Qin Haoxuan wanted to step forward and interrupt him, but this spiritual technique had clearly anticipated that its lengthy gathering of spiritual power would leave its caster vulnerable to close attack. The instant it activated, a shell-like protective force had already formed around Yuan Shanxiang's body.
"Thousand Cuts!" At the sight of the daggers floating before Yuan Shanxiang, a seasoned old hand cried out in alarm. Thousand Cuts was one of the more powerful spiritual techniques that Menial Disciples could learn, and it placed great demands on its user. What it tested was precise control over spiritual power; only by controlling every wisp down to the finest detail could one wield it perfectly.
At its highest level, this spiritual technique could conjure a thousand daggers. The stronger its user, the greater the daggers' killing power! With Yuan Shanxiang's current strength, he could only conjure fifty daggers, but that was more than enough to deal with Qin Haoxuan!
Under the flickering yellow firelight, the daggers condensed from spiritual power gleamed with cold light. Even the seasoned old hands could not help shuddering, each convinced that Qin Haoxuan was dead for certain this time!
An unprecedented sense of crisis surged into Qin Haoxuan's heart. His heart pounded wildly. The fifty daggers hanging motionless in the air were like fifty death warrants; one wrong move, and they would truly shoot him full of holes.
A teasing smile rested on Yuan Shanxiang's lips. With a flick of his right hand, one dagger shot probing toward Qin Haoxuan.
The dagger flew incredibly fast, yet under Qin Haoxuan's fully focused gaze, he could vaguely make out its trajectory. Just as it was about to strike his heart, he abruptly leaned left and narrowly dodged the blade.
Yuan Shanxiang gave Qin Haoxuan not even half a second to catch his breath. After he dodged the first dagger, three more flashing with cold light shot toward him from the left, center, and right. The daggers on either side swept in wide arcs to pincer Qin Haoxuan's ribs, while the middle one still pointed directly at his heart.
"Such rare control over techniques! He actually made spiritual-power daggers turn while moving at such high speed!"
Amid the old hands' exclamations, the smile on Yuan Shanxiang's lips deepened. So there were still people here who knew quality. Today was the first time he had revealed this trump card, and it had immediately won so much praise. His three years of secluded training had not been in vain.
Three streaks of cold light shot at him from three directions. Qin Haoxuan could barely see their incoming paths, but had no better way to evade them. He immediately crouched down and rolled like a lazy donkey. Though he got himself covered in dust, he narrowly escaped again.
With a sharp thud, the three daggers actually buried themselves an inch deep into the rock wall, which was harder than iron.
"Let's see you dodge again!" Yuan Shanxiang was furious after missing twice in a row. He spread his arms, and the more than forty daggers hovering before him began spinning at high speed with a series of buzzing sounds. Centered on Qin Haoxuan, they shot at him from every possible angle, leaving the watching old hands dumbfounded.
Controlling forty-six daggers at once to attack an opponent along forty-six different trajectories—some flying straight, some circling around, some soaring above Qin Haoxuan before plunging down from on high—was no different from laying down a net that covered heaven and earth. Even with wings, he would find it hard to escape.
This ability to control techniques was truly monstrous. Their gazes toward Yuan Shanxiang immediately gained a few shades of worship. For such a burly, rough-hewn man to cultivate control as meticulous as fine hairs was indeed no easy feat. Most people were already remarkable if they could control twenty daggers at once.
The display of control Yuan Shanxiang had shown not only stunned the old hands, but even the two enforcement disciples peeking through the iron gate felt inferior. They too were in the Immortal Seedling Realm Fifth Leaf. By their own estimation, they could control at most thirty daggers at once, and that was only simple straight-line control without any tricks. If they wanted every dagger to carve a different arc from a different angle to attack an enemy as Yuan Shanxiang had done, the difficulty would double and the number they could control would have to be cut in half, to fifteen.
Amid the cold glint of those daggers, Qin Haoxuan's mind was more focused than ever. At that moment, there was only one belief in his heart: evade this net-like barrage of daggers and survive. Even if not for himself, he had to live for his parents! So long as he lived, even if he became the lowest of Menial Disciples, his parents could continue receiving the two hundred taels of silver paid to Attendants each year and no longer worry over making a living!
Live! Live! I have to live!
Driven by that fierce desire to survive, all distracting thoughts vanished from Qin Haoxuan's heart, and his mind became crystal clear. The Mud Palace Pill suddenly jolted. The golden light that had erupted in his mind during his fight with Yuan Shanhu exploded once more. Instantly, he became brimming with energy, as though a layer of white gauze had been lifted from before his eyes. That unprecedented clarity returned; he could even see every speck of dust on the ground in the distance.
To Qin Haoxuan's eyes, the forty-six daggers speeding toward him moved as slowly as crawling turtles. He could clearly see the paths they took as they turned through the air. But Qin Haoxuan also knew that although he could see their approach clearly, he might not be able to evade them. His body was still too weak.
So his gaze turned once more toward Yuan Shanxiang.
As Qin Haoxuan concentrated with all his might, an unnoticed glimmer flashed through his eyes. He sensed within Yuan Shanxiang's mind a tiny golden light like a young sprout. It was much thicker than Yuan Shanhu's golden light, but compared to the immense golden light in his own mind, broad as a river, it was still utterly incomparable.
Focusing all his attention on controlling the golden light in his mind, Qin Haoxuan tried countless times. Then, with a sudden motion, he split off a strand of golden light and shot it outward. It instantly pierced Yuan Shanxiang's mind and swallowed the wisp of golden light within it.
