Dragon Canon

Wei Yuan claimed he had come alone, but how could Xu Chunyuan possibly believe him? He quietly extended his perception, trying to pinpoint the locations of any assassins lying in wait nearby.

The garrison commander’s office was bustling with activity at the moment. Maidservants scurried back and forth, busy with their tasks, while the guards stood at attention, dutifully fulfilling their duties in their designated posts. The housekeeper, with his flame-tempered[1] eyes, was searching the entire house for specks of dust that were practically non-existent. The entire residence was a hive of activity, yet utterly silent.

No one dared to slack off, for no one could escape the perception of a high cultivator such as an Avatar. The first few who dared to slack off had been beaten to death and dragged away on the spot. Since then, those who remained had been working tirelessly and fearfully, as if treading a tightrope.

There was nothing out of the ordinary within the residence, and Xu Chunyuan’s perception detected no assassins no matter where it looked. Suddenly, he jolted—he had actually become distracted! A formidable enemy was sitting right beside him, and he had actually allowed himself to become distracted!

Xu Chunyuan leaped to his feet and fixed a deathly glare on Wei Yuan. However, the young man still made no move. He said calmly, “I have no need to ambush a mere mid-stage Avatar.”

“You are courting death, junior!” Xu Chunyuan could no longer contain himself. A gigantic two-tailed scorpion appeared above his head, and one of its tail hooks plunged straight toward Wei Yuan’s head!

The tail struck like lightning, but before it could reach its target, Xu Chunyuan suddenly saw a bright red immortal sword appear in Wei Yuan’s hand. He was currently running his fingers gently along the blade. The moment he laid eyes on the sword, he was instantly overcome by a sense of impending doom!

Xu Chunyuan let out a cry of alarm. Although the scorpion’s tail was less than a fraction of a second from striking Wei Yuan’s skull, he still withdrew his Avatar and turned to flee.

At this moment, Xu Chunyuan had not yet realized that everything around him had become granular. Everything, including himself, seemed to be composed of countless microscopic particles. In this bizarre world, he clearly felt as though he had been flying for a long time, yet his body still had not yet left the room.

Wei Yuan casually rose to his feet and strolled up to Xu Chunyuan. Then, he delivered a vicious punch to the old man’s abdomen!

The force of the punch was unimaginable. It was like a mountain had crashed into him. It shattered Xu Chunyuan’s mystic energy, dispersed the qi of his physical body, and shattered his spine.

Xu Chunyuan’s back suddenly exploded, sending countless fragments of flesh, gore, internal organs, and shattered bones spraying outward. An enormous gaping hole instantly appeared in his abdomen, with Wei Yuan’s fist looming right before it.

The force of a million jun was packed into this punch!

The eerie, granular world vanished, and the surroundings returned to normal.

Xu Chunyuan’s whole body trembled as Wei Yuan helped him sit back down at the table. Wei Yuan then sheathed the bright red immortal sword and said, “I don’t actually need the immortal sword to deal with you. I just wanted to show it to you, that’s all.”

Xu Chunyuan was overcome with a mix of shame and rage. Above his head, the two-tailed scorpion flickered in and out of view, struggling desperately. In truth, though his physical body was severely injured, he wasn’t entirely incapable of counterattacking. However, his wounds were currently filled with countless wisps of pale-red sword qi that were constantly slicing his mystic energy, nearly causing his Avatar to disintegrate on the spot.

There were distinctions in quality even among Dao energies. Logically speaking, the refined Dao energy of an Avatar should easily crush that of a Dao Foundation. However, Wei Yuan’s punch was first a burst of pure physical strength that pierced right through Xu Chunyuan’s mystic body, followed immediately by a burst of white-gold sword qi tinged with pale red. This sword qi was of such a high caliber that Xu Chunyuan’s mystic energy had crumbled the moment it came into contact with it!

The commotion at the garrison commander’s office had already alerted the surrounding area. Two colossal Avatars appeared on either side of the residence, advancing with overwhelming pressure.

