Book 1: Winds Begin to Blow in Tai Yuan

Chapter 13 - Stunning Breakout

"Hey, you asleep?"

A low but graceful voice, bringing with it some laughter,sounded in her ear. Meng Fuyao opened her eyes, pleasantly surprised.

In front, Yuan Zhaoxu stood unruffled and n.o.ble, like he hadjust stepped into a palace. The drenching rain hit his body, yet his clotheswere dry. Standing far away in a swath of muddy green and with mountain cliffsat his back, he seemed like a suddenly arisen bright moon.

He was a far distance away, but his expression was still thesame, calm and unhurried. Logically speaking, even if he wanted to save MengFuyao now he would not have enough time; but the moment Meng Fuyao saw him, shefelt a unreasonable sense of relief, as if the life and death calamity in frontof her had become unworthy of her fear. The corner of her mouth couldn"t helpbut lightly lift up.

Meng Fuyao"s smile had not yet fully expanded, when she sawthe formerly still and far away Yuan Zhaoxu give her a grin.

Before the grin could fade away, he suddenly moved.

This one movement was like a thunderclap, destroying jademountains and causing avalanches. An incandescent, roiling turbulence sprintedover the flat ground, formidably stirring up a vast portion of the nightrainstorm. The unparalleled shockwave of power stripped the ground of trees andgra.s.s, all of which uprooted in a "hua la la" sound and coiledupwards to form a wall, filling the entirety of one"s vision with the darkgreen expanse that flew towards the huge enclosing net.

Yuan Zhaoxu flew sticking close to the ground, in a flasharriving in front of Meng Fuyao. With a stretch of his hand he pressed herdown, a hand closely embracing her body while still continuing to fly forwardson the ground. With a flip of the other hand"s sleeves, that tremendousagitation of powerful winds twisted and shattered the flying "plantwall". The branches and gra.s.s strands, mixed in with his true qi, becamecountless flying arrows, with loud whizzing sounds twisting through the air tomeet the huge web. Only an endless whistling of collision could be heard, and ina blink of an eye the net was completely shredded into broken fragments by theblade-like leaves and branches, losing its form.

The final bits of the ominously glowing net fell to theground, precisely landing in front of the feet of Yuan Zhaoxu, while behind himsome remainders were soundlessly beaten into the mud by the falling rain.

Lightly smiling, Yuan Zhaoxu unhurriedly spread his twoarms, looking at the woman sprawled underneath him.

"How do you feel, seeing me?" -----------

How do I feel?

Meng Fuyao blinked her eyes, staring upwards.

The overlooking Yuan Zhaoxu"s unfathomably dark eyes heldsome humor in them, their gaze unreasonably entrancing like wine.

A mysterious light fragrance was given off, something eventhis unending downpour had no way of diluting.

Two pairs of eyes met, for a time no one speaking. YuanZhaoxu stopped teasing, and Meng Fuyao forgot to snap back a sarcastic reply.In this instant in the never-ending rain, right after the danger had pa.s.sed,entrapped in Yuan Zhaoxu"s unique aura, she forgot how to form words, anddidn"t know why she would want to either.

This person who seemed so far away, ever since that momentthey met, had been close to her side. In only a short two hours, he had savedher twice already.

Meng Fuyao didn"t even know why he wanted to help her.

She only gazed at him, a warm flow swirling in the depths ofher heart. Her body that had become icy cold due to a night of raining anda.s.sa.s.sination, suddenly seemed to have a few degrees of warmth.

In only that instant of eyes meeting.

There was a thin strand of silk in the bottom of her heart,the strand long rusted due to many years of heartless erosion by winds offrost, and was almost severed because of that person"s betrayal; in that momentof eyes intersecting, in between the howling turbulence of the storm and thepeaceful stillness of their embrace, that strand began to lightly stir andconnect again, sending out a thin yet shocking vibration sound.

It was as if hearing a thunderclap while in silence.

Meng Fuyao shook.

Her fingers all of a sudden tightly dug into the wet ground.The th.o.r.n.y undergrowth pierced her fingers, the pure white fingertipsimmediately squeezing out some round blood droplets that were quickly washedaway by the pouring rain and absorbed into the black wet soil.

Meng Fuyao inhaled sharply, the shooting pain in her fingerscausing her pupils to become lucid once again. Her next thought was to shrinkback, but she only had time to move halfway. Yuan Zhaoxu, who was up until nowstaring fixedly at her, suddenly broke his gaze and reached out his arm to lifther up, and with a twist of his body they flew out together.

