Cutting the Grass

Deng Baiyi felt a chill unlike anything she had ever known, a cold wind sweeping past in fine, threadlike strands that struck straight into the seams of her bones.

A flurry of crows cried out in the night. Thunder shattered the sky, bleaching the barren ridge white.

Several zhang away stood a number of towering black shadows, mountainlike, as though they had been standing there all along.

Holding his oil-paper umbrella, Xie Xuanyi calmly looked around and said evenly, "Including the one we just killed, how many demons are there in Jade Pearl Town?"

"Three, four?"

Relying on memory, Deng Baiyi murmured back, her tone uncertain.

But there was no need to be certain now.

Because the transformed great demons currently surrounding the two of them had already exceeded that number.

Xie Xuanyi glanced over and made a simple count.

The ones that had appeared now already numbered five great demons, and in the distant mountains, demonic aura was still drawing closer without cease. Clearly, there were far more demons within Jade Pearl Town's territory than Deng Baiyi had guessed.

"This many great demons? Can you... handle them?"

Deng Baiyi inexplicably grew nervous. She reached out a hand and carefully tugged at Xie Xuanyi's sleeve.

"Great demons?"

Xie Xuanyi gave a cold laugh and shook his head.

He folded away the oil-paper umbrella and prodded the muddy ground with its tip. After he closed the umbrella, his clothes were not soaked. The rain threads falling from all over the sky, before they could reach his head, parted on their own, like countless long, slender Willow Leaves drifting in the wind.

This sight made the several surrounding "great demons" stop in their tracks.

"Transformed demons have merely gained a paltry bit of spiritual awareness, without even fully shedding their fur, yet they dare to call themselves great demons?"

Xie Xuanyi rested both hands, one palm over the other, on the umbrella handle, and looked expressionlessly at the several colossal creatures before him. "Within the borders of Great Chu, the Demon Race may not take a single step inside. Though I do not know... what exactly has happened all these years, one thing is beyond question: even if every Northern Border Guardian was dismissed from office, this iron law would never change!"

Beyond the northern border lay the demon nation. If this iron law no longer stood, then today's Jade Pearl Town would never have anyone living in it; it would long since have been trampled flat by foreign iron cavalry.

"So... you few sinful beasts could only have cultivated and attained the Dao within Great Chu's borders."

"Looking across the four borders, only the heretic cultivators of 'Yin Mountain' practice the Spirit Domination Art, taming wild beasts, awakening their spirits and opening their minds."

Leaning on his umbrella, Xie Xuanyi turned back and asked with a smile, "What was the title that beast reported before he died?"

Deng Baiyi suddenly understood.

How many great demons had "descended" upon Jade Pearl Town, and who they were, was actually not important!

What was important was where these great demons had come from!

"Heavy Mist... Yin Mountain Heavy Mist..."

Deng Baiyi murmured, reciting the honorific Tu Fei had reported.

So the one truly holding Jade Pearl Town in his palm was not these demons, but that heretic cultivator from Yin Mountain.

"Yin Mountain Heretic Cultivators dominate spirits and refine souls. Though these sinful beasts have awakened their intelligence, when all is said and done, they are all objects in his palm alone."

Xie Xuanyi said mockingly, "But this fellow Daoist called 'Heavy Mist' seems rather lacking in his cultivation of the Spirit Domination Art. As far as I know, the 'great cultivators' of Yin Mountain can split their divine sense into hundreds or thousands of strands, each controlling a different demon spirit. And when every demon spirit's body dies and its Dao vanishes, its master can draw out the threads and peel away the cocoon, retrieving its memories from before death."

Splitting divine sense into thousands, manipulating demon spirits—did such a terrifying existence truly exist in this world?

Yet from Xie Xuanyi's words...

Reaching that step seemed to be merely "nothing much."

Deng Baiyi's scalp tingled as she murmured, "Then what is your cultivation realm?"

