat Fushan Yue half to death.

Then Uncle Da grew impatient. It curled its claws, trying to hook the shield aside.

This shield was the second form of the Soul-Stealing Mirror, and it had the ability to reflect ten percent of the physical damage dealt to it. Uncle Da had already slammed into it over and over, meaning it had taken over a dozen rebounds. The accumulation stung even through thick hide and tough flesh.

It was like it had been putting everything into the fight only to keep slapping itself in the face.

Why is killing one man this much trouble?

But right then, Fleeting Life tilted at an angle, and the moonlight reflected off the blade grew twice as bright, condensing into a single concentrated beam that flashed straight into the tiger’s eyes.

That light was blinding, and Uncle Da instinctively jerked its head away.

And that beam of light, like a razor-thin spear, shot onward and struck the phantom battlements of Qianxing City.

At this point in the illusion, the King of Yuān was at the end of his road. The guards around him were falling one by one, while the enemies swarming onto the walls only grew more numerous.

Looking up and down, all he saw were foes. The blood of his own soldiers had already been spilled dry.

The last defender on the battlements was torn down by a jackal monster, blood spraying nearly a meter high, like the final rest note at the end of a long, hopeless struggle.

The King of Yuān let out a deep sigh, raised his sword to take his own life, and then Fleeting Life’s reflected saber light fell across his face.

The brilliance made him pause. He even seemed to startle before he turned his head and looked directly toward He Lingchuan’s position!

1. The original term here is 惊鸿斩. I translated it very literally, mostly because the name is kind of funny in English. Anyway, the 惊鸿 part typically refers to a fleeting glimpse of beauty, hence it being the name for this fleeting slash or cut. ☜