Unsheathed

A wry smile appeared on Wang Qi’s face as he replied, “That certainly sounds like a perfectly reasonable explanation, and perhaps it would be enough to fool Liu Zhen, but there’s no way our mountain master would believe it.

“Just do as I say and make sure you don’t reveal your true demonic form. All you have to do is force Chen Ping’an into displaying the slightest sign of weakness, and I’ll make sure that he doesn’t leave this place alive!”

“Alright, I hope you can do as you say and kill Chen Ping’an in one fell swoop, rather than just talk big with no followup,” the brawny man scoffed

He then burst into laughter as he jibed, “What am I saying? I almost forgot that all you scholars do is talk. In fact, all of you are unmatched when it comes to your ability to talk and preach.”

Wang Qi paid no heed to the brawny man’s jibes.

The brawny man stepped forward, and with each step that he took, the mountain summit would tremble violently. He didn’t care at all whether Chen Ping’an would notice the commotion that he was causing, and in the blink of an eye, he had already thrown himself off the cliff on the mountain summit before crashing down onto the ground with a resounding thump.

Meanwhile, Wang Qi heaved a faint sigh with a concerned look on his face.

Even the mightiest of trees was destined to fall someday, and the Golden Core that he had painstakingly cultivated was beginning to dim.

He possessed a vast wealth of knowledge that he was still yet to share with the world, so how could he die at a time like this? In particular, Golden Core Tier cultivators were far more sensitive to their lifespans than mortals who had no idea when their day of reckoning would come.

It was extremely grueling to have to count down the days to one’s death, and it was too much for Wang Qi to bear.

Chen Ping’an wasn’t deaf, so he naturally didn’t overlooke the commotion that the brawny man caused while jumping down from the mountain.

With his branch in his left hand, he patted his Sword Nurturing Gourd with his right hand, and First and Fifteenth flew out from within, vanishing out of sight.

He then reached into his sleeve with his right hand to pull out a golden talisman, the Treasure Pagoda Demon-Suppressing Talisman that Zhong Kui had inscribed for him.

A piece of talisman paper of this caliber was something so precious that Burial River Goddess had only received a single piece from the Great Quan Empire when Green Roving Residence was first established. Among the three pieces of golden talisman paper given to Chen Ping’an by Zhang San, this was the one with the dragon claw seal script.

Chen Ping’an didn’t know who was coming, but fate worked in very coincidental ways at times, and it couldn’t have been more fitting that a Demon-Suppressing Talisman that had been inscribed in Green Roving Residence was being used on a water demon that had been terrorizing Burial River for many years.

As for First and Fifteenth, Chen Ping’an was keeping them on standby to ward off any potential attacks from Wang Qi.

Meanwhile, Wang Qi was still standing on the other mountain summit with a forlorn expression.

He was hoping that after successfully killing Chen Ping’an here and obtaining the immortal mantra that he desired, he would no longer have to involve himself with these worldly affairs. He would be able to focus wholeheartedly on his cultivation, and he could make amends for what he had done once he became a deputy mountain master of Great Subduing Academy.

————

There was a young Daoist priest wearing a hibiscus hat. Instead of flying through the air, he was shrinking the land with each step that he took, and it didn’t take long before he crossed the border of the Great Quan Empire to arrive in the southern region of Northern Jin Nation. After that, he continued southward, then picked out a peaceful and secluded forest, where he stopped on a mountain summit before vanishing into thin air.

It was an entirely different world underground. There seemed to be a buried ancient path here, and the young Daoist priest walked for thousands of kilometers along the underground path. There were countless other paths branching off from this winding path, but the young Daoist priest was able to navigate his way through the labyrinth without any hesitation.

The young Daoist priest encountered many pieces of eerie or wondrous underground scenery along the way, but none were enough to make him stop even for a moment.

In the end, he arrived in front of an extremely dilapidated gate, above which was a lopsided plaque missing a decent chunk, and what remained of the plaque carried the words “Profane Departure Palace.”

As soon as he stepped inside, a burst of faint sword qi abruptly emerged before vanishing just as quickly.

The entire place was filled with ruins, and the young Daoist priest slowly walked along.

Flying Eagle Fortress, Green Roving Residence, Fox Town.

Aside from the inn that Jiu Niang was in, the other two places weren’t of much consequence. To put it more accurately, the Flying Eagle Fortress was once an extremely important place, but that was all in the past, and he didn’t want to think about it now.

During his journey through Parasol Leaf Continent, he had constantly been spreading certain seeds, but as for whether those seeds came into fruition, he didn’t actually care at all.

The keys to his plan on Parasol Leaf Continent were the two great demons in Planchette Writing Sect and on Peace and Tranquility Mountain.

