A Pawn's Passage

The Inn’s branch manager and Dreaming Cloud restrained themselves, refraining from causing earth-shattering destruction because if they collapsed this place and disrupted the Imperial Capital’s drainage system, the Imperial Court would not let it go lightly.

If sewage flooded back and submerged parts of the South City, the matter might reach the emperor’s ears.

Meanwhile, Qi Xuansu faced off against two Xuan-ranked Waiters of The Inn.

The Inn’s Waiters were divided into four ranks—Heaven, Earth, Xuan, and Yellow. Heaven and Earth ranks were typically branch managers or direct subordinates of The Inn’s six high-level executives, all of them Heavenly Beings. The Xuan-rank was generally Guizhen-stage Xiantian Beings.

The two Xuan-ranked Waiters who confronted Qi Xuansu were both at the Guizhen stage.

Qi Xuansu was a Heavenly Being who could stand a chance against Heavenly Beings in the Holy Xuan’s era. Thus, these two Guizhen-stage Waiters were hardly a match for him.

With a single exchange, both Xuan-ranked Waiters spat blood and were sent flying.

Qi Xuansu had not even used any Demonic Blade techniques. This was just the might of a Martial Arts Practitioner enhanced with innate qi.

Just then, someone stabbed Qi Xuansu through the abdomen from behind.

There had been no sign or warning. Yet Qi Xuansu had no reaction. There was no blood from the wound, only dissipating innate qi. At the same time, his figure began to fade, becoming increasingly translucent.

The attacker was an Earth-ranked Waiter skilled in ambush. Seeing this, his expression darkened.

This was the Rogue Cultivator’s Cicada Molting Technique, which allowed Qi Xuansu to escape like a cicada shedding its shell.

Qi Xuansu’s true body stood not far away, having already drawn the Flying White Shadow.

The Earth-ranked Waiter held a short sword, with another strapped to his waist. This twin-sword technique came from the Taiping Sect. It was said that Donghuang excelled in this technique, though he eventually returned to the traditional meter-long sword. As such, few in the Daoist Order practiced it now.

Qi Xuansu vanished once more, ghost-like and silent.

In terms of speed, Qi Xuansu was slightly inferior to the Earth-ranked Waiter. However, Qi Xuansu had an edge. His Demonic Blade allowed him to skip reaction time and rely on pure instincts to compensate for his lack of speed.

With a metallic clang, Qi Xuansu drew the Flying White Shadow from its sheath just in time to parry the Earth-ranked Waiter’s strike. He followed up with a sweep, forcing the Waiter to retreat.

A serious look crossed the Earth-ranked Waiter’s face as he shed all contempt. To him, slaying a Xiaoyao-stage Heavenly Being should have been no big deal, but he had not expected Qi Xuansu to be this formidable.

After forcing the Earth-ranked Waiter back with one strike, Qi Xuansu channeled innate qi into Flying White Shadow, unleashing an ominous wave of cold air.

In the blink of an eye, visible frost formed from thin air, and the pooled water around them began to freeze over.

With a grim expression, the Earth-ranked Waiter crossed his twin blades and slashed at Qi Xuansu’s throat before the chill reached him.

Qi Xuansu employed the Free-Roaming Blade technique, a signature move of Song Zheng’s Demonic Blade. It was a strike with no fixed form, direction, or distance.

Qi Xuansu’s figure became like a drifting breeze, appearing from nowhere and disappearing to nowhere. In an instant, the Earth-ranked Waiter felt a chill at his throat, which had been slit.

Still, the Earth-ranked Waiter was not dead from it. After all, a wound like this for a Heavenly Being did not even count as serious.

The Waiter employed all of his innate qi, exchanging over a dozen moves with Qi Xuansu in the blink of an eye before leaping backward.

His face bore an expression of disbelief as he noticed two bloody gashes on the backs of his hands.

In that exchange, his sword speed had clearly outpaced Qi Xuansu’s blade. Yet every strike had been blocked, rendering his efforts futile.

His twin swords were treasures laced with deadly poison, potent enough to affect even Heavenly Beings, but if they could not land a hit, they were useless.

The duel resumed, growing ever faster. The Earth-ranked Waiter moved like a ghost, leaving behind countless flickering afterimages. His twin swords were unpredictable, shifting endlessly. But Qi Xuansu blocked each one and even counterattacked. All the while, the chilly aura emitting from Qi Xuansu steadily spread. Before long, frost coated the Waiter’s brows.

With a low shout, a semi-corporeal flame burst from within the Earth-ranked Waiter, dispersing the cold.

Had the well-informed Zhang Yuelu been present, she would have recognized it as the perfected method called the Taishang Elixir Sutra, which undoubtedly exposed the origin of the Waiter as someone from the Daoist Order or the Imperial Court.

Yet no matter how the Waiter adapted, Qi Xuansu stood firm, responding to the changes with constancy, striking straight at the weaknesses in the twin sword techniques. As a result, the Waiter steadily accumulated injuries.

