I was on my knees. Blood streamed from my eyes in rivers, pouring down my chin and filling my mouth with the tang of iron. My soul felt as though it was being crushed into dust by the invisible hand of the heavens.
Somehow I still resisted. The forbidden technique of the Gao Clan was as insidious and cruel as the rest of their techniques. I felt that even a one-star Foundation Building master might not be able to resist this technique from Gao Shan.
My muscles and bones held on, the damage to my physical body minimal but the formless pressure still damaging my flesh. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been like this.
The only happiness I clung to was that Gao Shan had been forced to sacrifice a large amount of his vital qi in order to cast the forbidden technique. He would never be able to replenish that, no matter how many centuries he lived.
If Wang Ren arrived soon he might not survive to sunset. In my eyes, even if I died here and now, I had won. Gao Shan was weakened to the point of impotence.
Even though my Senior Brother Wang was only a middle stage Qi Gathering cultivator he would be able to finish the battle. A Body Tempering child might be able to deal the finishing blow at this point.
My vision had been stolen from me a while back. My mind was still my own for now, but I wasn’t sure how long that would remain true.
Like a million worms burrowing into my skull, the Gao Clan technique was wrestling control of my mind and soul away from me. Suddenly I felt a tremor in the earth, a deep rumbling that shook my bones.
I felt something clamp down on my shoulder. It wasn’t a powerful grip, but in my weakened state it felt like a lethal blow.
The next moment I felt something enter my mouth and slip down my throat. It reached my stomach and began to dissolve, leading me to smile.
Someone had fed me a healing pill. Without being able to sense my surroundings I couldn’t tell who it was, but I could guess.
Wang Ren had arrived.
Little Cui and the others had been successful in their journey to the Cloudy Falls Sect to plead for my Senior Brother’s help. I had no doubt he would come, I only worried that the two mortal women and the young city lord might not be able to make the journey.
The energy from the healing pill spread through my body, but it had little effect. I felt my vision clear a little, rays of light meeting my eyes. However, all I could see was a blurry mess.
“Don’t worry about me,” I coughed through bloody teeth and wheezed breaths. “Kill that Gao bastard.”
“You’ve always refused to die, even when those arrogant scions in the sect beat you within an inch of your life, Junior Brother. Keep taking it easy, I’ll handle him,” Wang Ren replied, slapping me on the back and knocking me to the ground.
****
Wang Ren controlled his descent through expert slashes of his glaive. Every single elegant arc cleaved through the air and pushed him back into the sky.
Perhaps a more skilled glaive wielder might even be able to fly using this method, though it would be quite unwieldy. However, Wang Ren wasn’t trying to fly.
He only needed to slow his fall enough that he didn’t break every bone in his body when he hit the ground. It was working.
Three River City exploded in his vision as he fell, soaring through the sky like a meteor. He sensed the presence of a peak Qi Gathering cultivator right below him.
Master Bang had seemed to kick him off the flying sword carelessly, but it had been a precise strike that sent him directly towards his designated enemy. The ground raced towards him and he raised his glaive while inhaling deeply.
“Haah!” he roared as he unleashed a devastating strike against the ground the instant before he landed.
The earth split, dust and debris being thrown into the air all around him. He stood at the bottom of a small indent in the earth, the tiled street shattered as far as the eye could see.
Wang Ren exhaled and raised his glaive to a resting position. As the dust cleared he saw the silhouettes of two cultivators facing each other down.
One was on their knees, drenched in blood with a faint presence that was fast disappearing, Wang Ren frowned as he realised it was Zhao Dan, but there was something wrong with his body.
He raced to his Junior Brother’s side, keeping half an eye on the other cultivator—the Gao Clan member. He too was injured, clutching his chest while performing hand seals as his qi flowed in strange patterns.
Wang Ren took a healing pill from his storage bag and forced it into Zhao Dan’s mouth. As the pill took hold, Zhao Dan’s body began to heal.
However, even after he had healed, blood still poured from his orifices and his qi signature fluctuated weakly. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with his Junior Brother, but he had a feeling it was related to the foreign mass of energy that was wrapped around his dantian.
