Chapter 92: We Won't Die

Qian Sifang and Huang Zonghan hastily retreated, and as they did, they whirled their longswords into a screen of white light.

The clanging never stopped, and the force of the blows left both of their arms numb.

Seizing the opening, Chu Tianfeng suddenly launched himself forward and raced toward the distant mountain.

He intended to use the same old trick again: lure the two of them into his wind-riding technique and bring them down.

It was a good plan. In fact, if he had not gone one step too far by killing the two disciples of the Qingcheng Sect and injuring Qian Sifang, the two of them might very well have fallen for it.

But now, even if Qian Sifang wanted to give chase, he was powerless to do so.

The reason was simple: the wound he had suffered was in his leg, his right leg.

Qian Sifang did not pursue him, and when Huang Zonghan saw that strange movement technique of Chu Tianfeng’s, he knew that even if he went after him alone, he would never catch up.

What was more, Chu Tianfeng’s hidden weapons were far too savage, and he feared that if he chased after him, he would only suffer for it.

So the two of them could only watch helplessly as Chu Tianfeng fled into the distance, neither daring to chase nor able to do anything else but stand there grinding their teeth and hurling curses at every woman in Chu Tianfeng’s family.

After running for a while and seeing that neither of them was following, Chu Tianfeng found it boring, so he came back again.

When Qian and Huang saw him approach, they shouted abuse, brandished their longswords, and charged once more.

But the moment Chu Tianfeng saw them coming, he turned and ran again.

Qian Sifang and Huang Zonghan did not know whether to laugh or cry. They simply could not catch him and had no way of dealing with him at all.

In the end, Qian Sifang had no choice but to grumble and bandage his wound, then begin digging a pit on the spot.

Chu Tianfeng, meanwhile, stayed not far from them, cleared a small space, and continued roasting his deer leg.

Qian Sifang tried several times to rush over and fight Chu Tianfeng to the death, but each time Huang Zonghan held him back.

Chu Tianfeng worked quickly. In barely ten minutes, the deer leg was done.

Qian Sifang and the others were still laboring away at the pit, all the while cursing Chu Tianfeng as they dug.

Chu Tianfeng was shameless to the extreme. He even took out a chair and sat down not far from the three of them, holding the deer leg in one hand and the monkey wine in the other, eating and drinking to his heart’s content.

Thus, a peculiar scene appeared in the valley.

Under the blood-red afterglow of the setting sun, a young man was devouring meat and drinking wine.

“Fine wine!” he exclaimed again and again.

“Wine your ass!” came a loud retort from an old man with half-white hair in a pit nearby.

The gray-white hair looked especially desolate and especially sorrowful in the evening light.

“Fine meat!” the young man said, shaking his head in praise.

“Meat your ancestors!” came the answer again from the same pit, from the same half-white-haired old man.

A breeze swept through, and the old man’s thin silver strands trembled faintly, as though voicing his indignation toward the young man.

Indeed, it was truly shameless. Truly despicable.

The old man was working himself half to death, while the young man not only refused to help, but sat there brazenly drinking wine and eating meat. Even the trees in the valley seemed to sigh at the decay of the age: the world was going downhill, and human hearts were no longer what they had been.

By the time darkness had fully fallen, Qian Sifang and the others had finally managed to bury the two disciples of the Qingcheng Sect.

Fearing a sneak attack under cover of night, Huang Zonghan discussed it with Qian Sifang and suggested that they return first to the Heartless Academy.

Qian Sifang was extremely unwilling, but he also understood that Huang Zonghan made sense. Once night fell, the other side’s godlike hidden weapons could well become a lethal threat to them.

So Qian Sifang cursed at Chu Tianfeng for a while longer before reluctantly following behind Huang Zonghan and the others on the road back to the Heartless Academy.

Chu Tianfeng, meanwhile, followed them like a lingering ghost, belching in contentment.

The night grew darker and darker, and the road became harder and harder to walk.

