Great Li Martial God

”How old is this Eighth Prince?” Sikong Xuan asked casually.

The hundred-man captain who had brought the message thought for a moment, then said hesitantly, ”Roughly... twenty.”

At those words, the white-haired Sikong Xuan could not help but frown.

And at that moment, another golden flame rose from the direction of Hundred Refinements City, lighting up the distant sky with sudden brilliance.

Sikong Xuan looked up, and a look of bewilderment and surprise surfaced in his clouded eyes, saying, ”According to what Qiwen wrote, the Eighth Prince defeated Hundred Refinements Peak’s Peak Master Zheng Yunfeng in a single move. And that was only a short while ago. Who from Falling God Peak has been taken down now?”

Yet how could the hundred-man captain before him answer such a question? He too was staring blankly at the brilliant golden light in the sky.

To be honest, while the story of the false prince had long since spread through every prefecture, the acknowledgment of this Eighth Prince had happened only recently, and those with limited access to news might not have heard of it at all.

He himself had learned of it from overhearing colleagues chatting. And yet this prince, who had existed without any presence or footing in anyone’s awareness, had gone alone to Hundred Refinements City and had taken down a Peak Master in a single move, one who had apparently been a headache even for the Commander.

At that moment he simply felt as though none of it was real, as though he were dreaming.

”Could it be that I have been under too much pressure worrying about the near-suicidal odds of destroying Falling God Peak and imagined a powerful martial artist appearing to save the Tianjin Guards?”The young hundred-man captain thought this, and immediately pinched his own arm.

At that point the former Commander Sikong Xuan glanced at him and then shook his head, letting out a sigh, saying, ”The relationship has grown distant after all. With a trump card like this held in reserve and not a word to this old man, that Qiwen and I as his adoptive father have truly grown apart.”

Hearing this, the hundred-man captain, now visibly wincing from the pinch and wearing an expression of delighted surprise, came back to himself. He immediately bowed respectfully and was about to say something kind on Fu Qiwen’s behalf to prevent any friction forming between these two men.

But before he could speak, Sikong Xuan shifted his tone without warning and said in a firm voice, ”Pass the old man’s orders down. Advance the attack on Jade Wave City ahead of schedule. This opportunity is rare. We must resolve things swiftly and take Jade Wave Peak without delay.”

The hundred-man captain blinked, his gaze settling on the stern aged face before him, and immediately straightened up sharply, saying nothing more but hurrying away to pass the order.

At that point Sikong Xuan’s gaze grew dim and unreadable, and he looked toward the direction of Falling God Peak’s main peak in silence for a moment before murmuring, ”That Qiwen has given this old man a surprise. I had thought I would never live to see the day their sect was destroyed, but this time there may truly be a thread of a chance.”

...

Beyond that, the other two columns of the Tianjin Guards advancing on Falling God Peak also received Fu Qiwen’s falcon-carried message in turn.

The two leaders at their head were skilled martial artists the Great Li court had kept hidden in reserve. One had once been known throughout the martial world as the Profound Frost Blade Tyrant, and thirty years ago had been ranked among the three great top-tier martial artists of the Great Li Tianjin Guards, only to disappear from public view afterward and remain in the capital in seclusion.

The other had also once been renowned throughout the Great Li martial world, and was the Marquis of Dragon Mountain, known as the Iron-Armed Azure Dragon.

The Marquis of Dragon Mountain had once entered the Tianjin Guards’s service to earn merit and preserve the title passed down from his father’s generation, and had received favors from Fu Qiwen. He had come on this operation to destroy Falling God Peak partly to repay that debt.

And among the forces in the fourth column attacking Falling God Peak, there were even allied forces from other sects that Fu Qiwen had recruited to act against Falling God Peak.

Without exception, every one of these sects carried an irresolvable mortal grudge against Falling God Peak. They had been hiding and enduring in remote mountain wilderness for years, and were among the very few who, upon hearing that the Great Li court intended to move against Falling God Peak, were willing to act.

But these sects, though they had built up some strength in secret, were clearly in no position to compare with a colossal power like Falling God Peak.

They all knew perfectly well that relying on their own strength to deal with Falling God Peak was essentially impossible. Though none of them believed the Great Li Tianjin Guards’s plan to destroy Falling God Peak would succeed, this was the only chance of seeing revenge that they had been able to find in all these years. Even if it ultimately failed, they wanted to try.

Otherwise they might go through their entire remaining lives without ever coming across such a perfect opportunity again.

”Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. With a martial artist like this in Great Li, maybe we truly can take down Falling God Peak this time. Even if we cannot destroy them entirely, we will certainly leave them with a wound that strikes to the bone and costs them dearly.”

In a mountain woodland, the Soaring Vulture Sect’s leader Gu Shengfeng stroked his beard and burst into laughter.

Behind him, the dozens of elite disciples of his sect all had sharp light in their eyes, their morale blazing and their killing intent overflowing.