There was nothing he could do for Zhao Dan. He hoped Master Bang would know a way to help him or that they could take him back to the Cloudy Falls Sect and hope that one of the other Elders knew a method.
Healing strange afflictions was a little researched field in the Celestial Jade Empire. Often when cultivators succumbed to insidious methods such as demonic techniques or poison, they could only rely on their own strength and willpower to overcome the trials.
It was down to the will of the heavens whether they lived or died.
There was a common method of cleansing demonic or evil techniques that Wang Ren knew of. It was a method he could put into effect immediately—killing the cultivator who cast the technique.
He prepared to turn to the Gao Clan cultivator when Zhao Dan suddenly coughed and spat blood.
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“Don’t worry about me. Just kill that bastard,” he gasped through short breaths.
Wang Ren shook his head while staring at his stubborn Junior Brother. He’d never broken despite facing endless torture at the hands of the influential disciples in the Cloudy Falls Sect.
“Will you ever die, Junior Brother?” he chuckled. “Keep lying about while I kill this bastard.”
Wang Ren hefted his glaive in his right hand as he turned to face the enemy cultivator for the first time. The man had noticed his arrival but was clearly too wounded to take immediate action.
He had been cultivating diligently since returning to the sect from the Jagged Sword Mountains. Seeing the ridiculous pace at which Zhao Dan had advanced—seeing twice the results with half the effort if his tales were to be believed—had lit a fire within Wang Ren.
He had managed to reach all the way to seven-star Qi Gathering through the help of his master and nonstop training and cultivation. He had barely slept or taken a moment of rest.
However, that struggle was worth it. The Gao bastard was a peak Qi Gathering cultivator, two stars above him and possibly more if he was a half step into the Foundation Building realm.
Wang Ren’s Shattering Earth Carving Heavens Heavy Glaive was on the precipice of reaching a new stage of accomplishment. Honing his skills against a worthy opponent was a perfect opportunity to achieve that.
“You Gao bastards dare to encroach on the territory of the Cloudy Falls Sect!?” he roared, his voice infused with qi and making the buildings in the street shake. “You dare to lay a hand on my Junior Brother!? Don’t think your death will be easy.”
The man stood up, his body cracking and twisting in strange ways. His qi flowed in erratic patterns but as Wang Ren watched it stabilised and soon he was unable to sense it at all.
“This is exactly why your arrogant sect will fall. We will leave it in ruins, devoured from within as we take control of everything you hold dear. Arrogant righteous bastards, thinking you’re so lofty, looking down on the world from your mountains while ignoring reality,” he spat, taking two steps forward while sneering down at Wang Ren.
It was a difficult feat, given that Wang Ren was a towering brute of a man. It was an unusual physique for a cultivator as most tended to be lean and beautiful, but he pulled it off.
“Your words are bold, but we will see how you stand up to my glaive,” Wang Ren replied. The time for talking was over.
He inhaled sharply and kicked off the ground as he swung his glaive. He started the movements for the first form of his master’s glaive art, the air distorting around the edge of his blade as he split the air apart.
The man didn’t draw a weapon, meeting Wang Ren’s glaive with his bare hands. He saw that they were coated in a dark green substance that dripped from the tips of his fingers, but ignored it.
There was nothing in this world that his glaive couldn’t split apart. That belief fuelled every single one of his swings as the two cultivators traded blows.
The first strike was evenly matched, though Wang Ren pushed the Gao bastard a step back from the force of his blow. A few droplets of the green substance stuck to the edge of his glaive.
He attempted to flick them off as he swung his glaive once more, but they clung onto the steel stubbornly. The Gao cultivator smirked as they struck for a second time.
His arms trembled as they struggled to absorb the force of the glaive. Wang Ren frowned. His second strike felt softer than the first—softer than it should’ve been.
As he pulled his glaive away there was more of the green substance coating the edge of the blade. He realised at that moment what the Gao bastard’s strategy was.
The mysterious substance was dulling the force of his blows and was impossible to remove. With every exchange Wang Ren would grow weaker while his enemy would grow stronger.