However, he had discovered that there was a completely oblivious fellow who had trodden repeatedly on the Great Dao that he had passed through.

Perhaps once or twice could be attributed to coincidence, but this had happened on too many occasions to be ignored.

He had to be careful. Otherwise, if the soul of his true body back home was too severely taxed, he would be unable to wake up for several centuries. If that happened, then he would miss out on this opportunity, one that could hardly be seen in a hundred millennia.

Missing this opportunity would render him unable to secure those unimaginably delectable and fertile plots of land for his descendants, and that would be entirely unacceptable.

At the end of the path in this abandoned palace was a site similar to a Dragon Locking Platform from ancient times, and Bai Yuan was seated there with his legs crossed. His clothes were in tatters, and he was covered in blood.

An unconcealable aura of violence was surging out of his body, but whenever wisps of this aura attempted to drift their way out of the giant stone platform, they would immediately be struck and erased by arcs of white lightning that appeared out of nowhere.

Bai Yuan had fled all the way to this place, and there was no longer a sword on his back.

“Why have you come here to find me?” Bai Yuan asked. “Are you not afraid that both of us will die here?”

The young Daoist priest strode over to the edge of the Dragon Locking Platform, but refrained from stepping onto it, and he smiled as he said, “Rest assured, there’s an old geezer back home, and he told me long ago that you’re a man who’s blessed by fortune, and that you won’t die anytime soon.”

“What do you want?” Bai Yuan asked.

The sight of this young man was a very frustrating one for Bai Yuan.

All those years ago, the young man somehow completely altered his own appearance, posing as a young boy who suffered from amnesia, and he managed to catch the eye of a Golden Core Tier cultivator from Peace and Tranquility Mountain, who took him up the mountain.

From there, he was able to fool everyone and make his way into the ancestral hall, where he even received a precious jade tablet. Prior to Huang Ting, he was the one regarded as the most likely to reach the Unpolished Jade Tier, and there were incredibly high hopes resting on his shoulders.

The speed with which he broke through his Golden Core and Nascent Tier bottlenecks astounded even those in the ancestral hall of Peace and Tranquility Mountain, and they even went as far as to find a precious treasure for him to conceal his aura so that he didn’t draw the attention of Parasol Leaf Sect and Jade Tablet Sect.

After reaching the Nascent Tier at a young age, he dedicated himself wholeheartedly to subduing demons and eliminating fiends on his cultivation journey, earning himself an extremely stellar reputation in the process.

One day, he decided, for some reason, that the time was right.

He revealed his astonishing true identity to Bai Yuan in the well prison, and he instructed Bai Yuan to intentionally release a great demon on the bottom level of the well prison. A battle ensued between the two, and both combatants emerged in grievous condition.

At the time, the young man was an earth immortal not yet one hundred years of age, yet he ended up on the brink of death, and there was no way to recover his waning vitality. In fact, his condition was even worse than that of a thousand-year-old Nascent Tier earth immortal.

After that, the young earth immortal left Peace and Tranquility Mountain to travel the world in search of a cure for his own condition. It was during this journey that he encountered that Golden Core Tier cultivator from Planchette Writing Sect, and the latter summoned the avatar of an almighty ancient demon, paying the price of losing any chance of entering the cycle of reincarnation.

At the end of the battle, the young earth immortal met his demise, and not even a single shred of his body remained.

The jade tablet from the ancestral hall of Peace and Tranquility Mountain was gone, and the treasure used to conceal his aura was also destroyed.

The young Daoist priest sat down on the steps leading up to the stone platform, facing away from Bai Yuan as he smiled and said, “Zhong Kui and Huang Ting must die, particularly Zhong Kui.

“If he doesn’t die, he’ll surely go on to become a mountain master of a Confucian school, and that’ll be just the beginning of our concerns. In the wake of the battle, countless living beings will lose heir lives, and it will be the turn of ghosts and spirits to roam the earth.

“Back in our hometown, there just so happens to be an old geezer who can take advantage of that. If Zhong Kui is present during the battle, then we could lose as many as this number of you.”

He raised three fingers as he spoke, then continued in a grim voice, “And that’s at the very least.”

He then raised the two remaining fingers of his hand to present five fingers in total as he concluded, “It’s actually this number. I only showed three just now because I didn’t want to startle you.”

Bai Yuan was completely unconvinced.

Five Bai Yuans meant five twelfth-tier swordsmen. He had managed to kill Zhong Kui with just three strikes, so how could Zhong Kui possibly possess sufficient power to kill five of him?

