The long wind drifted on, yellow sand filling the air.
A young woman dressed like an ordinary wanderer of the martial world rode slowly into view at the end of the official road.
Her skin was smooth as jade, utterly out of place amid the dusky yellow dust around her.
Jiang Yuechu frowned and urged her horse onward, leisurely entering Jincheng County.
Though she had long been prepared for the fact that the cities of this world could never be as prosperous as those of her previous life.
The ghost-city desolation before her still exceeded her expectations.
Not a soul could be seen on the streets, while the shops on either side stood with doors and windows wide open.
If not for the words "Jincheng" outside the county seat, she would truly have thought she had come to the wrong place.
Could the demon have already left?
The thought had only just arisen.
When an angry shout, accompanied by the clash of metal, rang out from the depths of the long street.
Jiang Yuechu's pupils contracted. She flipped down from her horse, casually tying it to a pillar nearby.
Then, with one hand resting on her sword hilt, she silently crept toward the sound.
Clang—
A blade cried out, clear and cold as a dragon's roar.
Xu Nian said not another word. He leaped down from horseback, and the Horizontal Blade in his hand carved an arc through the dim yellow light.
His qi and blood surged, pouring into the blade.
At the sight, the Pig Demon actually let out a savage grin. With a backhanded motion, it somehow produced a rust-covered longsword.
"Courting death!"
The blade arrived.
The sword met it.
Sparks flew in every direction.
The next instant, that rust-covered longsword snapped apart with a sharp sound.
Half the blade flew away and thudded into a distant wall.
Xu Nian landed, his Horizontal Blade angled downward, his body utterly motionless.
"Good!"
"Lord Xu is mighty!"
Several Demon Suppression Bureau Imperial Guards who had rushed over after hearing the commotion happened to witness the scene. Their faces changed drastically, and they could not help cheering aloud.
"So this is the might of a Bone Resonance Realm expert... Ordinary demons cannot even withstand a single exchange!"
Yet there was not the slightest joy on Xu Nian's face.
He raised a hand, stopping the people behind him from advancing.
"None of you come closer!"
The crowd froze, the excitement still lingering on their faces.
"This demon is no ordinary Bone Resonance..."
Xu Nian drew a deep breath and issued a stern command.
"Liu Chen, immediately take the others and retreat! Return to Liangzhou Prefecture and report to the general! The demon in Jincheng County is no longer something we can handle!"
"Come when you please, leave when you please?"
The Pig Demon bared its teeth and let out a grating laugh, its scarlet eyes brimming with mockery.
"Do you really think I, Zhu Yan, am made of mud?"
As the words fell.
It slowly tossed the hilt of its broken sword to the ground.
The next moment, the fat all over its body began to writhe in a bizarre manner. Its already enormous frame swelled another size, bursting apart the tattered clothes on its body.
A thick, foul-smelling blood mist slowly seeped from the pores across its body and spread outward.
Within the blood mist, the stench was enough to sting the nose.
Only then did Liu Chen and the others finally understand why Xu Nian, a Bone Resonance Realm expert, had given the order to retreat without hesitation.
"This... this is..."
When demons cultivated into Bone Resonance, their sinews and bones resonated together, allowing them to awaken innate divine abilities.
Yet though the Demon Race was favored by heaven and earth, not every one of them was a heaven-blessed prodigy.
Those who gained divine abilities were one in ten thousand.
Either they carried the bloodline of an ancient Great Demon, noble and exalted.
Or they had encountered an opportunity vast enough to shake the heavens.
Even if ordinary demons chanced into Bone Resonance, they were merely beasts with tougher hides and thicker flesh.
But this Pig Demon before them...
The blood mist spreading from its body was clearly that one-in-ten-thousand bizarre divine ability!
The Pig Demon looked at the Demon Suppression Guards before it, who faced it as if confronting a great enemy, and actually gave a self-mocking laugh.
"Learning to wield a sword, learning to recite poetry—after so long, I had forgotten..."
"My Pig Demon kind was born to tear flesh with claw and fang, to chew bones to mush with our tusks."
