Shangguan Hongyue clutched the Array-Piercing Talisman tightly in her hand, panic and helplessness filling her eyes. Instinctively, she looked toward the only senior present.
"Senior, the 73rd Hanging Sword Array was guarded in shifts by three Dao Masters at the ninth level and an elder at the Dao Venerable level, yet it's been breached. What should we do next?"
"Should we go support the 73rd Hanging Sword Array?"
Little did he know, when Chen Xian heard this, he was panicking even more. But he also knew that now, more than ever, he had to keep up his persona as a "senior"!
He slowly raised his head and gazed up at the sky. The late-autumn night wind swept past, stirring his gray-white hair, as he let out a long sigh filled with endless desolation.
"Alas... I'm old."
Shangguan Hongyue's heart clenched. She didn't know what Senior meant by that.
"If this were the old days, I'd have taken you, girl, straight to the Blood Demon Sect and slaughtered them until heaven and earth turned dark!"
"But alas..."
Chen Xian paused, glancing at Shangguan Hongyue, whose face was alight with excitement. "Now I'm old and frail, with less than a tenth of my strength left. We must proceed with caution."
Shangguan Hongyue nodded. Though she wanted to fight her way to the 73rd Hanging Sword Array, she knew she wasn't strong enough, and Senior didn't seem to be in any shape to fight either.
"So, girl, take him with you. We'll return to the sect first!"
Chen Xian knew perfectly well that there was no point talking about supporting that 73rd Hanging Sword Array. Even a Sword Master at the sixth level like Lin Xiaoyan had been beaten half to death, which meant the pursuers behind them were certainly more than he and Shangguan Hongyue could handle.
We couldn't go throwing our lives away.
The most urgent thing was to reach the Xuanyun Sword Sect as quickly as possible.
Staying alive came first!
"All right! Senior... let's go now!"
Chen Xian's calm demeanor had helped Shangguan Hongyue settle down completely. She knew she had to report this to the sect first.
She stowed the heavy sword on the ground in her Mustard Seed Bag, then hoisted the badly wounded Lin Xiaoyan onto her back. With one hand, she beckoned, and a flying sword rose before her.
"Not again!" Chen Xian's old face instantly turned into a bitter gourd.
Shangguan Hongyue didn't rush to step onto the flying sword. Instead, she formed a hand seal and chanted a few incomprehensible syllables.
The flying sword, only three fingers wide, suddenly expanded to nearly two and a half meters long and one meter wide, like a door panel.
"She can do that too?" Chen Xian felt a little more at ease.
At least this was much more reassuring than standing on a flying sword barely a palm's width across.
She first set Lin Xiaoyan on it, then hoisted Chen Xian aboard.
"Senior, I'll have to put all my effort into controlling the sword. Please look after Senior Brother Lin!"
Chen Xian nodded. He saw Shangguan Hongyue pop a pill into her mouth.
"Law enforcement! Make way!"
"Constable Wang is here!"
"Constable Wang, the person who fell from the sky is up ahead, and then two more people came flying over!"
The crowd stirred as a middle-aged man in a dark blue constable's uniform, a long saber at his waist, made his way through them.
Before he could even get a good look at the scene in the crater, he saw an "iron door panel" carrying three people fly into the sky and speed away amid the crowd's cries of alarm.
"So cultivators really do exist in this world!"
Constable Wang's eyes widened in shock. He remembered the stories his centenarian great-great-great-grandfather had told his great-great-grandfather, who had passed them down to his great-grandfather, then to his grandfather, and finally to him.
But why did the old man on that door panel look like Grandpa Chen, the candied hawthorn seller he knew?
Before he could think it through, three blood-red streaks suddenly appeared from the opposite direction, the way the cultivators had gone.
The bloody streaks moved incredibly fast. In barely a few blinks, they crashed onto the plaza.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The bluestone plaza, already cratered, now had three more craters.
The shockwaves knocked down many people, including Constable Wang.
But Constable Wang was a martial artist in the prime of his life, and he reacted quickly. He sprang to his feet in one fluid motion, his hand already on the hilt at his waist.
"Three more cultivators?"
Constable Wang narrowed his eyes and took a couple of steps forward, trying to make out the three figures in the dust.
A pungent, fishy stench swept over him, and he instinctively held his breath.
As the dust gradually cleared, his eyes suddenly flew open. With a metallic ring, he drew his saber and shouted, "Everyone, get back!"
The three who had landed had fangs and horns! Or rather, they weren't human at all, but some kind of humanoid monsters!
Yet these three monsters could speak.
"Xue Hong, that fake Array-Piercing Talisman you made is too slow at getting us through the array."
"That kid got away. The elder will surely punish us."
"Big brother, should we keep chasing him?"
"..."
The three strange creatures chatted as if no one else were there, seemingly unconcerned by the ring of ordinary people around them.
After a brief silence, the leader—a white-faced, bull-nosed monster with a pair of golden horns—spoke.
"Forget it. We're too close to the Xuanyun Sword Sect here. If we run into an elder from the sect on their way over, the three of us will be done for."
The other two monsters nodded in unison.
Then all three turned their eyes toward Constable Wang, who stood with his saber drawn.
Constable Wang's scalp prickled. But seeing that some of the townspeople behind him hadn't yet left, he steeled himself and faced the three monsters.
"Who are you?"
The three ignored Constable Wang's question. Instead, strange smiles spread across their faces.
"Heh heh heh... This mortal's got some nerve. He sees us Blood Demons and doesn't even run."
"Big brother, there are plenty of mortals here. How about the three of us get ourselves some Blood Food?"
The speaker was a Blood Demon with a silver horn growing from his forehead. Purple, bulging veins covered his face, making him look horrifying.
The Golden-Horned Blood Demon looked tempted, but after glancing at the sky, he hesitated and shook his head. "Forget it. The Hanging Sword Formation hasn't been broken yet. If we attack, the Formation Spirit might detect us."
"Big brother's right. Xue Hong, if that piece of junk Array-Piercing Talisman of yours fails, we'll all die inside the Hanging Sword Formation."
The silent, blue-faced Blood Demon with curling ram's horns rumbled his agreement.
"Fine!" Xue Hong, the silver-horned Blood Demon, shrugged, looking regretful.
He stared sinisterly at the saber-wielding mortal before him and licked his lips with his forked tongue. "Such rich blood... what a pity."
"Let's go! This is just a mortal town. We'll hurry back to the 73rd Hanging Sword Array. There are still several huge cities, each with a million mortals, waiting for us to hunt."
The Golden-Horned Blood Demon patted him on the shoulder.
Then three streaks of blood shot into the sky, quickly vanishing in the direction from which they had come.
Clang!
The saber slipped from Constable Wang's hand. His legs gave way, and he collapsed to the ground, feeling as if his insides had gone completely damp. Sweat drenched him from head to toe.
He knew he had just escaped death.
A few bold townspeople who hadn't gone far waited until the bloody streaks had completely disappeared from the horizon, then hurried over to help him up.
"Constable Wang, are you all right?"
"Wang Wei! Wang Wei! What's wrong with you?"
Supported under both arms, Constable Wang stared blankly ahead. He could only keep murmuring:
"The world's changing. The world's changing..."