Roughly an hour later, the group reached a narrow path along a cliff.

The path was very tight, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. On one side rose a sheer stone wall; on the other yawned a cliff several hundred meters deep.

There was a wooden railing along one side of the path, but after years of neglect, much of it had long since broken away.

Afraid that Chu Tianfeng might launch a sudden attack from behind, Huang Zonghan arranged for Qian Sifang to move to the front, while the two force-transformation disciples stayed in the middle, and he himself took the rear.

However, after the formation was adjusted, Huang Zonghan suddenly realized that Chu Tianfeng, who had been following them all along, had vanished without a trace.

Puzzled, Huang Zonghan called out loudly to Qian Sifang, “Brother Qian, did you see that fellow?”

Qian Sifang swept his flashlight left and right and answered, “No. The brat probably got scared and ran off on his own.”

The words had barely left his mouth when a sharp rustling sound suddenly came from right in front of them.

Something was wrong. Qian Sifang’s face went pale with shock. He knew at once: the hidden weapons were coming again.

“Watch out for the hidden weapons!” he shouted, leaping high into the air.

But the two Mount Hua disciples behind him had been following too closely, and their cultivation was not high to begin with. They had only just jumped when the ice spikes flying toward them struck home.

Ahhh!

Two screams rang out.

After Qian Sifang leaped upward, he did not grab onto anything on the cliff wall. He merely tapped the wall with the tip of one foot, borrowed a bit of force, drew his longsword, and landed hard back on the path.

By then, the two Mount Hua disciples had already collapsed to the ground, crying out in pain.

“If you’ve got the guts, come out!” Huang Zonghan also drew his sword and held it before him.

But the only answer was the howl of mountain wind and the chirping of insects.

“I died such a miserable death!”

Suddenly, both of them heard the same cold, sinister female voice in their minds.

“Who’s there? Stop playing tricks! If you’ve got the guts, come out!” Qian Sifang cried, alarmed.

Then came a burst of laughter, light and silver-bright.

Next, a faint figure slowly appeared in midair.

The figure was naturally Xi Yazi. Since forming her foundation, she had gained a faint corporeal outline that ordinary people could also see.

“Are you human or a ghost?” Qian Sifang shone his flashlight on her.

“What do you think?” Xi Yazi still spoke by divine sense.

Floating there in midair was answer enough.

The two Mount Hua disciples on the ground were so frightened at the sight that they immediately fainted.

Qian Sifang’s hairs stood on end all over his body, and he looked in panic toward Huang Zonghan.

Huang Zonghan was slightly bolder. He forced himself to remain calm and said, “We do not know you. We have no grudge against you. Why are you looking for us?”

“Oh, someone just said there would be a death here, so I came to take a look,” Xi Yazi laughed sweetly. “Fresh souls. How could I miss them?”

“No, no, you’ve got it wrong. No one is going to die here. No one will die here,” Huang Zonghan hurriedly said at once.

Qian Sifang was already too terrified to speak coherently, and he hurriedly shook his head in agreement. “Yes, yes, we, we won’t die.”

The words had barely fallen when the rustling sound came again.

“Hahaha! Whether you live or die is not up to you,” Xi Yazi said. With that, she once again melted into the darkness and vanished without a trace.

This time, what came at them was not ice spikes, but fire arrows.

Qian Sifang and Huang Zonghan hastily whirled their longswords into layers of defense, trying to block them.

Thump! Thump!

The fire arrows struck the blades with heavy, muffled impacts.

The two men barely managed to stop them, but when the barrage ended, they discovered that the swords in their hands had become strangely light.

They looked down at the blades together.

Oh no!

Their longswords had almost become mere hilts, with only a short section still remaining in their hands.

Shocked, the two of them quickly flung away the broken swords.

The rustling sound started again.

“Damn it!” Qian Sifang roared in fury.

Huang Zonghan did not curse. All he felt was regret.