Its scarlet eyes swept across the crowd.
"You, as running dogs of the Demon Suppression Bureau, aid a tyrant in his evildoing. That is your first crime."
"Slaughtering my children without cause and severing my bloodline—that is your second crime."
"Two crimes, punished together."
"Today, every last one of you will die!"
As the words fell.
The blood mist filling the long street suddenly rolled back.
It condensed into countless thick blood-colored tentacles, sweeping down upon the crowd like the sky collapsing!
"Ah—"
One Demon Suppression Bureau Imperial Guard failed to dodge in time and was wrapped around the limbs by several blood-colored tentacles, hoisted into the air.
He struggled desperately, and his Horizontal Blade slipped from his hand, clanging onto the ground.
"Save..."
Before he could even cry out the single word.
The Pig Demon opened its gaping bloody maw and bit down.
Crack.
His head separated from his body, blood spraying everywhere.
Liu Chen's eyes turned bloodshot. With an enraged roar, he slashed out with his Horizontal Blade, severing several incoming tentacles.
But the tentacles regrew as soon as they were cut, endless and inexhaustible.
"Damn it!"
Xu Nian cursed under his breath. The qi and blood within him roared into motion, and the bones throughout his body hummed like clashing gold and stone.
The Bone Resonance Realm, unleashed at full strength!
He stepped forward, and a faint layer of golden aura ignited over the Horizontal Blade in his hand.
"Prison-Suppressing Blade!"
With a thunderous shout, blade light swept out like a bolt of white silk.
This blade art was the secret never passed beyond the Demon Suppression Bureau of Longyou Circuit, created specifically to behead demons and exterminate evil. Its blade intent was fierce and tyrannical, shattering wickedness and sweeping away filth.
The golden blade light flashed past, and dozens of blood-colored tentacles broke apart at once.
A sizzling sound rose from their severed ends.
As though boiling oil had been poured over ice and snow, black smoke billowed out, and the wounds refused to heal for a long while.
But even so, against the blood-colored tentacles rolling in from all directions, it was still but a cup of water against a cartload of firewood.
Even Xu Nian was struggling so greatly.
The Demon Suppression Guards behind him, who were only in the Mortal Realm and String-Hearing Realm, found it even harder to resist.
In the blink of an eye, two more Imperial Guards were swept up by the tentacles.
Zhu Yan grinned viciously and repeated the same method, biting their heads off alive and chewing with loud crunches, his mouth smeared with blood.
"When you killed my children, did you ever imagine this day would come?"
Xu Nian's face was ashen. He said nothing, only madly driving his qi and blood, his blade light burning ever brighter as he shielded his few remaining subordinates.
But in the end, he was only one man with one blade.
The blood mist was endless.
A demon's divine ability was simply this unreasonable.
And precisely because it was so unreasonable.
Demons possessing divine abilities were all the rarer.
Liu Chen put everything he had into a slash, splitting apart a blood-colored tentacle, but another three or five took advantage of the opening and bound him tight.
A tremendous force yanked him upward, pulling his entire body off the ground.
The gaping bloody maw was right before his eyes.
Foul saliva dripped onto his face, mixed with someone's blood.
Nothing remained in his eyes but despair.
It was over.
But at that moment.
The Pig Demon's movement abruptly stalled.
The blood-colored tentacles binding Liu Chen loosened as well.
Bang—
Liu Chen crashed heavily to the ground, his senses knocked into chaos as he violently coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Ignoring the pain, he instinctively looked up.
He saw that the Pig Demon had unexpectedly stopped paying attention to them. Its pair of scarlet beast eyes stared fixedly behind the crowd.
Xu Nian also sensed that something was wrong and forced himself to turn around.
At the end of the long street.
At some unknown time, another person had appeared on the street.
The wind lifted her long hair, revealing her full face.
Lovely as peach blossoms in the third month of spring, pure as chrysanthemums in the ninth month of autumn.
How could such a young woman appear here?
The doubt in everyone's hearts had yet to fade.
Blade light rose.
A blood-colored tiger shadow soared into the heavens behind her.
Roar—
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