In that instant, Yuan Shanxiang felt as though his brain were splitting apart from pain. Heaven, earth, and time itself seemed to stop moving. His thoughts and consciousness went blank in an instant, and he became dazed and vacant.
At that critical moment, the forty-six daggers that were about to turn Qin Haoxuan into a sieve lost control. They suddenly halted in midair, then fell straight down. Before even reaching the ground, they turned into ownerless wisps of spiritual power and vanished without a trace.
Had it been even a little slower, Qin Haoxuan truly would have become a sieve.
In everyone else's eyes, Yuan Shanxiang had suddenly gone blank as well after Qin Haoxuan, frightened senseless, had affected him somehow. Then... then they could not understand what had happened either.
The watching old hands racked their brains, yet could not figure out why Yuan Shanxiang had suddenly stopped.
Had he run out of strength? Looking at Yuan Shanxiang's effortless manner and vigorous bearing, how could that be possible!
Was he afraid of being expelled from the sect for killing someone? What a joke. Once the bow was drawn, there was no turning back. After those daggers had been launched, forcing them to stop would inevitably trigger spiritual-power backlash. At best, his meridians would all rupture; at worst, his qi and blood would flow in reverse and kill him.
Each explanation seemed to make sense, yet none of them truly did.
Just as the two enforcement disciples peeking through the iron gate and the old hands wracked their brains in confusion, a horrifying scene unfolded.
Qin Haoxuan, who had nearly been shot into a sieve moments ago, suddenly leaped up and charged before Yuan Shanxiang like an arrow released from the bowstring. He drove a vicious punch into Yuan Shanxiang's nose bridge.
The vacant-faced Yuan Shanxiang immediately began streaming blood from his nose and fell to the ground with the blow. His huge body slammed into the earth, sending dust flying.
The situation reversed in an instant. Qin Haoxuan pounced on him without the slightest courtesy, raining a barrage of old-fashioned punches down over Yuan Shanxiang's head and face.
Without consciousness and unable to draw on spiritual power to protect his body, Yuan Shanxiang was at most somewhat stronger than an ordinary person. Under Qin Haoxuan's barrage of punches, his body turned a riot of purple and red, bruises blooming everywhere. His face swelled even uglier than Old Ye's had been.
The enforcement disciples who had watched Qin Haoxuan's two fights looked at one another. Had they not seen it with their own eyes, they would surely have thought it was a joke someone had made up.
An immortal cultivator—an immortal cultivator in the Immortal Seedling Realm Fifth Leaf—was being beaten so savagely by Qin Haoxuan, who was still an ordinary mortal. It was not even that he could not resist; for some unknown reason, he had suddenly become blank and motionless, without any awareness, letting himself be beaten and slaughtered like a target.
After striking Yuan Shanxiang more than ten times, Qin Haoxuan remembered that Yuan Shanxiang possessed enough strength at the Immortal Seedling Realm Fifth Leaf to injure him. Once he regained consciousness, he would still be a tremendous threat!
Since he had started, he might as well see it through. Qin Haoxuan's blows grew increasingly vicious, especially as he gave Yuan Shanxiang's wrists and ankles special attention.
A series of cracks rang out as Yuan Shanxiang's leg bones were broken!
If you are ruthless, I will be unjust! This had always been Qin Haoxuan's guiding principle. Mercy toward an enemy was cruelty toward oneself—especially toward an enemy who wanted him dead!
Qin Haoxuan was in the middle of enjoying himself. After breaking Yuan Shanxiang's legs, he broke the bones in his left hand as well. Just as he was about to cripple his right hand, he suddenly sensed Yuan Shanxiang's consciousness fighting back. Spiritual power began flowing through his meridians again and shielded his body, making Qin Haoxuan's punches feel as though they were striking a stone slab. The recoil made his fists ache faintly.
This was a sign that he was about to wake up!
The notes Xu Yu had sent over the past few days also contained some explanations of divine sense. Qin Haoxuan became increasingly certain that his earlier attack had been a divine-sense attack. It was simply that he was too weak; at the end of the day, he was still a mortal who had only just stepped onto the path of cultivation and did not understand the tricks of divine-sense attacks, so naturally he could not display their power. Otherwise, how could Yuan Shanxiang have awakened so quickly? If he understood some of the techniques of divine-sense attacks, he might even have been able to directly erase Yuan Shanxiang's soul. Then even if Yuan Shanxiang did not die, he would become an idiot.
Qin Haoxuan had barely leaped away when Yuan Shanxiang woke from his stupor. Yuan Shanhu had taken nearly a hundred breaths to regain consciousness, while Yuan Shanxiang recovered in only twenty. It seemed the stronger an enemy's soul, the faster it recovered. If he encountered someone stronger, then with his divine-sense attack that lacked all technique, he feared he could only stun them for a moment—or at most interfere with them.
After waking, Yuan Shanxiang felt pain throughout his body. Seeing the bruises covering him, his face swollen nearly into a pig's head, and waves of agony shooting from his left hand and both legs, which would not obey him at all, he realized that this mortal had actually beaten his limbs until the bones broke!
What was going on? A moment ago, his head had inexplicably erupted in unbearable pain. Then it was as though he had fallen into a bottomless abyss and lost all consciousness and sensation. By the time he struggled awake, he had become like this.
A dignified cultivator of the Immortal Seedling Realm Fifth Leaf, who ranked among the middle and upper tiers of Taichu Sect's vast body of Menial Disciples, had been beaten into fractures by a mortal who had only just entered the sect. What was more, he had been beaten in front of so many people. His face had been utterly swept away. If word spread, he would surely become everyone's laughingstock. How could he ever keep his footing in the sect afterward?
P.S. Where are the recommendation votes... Let me see you...
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