He knew he had provoked someone he should never have provoked.

The two of them leaped high at once to evade the incoming ice spikes.

Hidden in the dark, Chu Tianfeng had his divine sense locked firmly onto them. How could he possibly let them escape so easily?

The night itself was his stage. He could display his full talent to his heart’s content, while Qian and Huang only needed to cooperate.

Fight back? Ridiculous.

They could not even see him. Even if Qian Sifang and Huang Zonghan wanted to strike back, they had no target at which to strike.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Chu Tianfeng seemed to go mad, both hands constantly sweeping through the air, driving Qian and Huang about like marionettes as they kept leaping and dodging on the narrow path.

Huang Zonghan fared somewhat better. His cultivation was higher, and he stood farther back, so far fewer ice spikes were aimed at him. Thus, after several rounds of ice-spike storms, he remained completely unharmed.

Qian Sifang, however, was in a miserable state. He was already injured, and the wound in his right leg severely hampered his movements. On top of that, he was closer to Chu Tianfeng, so he received many more of the ice spikes.

He barely managed to avoid five rounds of the ice-spike rain, but in the sixth round his movements slowed just a little, and two spikes struck him at once.

The two Mount Hua disciples on the ground were even more miserable. The barrage had not originally been aimed at them, but because they were lying there, they were still hit from time to time.

In an almost entirely unconscious state, they were pierced full of holes by the ice spikes and died without even knowing how they had died.

After Qian Sifang was injured again, his movements became slower still.

In the seventh round of the ice-spike rain, he was hit by four spikes. The injury upon injury made things worse.

When the eighth round came, he could no longer even jump properly.

He could only clutch at his chest and cry out in despair, “109!”

Chu Tianfeng ignored him completely.

Sizzling sounds rang out one after another.

Qian Sifang staggered helplessly and slowly collapsed at the edge of the cliff.

Huang Zonghan no longer dared to hold out. He turned around and fled madly down the mountain.

Chu Tianfeng’s figure flashed at once as he launched into pursuit, while Xi Yazi pounced toward the three men who had fallen to the ground.

Huang Zonghan’s lightness skill was truly nothing to boast about. He had only run twenty-odd meters before Chu Tianfeng cut him off head-on.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

At that instant, Huang Zonghan felt as though ten thousand cursed beasts were floating through his mind.

But he did not have time to shout it out.

After several exchanges, he already understood Chu Tianfeng fairly well.

He knew the other man’s movement technique and hidden weapons were both vicious to the extreme. If he was not careful, he would leave his life here.

He leaped up at once, dodging upward.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Another hail of ice spikes.

Dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge!

Huang Zonghan cursed under his breath while dodging again and again.

After all, both men were still by the cliff edge. Chu Tianfeng’s attack angles were relatively limited, and most of his attacks came straight from the front.

Huang Zonghan, on the other hand, had it far worse. The path was extremely narrow, and with the darkness as well, evading the ice-spike rain was truly no easy matter.

Before long, when Huang Zonghan landed, he failed to keep his footing and staggered, nearly falling.

Chu Tianfeng had been waiting for exactly that moment. The ice-spike rain erupted at once, a frantic downpour that blotted out the sky.

A chill of despair filled Huang Zonghan’s heart. He knew he was finished too.

Sizzle!

Two ice spikes struck his left and right shoulders in quick succession.

Huang Zonghan gave a dull grunt and staggered backward repeatedly.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

Chu Tianfeng had become increasingly skilled at kicking a man while he was down, and he gave Huang Zonghan no chance to breathe.

Ahhh!

Huang Zonghan let out a furious roar and, using all the strength in his body, sprang violently upward into the air.

A burst of sizzling sounds followed in rapid succession.

Huang Zonghan succeeded in leaping into midair, but his body was struck by several ice spikes, and blood sprayed out in a torrent.

“Die for me—” Chu Tianfeng shouted, and another round of ice-spike rain shot forth.