In his arms, Fuyao turned her head in astonishment, whileYuan Zhaoxu had already laughed, "You want to devote your body to me here?But I"m afraid of catching a cold."

His voice had a relaxed humor in them. From Fuyao"s angle,she couldn"t see his expression, but judging from his tone he seemed to not beaffected by that moment just now, giving her some relief. For some unknowablereason, however, hearing his indifference also gave her a bit of disappointmentand hurt.

Then with a "pei" sound in her heart, Meng Fuyaosilently cursed herself for being such a Qiong Yao [1]. What was she doing! Shewas an old woman whose mental age was almost 40, what was she doing playingaround with the struggles of affection?

She swiveled her head, wanting to drop down and leave YuanZhaoxu"s close hug, but the caught unaware Yuan Zhaoxu pressed his fingersagainst her tightly to keep her in place, while softly saying, "Don"tmove."

The words had not yet faded away before, five zhang infront, countless numbers of black figures appeared out of the darkness, holdingbows and nocking arrows in combat ready positions. When the forward-most blackfigure saw a person, he immediately loosed the bowstring and shot an arrow, the"weng" sound from the shot screaming continuously forwards. Anotherstreak of phosph.o.r.escent lightning shot straight up from the ground, andfollowing that a thicket of trees orderly flattened, forming a piece of emptyland behind which were ten or so trees. Their upper halves were dark jade,while their lower halves were sc.r.a.ped of bark, revealing the dull white of theinner wood.

Seeing those trees and their pattern of arrangement, MengFuyao instantly thought of a Five Variation White Wood Array that the oldDaoist had mentioned once before. Just when she wanted to shout at Yuan Zhaoxuto be careful, she actually saw him not even hesitate, with one point of hisfoot directly flying into the heart of the formation.

Yuan Zhaoxu"s Qinggong skill was the highest of anyone Fuyaohad ever seen. Even when holding another person his feet never touched theground, light as a feather, so fast that she couldn"t even stop him before in ablink they had reached the eye of the array.

Meng Fuyao"s heart sank, only closing her eyes whilesilently calculating her body"s position. According to what she had learnedbefore, she planned to destroy the tree three steps to her left side firstbefore anything else. The Five Variation White Wood Array had a myriad oftransformations, with life and death possibly coming in an instant. She onlyhad around 50 percent confidence to escape from the large formation"s possiblyconcealed underground arrows and giant log presses, but no matter what, itwould still be better than following Yuan Zhaoxu directly sprinting into adeath trap.

However right before she moved, Yuan Zhaoxu suddenly shotout an unexpected flying kick, completely splitting the array center"s gianttree in half and blowing it away. Amidst the roaring explosion, a "kaka" mechanical spring noise began to rise up from the surroundings. With lightwhizzing noises something erupted out of the ground surface, almost like a thickcl.u.s.ter of wasps or a hurricane of conglomerated branches and leaves; the ominouslygray patch tyrannically gusted towards them while tearing up the ground.

The cloud was consisted of the dark steel daggers hiddenunderneath the ground, piercing through the air along with the scattered flyingrain and mud. The blades bounced and weaved in between the trees, unceasingly hittingtrees at different angles, then in an instant reflecting off of the power ofthe collision in different directions. The daggers shot straight for the eyes,then the chest, and blades originally about to pierce into the back would thenshoot straight up; thousands and tens of thousands of variations flashed by,with nowhere to hide.

Yet Yuan Zhaoxu never put this pressing situation of life ordeath in his eyes. In mid-air his robes flew, tumbled, and snaked, like gusts offierce wind blowing storm clouds to drift, or like electricity twisting insidedeep fog, sometimes seen and sometimes unseen. Silhouetting the dark heavens theylifted up, then sharply stopped, time and time again. Close by, air currentsflew like unseen knives, each one splitting a tree that would take many to wraptheir arms around. One could only see that in between the fluttering of hissleeves sonic booms would sound non-stop - every time he attacked, another treewould be halved. The sharp daggers and the human figure that penetrated betweenthem flew past the gigantic tree trunks as fast as lightning and as light asfeathers; every time the figure dodged the flying daggers, it flashed throughthe smallest of cracks that wouldn"t even allow a strand of hair to slipthrough. He was clearly dealing with the most chaotic and unpredictableattacks, yet his movements were precise and exquisite, as if he had rehea.r.s.edthis play countless times before.

He was like an immortal with incomprehensible powers, usingrivers as string and lightning as the needle, weaving an impenetrable and wonderfulpicture on the complex brocade of the blue seas and eight wildernesses.

