Chapter Eighty-Nine: The Brute

Of the sixteen celestial glows that emerged into the world, nine smashed through Mount Li and vanished without a trace. Before long, four more shot off in all directions, leaving only one gray radiance, one red radiance, and one white radiance darting wildly about the South Pole Cliff. Now and then, uncanny sights arose out of nowhere: a phoenix cry ringing through the heavens, golden lotuses welling up from the earth, mournful winds howling into being. Brilliant colors flashed in profusion, dazzling and strange beyond measure.

Zhou Qian glanced at his master. Zhou Xun had already cornered the gray radiance, his Severing Evil Sword slashing and chopping through it from every angle, the thing humming incessantly under the assault. Judging by how casually he handled it, he was clearly quite confident.

Zhou Qian gritted his teeth and struggled upright. In front of his master, he could not possibly look too useless, or he would lose face badly. He studied the remaining two lights carefully and discovered they were somewhat different.

The red radiance was comparatively heavy, over three zhang in length, and seemed to have wings and tail feathers. Fire flickered into existence in the void around it from time to time, the flames a golden yellow, carrying considerable menace.

The white radiance, by contrast, became a thick streak flashing and lashing in all directions, without any apparent pattern. Yet it was incredibly swift, and from time to time it split into three or four white streaks that shot off separately. Only after quite a while did the phantoms finally fade.

One could not have both the fish and the bear's paw. Zhou Qian was not a greedy man, and he had seen many a case where one ended up with neither. Having made up his mind, he would take only one treasure, and that one from within the red radiance.

He sprang forward and gave chase. The red light was rather slow; after pursuing it for a few hundred zhang, he caught up to it. Even so, the distance between man and treasure remained seven or eight zhang. Zhou Qian could not fly on a sword, nor could he match his master's uncanny footwork. Fortunately, he still had a final move: the Evil-Slaying Sword Finger.

With a sweep of both hands, the four black marks on his thumbs and forefingers vanished into thin air. In their place, four black threads extended and contracted unpredictably, sending out evil qi in all directions. In a flash, they locked onto the red light from above, below, left, right, and all around. Then he twisted his fingers, and a wave of black and red qi rolled outward. Brightness suddenly flooded the dim void, and the red light instantly dimmed, as if it had been wounded.

But then a sharp phoenix cry rose up. The red light contracted, and a creature of flame materialized out of nowhere: rooster head, swallow chin, serpent neck, tortoise back, fish tail, brilliantly multicolored, over six feet tall. It was a phoenix bird.

Its cry was like flute and reed pipe, beautiful and clear to the ear, yet its fierceness spread like wildfire and rushed straight at Zhou Qian.

Zhou Qian was startled. This magic treasure was awfully intelligent. But wasn't it a bit too intelligent? As the flames behind it seared him until sweat poured down his back and he became a miserable sight, he silently cursed it in his heart.

He hurriedly unleashed two more Evil-Slaying Sword Fingers. Truly one of the divine arts within the Mysterious Yin Sword Art, their power was astonishing. They battered the treasure until its flames scattered and its qi began to dissipate. The treasure itself seemed to realize how formidable its opponent was and turned to flee. Zhou Qian quickly drove the Flame Pearl, and fire was born from the sword—countless blazing sword-flowers engulfed the object.

Using fire to control fire: the Flame Pearl was an innate fire seed, while the phoenix fire was merely the bird's own nature manifesting through the treasure. Thus it had fallen short from the outset. After seventy-six consecutive sword strikes, the phoenix bird was beaten apart. A flash of red light from the Flame Pearl flared, and the blaze was absorbed into it. With no one controlling it and some of its fire essence depleted, the treasure fell straight down, where Zhou Qian caught it with his left hand. Looking closely, he found it was a jade hairpin, smooth and translucent, with a tiny phoenix head at the tip.

Zhou Qian twisted his mouth. Though magic treasures were good things, this was plainly meant for a girl. What was he supposed to do with it? It was also rather odd as a collectible item for someone who lived in the immortal world.

