A Guide to Self-Rescue in the Cultivation World - Chapter 17

“Watch out!”

Qi Jie’s pupils contracted. The moment the warning left his lips, the longsword at his waist flashed from its sheath.

“Clang—!”

The blade erupted with golden spiritual light. With no fancy footwork or flourish, it drove straight toward Xuan Yangming’s white bone staff, letting out a grating metallic screech upon impact.

The deathly silence of the Imperial City night was utterly shattered in that instant.

“Insects!! Do you really believe your petty resistance can change anything now!”

Xuan Yangming’s hoarse voice, grating like metal scraping metal, scraped against Zhou Suyao’s nerves, stirring up a wave of nausea. She dug her nails into the flesh of her palm, trying to use the pain to stay lucid.

Even as she felt dizzy, a cold surge of yin energy erupted from the tip of the bone staff. The yin energy didn’t fly straight at the trio but instantly plunged into the ground like a sentient black snake.

In a flash, the entire space turned as cold as an ice cellar.

Countless white, skeletal arms sprouted from the earth, just like the malevolent ghosts they had seen in the Underworld, reaching out menacingly and lunging at them.

“Retreat!” Though severely wounded, Qi Shuo Bei instinctively shielded the other two. He quickly formed a hand seal, and his heavy meteor hammer instantly flew out, crashing into the skeletal arms before them with a sound like wind and thunder.

Instantly, broken stone and bone shards flew everywhere. The heavy rebound force made his already pale face turn even whiter, and dark red bl00d spilled from the corner of his mouth.

Zhou Suyao’s pupils constricted. She felt the cold, demonic qi from the myriad of demons within her body thrashing wildly under Xuan Yangming’s spiritual pressure. Her meridians felt as though they were being pierced by thousands of icy needles.

“Useless struggling!” Xuan Yangming’s roar was thick with mockery. “I have planned for a century! How can I allow mere youngsters to disrupt me? I spared the Qi family before out of respect for the RaoTian Dao, but since you keep interfering, I’ll just fuse you, Zhou Suyao, and the two of you into the Three-Path Meridian Flower!!”

The bone staff struck the ground again. The pressure instantly intensified, and countless bones clawed their way out of the earth, reforming into grotesque, constantly moving corpses.

Qi Jie quickly rushed to stand in front of Qi Shuo Bei, his sword intercepting the skeletal attack—but his Pure Yang Sword Qi wavered violently in this place of deep yin power. He grunted, a sound of unbearable strain.

Qi Shuo Bei was visibly flagging. For every corpse he smashed, more wrapped around him.

Just then, an entirely black revenant slipped past Qi Jie’s sword net and silently appeared right behind Zhou Suyao. The smell of gore overwhelmed her.

“Watch out!”

Qi Jie yelled in alarm. Distracted, his sword net was breached by several ghosts, and a gruesome skeletal arm clawed his chest.

He was instantly hit by a heavy blow, his body sent flying backward to crash against the broken wall.

“Ah Jie!” Qi Shuo Bei was furious and shocked. But he couldn’t fight off a thousand hands with three fists. Tens of thousands of white bones wrapped around him, and freezing Death Qi drilled into his orifices. He struggled fiercely, his meteor hammer falling to the ground. His face quickly turned purplish-green—he was about to be strangled alive.

Zhou Suyao suddenly lifted her head.

The uncontrollable demonic qi within her, sensing the suppression from Xuan Yangming, exploded with extreme fury, striking her spiritual consciousness like countless silver needles.

Yet, seeing the Qi brothers instantly severely wounded and on the brink of death, an indescribable emotion, mixed with the wild surge of the demonic qi in her body, instantly rushed into her consciousness.

She couldn’t die here.

Ming Luo was still waiting for her.

Eldest Senior Brother… and so many… unsolved mysteries.

Xuan Yangming’s withered but triumphant face was magnified and distorted in the dim light, radiating a sickening aura of malevolence.

“Kill him… Kill him… Kill him!!!”

Within her, the trembling screams of countless demon souls shook her spirit.

Kill him…!

A volcanic eruption of unprecedented resolve and violence instantly erupted in her heart.

In that moment, her eyes turned bl00d-red. The demonic spiritual power that had been forcibly suppressed within her instantly lost all control.

“Xuan Yangming—!!”

It was a sharp, distorted shriek, one she didn’t even recognize as her own, and it seemed to contain more than just her voice.

She no longer dodged but threw herself at Xuan Yangming.

In her dantian, the core—which her Master had nourished with elixirs gathered from across the world and which now bore the resentment of a thousand demons—was squeezing wildly at an unprecedented speed. Each squeeze brought the agonizing pain of tearing meridians and the spiritual cry of a soul that could bear no more.

“Thinking of self-detonation?! Haha!” Xuan Yangming let out a mocking laugh, laced with surprise but mostly disdain.

“A death struggle!! All the better! It saves me the effort of refining you!! Your spiritual core!! I’ll gladly take it!”

The bone staff lifted again, aimed directly at the recklessly charging Zhou Suyao.