As the fight progressed, the Earth-ranked Waiter moved so quickly that his form blurred beyond what the naked eye could follow. He attacked Qi Xuansu from every angle like a faint wisp of smoke, yet Qi Xuansu’s defense remained flawless.

Suddenly, the Earth-ranked man roared. Flames burst from his body, twisting into twin fire dragons that coiled around his swords, unpredictable in length and trajectory. The blazing dragons entangled both fighters, blurring their forms.

Qi Xuansu responded by retracting his icy aura and concentrating it along his blade to ward off the flames.

After nearly a hundred more exchanges, both fire and frost had dissipated. The Earth-ranked Waiter abruptly spun and delivered a sweeping kick, carrying with it a strong gust of wind. With no room to dodge or draw his blade, Qi Xuansu met the strike with his bare palm.

When they collided, Qi Xuansu merely staggered back, but he was still unscathed.

The Earth-ranked man was startled and dropped his swords as well, launching a flurry of palm strikes. Qi Xuansu hooked his opponent’s wrist with his left hand, while his right hand crashed down with the Mountain Fist, bearing with it the weight of the sky collapsing in every direction. The Earth-ranked Waiter had no choice but to meet the punch head-on. As their palms clashed, the Waiter also staggered.

Without their blades, the two traded punches and palm strikes, darting and weaving like the wind. After another 20 moves, Qi Xuansu surprised the Earth-ranked Waiter with a strike using the Cosmos Loop Fist, hitting the latter square in the chest. Blood spurted from his mouth as he was blasted backward.

Meanwhile, the branch manager of The Inn was also losing ground against Dreaming Cloud. After all, Dreaming Cloud was what Madam Qi called a Half-Step Zaohua-stage cultivator. That came with clear advantages.

Dreaming Cloud seemed to hail from the Zhang family, as he had cultivated the Five Thunder Celestial Heart Method. Upon reaching the Wuliang stage, close to the Zaohua stage, its full power as an orthodox perfected method began to truly shine.

With one hand, Dreaming Cloud caught the sweeping halberd without getting scratched. Then he poured lightning into the treasure-grade halberd. The weapon turned an eerie shade of blue-purple and sparked with menace.

“Let go!” Dreaming Cloud gave a low command as purple lightning coursed down the halberd, surging into the Innkeeper’s hands.

Unable to bear the thunder’s force, the Innkeeper’s hands went numb, forcing him to release the weapon. The halberd fell into the water, and the lightning within it dispersed, turning the entire pool into a thunderous lake.

Though Zhang Yuelu also hailed from the Zhang family, she had not studied the Five Thunder Celestial Heart Method, so her power was nowhere near this level.

Dreaming Cloud extended his hand and summoned the lightning, shaping it into a meter-long thunder blade and slashing it outward.

The six water dragons shattered instantly. Countless droplets scattered in all directions, only to freeze midair. Upon closer inspection, each droplet held a lingering, chilling streak of purple lightning.

The Innkeeper took the brunt of the strike. As the lightning blade swept across him, arcs of electricity spread over his body like thorny vines, though it was still far from fatal.

Dreaming Cloud was a Wuliang-stage Qi Refiner, whereas the Innkeeper was a Wuliang-stage Martial Arts Practitioner.

At this level, a Martial Arts Practitioner’s blood qi remained dormant, like still water. The body spirit residing in the Martial Arts Practitioner’s acupoints stayed in a slumber-like stasis unless actively roused by blood qi. This prevented his power from unintentionally harming those nearby.

In other words, this was merely his resting state. His full might would be unleashed once blood qi surged through his meridians and activated his body spirit. His physique would undergo a dramatic transformation, known as the Manly Immortal’s True Body.

Bones and flesh crackled loudly as the Innkeeper’s clothes split apart. His frame swelled rapidly to resemble a giant, only slightly shorter than the Great Witches.

The Manly Immortal’s True Body only manifested fully in the Zaohua stage, akin to those Great Witches. Even in its incomplete form, however, it was terrifying, impervious to ordinary spells or blades.

Meanwhile, Dreaming Cloud conjured a miniature thunder pool around himself as protection.

In the next instant, the Innkeeper moved.

From Dreaming Cloud’s perspective, the Innkeeper merely leaned forward slightly, as if preparing to charge. In truth, that was just an afterimage. The Innkeeper’s True Body was already upon Dreaming Cloud, who had to rely on spiritual intuition to trace his charge.

The Innkeeper’s punch was pure brute force, tearing through Dreaming Cloud’s crackling lightning field. Wherever it passed, the lightning melted away like snow under the sun.

The overwhelming blow only slowed when it was one meter in front of Dreaming Cloud. At that moment, Dreaming Cloud’s lightning condensed to its peak, colliding head-on with the opponent’s surging blood qi. Then, the Innkeeper’s fist slammed into the blade of pure lightning.

A massive ripple spread out from the clash. Wherever it passed, steam rose in columns, and the ground itself turned glassy because the Martial Arts blood qi had reached blazing temperatures. Combined with plasmatic lightning, the water all around them vaporized, and even the stone flooring began to crack and melt.