Unsheathed

Even though the young boy in white was surrounded, he chose to advance instead of retreat. After throwing several punches, he had already rendered the burly man incapable of fighting back.

This planted a seed of unease and anxiety in the bandits' hearts.

If it weren't for the burly man's warning, the formation cultivator in the north might have been brutally killed in an instant.

At the time, the old man had been squatting on the ground and arranging a Mountain-Moving Formation for everyone. He had been planting several small earthen-yellow flags in the ground. Even though he hadn't detected any danger, he had still chosen to smack his own chest without any hesitation, shattering the hidden and extremely precious Substitute Talisman in his clothes and instantly switching positions with one of his young disciples.

In the blink of an eye, a flying sword seemingly tangible yet intangible had rushed down from the sky like a needle stabbing into water. Its speed was immense, and it had left the air rippling in its wake.

A baffled young boy had been brutally cleaved apart, splitting into two from his head to his waist. The two halves of his corpse had then crumpled to the ground, sending organs and intestines spilling everywhere. This was a harrowing and ghastly sight.

The flying sword that was much larger than the swords of ordinary sword cultivators had then disappeared into the ground in a flash. However, it didn't damage the ground at all.

It was undoubtedly the bonded flying sword of a sword cultivator.

In the next moment, the formation cultivator reached out again and smacked his chest, seemingly using another Substitution Talisman. He was planning to sacrifice his second direct disciple to guarantee his own safety.

This time, however, the demonic cultivator who had been caught by surprise just then was finally able to react. He didn't remain idle even though he was standing far away, and he retrieved a small and pitch-black clay pot that was covered in inscriptions of talismanic symbols. He silently recited some mantra and lightly swayed the clay pot back and forth several times.

A sinister column of black smoke soared into the sky, splitting into three separate streams as it left the clay pot. These streams of black smoke flew toward the formation cultivator, his young female disciple, and Lu Tai who was controlling his flying sword from a tall branch.

His flying sword materialized in the air again, once again slashing down at an enemy.

However, it didn't slash down at the formation cultivator who had shattered another talisman, and it instead slashed down at that young girl with a petrified expression.

The cloud of churning black smoke that was formed from countless yin entities and ghosts spread apart above the young girl's head, forming a defensive barrier to protect her.

However, the gigantic flying sword was far too powerful, and it easily sliced through the cloud of black smoke like a hot knife through butter. Just like before, it cleaved the young girl into two from head to waist.

The young girl who was only 13 or 14 years old was killed just like that, falling on her path to seeking the Great Dao.

After working so hard and enduring so many challenges to seek longevity, she was ultimately unable to even reach 20 years old.

There was a dark expression on Lu Tai's face as he leaned a hand on the tree trunk.

The demonic forces were truly always one step ahead.

To Lu Tai's surprise, the formation cultivator hadn't actually activated a Substitution Talisman. Smacking his chest had only been a ruse to get Lu Tai to target the young girl.

However, Lu Tai wasn't frustrated after losing this exchange. When it came to cultivating in the mountains, those who were stupid didn't even possess the right to enter the mountains. Moreover, no matter how moronic someone was, and even if they had lived like a dog for tens upon hundreds of years, they should still become a powerful dog spirit even if they were genuinely a dog.

In other words, no one was a pushover.

Even though Lu Tai's flying sword was colossal in size, the speed at which it traveled was simply unfathomable. Lu Tai remained standing in the same spot, allowing the stream of black smoke to furiously charge toward him. After his flying sword killed the young girl, it flew back in front of him in an instant, crushing the stream of black smoke that was filled with hatred, agonized wailing, and twisted faces.

The demonic cultivator continued to rock the small clay pot back and forth, chuckling in a sinister manner and saying, "You dare to damage my yin entities? Then let me see how much more spiritual energy you can afford to waste!"

Bursts of black smoke flew out from the small clay pot, and it was as if there were a large black flower blooming in the demonic cultivator's palm.

The formation cultivator was genuinely terrified that his enemy would unleash another sword strike at him. Left with no other option, he retrieved a large handful of snow-white beads and scattered them into the surroundings.

The dozens of beads hovered in midair around the formation cultivator, grouping together to form the Three Aspects, Four Divisions, Seven Stars, Eight Trigrams, and Nine Palaces.[1]

There was profound meaning behind the placement of these beads, and they formed numerous defensive formations that radiated with brilliance after they were successfully created. Under their illumination, the formation cultivator appeared boundlessly brilliant and imposing.

However, this also meant that the formation cultivator was putting aside the setup of the Mountain-Moving Formation. As a result, its completion would inevitably be delayed by a significant amount of time.

The demonic cultivator knew that a few words wouldn't be enough to persuade the old formation cultivator to abandon his defenses and work on the Mountain-Moving Formation. After all, this was an old formation cultivator who feared death and cherished life.

While controlling the streams of black smoke to attack Lu Tai, he said in warning, "Make haste and complete the formation. Otherwise, we would have wasted our time pursuing them for hundreds of kilometers. Moreover, these two people will definitely be boundless threats in the future if we fail to kill them today. Weigh up the consequences by yourself!"