Having received Fu Qiwen’s message, and having seen with their own eyes the signal rising from Hundred Refinements City, they felt a roaring fire of hope burning in their hearts.

The Soaring Vulture Sect had decades ago had its entire sect destroyed when it fell short on its tribute payment by one-tenth, infuriating certain powerful figures of Falling God Peak who used it as a pretext to wipe them out overnight. Gu Shengfeng and the younger disciples of the sect had survived only because the senior martial artists and elders gave everything they had to protect them.

Through these decades, they had cultivated day and night without rest, never for a moment letting go of the desire for vengeance against Falling God Peak.

But as their martial cultivation grew and time passed, what they had found was not the hope of revenge, but rather an ever-growing awareness of how terrifying Falling God Peak was and how impossible to shake.

With their level of strength, it would take only a few elders from any one of the nine peaks to completely annihilate the Soaring Vulture Sect.

They had originally believed they would never be able to avenge their sect’s elders in this lifetime, but the Great Li Tianjin Guards had offered them a thread of hope, and now this Eighth Prince of Great Li had given them even more.

How could their hearts not fill with excitement?

”Though I am hearing for the first time that the Eighth Prince newly acknowledged by His Majesty has martial cultivation this terrifying, I cannot imagine Commander Fu would lie about such a thing.”

The Marquis of Dragon Mountain said with a pondering air. Even though his heart still found it genuinely difficult to accept that Li Musheng, such a young prince, had defeated the Hundred Refinements Peak Master in a single move, he swept a look across the combined martial artists including the Soaring Vulture Sect and the assembled Tianjin Guards, and resolutely gave the order to advance the attack ahead of schedule, seizing the opportunity to move against the prearranged target.

...

Falling God Peak’s main peak.

A sheer cliff of a thousand yards stood like a great sword severed from the heavens, its rock formed of meteorite iron and earth-fire fused into deep black iron-bone, its mountainside wrapped in twelve bronze chains, each as thick around as a giant serpent.

At the summit, the main hall called Fallen God Hall was supported by nineteen golden pillars, its red walls and golden tiles towering and magnificent, gleaming brilliantly in the firelight of the surrounding lamp columns.

In the night, the summit was shrouded in surging cloud and mist, yet at that moment a simply dressed elderly man sat cross-legged in the air, suspended above Fallen God Hall.

Threads of blue-green cloud energy circled around him, and his aura seemed to have merged with heaven and earth.

In the next instant, the elderly man suddenly opened his eyes.

In an instant, purple lightning flashed through them, and then thunder cracked across the entire sky above Falling God Peak, and electric serpents writhed through the cloud layer, as though the sky itself was about to become a pool of lightning.

”Something has happened to my eldest disciple?”

The elderly man sat among the clouds, looking down toward the direction of Hundred Refinements City. He could clearly see that a brilliant golden flame had blossomed from the darkness there with incomparable brilliance.

Then a blurred figure appeared, gradually materializing out of thin air before the elderly man.

She was a young woman with a full head of cyan-black hair, roughly twenty years of age, dressed in a long jade-green robe, with fine and beautiful features and skin like condensed white jade. Between her brows and eyes was a thread of cold clarity.

The young woman’s eyes were extremely cold. Her pupils were not pure black, but had the quality of a glacier cracking apart just before it gives way. When she looked at someone it always seemed as though she was doing so through a layer of frozen mist.

The woman then spoke with complete indifference, as though utterly without feeling, saying, ”Three of the younger generation have already returned to the peak with reports. They say Zheng Yunfeng of Hundred Refinements Peak was killed in a single move, and your eldest disciple went to observe the situation.”

As she spoke, the woman in jade-green paused, then looked toward the dark Hundred Refinements City in the distance.

The golden light that had risen there was now gradually fading, and the entire sky was returning to darkness once more.

Seeing this, the woman’s eyes narrowed slightly, and she said with flat indifference, ”But from how things look at this moment, your eldest disciple has in all likelihood met with trouble.”

Hearing this, the cross-legged elderly man in midair furrowed his brow slightly, saying, ”Were people sent to assist? If help arrives in time, with my eldest disciple’s innate divine gift, there may still be a thread of hope.”

”People were naturally sent.”

The woman in jade-green gave a slight nod and said, ”Martial Nephew Scarlet Fire has gone. Whether he can save your eldest disciple is not certain.”

The blue-green cloud energy around the elderly man swayed gently, and he looked at the woman in jade-green before him, saying with a thoughtful air, ”If Martial Brother Scarlet Fire is not enough, then send Martial Brother Black Mountain to assist as well. With both of these Fallen God Honored Elders acting, even if that person’s martial cultivation is formidable, there should be no chance of winning.”

The woman in jade-green stood in the air and slowly shook her head, saying with cool detachment, ”You misunderstand me. What I mean is that by the time Martial Nephew Scarlet Fire arrives, your eldest disciple may already have been killed.”