The warm pavilion vanished without a sound, revealing Wei Yuan and Xu Chunyuan, who were still sitting side by side at the table. Wei Yuan looked up at the two Xu Clan elders who had rushed over. They immediately gasped and exclaimed, “Wei Yuan!”

Wei Yuan said, “I have come alone tonight to test the abilities of you elders and, while I’m at it, settle a few scores.”

The two elders exchanged glances, then looked at the two mysterious cultivators—one scholarly, another martial—who had silently appeared behind them. Although they did not know their identities, they were undeniably genuine Avatars.

At the same time, a snake slithered out of somewhere and quietly coiled itself around Xu Chunyuan’s body. A few Dao Foundation stage cultivators had appeared in the air and took aim at the two elders wielding strange weapons as well.

Wei Yuan smiled faintly and said, “The Xu Clan’s Avatars are—”

Before he could finish his sentence, the elder whose Avatar was a six-clawed white tiger suddenly turned and fled! Caught by surprise, the scholarly Avatar’s rotary flying-sword cannon was just beginning to spin when the elder was already 100 zhang away!

This sudden turn of events took Wei Yuan by surprise as well, but he had no choice but to finish his sentence, “—all garbage.”

By the time he had finished speaking, the Xu Clan elder had already fled far away and were impossible to pursue. Having lost his target, the scholar immediately rejoined the towering warrior to surround the remaining Xu Clan elder.

The Xu Clan elder was a split second too slow to react. Only now did he realize that the snake was an Avatar-stage spirit beast! Counting Wei Yuan himself, that made four Avatars standing in this residence right now!

The elder was overcome with shock and rage. While fending off the scholar and the warrior’s attacks, he yelled, “And you claim you have come alone? You’re truly shameless!”

Wei Yuan pointed at the snake and said calmly, “This one isn’t human.”

He then pointed a finger upward and continued, “And those two are my puppet guards. Therefore, I wasn’t lying when I said I had come alone. Right now, you and I are fighting a fair one-on-one combat. Speaking of which, watch out—I’m about to strike.”

Wei Yuan pointed toward the sky. The dark clouds suddenly brightened slightly as several rays of sunlight pierced through the clouds and fell. They merged with Wei Yuan’s Dao energy in midair, transforming into a blazing stream of fire and striking the elder head-on.

The Dao spell was called the Skyfire Spell. When cast by an ordinary Avatar, it created a stream of fire that was 10 zhang wide. But when cast by Wei Yuan, it was at least 50 zhang wide!

The Xu Clan elder was terrified out of his wits. Under the fierce assault of both the scholarly and the martial Avatars, he just barely managed to block the spell. However, more and more sunlight were pouring through the sky, and stream after stream of fire kept raining down. From a distance, it looked like the Gate of the Nine Heavens had descended!

Just then, the deafening roars of battle suddenly erupted throughout the pass. Bursts of flame soared everywhere as countless assailants launched surprise attacks against key locations such as the garrison headquarters, the patrol barracks, the armory, the granaries, and more. Although their numbers were small, every individual possessed profound cultivation. More than half of them were Dao Foundation stage cultivators!

Their cries echoed throughout the city: “The Heavenly Fighting Gang is on business today. Those not involved should return home and lock their doors tight! Anyone who dares to obstruct us will be killed without mercy!”

Panic immediately gripped the city. Chaos reigned as the people scattered in all directions. The Heaven Fighting Gang’s name had long been renowned throughout the western regions. Although the upper echelons knew the gang’s origins, how could the common people possibly be aware? As far as they were concerned, for the first time in nearly a century, horse bandits had actually breached Hanyang Pass!

Fires broke out everywhere within the city. They burned with extraordinary ferocity as well. The members of the Heaven Fighting Gang were specifically targeting the military encampments, various yamens, and important administrative buildings. Even the large trees planted in courtyards would burst into raging flames the moment they scattered a handful of powder on them.