The young Daoist priest gently patted his knees with his hands as he continued, “Even though you’re hiding like a rat now, at least you have something to look forward to. In contrast, that scoundrel from Planchette Writing Sect spoiled my plans, and he’s been pursued all the way out into the sea; deservedly so, might I add. He doesn’t possess as much fortune as you do, and even in the sea, he’s still not going to be able to escape death.

“Now, it’s just a matter of which of his two pursuers will be able to reap the spoils from his demise. Having said that, as a twelfth tier cultivator, a desperate final blow from him is nothing to be scoffed at, and perhaps he could even take down one of those two with him, so I won’t punish his descendants once I return home.”

Bai Yuan’s brows furrowed slightly as he asked, “Even I can’t find that Confucian sage presiding over Parasol Leaf Continent, so wouldn’t it be even more difficult to find you? Why are you in such a hurry to leave?”

The sage he was talking about was one of the seventy-two sages worshiped in Confucian temples. Even though his duty was to oversee the matters unfolding on Parasol Leaf Continent, all he saw was a couple of sparks here and there.

Even in the case of the battle on Peace and Tranquility Mountain, the sage in question only saw the emergence of two slightly larger sparks, and that prompted him to use his mystical powers to set his sights on Peace and Tranquility Mountain.

It was extremely difficult for immortals to preside over territories, particularly when those territories spanned over multiple nations and continents, all of which had invisible natural barriers between them.

The young Daoist priest clasped his hands behind his head, then lay back against the stairs as he continued, “In order to prevent Peace and Tranquility Mountain from searching for this ancestral hall hibiscus hat that I’m wearing, I had to intentionally ruin it.

“Originally, it would’ve been able to last fifty or sixty more years, but now that that Confucian sage has preemptively descended into the world, it’s hard to say how much longer I’ll be able to maintain the status quo. If he tries to find me, then he’ll definitely be able to do so. There’s definitely a higher power pulling the strings behind the scenes, instructing the three great demons of Parasol Leaf Continent.

“Before he finds me, I have to do some more things. Seeing as my plan has failed, at the very least, I have to leave behind something for them to remember me by. For example, I have to kill Chen Ping’an, or Huang Ting, or preferably both. There’s no hurry; we’ll see how it goes.”

Bai Yuan offered no response.

Hatching plots was not his forte.

The young Daoist priest smiled as he continued, “I’ll only be able to retain a chance at victory if I’m found. Of course, I can’t let them find me too easily. Otherwise, they’ll become suspicious of me. In order to avoid arousing suspicions, I have to make that Confucian sage go to great lengths to find me. I have to make them slowly track me down by using the deaths of Chen Ping’an and Huang Ting as leads.

“Otherwise, if I scurry back home with my tail tucked between my legs, then I’ll truly have completely and utterly lost. If that happens, I’ll be in for a very hard time. Perhaps I’ll be banished to that mountain range to fend for myself, then be forced to serve as a manual laborer for that blind man. Just the mere thought of that is getting me on edge.”

Bai Yuan was also a little spooked as the thought of that ancient legend from Savage World sprang into his mind.

“I must admit, I’m a little homesick,” the young Daoist priest mused. “There are too many rules and inhibitions here. Not only do I have to constantly be wary of the prowling Confucian sage, I also have to worry about the abbot of the Observing Dao Temple, it really is all quite a massive pain.

“If it weren’t for the abbot, my plans for Parasol Leaf Continent would be much easier to implement; there would be no need for me to constantly have to worry about attracting his attention. Huang Ting is a lucky girl. With my demise serving as a cautionary tale, she was thrown into the Daoist temple by that short-tempered grand elder of ours. If it’s possible, I really want to see that grumpy old fart…”

His voice abruptly cut off there… while in the rundown temple, Pei Qian suddenly clasped her hands over her eyes while rolling around in pain, and it seemed as if the light of the sun and the moon were spilling through the gaps between her fingers.

Moments later, a tall, elderly Daoist priest appeared near the underground Dragon Locking Platform with a cold sneer on his face.

————

Over in the sea to the west of Parasol Leaf Continent.

A great demon had revealed its gargantuan true form, and it was fleeing in a panic, raising enormous waves in the process.

It was being pursued by several figures, while a swordsman in a very foul mood was flying in from the opposite direction.

He didn’t want to serve as a Dao guardian for anyone, but deep down in his heart, he was also concerned that the messy state of Parasol Leaf Continent would bring harm to the young man upon whom Little Qi had placed all of his hopes.

He didn’t want to show himself in the world, so he was flying over the sea to take his mind off things.

His name was Zuo You, and even though the wounded great demon was making an effort to get out of his way even as it fled for its life, he was in such a foul mood that he slew it with a single slash of his sword anyway.