The man was playing the pig to eat a tiger, nursing his wounds and then striking out with force. Wang Ren snorted.
“Is this the masterful poison of the Gao Clan? You dare to believe you can bring about the downfall of my Cloudy Falls Sect with such pathetic techniques!?” Wang Ren sneered, raising his glaive into the air with two hands.
He channelled his qi from his dantian through all seven of his meridians that he’d opened, the flow gathering momentum with every cycle. This was a technique that he hadn’t inherited from Master Bang, but discovered himself in the sect library.
It was an old technique that only someone with a body like his could use, combining the strength of the physical body with one’s cultivation. His muscles swelled as his qi flared, expelling qi and blood from every orifice and into his glaive.
The sticky green substance was blasted into dust, leaving his blade sparkling in the sunlight. He roared and lunged forward, swinging the judgment of the heavens against his foe.
Gao Shan didn’t make a sound, grimacing as he flared his qi and raised his hands to block the strike. This time he was not so sturdy.
The glaive blasted his arms aside, blood spraying across the street as two of his fingers were sliced cleanly off. He grunted and stumbled backwards, but Wang Ren was just beginning his onslaught.
He had yet to perfect the second movement of the first form, but he felt that it would only reach completion in battle. Inspiration was at the tips of his fingers as he swung his glaive.
Wang Ren was like an asura as his glaive whirled around him, slicing and smashing the Gao cultivator around like a rag doll. He sprayed the green substance as they fought, but Wang Ren’s technique had left a coating of qi and blood on the edge of his blade and it slicked off like drops of morning dew.
The Gao cultivator had played the pig to eat a tiger, but Wang Ren was more like an unstoppable gorilla. His hulking muscles looked as if they were carved from steel, swinging the gigantic glaive as though it weighed nothing.
Another strike sliced a gash down his enemy’s thigh. Blood spurted out, but it was not red. Black blood sprayed across the streets, a few drops spraying onto Wang Ren’s skin.
Where the black blood landed it began to dissolve Wang Ren’s skin. It burned, a searing pain like a hot needle pricking his skin.
However, the pain did nothing to slow Wang Ren. He’d felt worse pain from his own master’s strikes during his training.
Even though the Gao cultivator was two stars above Wang Ren he was powerless to resist the devastating strikes. Each blow brought Wang Ren closer to understanding the essence of his master’s technique.
The name was domineering, representing a defiance against heaven and earth through one’s glaive. Master Bang had developed the technique in battle, carving his intent into his glaive through mountains of corpses and a sea of blades.
Wang Ren embodied that essence, but he was not his master. If he followed in Master Bang’s footsteps blindly he would never reach the peak that he aimed for.
Wang Ren did not wish to shatter the earth and carve the heavens. No, he wanted to obliterate everything in his path. The earth would vanish under his strikes and the heavens would be blasted into dust with the swing of his glaive!
A chime resounded through the street. A huge image of a warrior swinging a glaive materialised in the air behind Wang Ren. The warrior didn’t wield a physical glaive, but he didn’t need to.
His body was the glaive. When he swung his arm, seas were split in half, the earth was ravaged, and even the heavens were powerless to resist as they were carved apart like tofu.
Wang Ren’s eyes flashed as he formed a strand of glaive intent. The intent brought his technique and his strike to a new realm as it descended towards the weakened Gao cultivator, who could only watch with wide eyes and shock written across his face.
“How!? For a mere seven-star to form intent is impossible!” he cried, the blade a breath from cleaving him in half.
“You dare, junior!?” a deafening voice rang out through the skies as a pressure like a thousand mountains descended onto Wang Ren’s shoulders.
He froze mid swing, but the next moment he felt the comforting presence of his master’s qi and he finished his swing. Gao Shan was cleaved in half from head to groin as Wang Ren achieved Master accomplishment in the Shattering Earth Carving Heaven Heavy Glaive and cultivated a strand of glaive intent.
As soon as his glaive touched the stones, he felt a bloody aura descending on him from the skies. The hairs on the back of his neck raised and he trembled, raising his gaze to meet the furious glare of a Foundation Building master.