There was a cloudy and shifting expression on the old formation cultivator's face. After a while, he reached a decision and resolutely removed half of the defensive formations, retrieving dozens of the beads. This allowed him to speed up the process of setting up the Mountain-Moving Formation.

In the battlefield to the south...

The burly man crashed to the ground and continued to vomit blood. It was as if he were about to vomit his heart and lungs out as well. The ground was dyed bright red, and he appeared as pitiful as could be.

He was a genuine fifth tier immortal, one who had gained his cultivation base and experience through month after month of hard work. He was an extremely difficult opponent.

However, the burly man hadn't come across any sagacious teacher or received any guidance during his martial arts journey, so his path forward had been extremely difficult and filled with obstacles. As a result, his foundation in the third tier of martial arts was full of gaps and shortcomings.

With this in mind, he had definitely pulled out all stops to advance from the fourth tier to the fifth tier. If nothing incredible happened, it would definitely be impossible for him to advance to the sixth tier.

However, someone like him naturally wouldn't allow his aspirations to be choked to death by a roadblock like this. Thus, the burly man had turned to heretical methods of cultivation. His deity-summoning technique had come from half a damaged scroll, one which he had naturally obtained from hunting prey in the wild.

Because of this, he only knew how to summon deities but not how to send them away. This was the principle captured by the saying, "Inviting a deity is easy, but farewelling a deity is hard."

The burly man had to pay a huge price each time he summoned a deity to possess his body. After fumbling around for almost 20 years and begging many people for help, also purchasing all kinds of immortal texts and secret scrolls related to this technique, the burly man had finally managed to control the side effects of this deity-summoning technique with much difficulty.

Today, however, the "deity" had shockingly been smashed back to its divine altar by the young boy's punch when the burly man had only been halfway through the deity-summoning technique. This was profoundly disrespectful to the practice of summoning deities, a practice that had many strict rules and requirements. Thus, the burly man was suffering a severe backlash, with wisps of his soul drifting out from his acupoints and rising into the air like smoke from three sticks of incense.

After the "three sticks of incense" were exhausted, there was still no sign of the backlash stopping as clouds and mist rose from the burly man's back. One had to realize that these wisps of cloud and mist were the manifestation of a fifth tier martial artist's Qi. They were the fundamental vital energy of a pure martial artist...

"Save me!" the burly man exclaimed in a hoarse and unclear voice.

The brows of the Qi refiner who was skilled in wood-element techniques knitted into a deep frown, and he had no option but to retract the technique that he was using against the young boy in white. He walked over to the burly man and squatted down, with his fingers forming seals and his face becoming bright red. As he completed more and more seals, specks of dark light rose from the ground and circled around his fingers. The Qi refiner then forcefully pushed these specks of dark light into the burly man's back.

The collapsed body of the burly man jolted, and a shade of healthy red immediately returned to his face. The crisp sound of cracking traveled over from all of his main joints, making him seem like a withered tree that was welcoming a new spring. The burly man raised his legs and performed a kip-up, jumping to his feet with his two iron whips in his hands. He was beaming and buoyant, and no longer seemed to be suffering from the debilitating side effects of the backlash.

"I'll add this to your debt," the Qi refiner who had saved him said in a solemn voice.

The burly man gritted his teeth in anger and glowered at the young boy in white who had attacked him with astonishing ferocity. He nodded and replied, "Everything can be negotiated once we slay these two fat sheep!"

That night in Planchette Writing Sect's Sky Calling Street, the young man who was even more beautiful than women had thrown money around in an extremely generous manner. In fact, even vagrant Golden Core Tier cultivators would have felt ashamed upon seeing him in action. This wasn't to say that vagrant Golden Core Tier cultivators couldn't produce so many lesser heat coins.

However, it was important to remember just what the handsome young man had spent money on. He had purchased a Mutton Fat Beast, Intimate Dream Spider, talisman paper humans, and other money-wasting items. Indeed, he hadn't purchased any powerful offensive immortal treasure, nor had he purchased any life-saving defensive treasure!

Moreover, regardless of whether one was an orthodox immortal from the mountains or an itinerant cultivator from the cultivation world, which cultivator in Parasol Leaf Continent would have such crappy mastery over the official dialect of the continent?

The young boy and the young man had clearly come from outside the continent. After leaving Planchette Writing Sect, they had also chosen to take mountain paths and walk through small towns. During their 500-kilometer trip to the north, they hadn't visited a single immortal force on the way, nor had any powerful cultivator actively come over to visit them. What did this signify?

This was a clear sign that Chen Ping'an and Lu Tai were inexperienced newcomers to the cultivation world. They hailed from wealthy clans, and they were also carrying huge amounts of wealth around with them. They had definitely been mollycoddled since a young age, leaving them oblivious to the depth and dangers of the cultivation world!

Could these bandits live up to their many years of difficult cultivation if they didn't capture these two naive cultivators who were dripping with wealth? Apart from searching for fated opportunities everywhere and coating their weapons in blood, they also had to bow their heads and act as lackeys for those esteemed immortals from the mountains.