The garrison troops patrolling the city rushed to the scenes of the fires, but upon making contact with the enemy, the horse bandits instantly formed a three-tiered formation—front, middle, and rear—and fired their guns at them. More than half of the official troops in the front ranks fell instantly.

Similar scenes were unfolding throughout the city. Squad after squad of horse bandits rampaged unchecked, sweeping everyone and everything in their way. The patrols suffered heavy casualties the moment they ran into a bandit squad, and they proved no match for their opponents at all.

The city’s main mobile forces were stationed within the city and the four gates, with half of them deployed at the western gate alone. Despite the chaos raging within the city, the garrison generals of the four gates—lacking direct orders from the garrison headquarters—only dared to dispatch small contingents to suppress the horse bandits. Naturally, these contingents were scattered practically the instant they entered the city.

Fires were breaking out in more and more places within the city; but none were more terrifying than the streams of fire raining down upon the garrison headquarters! It looked like it was drowning in raging flames as columns of thick, black smoke billowed into the sky.

Anyone with a slightly keen eye could see that several Avatars were engaged in a fierce battle near the garrison commander’s office. At this time, no one in their right mind dared to go there as even a single brush with just the aftermath meant certain death.

Most of the garrison’s forces were stationed in three military camps, but without an order from the pacification commissioner, the troops were forbidden from taking a single step outside their barracks. To do so would instantly earn them the death penalty. Thus, though the military officers were frantic with anxiety, they were powerless to act. They could only keep sending men to the garrison headquarters to investigate, but not a single scout had ever returned. Judging by the towering flames engulfing the place, it seemed unlikely they would receive orders anytime soon.

Moments later, the streams of fire finally dissipated, and the battle at the garrison headquarters subsided, leaving behind only the burned residence and yamens.

The Xu Clan elder had been struck by more than thirty Skyfire Spells from Wei Yuan. He had been forced to drain every speck of his mystic energy to defend himself, then burn alive into a charred husk. Wei Yuan then seized both his soul and his Avatar, sent it into the Great Realm, and presented them to the shadow in the moon.

A bird’s head appeared and swallowed the Avatar in one gulp. It then spat out three wisps of advanced fortune and left behind a single thought: “We’re even.”

Wei Yuan had thought he would need to sacrifice at least two more Avatars to settle the debt. He hadn’t expected that a single early-stage Avatar would suffice. It would appear that the shadow in the moon had a particular fondness for human Avatars and souls.

Subduing and killing this elder hadn’t actually taken all that much time. He had cast dozens of Skyfire Spells in rapid succession, one after another, and even then, he had only expended a small portion of his Dao energy.

Now that the Avatar elders were taken care of, there was no one left in the city who was a match for Wei Yuan. He immediately rallied some of his subordinates who were sowing chaos in the city and charged toward the southern gate.

The garrison at the southern gate’s gatehouse was far smaller than that of the western gate. Seeing the massive horde of horse bandits charging toward them, they understandably panicked and started firing their powerful bows and crossbows. However, the gatehouse’s defenses were designed to handle external threats, not internal ones. Thus, the horse bandits continued to close in using the surrounding houses and dwellings as cover.

It was at this moment a surge of army aura suddenly shot up into the sky from the distance, and a cavalry force of 10,000 riders rolled in! Although they numbered only 10,000, their army aura was in no way inferior to that of a 100,000 border troops—it might even surpass it!

This cavalry unit bore distinct banners. One large banner read “Military Commissioner of Western Pacification”, while another displayed the large, large word of the surname, “Wei”.

As the surging cavalry reached the foot of the pass, an officer on the forefront shouted, “We act on the orders of the Military Commissioner to pursue and annihilate the bandits of the Heaven Fighting Gang! Open the gates at once—failure to comply will be treated as delaying military operations and can result in capital punishment!”

1. Basically meaning eagle eye. ☜