Fairy Su, Elegant and Unstained by Dust
The scarlet couplet was reflected in Qi Lin's eyes.
"This sky-piercing sword must be the black wooden sword formed from our ancestors' spirit tablets."
No sooner had he spoken than the couplet on the giant sword gradually faded. Then a great mass of golden characters began to emerge across the blade, arranged from top to bottom in ten columns!
They were the inscriptions from the ten ancestors' spirit tablets.
The sky-piercing sword was like ten immense black-and-gold tombs stacked atop one another, a historical monument towering between heaven and earth!
The sight made Qi Lin's blood burn all the hotter.
The golden tomb inscriptions also seemed to be some kind of seal, covering the space within the blade.
"What's that?"
Qi Lin was still elated when he suddenly saw a scarlet lantern emerge from within the blade behind the golden tomb inscription of the first ancestor, Qi Tiandao, and press itself against the inscription!
"The Hundred-Eyed God!"
Qi Lin's mind buzzed.
It was no lantern at all!
It was an enormous eyeball, a scarlet eyeball shaped like a red lantern!
It grew at the end of a tentacle like a giant blood vessel, staring at Qi Lin with a ghastly look.
He had seen this image more than a thousand times on the first page of the clan genealogy!
The genealogy recorded:
In the three hundred and fiftieth year before the Divine Descendant calendar, the Heavenly Gate sent down an ancient remnant beast that called itself the Hundred-Eyed True God. Its body was like a giant heart, towering like a mountain, and a hundred vessels spread from it across the sky like blood vessels. A scarlet giant eye hung from the end of each vessel, a hundred eyes in all suspended in the heavens. Like blood-red lanterns, they shone upon the mortal world, or like a hundred crimson suns blazing overhead. Wherever the light of their pupils fell, the world became a blood prison. Living beings and mortals alike prostrated themselves in worship, their minds bewitched and bewildered. They threw themselves into its mouth, willing to be devoured.
The Hundred-Eyed God that the first ancestor, Qi Tiandao, had slain in fury, whose divine blood had flowed across three thousand miles of land, was this very creature.
"Why would the Hundred-Eyed God, dead for ten thousand years, appear inside the first ancestor's spirit tablet?" Qi Lin could barely breathe.
Thump! Thump!
The hundred-odd scarlet lanterns crowded against the golden tomb inscription, filling the gaps between its characters with eyeballs. Blood dripped from the lanterns onto the inscription, hissing as black smoke rose.
"Hungry!"
The scarlet lantern eyeballs stared fixedly at Qi Lin, their red light shining upon him like a nightmare.
In that instant, Qi Lin fell into a sea of blood!
Corpses and bones floated before his eyes. Mutilated bodies, severed arms, ruined legs, hearts, lungs, and livers tangled and knotted together, bound by great quantities of thick, congealed black blood. Faces filled with terror, unwillingness, despair, and pain all seemed to be looking at Qi Lin.
"Your body is dead and your Dao has vanished, yet you dare frighten my descendant?"
At that thundering roar, golden flames erupted across the vast sea of blood.
Qi Lin's vision cleared, and he saw the golden tomb inscription on the sky-piercing sword monument of giant tombs form a great golden hand. It seized the Hundred-Eyed God, and raging flames scorched it, making its hundred-odd lantern eyes shriek, struggle, and writhe in anguish.
Buzz!
The instant the gore was burned away, the great golden hand seized a scarlet, eye-like crystal and held it before Qi Lin.
"Qi Lin."
The aged, weary call echoed in Qi Lin's ears.
"First Ancestor!"
Qi Lin's eyes reddened as he looked at the great golden hand before him.
"Where the pupils' light falls, all plunge into a blood prison."
A call spanning ten thousand years was joined in this moment through their bloodline.
"This is the elementary Divine Vein, Blood-Shining Hell..."
The great golden hand pressed the scarlet crystal into Qi Lin's eye. "Child, with humanity's survival at stake, if you wish to break the deadlock, you must first put yourself on the board!"
The moment the blood-colored crystal entered his eye, Qi Lin's world fell utterly silent.
Buzz!
The great golden hand before him dissipated completely.
Nine golden tomb inscriptions remained on the sky-piercing sword monument of giant tombs. Within the spirit tablet divine prison, the "gods" they contained were ghostly, savage, or wearing sinister grins.
Qi Lin's consciousness grew hazy.
"The young master is dead!"
Suddenly, piercing screams jolted Qi Lin awake from his "dream."
He looked ahead!
The ancestral hall, the townspeople, the Xiao Clan members, the billowing black smoke... all were still there.
Everything that had just happened had been as if time stood still.
"The young master died here. If we don't take him down, we'll all lose our lives when we go back."
The terrified faces of the hundred-odd Xiao Clan members abruptly turned fierce and cruel.
They tightened their grips on their blades and surrounded Qi Lin.