Xie Xuanyi smiled and shook his head, not answering the question.

But Deng Baiyi vaguely knew the answer in her heart.

If Heavy Mist could cultivate to that step and glimpse Tu Fei's memories before death, he absolutely would not send the demons under him to come surround and intercept them.

His best course would be to abandon everything he owned and flee at the fastest speed possible, escaping Jade Pearl Town, escaping Northern Radiance Prefecture, and preferably escaping beyond Great Chu's border. That way, perhaps he might seize a thread of survival.

In the next instant, every trace of a smile vanished from Xie Xuanyi's face.

He looked at the several "colossal creatures" before him as if looking at ants.

Those mountainlike figures were very tall.

But there was only one mountain here.

"I'll say it again—"

With one hand, Xie Xuanyi lifted that oil-paper umbrella, aimed the tip at the figure before him, and lightly tapped.

"What I hate most in my life is Yin Mountain."

The killing intent that had condensed into substance in the air erupted completely!

With a pu sound!

The great demon at the very front moved to pounce, and then its body abruptly burst apart.

From more than ten zhang away, Xie Xuanyi had merely jabbed the tip of his umbrella lightly.

It was like he had popped a burning lantern—

A sky full of blood mist mixed with mud exploded outward!

The sight was far too impactful—more direct, more brutal than when Tu Fei had been killed in the manor earlier. Deng Baiyi was completely stunned. When a person saw something that shattered the lowest line of fear, they could not even let out an instinctive scream. She just sat there blankly in the mud, entrusting her entire life and fortune to a plain-robed youth she had met only once.

Blood mist splashed across the sky, yet not a single drop landed on either of them. Invisible waves of qi churned before Xie Xuanyi, and the filth seemed to have been flung against a wall of bronze and iron.

The next instant, the remaining four great demons blockading the desolate ridge all launched their attacks!

The world before Deng Baiyi's eyes abruptly turned dim.

But in the next instant, it became bright again.

In a single moment, the entire ridge and sky were filled with thousands upon thousands of silver threads. Thunder blazed in majestic radiance; everything had ended before it even began. The bodies of all four great demons exploded to pieces. In terms of time, the deaths of these five evil beasts were not far apart, separated by perhaps only one or two breaths. With a slap, at the far end of Deng Baiyi's vision, a long, narrow object was thrown out at an angle and stabbed into the mud, almost buried to the hilt.

It was precisely the paper umbrella Xie Xuanyi had originally folded up and held in his hand.

At this moment, the paper canopy was already torn apart, riddled with holes.

The thousands upon thousands of silver threads that had filled the ridge earlier had all been cut out by an ordinary paper umbrella.

This was not a cultivator's lifebound weapon, nor did it possess any special power... It simply could not withstand the force of Xie Xuanyi's sword strike.

After barely being used once, it had already reached its limit and was utterly ruined.

"When a sword is drawn, someone must die. When cutting weeds, the roots must be pulled out."

Xie Xuanyi watched the shattered corpses raining down from the sky with crackling sounds, his expression unchanged. He silently extended a hand, and Deng Baiyi, still dazed, somehow handed over the paper umbrella in her own hand as if possessed.

"Even if I had no grudge with Yinshan, for something like this, I still wouldn't leave anyone alive."

Xie Xuanyi took the paper umbrella, lightly weighed it in his hand, and spun it in a sword flourish.

He lifted his eyes to glance at the dim sky and said calmly, "Go back to the manor first. After I'm done killing, I'll return. Give me your answer then."

"I..."

Deng Baiyi had just opened her mouth, wanting to say something.

Another thunderclap rose over the mountain ridge, and the plain-robed figure before her vanished like a ghost, without a trace.

(The signing status finally got fixed. Thank you to "Ai Ai Ta Jia Da Ke'ai Si Si" for the Alliance Master reward, mwah! During the new book period, updates are tentatively twice a day, at noon! Charge!)