The elderly man raised his gaze and looked at the woman before him, saying, ”If my disciple is truly dead, that would be a great shame. Someone with the talent for Dual Cultivation of Divine and Martial is not easy to find. And for him to have consumed so much blood of divine nature, only for all of it to go to waste.”

”It will not go to waste.”

The jade-green woman’s fine and beautiful face was without expression, her voice carrying no trace of feeling, saying, ”The blood of divine nature within your eldest disciple’s body will naturally be consumed by Martial Nephew Scarlet Fire. And of course, if you continue sending Martial Nephew Black Mountain there as well, the body would be divided between the two of them.”

At those words, the elderly man looked at the jade-green woman, whose expression was entirely emotionless yet wholly serious, and let out a helpless sigh.

He thought for a moment, then stopped discussing this matter with her any further, and sent a transmission into a certain part of the main peak.

Very quickly, a solidly built elderly man in black came stepping out of a courtyard somewhere on the peak and hovered in the night air.

The black-clad old man had vertical lines on his brow carved as deep as knife cuts, while horizontal lines covered his face as densely as a fisherman’s net. He had a grey-white beard at his chin, and on his feet he wore a pair of straw sandals.

He looked up toward the old man cross-legged at the summit above, saw him give a slight nod, and said nothing at all. The True Qi around his body suddenly dissolved, and he dropped straight downward.

In the blink of an eye the black-clad old man plummeted to the foot of the peak. But not the slightest damage was done to the ground below at his landing. The moment he fell from the sky to the earth, rocky peaks rose from the ground like bamboo shoots, lightly catching his body without any use of martial True Qi whatsoever, absorbing every last bit of the impact.

The black-clad old man then took strides of three yards at a time, leaving a trail of slowly dissolving rock paths on the mountain road as he headed off in the direction of Hundred Refinements City and disappeared.

Watching the faint and receding silhouette of the black-clad old man below, the grandmaster of Falling God Peak hovering at the summit showed a thoughtful expression, and then muttered with a furrowed brow, ”Able to kill Yunfeng in a single move. Which old presence from the Great Li imperial palace has come this time?”

The Great Li dynasty had stood for a hundred years and governed nineteen prefectures. Even as one of the four great sects of the martial world, Falling God Peak would never underestimate them for a moment.

What the Falling God Peak grandmaster had not expected was that the Great Li Emperor Yuanwu had actually steeled himself to move against Falling God Peak, disregarding the watchful eyes of the four surrounding kingdoms and the other three great sects poised to benefit from their fighting.

”If the Great Li court truly committed its full strength to destroying Falling God Peak, our only path would be retreat and flight. But the Great Li court would also suffer eight hundred losses to inflict a thousand on us, and come out no better off for it.”

”That Emperor Yuanwu cannot possibly be so foolish as to make a decision that costs both sides so heavily. And looking at what is happening now, it seems only the Great Li Tianjin Guards is actually moving against Falling God Peak.”

The Falling God Peak grandmaster said all of this slowly, and as he did, threads of purple lightning began to appear within the blue-green cloud energy around him, and a barely perceptible killing intent surfaced.

He turned to look at the jade-green woman who had been standing there throughout without leaving, and said in a low voice, ”This also means the person in Hundred Refinements City is the Great Li Tianjin Guards’s sole trump card. As long as this person is dealt with, everyone else is nothing but a rabble, and no cause for concern.”

At those words, the jade-green woman looked at the elderly man with cold eyes, saying, ”What you say is not unreasonable. But I hope you do not end up like your eldest disciple. Excessive confidence is not a virtue.”

The Falling God Peak grandmaster furrowed his brow slightly, but said nothing more. He glanced in the direction of Hundred Refinements City and left only one instruction, ”Tell me when there is a result.”

Then the cross-legged figure faded into the cloud layer.

In an instant, a cloud vortex swirled within the sea of clouds, electric arcs drifted like serpents along its edges, and from deep within the clouds came the hammering sound of thunder like iron being forged.

Seeing this, the jade-green woman only withdrew her gaze with flat indifference, and then her graceful figure vanished from where she stood without a trace.

...

Shortly afterward, Li Musheng, sitting on the roof of the Hundred Fragrance Pavilion, suddenly sensed something and drew his mind back from refining the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture, then looked out toward the night sky beyond Hundred Refinements City.

In the nearby wine house where they were hiding, the hemp-robed elderly man and Lin Xunner both felt something at the same time and immediately looked in the direction Li Musheng was watching.

They could see that at the dark edge of the mountain range outside the city, a point of firelight no larger than a bean was approaching at great speed from far away.

Gradually, what had first appeared as an impossibly small point of light grew larger in their vision, becoming brighter and more blazing by the moment, lighting the night sky a deep red as though with rolling magma, and seeming to carry a barely resistible heat as it drew near.