Yang Anzhi’s face greatly changed. He actually hadn’t noticed Li Qingshan’s arrival in the slightest. Li Qingshan’s footsteps were already not heavy and clumsy in the least, they were now lithe and silent like a feline instead.
The other elders and disciples were still wondering, who was this! Yang Jun roared, “Li Qingshan!”
The crowd filling the hall stood up and put their hands on their swords all together without prior consultation. Everyone started talking at once in a burst of noisy disarray: “What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are those disciples guarding the mountain doing.” “How did you come up?” “Who else are there? All of you come out!”
“You don’t need to care about how I came up. Today there’s only the one of me who came!” Li Qingshan looked around and saw many people present he didn’t know. He said, “I came today merely to put the chief evil to death. Other people all exit the hall if possible, I’ll give you the time of a cup of tea1.” He moved his body and stepped away from the the hall’s doors behind him, but what answered him was the “shua shua shua” of drawn swords. The awe-inspiring sword glints flickered without pause.
The punishment hall elder said: “Truly, the heavens gave you a road but you don’t walk on it. Truly, there’s no door to h.e.l.l but you break inside. You actually dare to sneak up the mountain all by yourself, do you really think my Dragon Gate Sect is so good to provoke?” He was in charge of punishments and was well-known even inside the Dragon Gate Sect for his callousness. He looked at Li Qingshan as if he were looking at a sinning disciple he was in charge of.
“Kill him, he’s my Dragon Gate Sect’s great foe!” “The Dragon Gate Sect wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him. He actually dares to send himself to our doors.” “We can’t let him off easy, I have to cut off his hands and feet!”
The crowd that was originally on the verge of infighting united with a common goal facing the emergence of this “main criminal” Li Qingshan. They wanted to pour all the anger inside their chests over his body. They hated they couldn’t slice him into mincemeat or dismember his body into ten thousand pieces.
In their imagination, the Li Qingshan who’d come alone was already meat on the chopping block, waiting for their slaughter.
There was only Yang Anzhi who didn’t breathe out a word as he held his sword hilt tight. He’d sensed the changes inside Li Qingshan. The Li Qingshan from before was like a confused iron rod, and he was still short of variations and sharpness even if his strength was deep. But the present Li Qingshan seemed to have had an edge polished out of him. The exposed edge made people sit up and take notice.
Li Qingshan said with a calm expression, “Then the Dragon Gate Sect will be the next Black Wind Camp!” A murderous intent rose inside his heart and an aura of death gushed out of his entire person, pressuring every man of the Dragon Gate Sect.
What a heavy murderous aura!
Everyone felt a chill in their heart. They felt as if the temperature in the hall had lowered by a few degrees. It was even more so for Yang Jun who’d lost his martial abilities; he almost went soft and dropped on the floor.
Li Qingshan took this opportunity and used a “Tiger Demon Stream Leap” to pounce on the Dragon Gate disciple closest to him, reaching the distance of a dozen steps in one pounce. He clawed with a “Tiger Demon Heart Scoop.” His five fingers broke through the air with a fierce hiss, scaring men’s galls.
A lion used all its strength to seize a rabbit, never relying on its superiority, never speaking nonsense with the enemy.
That disciple didn’t expect Li Qingshan to act so abruptly. He couldn’t even display half his body’s power amidst his terror. He helplessly watched Li Qingshan’s hand-claws enter his chest, dig out a heart dripped with blood, and toss it away casually.
Little An climbed out and caught the heart in his hands before absorbing the blood within. Ever since he’d learned from Li Qingshan there was an opportunity to restore a body of flesh and blood, he’d done this thing with the att.i.tude of completing a divine ritual.
Little An’s flames inside his eye sockets flashed as they swept past the men inside the great hall. He merely needed to kill this group of men to be one step closer to his goal! No matter the price he had to pay, he wanted to appear in front of him with a body of flesh and blood anew.
The men of the Dragon Gate Sect had originally already reacted by the time Li Qingshan had killed that disciple, but their steps once again came to a sudden halt. They watched this strange scene with fright. A skeleton stood besides the light of the stoves’ fire and held a human heart in its hands in order to swallow it. A word bubbled forth from their hearts: “De… demon!”