At that moment, the black-clad boy before them slowly raised his head amid the thick smoke, an utterly unremarkable black wooden sword in his hand.
"Ah!"
The hundred-odd Xiao Clan members were scared out of their wits once more!
They saw that the boy's eyes were scarlet and seeping blood. Within his two pupils seemed to lurk tiny crimson eyes, some looking left, others right. There were a full hundred of the little blood-red eyes, all crowded together into a pair of bloodshot eyes that sent chills down their spines.
"The sky!"
The Xiao Clan members let out even more piercing screams. The sky they saw had been dyed like a sea of blood, with over a hundred bleeding suns hanging above. They also resembled scarlet eyeballs belonging to the heavens, shedding countless drops of blood that poured down as a torrential rain. The entire world had become a scarlet hell.
What a terrifying sight!
Was that boy human, or was he the god of death from the blood prison?
The Xiao Clan members were so frightened that their eyes rolled back and their legs convulsed!
"What's wrong with them?"
The people of Mystic City had been worried about Qi Lin, but now they were all bewildered.
Qi Lin hadn't changed much at all!
How had these people been frightened so badly?
"Where the pupils' light falls, all plunge into a blood prison."
At that moment, Qi Lin understood what the first ancestor had meant.
What he was using now was the elementary Divine Vein, "Blood-Shining Hell."
The Xiao Clan members had all plunged into the blood prison, but the townspeople were unharmed.
This move doesn't seem to increase combat power, but in a life-or-death fight, it's immensely useful.
Besides, this was only an elementary Divine Vein. Who knew how it might improve later?
Most importantly, Qi Lin still had nine similar spirit tablet divine prisons on his sword!
Now that Xiao Tianyang is dead, the Xiao Clan will surely leave me without a burial place, and the tens of thousands of poor people in Pingyang will likely be unable to escape disaster... I have no way back.
His eyes scarlet, Qi Lin gripped the black wooden sword and charged at the Xiao Clan members to slaughter them.
"Then you can all die!"
Like a god of death, he left flying bodies and splattering blood wherever he went!
To the townspeople, Qi Lin was chopping them down like melons and vegetables.
But what the Xiao Clan members saw was the arrival of the god of death!
A bloody hell filled the world, giant eyes dripped blood from the sky, and mutilated corpses surrounded them like a sea...
This was not merely a pupil technique, but control over the mind.
Pfft! Pfft!
Inside the thick smoke, the Xiao Clan members fell dead one after another!
The few who dared fight back also had their minds and wills badly affected, and their heads fell all the same!
Before long,
Xiao Clan corpses littered the ground at Qi Lin's feet!
All dead!
"A worthy descendant of the old Qi family-brave and righteous!"
The people of Mystic City watched Qi Lin furiously cut down more than a hundred Xiao Clan members, their eyes brimming with tears, moved and full of reverence.
A thirteen-year-old child had held up their sky!
"Sister Xiaoyu, Grandpa Yang..."
Qi Lin hurried toward the crowd.
"The bleeding has stopped. Their lives aren't in danger for now, but Xiaoyu probably won't be able to speak again, and old Yang... alas!"
The townspeople sighed deeply, their faces downcast.
"Divine Capital! Xiao Clan!"
Qi Lin looked at Grandpa Yang, wrapped in layers of bandages, and Sister Xiaoyu, terrified and dazed. He gripped the black wooden sword tightly, blood-red Qi surging in his eyes.
Perhaps, with Xiao Tianyang dead, the calamity had only just begun.
"Xiao Lin!"
Before long, a soft, lovely female voice suddenly called from afar.
Hearing it, the townspeople looked up in delight.
"It's her!"
"She's finally here..."
Before them, a woman approached in haste, compassion on her face.
She wore a flowing white dress of snow gauze, graceful as an immortal. Her dark hair cascaded to her waist, and her jade bones and ice-like skin were untouched by dust. Beside the plainly dressed townspeople, she was like a fairy.
"Fairy Su!"
That was indeed what the townspeople called her.
She was the daughter of Mystic City's city lord, named Su Lianxi. Beautiful and kindhearted, she often aided the poor and was deeply respected by the people of Pingyang.
Whenever she came to help the townspeople, Qi Lin would guide her and carry supplies for her.
Now, looking at the Xiao Clan corpses covering the ground, she asked the crowd, her pretty face somewhat pale, "Who killed these Xiao Clan members?"
"Sister Su, it was a tall, thin evil man. He looked to be in his forties!"
Qi Lin quietly wiped the blood from the black wooden sword as he spoke, seemingly a little afraid.
The townspeople had been about to answer Su Lianxi, but when Qi Lin beat them to it, they all froze for a moment.
Then they silently closed their mouths.
"Oh?"
Su Lianxi stepped forward until her pretty face was less than three inches from Qi Lin's, her rich fragrance filling his nose.
She gazed deeply into Qi Lin's eyes and asked:
"Did that evil man have any other distinguishing features?"