Better give it to Sister Zhao. After all, it was an immortal treasure; even the name carried a certain grandeur. His second brother had once said that girls liked this sort of thing.

Coming back to his senses, he saw that Zhou Xun had already subdued the black light. He quickly asked, "Master, what good treasure did you get?"

Zhou Xun casually tossed the object over and said, "Keep it and play with it yourself."

Zhou Qian clicked his tongue in wonder and hurriedly caught it. After examining it, he found it was a small serrated sword, the body black like a wolf's head, with dark radiance faintly coursing along the blade. Its appearance was anything but ordinary.

"A flying sword!" Zhou Qian was delighted. Sword immortal, sword immortal—without a flying sword, how could one be called a sword immortal? What one wanted was precisely that imposing might of taking an enemy's head from a thousand miles away.

He was just about to speak when he saw Zhou Xun frown deeply and stare at the black cliff wall. Zhou Qian froze, then quickly turned to look as well.

Countless bizarre characters appeared on the sheer cliff, looking like beasts, like birds, like ancient and lesser seal script. They drifted and shifted without pattern, constantly taking on new forms. After only a short while, Zhou Qian felt dizzy, nauseated, and on the verge of vomiting, and had no choice but to turn away.

He glanced at Zhou Xun from the corner of his eye and saw that his master was still fixed on the cliff. After a long while, when the writing vanished, Zhou Xun sighed and said, "So this is the Chapter of Void-Gobbling Ghosts? What a disappointment. It isn't the foundational method after all."

"The foundational method?" Zhou Qian asked in confusion.

"The method by which one cultivates into the Dao. It's a completely different matter from the Mysterious Yin Sword Art you obtained," Zhou Xun explained.

Zhou Qian seemed to understand. It was rather like the difference between training methods and fighting methods in martial arts: two sides of the same hand.

"How much did you remember?" Zhou Xun asked.

"Only a small portion," Zhou Qian replied after thinking for a moment.

The two of them compared notes, but astonishingly not a single character matched between them. They stared at each other in surprise. Could it be that everyone saw different content in the Chapter of Void-Gobbling Ghosts?

After a long silence, Zhou Xun sighed and said, "The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. Let's get out of here first."

At that moment, the ground suddenly shook violently. Huge rocks crashed down as the fissure in the cliff wall widened and split apart, the impact loud enough to shatter one's ears.

The two of them were shocked at once. The passage lay along a precipice; if it collapsed and caved in, would they not be trapped and buried alive here?

"Move!" Zhou Xun roared, and the two of them ran back at full speed.

By some stroke of chance, after the South Pole Cliff split open, Zhou Qian glanced back and faintly saw a hexagonal black tablet suspended within the chasm. He suddenly remembered the words of the Longevity Immortal and cried out, "The Profound Yin Seal Tablet!"

"Master! I have to go back for a moment!"

"Go back and look for death?"

"I promised Old Ginseng. A man of the martial world keeps his word, and it won't take long." Zhou Qian's gaze was resolute.

"Then we go together!"

Zhou Xun did not hesitate in the slightest.

Zhou Qian opened his mouth, but by then Zhou Xun had already run far ahead, and he hurried after him.

Suddenly, several stone spikes as thick as a man's thigh shot up from underground, all aimed at Zhou Xun. Zhou Xun frowned, lifted his right hand to block them, black sinews bulging as the stone spikes failed to break through. Even so, they forced him to retreat repeatedly while sword light danced around him.

Whether by coincidence or by design, the mountain cliff to the left suddenly slid down in a torrent of rock and mud, obscuring the sky and earth, perfectly blocking the way between the two men and forming a huge barrier stretching east to west.

A voice called out, "Brother Zhou, are you satisfied with the gift I, Lu, have given you?"

It was Lu Cunwen, lying in ambush here. Clearly this had been planned long ago.

Zhou Xun said each word with killing intent bared, "Lu Cunwen, are you truly looking to die?"

Lu Cunwen's battered figure remained dozens of zhang away from Zhou Xun as he sneered, "Naturally I cannot beat you, and I am also afraid of being slain by you. But time waits for no one. Which matters more now—killing me, or saving your disciple?"