They accepted money and helped those esteemed immortals complete dirty tasks that the latter found beneath them to personally attend to. After gaining a bad reputation, they would flee and start over again in some new place. This was a vicious cycle with no end in sight.

In fact, only a few seconds had elapsed from the moment the burly man was struck by five punches of the Deity Drumming Technique and left half-dead to the moment the Qi refiner used a secret technique to extract the fortune of the mountains and waters to heal him.

During these few seconds, Chen Ping'an was obstructed by the waves of sword qi unleashed by the middle-aged sword expert, rendering him unable to follow up and kill the whip-wielding burly man.

Using one's Qi to brandish swords was a very impressive immortal skill in the cultivation world.

There were many poems and stories in ill-informed regions that talked about using so-called flying swords to decapitate enemies from hundreds of kilometers away. In reality, these literary works weren't referring to sword cultivators, but instead sword experts who would often show themselves in front of ordinary people.

Compared to sword immortals from the mountains and sword practitioners from the cultivation world, mediocre sword experts were stuck in an awkward situation where they were too weak to become sword immortals but too haughty to regard themselves as sword practitioners. Regardless, sword experts were a group of people who liked to fish for fame.

When sword experts manipulated swords to attack enemies, they would often unleash both sword qi and physical swords. The former would be powerful due to the large amounts of sword qi that could be unleashed, while the latter would be powerful due to their impressive strength.

The bursts of sword qi were like light cavalry charging over to create an advantage, while the physical swords were like heavy cavalry thundering over to drive home the advantage and obtain ultimate victory. Both were critical to obtaining victory.

The middle-aged sword expert facing off against Chen Ping'an was clearly a skilled individual in his field. Waves of glowing azure light rippled across his swollen sleeves from which burst after burst of azure sword qi were shooting forth in a formidably intense manner.

Fortunately, the sword expert could only control two of the many bursts of sword qi at once.

As a result, Chen Ping'an was able to dodge the sword qi quite easily, and he was nowhere near threatened by these attacks. However, he was completely held up and unable to deal with the burly man.

Chen Ping'an didn't choose to risk severe injuries to kill his enemy. He had gravely wounded the burly man just then, yet he had failed to kill him because of the middle-aged sword expert holding him up. In the end, the Qi refiner skilled in wood-element techniques had saved the burly man. Even so, Chen Ping'an still pretended that he wanted to charge over.

This caused the sword expert to misjudge the situation and leave a wisp of sword qi lying in wait near the burly man. This was a wisp of sword qi that he could control. However, Chen Ping'an suddenly increased his speed and directly charged toward the sword expert, almost making it within three meters of him.

The sword expert was terrified, with cold sweat instantly drenching his body. He had no choice but to use his true trump card.

A small physical sword flew out not from the sword expert's sleeve, but silently from his hair instead. As it turned out, his jade hairpin was actually a mini scabbard used to conceal his small sword.

This was an extremely slender small sword with no hilt and in the shape of an emerald green willow leaf. It flew in circles around the sword expert, leaving a trail of tender green light in its wake.

"My two Dry Well Talismans can only last another 20 seconds at most!" the Daoist priest from the talismanic branch warned the other bandits in a stern voice. "Make haste and wrap up the battle as quickly as possible! Hurry up and kill those two little bastards! Once his flying swords break free from my restrictions, we may as well line up and wait for him to behead us one by one!"

The old Daoist priest looked haggard, and his dry and bony fingers continued to move slowly as he spoke. He was most likely controlling the two talismans that were trapping First and Fifteenth. His voice quivered as he continued, "Wasn't this little brat described as a martial artist sword practitioner in the secret report that you people provided me? But what about now? Not only is he a sword cultivator, but he even possesses two flying swords! Two!

"If it weren't for me having some treasures and owning these two precious talismans that I had initially wanted to pass down as family heirlooms, all of us would have been screwed this time! We agreed on how to share the spoils before, but that doesn't count anymore!"

There was a dark expression on the burly man's face as he strode toward Chen Ping'an. He didn't spare the old Daoist priest so much as a single glance as he replied in a gloomy voice, "I'm happy to discuss your share of the spoils later. I definitely won't leave you short-changed."

The old Daoist priest humphed coldly in reply.

1. The Three Aspects (三才) is a philosophical concept from the Classic of Changes (易经) and refers to heaven, earth, and humans. The Four Divisions (四象) refers to four of seven regions of stars in the sky, separated into north, south, east, and west. Each region is represented by a mythical beast, the Azure Dragon of the East, the Vermilion Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Tortoise of the North. The Seven Stars (七星) refers to the Big Dipper. The Eight Trigrams (八卦) is a set of symbols intended to illustrate the nature of reality as being composed of mutually opposing forces reinforcing one another. The Nine Palaces (九宫) refers to the division of the sky into nine grids by ancient Chinese astronomers. It also refers to the division of the Eight Trigrams into nine regions according to the Luo Shu Square. ☜

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