The huge trees were felled one by one, seemingly falling atrandom. Yet in reality every trunk dropped in a slightly different position,each tree resting higher than the other by a small height and impacting withchanging amounts of force, every one coincidentally stacking on top of theprevious tree trunk. With this fold by fold domino-like falling pattern, notone tree actually landed on the ground, and at the end, all the trees wereresting in a mountainous hill-like structure. Those crazily shooting daggersalso bounced off the covering tree structure with extraordinary accuracy, allof them rebounding downwards and neatly piercing back into the earth.

Exhaling a breath of cold air, Meng Fuyao almost forgot howto breath. She also knew how to break this formation, but she had never thoughtthat there would actually be someone in this world who could break it with thiskind of method. This type of breaking method that completely borrowed thearray"s strength to break it - just what extreme level of accuracy andfrightening calculations would be needed? Those many trees, those uncountableflying knives and every knife"s power and angle of rebound, required one tohave a complete peak expert"s grasp and calculation skill, to only then be ableto land without the smallest injury. This kind of horrifying calculation, Fuyaothought that even a modern computer would take several seconds to process, letalone the Yuan Zhaoxu in the middle of the formation, facing almost-certaindeath from ferocious attacks from all sides!?

This, was this still a person?

The huge trees had all fallen, and the daggers had allrebounded into the ground. With a flip of his sleeve, Yuan Zhaoxu brought MengFuyao to fly directly outwards, his mid-air steps as if he were treading onflying clouds. With one leap he had already arrived at the highest tree"s branchend, the large downpour of rainwater being deflected away by the flowing trueqi around his body. While traversing the air his figure was straight, like aflying immortal.

His feet landed on the tallest tree canopy, but the leavesunderneath didn"t shake. Yuan Zhaoxu clasped his hands in a slight smile, proudlyoverlooking that crowd of ambushers whose hands were still on the bow, theirarrows still nocked on the bowstring. Those people all were in their previous positionslike they were solidly paralyzed in place, their mouths open wide in shock asthey looked back at that G.o.dly male figure standing on the branches. After seeinghow with an instant of hand and eye coordination he had completely destroyedtheir sect master"s carefully set up, unbreakable white wood array; seeing howwith a light traversing, he had used the most unbelievable and unthinkablemethod to pa.s.s through the array in a flash; seeing how not even a speck ofdust was touched on his body, like entering that certain-death array was likeentering an empty s.p.a.ce, and seeing how the remote figure on the tree canopywas completely relaxed and unruffled, for a time they experienced an awe-inspiringdread, as if they had just seen a deity. How could they have still rememberedto use their bows and fire their arrows?

Yuan Zhaoxu gave a faint grin then lifted up his sleeves ina flick. Those below neatly scattered, but for a moment didn"t see anything.Then, they heard a long laugh sound in the air. Two black human shadows lithelyshot out like electricity, drawing a long-lasting dark line through the mid-airrainwater. Those leaves and branches nearby were scattered into the air, treeswere orderly parted to the sides, and the acc.u.mulated mud on the ground surfacewas gusted upwards by the gentle yet vast true qi, splattering in four directions."Ka cha ka cha" sounds erupted one after the other, arrows twistedand the earth cracked, water surged and fire was extinguished, and in aninstant, the remaining four Black Water, Yellow Earth, Raging Fire and Dark Metalformations behind the white wood array were broken through in procession.

The four formation"s continuously triggered chains of trapsand mechanisms randomly activated en ma.s.se, and at once killing not a smallnumber of the guarding Profound Origin sect disciples. Amidst shocked cries,the crowd fled in even more chaos.

Their sprinting speed was too fast, and the wind violently howled.Meng Fuyao struggled to lift her head while in Yuan Zhaoxu"s embrace, lookingat the already unrecognizable large formations with a bit of pity. She alsoknew how to break through these arrays, but because the person above her headwas too valiant, from start to finish she could only be a hero with no chanceto show her talents. Bored out of her mind, she lazily played with Zhaoxu"srobe lapels, then lazily let out a breath of air.

She heard Yuan Zhaoxu"s voice dimly sound from above herhead. When speaking his chest slightly trembled, knocking against her cheekthat was stuck to his chest. The place where they touched was burning withtemperature, gradually spreading to her whole body, and causing Meng Fuyao, whohad ran here and there for a whole night and was already exhausted, to fuzzilybecome sleepy-headed.

" ... these formations are a little too shabby, howabout we switch to another method of escaping ..."

Ok, let"s escape, I"ll drag you with me.

Meng Fuyao shut her eyes, and fell asleep.

1. Qiong Yao "琼瑶" was a very famous Chineseromance novelist in the 20th century.