The rocks continued to tumble. Zhou Xun frowned. "Do you take my disciple for your useless son? He can't even handle this little situation?"

"Oh? Yet through my divine sense I can sense a monster of deep cultivation on the other side has been released. I am no match for it, but I wonder how long your disciple can hold on?"

"An evil spirit!" Zhou Xun's expression changed as he cried out.

"With your temperament back then, you feared nothing and had no attachments. But now, do you kill me, or save your disciple?" Lu Cunwen said with full confidence. He was indeed no match for Zhou Xun, but schemes and tricks were another matter entirely. If Zhou Xun came after him, he would flee, and the disciple would die. If Zhou Xun went to save his disciple, even better—he still had a second move, and then master and disciple would both perish together.

Unexpectedly, Zhou Xun suddenly calmed down and said flatly, "After I dueled with you ten years ago, I was quite pleased in my heart. With your talent and disposition, you should have reached the True-Core Pill stage within a year or two. By then, victory or defeat would be hard to say. After all, your saber technique back then was quite formidable. I never expected you to force your way into cultivation after forming a false core. Did you think you had the bones for it? In the end, you've made yourself neither fish nor fowl."

Lu Cunwen laughed coldly. "When one road is a dead end, one naturally has to take a detour, or try another road. The same goes for martial techniques—there are the illusory and the real, two paths..."

"Just timid cowardice!" Zhou Xun laughed freely. "And you dare speak to me of martial arts? When this path reaches its end, it is nothing but a wall. Whether you smash through or roll back, you choose the latter, and you still have the nerve to argue?"

"The martial path is a dead end. However many words you have, that is all it is! What can you do about it?" Lu Cunwen said coldly.

"Whether it is a dead end, how could one know without risking one's life and smashing one's head bloody against it?" Zhou Xun said.

"Besides, whether practicing the sword or cultivating the Dao, I have always preferred to take the straight path rather than seek the crooked one!"

"My temperament has not changed in the past, and it will not change in the future. My disciple, I will save. And you, I will kill!"

"Within ten moves, victory and defeat will be decided! Killing you will be as easy as slaughtering a chicken—"

Before the words had even faded, Zhou Xun vanished without a trace. His speed had already exceeded what the naked eye could follow. The air boomed with sonic bursts. Lu Cunwen's expression changed drastically; with a sweep of his hand, fierce winds rose, and he hurriedly borrowed the force of the gale to retreat.

Zhou Xun's right arm swelled thick as a pillar, his palm broad as a fan. The Cloud-Hand Technique transformed palm into claw, six energies converged, and the one hundred and twelve acupoints of his arm, both regular and extraordinary, opened and closed in swelling pulses. Great sinews crackled continuously, and with a sudden tug, it was as if dozens of firework shells had exploded at once.

"Come back here!"

Though they were nearly ten zhang apart, an overwhelming force dragged Lu Cunwen backward and slammed him to the ground. Zhou Xun had actually executed his technique through the air, and a thick white aura slowly dispersed in the void.

Before Lu Cunwen could even hit the ground, he formed hand seals repeatedly. Walls of earth surged up from both sides to shield his body, but a sword ray, dragonlike and serpent-like, struck once, and more than a dozen thick walls were blasted into flying dust, raining down like mud.

Lu Cunwen was horrified beyond measure. This was not something an ordinary person could accomplish at all. The gap was far too great.

But his will was firm. Black mist喷ed from his mouth and enveloped the upper air. From his robe, he drew a short blade and fought with his life on the line.

He still had the courage he had in those years, and he could still use the saber-drawing art from back then. Only—

A streak of sword light drove straight through his chest, while his blade had not even been pulled from his robe.

"When did you become unable to use saber techniques?" Zhou Xun frowned.

"You can't get through! You'll die!" Lu Cunwen coughed blood, eyes wide.

"Who knows?" Zhou Xun suddenly smiled, his expression carrying an ineffable charm.

"I'll wait for you in the underworld..."

The sword light flashed, and a head rose into the sky.

"Wait for me? Even in the underworld, you would still meet the same end!"