"Is that a shooting star?"
Chen Xian narrowed his old eyes as he watched the red streak race across the sky from southeast to northwest.
He muttered, "They say a shooting star falling means some noble person is worn out from traveling. Who's in such a hurry in the middle of the night?"
"What noble person? What shooting star?"
Shangguan Hongyue, who was just about to finish gnawing on an entire pork knuckle, heard him and glanced up.
The next second, the pork bone clattered to the ground. She shot to her feet. "No! That's not right. It's not a shooting star!"
A faint silver glow instantly covered her eyes. It was the universal Sword Master Realm technique, the Sword Eye, which let her see through the night and make out distant shapes.
Her gaze was like a sword, cleaving through layer upon layer of clouds and mist. At last, she saw the true form of the streaking "shooting star."
"That... that's one of our disciples' protective sword light!"
"Oh no! He's burning his blood essence to force his sword onward. He's about to crash!"
Shangguan Hongyue's pretty face turned deathly pale.
Chen Xian's heart gave a jolt, too. "What happened?"
"I have to go help!"
The flying sword leaning against the table shot into the air. Shangguan Hongyue was about to step onto it when Chen Xian cried out, "Take this old man with you!"
Shangguan Hongyue froze for a moment, then realized the senior had no flying Dao Artifact. She pressed her lips together. "Senior, forgive me! Saving someone comes first!"
Chen Xian felt a tightness around his old waist as a soft yet powerful arm wrapped around him and carried him onto the flying sword, a meter above the ground.
"Hey, hey, slow down! My lumbar disc..."
Before he could finish, his feet were already planted on the flying sword, which shimmered with silver light. The sword suddenly widened. As soon as he got his footing, it sprang into the air and shot away like an arrow loosed from a bow.
The two of them and the sword quickly vanished into the distance, leaving the villagers gaping in astonishment.
In the sixty years since Chen Xian had transmigrated here, this was the first time he had truly flown.
The experience was awful.
The howling wind pried his lips apart and poured down his throat through the two gaps where his teeth were missing. His wispy hair and beard whipped around like weeds in a storm.
If not for the strange force sucking at his feet and keeping him firmly atop the flying sword, he would have fallen from the sky and died long ago.
But the intense feeling of weightlessness had his stomach churning. He nearly vomited up all the wine he had just drunk, but managed to hold it in.
Fortunately, he was standing behind Shangguan Hongyue, so she couldn't see how disheveled he looked. Otherwise, his "senior" air would have been completely ruined.
Her red skirt snapped in the wind, its hem slapping Chen Xian's old face. A flash of white caught his eye. He took a closer look, and his face turned red. "So cultivators wear safety shorts too."
But Shangguan Hongyue was focused on driving the flying sword at full speed toward the place where the "shooting star" was plunging. She had no time to pay attention to him.
Before long, the "shooting star" crashed down, and its light vanished.
Squinting against the gale, Chen Xian managed to see that the "star" had fallen in Center Town.
Center Town had a simple, self-explanatory name. Dozens of villages surrounded it, making it the hub of the human settlements within hundreds of miles—and the region's only commercial center.
At this hour, the shops should have been closed and every household dark and asleep. Instead, the town was ablaze with light.
A moment ago, a thunderous crash had shaken the place, and the bluestone plaza in the center of town now had a crater five meters across.
Countless townspeople rushed over carrying torches and oil lamps. Their faces were full of fear as they slowly gathered around the crater.
At its center, the hard bluestone paving had shattered into rubble, and earth had been thrown up around a figure lying face-down amid the wreckage, covered in blood. A huge sword giving off a faint glow seemed to be trapped beneath him.
"Good heavens! Who is that? Did Heaven strike him down?"
"What do you mean, Heaven? I think the legendary Saint must've fallen from the sky and gotten hurt!"
"A Saint, and that weak?"
"Shh! Look at the huge sword under him. It's longer and wider than our bench at home. He must be one of those cultivators from the storytellers' tales, right?"
"Cultivators? Aren't those people only in storybooks?"
"..."
The townspeople pointed and whispered, but not one of them dared to approach and investigate. They were all waiting for the town's law-enforcement constables to arrive.
Center Town had a population of tens of thousands, with a well-established set of rules and a law enforcement office.
They waited for quite some time, but no constables showed up. Instead, a silver streak tore through the night sky and landed steadily at the edge of the crater.
The onlookers hastily backed away, and the crowd began to whisper. "Two more! Are they enemies or friends?"
