Chapter Seventy-Eight: Completion

This move would likely be impossible for anyone in the martial world to take head-on.

Li Miao answered with a direct counterstroke.

Their palm-blades collided, and the sound rang out like metal striking metal.

Both of their palms had turned a dark bluish black.

Indeed, both were masters whose every art came at a call, and naturally each had already driven a body-hardening discipline through themselves.

A thunderous roar shook the air, and surging inner force burst in all directions.

The flagstones around them were pried up and sent flying like fallen leaves.

Before those stones had even hit the ground, Li Miao and Yun Zelin had already exchanged more than ten blows where they stood.

The crashing violence of it could probably have shaken an ordinary martial artist to death.

Yun Zelin’s strike cleaved through half the beams and pillars of the main hall. The hall of Mount Tai Sect, battered by the aftershock of their clash, could no longer hold itself up and collapsed with a deafening roar.

In an instant, Yun Zelin was outside, staring into the ruins.

Amid the dust, Li Miao walked out, brushing dirt from his shoulder with his left hand.

“Continue.” Li Miao beckoned to Yun Zelin.

Before the words had even faded, Yun Zelin had already appeared before him.

From their earlier exchange, both had understood that ordinary martial arts could not break the other’s indestructible body.

Only when inner force and physical power were properly joined could the true might of a martial art be fully brought out.

Using the Jade Seed method to force together a haphazard mix of techniques gave variety enough, but greatly reduced their power, making it hard to achieve any decisive result.

The Jade Seed was, of course, not merely the ability to use several techniques at once.

To ignore temperament, to ignore inner cultivation, and to bring every martial art to its fullest extreme—this was the greatest use of the Jade Seed, beyond even the highest realm.

Yun Zelin struck out with a palm that was none other than the complete and unaltered supreme art of the Brightness Church, the Grand Nine Heavens Palm, its power now even greater than before.

Li Miao returned it with a Grand Nine Heavens Palm of his own.

Their palms pressed against each other’s chests.

This time, there was no sound at all, no imposing force as before, as though they were merely friends greeting one another.

Yet it was ten times more perilous than before.

The so-called aftershock had in truth been caused by the two of them forcibly blending their arts; their inner force could not fully match their physical power, and excess energy had leaked out.

But now, having used their true and complete arts, physical force and inner force fused into one. Every trace of power was gathered by the Jade Seed to a single point, with not a whisper of leakage.

In terms of killing power, it was far beyond the earlier exchange of overwhelming spectacle.

The two men, who had shown no change in expression before, both gave muffled groans and stepped back.

Blood seeped from Yun Zelin’s nose and mouth as he looked at Li Miao.

At Li Miao’s chest, a patch of red slowly spread through his clothing.

The first round had ended.

Ha, hahahaha! I still have the advantage! Yun Zelin laughed.

“Lord Li, your Jade Seed is still incomplete!”

Though it looked as if Yun Zelin had taken the greater loss, in truth he had narrowly prevailed.

Yun Zelin bleeding from nose and mouth did not mean he was more heavily injured; it was merely proof that Li Miao’s inner force had not been as tightly gathered as Yun Zelin’s.

“Again!”

With a loud cry, Yun Zelin charged at Li Miao.

—

Inside Tai'an City.

Liu Baiyun and the others had already swept through most of the city and uncovered several stray gu soldiers, while also rescuing some civilians trapped beneath the ruins.

They handed the rescued people over to Jiao Qingfeng and instructed him to clean up the aftermath.

After what had happened tonight, Jiao Qingfeng had gained a measure of official bearing and the composure to face affairs. Once ordered, he began leading some of the still-mobile townsfolk and the garrison soldiers in an orderly effort to put out fires throughout the city.

At present, the three sect masters stood in the prefectural office, silently looking down at the corpses on the floor.

They were the disciples of the three sects who had died tonight.

Those brought out of the sects to attend the Five Peaks Alliance Assembly were all outstanding disciples, the very roots of the sects’ inheritance.

Yet nearly half had died. How could the three masters not grieve, not hurt?

In front of Liu Baiyun, her old adversary, Zhou Yingxue did not want to show any weakness. She kept herself forcibly calm, though the hand gripping her sword hilt had already gone white.

Liu Baiyun, however, had no time to look at her.

The disciples of Mount Hua Sect had been the first to stand guard here in the prefectural office. In casualties, they had suffered the most.

The gentlest of the three, Deng Baixuan, was already unable to hold back his tears.

These were the promising young disciples he had spent years cultivating, the very stock from which he had expected to pass on his sect’s legacy.

Zhang Jingfeng let out a long sigh and said, “Everyone, let the grief wait for another day.”

“The thousand-household commander has already gone to Mount Tai Sect to deal with the Brightness Church’s right envoy. We still need to go and hold the line there. If even a few gu worms slip down the mountain, then the deaths of our disciples will have been in vain.”

Liu Baiyun was the first to nod. The others steadied themselves as well, and together they headed for Mount Tai Sect.

At the foot of the mountain, they split up, spreading along the path upward as they searched with vigilance.

Along the way, they found bodies strewn on both sides of the road.

—

At this point, Little Four had already woken. She was still somewhat weak, but she could move normally.

She stepped forward, and Wang Hai slit open the corpses for her. Little Four picked out the gu worms inside and examined them briefly.

“Everyone, there’s no need to be on guard anymore,” Little Four said.

“The mother gu is already dead. No child gu can survive, so there’s no need to fear a repeat of what happened in Tai'an City.”

Hearing this, the sect masters all let out long breaths of relief.

Zhang Jingfeng, however, frowned. “How could it be resolved so abruptly?”

“I know the thousand-household commander’s martial arts are beyond the ordinary, but he shouldn’t know witchcraft and gu sorcery as well, should he? Otherwise he wouldn’t have sent us here to keep watch.”

“No, this wasn’t the thousand-household commander’s doing,” Little Four said.

“From the way these child gu died, rather than being killed, it looks more as though the mother gu simply ran out of life and perished on its own.”

“Still, whatever the cause, the Brightness Church’s plot has already failed, and the gu disaster has been averted. That thief Mei will surely die by the thousand-household commander’s hand.”

“Let us go up the mountain and see,” Wang Hai said.

When it came to faith in Li Miao, there was not a single person in all the world who could compare with Wang Hai—not even Li Miao himself.

Even if one day Li Miao told Wang Hai, “Actually, I am the reincarnation of the First Emperor,” Wang Hai would still find a way to believe it.

Only, the battle on Mount Tai now was not unfolding as Wang Hai imagined.

Yun Zelin and Li Miao stood apart on opposite sides.

Both bore injuries and were in the midst of slowly recovering.

By the look of things, it was Li Miao who had fallen behind.

“Lord Li, how is it? Have I disappointed you?” Yun Zelin laughed. “Your incomplete threefold path is still no match for me!”

He was indescribably pleased with himself now.

Though he had taken a shortcut and would not live more than an hour, as long as he could kill Li Miao and obtain Li Miao’s corpse, he was confident he could survive.

By then, he would become the living legend of the martial world.

Li Miao loosened his shoulders and said with easy indifference, “Not bad, but you might not want to get smug just yet.”

“I may be incomplete, and you may have taken the crooked road. In the end, there’s not much difference.”

“Still, now that my bones and sinews are loosened up, it’s about time to turn up the pressure on you.”

Yun Zelin frowned and looked at him.

In that instant, his pupils contracted.

He saw that Li Miao’s originally jet-black hair was slowly turning white.

Li Miao clenched his fist.

“Mm. A perfected Golden Bell feels pretty good.”

He beckoned to Yun Zelin.

“Come. Second round.”