By now, the only things left in her vision were the faint light of imminent death and the sickeningly triumphant look on Xuan Yangming’s face. She clearly felt the spiritual core about to break its final constraint, lodging itself in her throat. Her consciousness drifted on the edge of agony and destruction, with only one thought remaining: Kill him! Kill him!! Kill him, and avenge the Demon Race!!!

Just as the spiritual core was about to be detonated—

Her neck was yanked back by someone.

Followed immediately by a hearty, somewhat impatient sound.

“Woof! Woof woof woof!”

A dog bark.

“Still thinking of detonating your spiritual core?” the voice drawled. “Just wait ’til we get back; I’ll deal with you properly.”

With that, the person simply grabbed her by the collar and tossed her behind him.

Then, faster than the eye could follow, he raised a leg, slipped off his grass sandal. A dusty grey shadow, like lightning, flew with incredible precision and slapped, square and center, onto Xuan Yangming’s ghastly pale old face.

And this grass sandal was even covered in fresh mud, which now stuck messily to Xuan Yangming’s face.

Time seemed to freeze at that moment.

The countless white bones instantly became rigid. The dying Qi Shuo Bei forgot how to struggle. Qi Jie, who had been thrown against the rubble, propped himself up, eyes wide with shock. Even the demonic hatred within Zhou Suyao’s body stalled at this ridiculous spectacle.

The owner of the sandal—a messy-haired old man in a faded, washed-out robe, his hair like a bird’s nest—seemed completely oblivious to the absurdity of the scene.

As he walked forward, he lifted his other bare foot and, with a look of distaste, scraped the mud off his sole onto a relatively clean piece of broken stone nearby. He muttered under his breath:

“What in the world are you lot raising such a ruckus for in the middle of the night? I was forced to chase Wangcai through eight streets. Finally found a nice spot by the wall on the west side of the capital, took my shoe off, and this dead dog took off for the Imperial City like a madman, couldn’t even call him back.”

Master scratched his nest-like hair, let out a massive yawn, and his slow old eyes swept over the messy scene, finally settling on Xuan Yangming, who was frozen in place, a mud-covered grass sandal plastered to his face.

“Oh.” The old man raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t this… cough, the former Elder Xuan Yangming from the Xincong Sect? What’s this, decided not to reflect properly in the RaoTian Dao prison, but to come to the Imperial City… to play in the mud?”

Then, as if unable to contain his laughter, he chuckled a few times: “You’re quite… unique, aren’t you?”

“You…! Old fool! You’re looking for death!”

The repeated humiliation finally snapped Xuan Yangming out of the profound shame of being slapped by a sandal. He let out a hysterical roar. He violently flung the sandal off his face. Blue light, capable of destroying the world, once again erupted from his staff and slammed fiercely toward the suddenly appearing old man.

“Zhou—Xu—Qing! What do you want! You ruined my Master’s great endeavor a century ago, and now you ruin mine! Do you truly think you can save the righteous path in your heart all by yourself?!”

“Haha, I didn’t want to bother, but you harmed my Senior Sister a hundred years ago, and a hundred years later you harm my apprentice. Why is it that you, a bunch of evil heretics, just love to mess with the people around me?!”

With that, he walked straight toward the spiritual power, thick with yin wind, that was rapidly assaulting him from Xuan Yangming.

“Master, be careful!” Zhou Suyao cried out in alarm. The spiritual power that had stalled within her instinctively started circulating again, seemingly wanting to rush forward to block the attack.

However, Master merely smiled faintly, raising his hand as if performing a casual gesture. In his hand, he seemed to be holding the other mud-covered grass sandal.

His movement wasn’t fast; in fact, it was slightly leisurely.

But the moment he raised his hand, an indescribable, vast aura of heaven and earth, as if it had settled for eons, instantly erupted like a sleeping primordial beast opening its eyes.

There was no blinding light, no earth-shattering commotion, only the sudden descent of a power capable of utter destruction.

Then—

A loud “Smack!”

The grass sandal, with perfect precision, once again struck Xuan Yangming squarely on his old face.

Next, while everyone watched dumbfounded, he evaded to Xuan Yangming’s rear. The gentle silver light surrounding him—utterly different from Xuan Yangming’s power—looked so out of place in this isolated battle in the Imperial City.

“Noisy,” Zhou Xuqing said, casually flicking his ear as if brushing off dust, his face showing undisguised contempt.

“Who do you think cleared the path for the immortal sects a century ago, when they besieged Dao Mo Xing? Who was it that eliminated the cult’s own disciples for them? You absorbed too much spiritual power through the Same Life Seal. Without it, you can’t even gauge your own strength, which is why you think you can fight me.”

“You… you!!” Xuan Yangming’s face twisted in shock. He seemed not only surprised that someone knew about his Same Life Seal scheme but also that Master would mock him so directly. His face instantly turned deathly white. His body shuddered like a dying butterfly. The next moment, his staff transformed into a plume of black smoke, enveloping his entire form.

Just as he was about to vanish completely, he shouted: “I will return!! And when I do! No one will be able to stop my great endeavor!”

“Wow,” Zhou Suyao thought to herself. “Where did this Big Bad Wolf come from?”

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