Since Little An didn’t possess the ability to conceal his form anymore, then there was no need to hide. Li Qingshan pulled out the Dragon Gate Sect’s ancestral legacy, the Soaring Dragon Sword, and stuck it inside the ground: “I’ve long heard that the Dragon Gate Sect became famous thanks to its sword arts. Little An, come ask them for advice!”
Little An threw the heart down and grabbed the Soaring Dragon Sword. This sword was a little too big and too long for him, but his entire momentum changed as soon as he held the sword hilt, the sharp point of the sword pointing obliquely like a matchless fencer. Each and every one of the Dragon Gate Sect felt they had already been shrouded inside the sword’s momentum.
The punishment hall elder’s face became pallid. He no longer had his self-confidence from before. As a sword sect, they were still knowledgeable when it came to sword techniques, no matter their conduct.
The man who’d left behind the aura and meaning of the sword on the painting scroll was a man who could draw a spiritual weapon and obtain the green bull’s praise. Even if Little An had merely comprehended a part of the sword technique within, it was still superior to every sword technique from a second-grade sect like the Dragon Gate Sect.
The marble tiles under Li Qingshan’s feet suddenly broke, his person already vanished from where he had stood. He once again used the “Tiger Demon Stream Leap” and aimed directly at the Dragon Gate Sect’s suzerain Yang Anzhi, without paying attention to anyone else in the great hall.
Yang Anzhi said with a great shout, “Kill him!” His voice shook awake everyone in the hall. They were also swordsmen who’d studied the sword for many years, they wouldn’t truly be intimidated. They knew they’d arrived at a moment that would decide life or death, and their eyes became red as they gave all the strength they had. More than ten beams of sword qi stabbed like rainbows toward the Li Qingshan who was still in mid-air and who couldn’t borrow strength from anywhere.
Li Qingshan didn’t dodge nor hide. He didn’t even spare a glance for those sword lights. His eyes shrank into needle points as he stared straight at Yang Anzhi, just like a ruthless beast.
Yang Anzhi’s sword finally left its sheathe. It was actually yet another treasured sword flashing with spiritual light, and although it was slightly inferior to the Soaring Dragon Sword, it could still slice metal and cut jade. It transformed into seven sword shadows, drawing seven sword flowers as it attacked Li Qingshan. Even if the other swords couldn’t pierce Li Qingshan’s skin, this sword was certainly capable of settling Li Qingshan’s life.
Little An leaped up when Li Qingshan was about to act. The Soaring Dragon Sword likewise transformed into seven sword shadows and drew seven sword flowers as it clashed together with Yang Anzhi’s sword, producing a series of acute “ding dang.”
The crowd of Dragon Gate elders and disciples were frozen stiff like sculptures behind Little An. They were still in the middle of their stabbing motion in Li Qingshan’s direction when fresh blood madly sprayed out at the same time from terrible lines of injury on their necks, chests, or between their eyebrows. They fell to the ground.
When Li Qingshan had acted, Little An had grabbed the Soaring Dragon Sword and acted at the same time. He had actually pressed close to the floor as he went through the great hall. He’d taken advantage of the wide open opportunity of everyone pouring their whole strength into attacking Li Qingshan and instantly killed every elder and disciple before meeting Yang Anzhi’s sword.
He wasn’t a little child, but a demon cultivator who cultivated a supernatural skill from the way of the demon. The Soaring Dragon Sword wasn’t a toy either, but a fearsome lethal weapon that could take away human lives.
Li Qingshan had once said back when Little An had reached the beginning completion of the [Dao of the Beautiful Bones] that he probably could raze the Black Wind Camp by himself. He only saw today what kind of strength he’d reached after comprehending the sword art on the spiritual weapon and using a sharp weapon like the Soaring Dragon Sword. “This kid!”
The two men’s martial ability had both gradually transcended the realm of second-grade masters. This was after all the martial world, and the layering of numbers had almost no effect at all under the oppression of absolute martial skills.
A treasured sword flew up with a “clang” and nailed itself into a crossbeam inside the great hall. Yang Anzhi’s covered with his hand the broken skin between his thumb and index as he hurriedly retreated back, his pale face without any trace of blood. He didn’t have the might of a sect suzerain anymore: “What kind of thing are you!” How would he be able to match Little An’s strength
1. This has been mentioned before but I forgot to make a note about it. The “time for a cup of tea” is a measure of time in ancient China you’ll often find in Chinese novels. It’s around 10 to 15 minutes.