Shangguan Hongyue ignored the chatter around her. Before the flying sword had even stopped, she leapt off and rushed to the person in the crater.
Chen Xian climbed down from the sword at a leisurely pace. Only when he felt solid ground beneath his feet did he finally breathe a sigh of relief. Taking advantage of the firelight, he examined the person in the crater.
Even an old man who had seen his share of life and death found the person's condition horrifying.
He wore a long robe, red like Shangguan Hongyue's skirt. The color must have been a signature feature of the Xuanyun Sword Sect's disciples' uniforms.
There were more than ten wounds on his body, some gaping and even going straight through. Blood poured from them, staining his robe a shocking crimson. His left arm was broken, the joint twisted backward at an exaggerated angle.
The wounds had different shapes, suggesting he had been attacked with various weapons.
Chen Xian approached and looked him over carefully before reaching his conclusion.
"Senior Brother Lin? It's Senior Brother Lin Xiaoyan!"
Shangguan Hongyue somehow produced a handkerchief and briefly wiped the blood from the man's face. Then she cried out in shock.
A wooden box appeared in her hand. With trembling fingers, she opened it and took out a green pill.
Seeing that Senior Brother Lin was unconscious and unable to swallow, she crushed the pill into powder and used her Dao Power to send it into his mouth.
Even from more than a meter away, Chen Xian could smell the rich, herbal fragrance. The pill's medicinal power must have been extraordinary.
Sure enough, as soon as the pill entered his mouth, almost all the wounds on Lin Xiaoyan's body stopped bleeding at once. A few breaths later, he began coughing violently.
"He's awake! He's awake!"
"Good heavens! What a miracle pill!"
The onlookers gasped in amazement. He had been so badly injured, yet they had brought him back from the brink. These legendary cultivators truly had extraordinary methods.
"Cough... cough, cough!"
After spitting out several mouthfuls of black blood, Lin Xiaoyan slowly opened his eyes. Through his blurred vision, he caught sight of a familiar crimson uniform worn by an Inner Sect disciple.
His gaze gradually came together and settled on the face before him.
"Hong... Junior Sister Hongyue?"
A faint look of joy crossed his face, but his voice was as low as a broken bellows.
"It's me! Senior Brother Lin, what happened? You're a heavy-sword master at the sixth level of the Sword Master Realm. Who could have hurt you like this?"
Shangguan Hongyue's eyes were red.
Lin Xiaoyan didn't answer right away. Instead, he struggled to turn his neck and saw Chen Xian standing nearby, one hand resting on his cane.
He paused. Though the old man's cultivation appeared to be only at the first level of the Dao Disciple Realm, the faint aura he gave off was so imposing that even Lin Xiaoyan's heavy-sword intent felt suppressed.
Could this be one of the sect's steward elders?
Lin Xiaoyan looked as if he had found his salvation. "S-Senior!" He grabbed Shangguan Hongyue's sleeve with his free hand, his eyes wide as though he were experiencing a final rally before death. "I must report... to you!"
Seeing his blood surge, Shangguan Hongyue hurriedly held him down. "Senior Brother, don't rush. Take your time!"
"The Hanging Sword Formation No. 73 in the Mortal District has been breached!"
Lin Xiaoyan's words exploded beside Shangguan Hongyue's ears like a thunderclap. "The Blood Demon Sect... those bastards... they're blood-sacrificing the entire Mortal District! They've already slaughtered... three cities!"
Before he could finish, Shangguan Hongyue stiffened as if struck by lightning.
The Hanging Sword Formations were the barriers the Sword Sect had set up to protect the mortals in the Xiongguan Mountain Range from Blood Beasts and demonic cultivators.
If a formation was breached, it meant that a once-pure land had become a killing ground for demonic cultivators.
And Blood Demons were the cruelest kind of demonic cultivator. She could almost see the mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
"Junior Sister, take this..."
With the last of his strength, Lin Xiaoyan pulled out a jade token carved with mysterious runes.
A faint purple light flowed across the token, and it carried an uncanny aura, as if it could pierce through the boundary between the real and the illusory.
"An Array-Piercing Talisman!"
Shangguan Hongyue recognized it at once. With the Array-Piercing Talisman, she could pass directly through the Hanging Sword Formation instead of waiting until tomorrow at the quarter-hour of the Horse.
"Hurry... hurry back to the sect... the Blood Demon Sect's pursuers are right behind..."
With those final words, Lin Xiaoyan's head lolled to one side, and he passed out again.
Chen Xian was dumbfounded.
What did he mean?
Could they leave right now?
What do you mean, there are pursuers behind us?