Sword in Hand, Crossing Azure Dragon; Demons Subdued Between Heaven and Earth

The ancient tomb lay deep underground, its passages twisting and stretching into the darkness. The stone walls were mottled and cracked, coated in dust that had gathered for untold years.

Tomb-guarding beasts crouched in the darkness on either side, their fangs bared and eyes wide with fury, as though silently intimidating all who entered.

The lamplight flickered, casting swaying shadows all around. Yet what was strange and sinister was not merely the scene within the tomb, but the human heart.

The people from the Global Spiritual Cultivation Society clustered around Ying Caihong, their cold gun barrels all aimed at Hu Bayi and the other three.

Facing Hu Bayi's group, who still refused to bow their heads, Ying Caihong finally tore off her mask of hypocrisy and revealed her chilling fangs.

She had to obtain the Flower of the Other Shore.

At any cost.

Even if she had to sacrifice everyone here, she would not hesitate.

"Five hundred thousand dollars, plus the lives of your three friends." Ying Caihong stared at Hu Bayi, the corner of her mouth lifting slightly. "Mr. Hu, do you think this deal is worth it?"

"Despicable. Shameless." Hu Bayi gritted his teeth, enunciating every word. "And if I refuse?"

"Yoko," Ying Caihong said flatly.

Her adopted daughter beside her expressionlessly drew her pistol and fired.

Bang!

The bullet instantly tore through Big Gold Tooth's calf.

"Arghhh!"

Big Gold Tooth cried out miserably, clutching his leg as he dropped to his knees. Cold sweat covered his face, which had gone deathly pale, as he looked pleadingly toward Hu Bayi and the others.

"You old witch! How dare you!" Wang Pangzi's eyes turned red. He grabbed his entrenching shovel and stood protectively before the others, his chest heaving violently.

At that moment, he was both terrified and full of regret.

He should not have come.

Still less should he have dragged Old Hu and the others into this.

They had all been ready to wash their hands of this business, yet they had still stepped straight into this godforsaken place.

"Fatty!" Hu Bayi barked, turning to Ying Caihong. "I agree. I can lead the way, but you'd better keep your word."

He knew perfectly well that these people truly dared to kill.

An ancient tomb was a lawless place to begin with. If they killed them all and buried them in some random pit, no one would ever find a trace.

"A wise man submits to the times." Ying Caihong smiled in satisfaction and gestured for Yoko to lower her gun. "Expert Hu, then please proceed."

Hu Bayi turned to Huang Bai beside him, his eyes full of apology. "Brother Huang, you shouldn't have come. I dragged you into this too."

Tomb raiding had never been a dinner party, much less writing poetry or painting pictures.

It was a trade walked along the line between life and death.

One wrong step meant eternal damnation.

Yet Huang Bai had come to help them at such a time, and Hu Bayi could not express his gratitude. But to protect the people behind him, he could only bow his head for now.

"It's fine." Huang Bai gave only two words.

He said them calmly, almost unnaturally so.

Their exchange fell on Ying Caihong's ears, and her gaze immediately settled on Huang Bai.

Huang Bai wore a blue-green Daoist robe, his long hair tied behind him, his figure tall and straight.

What drew the eye most was the faint green glow in his eyes. They seemed to conceal two ghostly flames, cold and mysterious, making one's scalp prickle after a single glance.

His entire appearance gave off an inexplicably unfathomable air.

"I like your eyes very much." Ying Caihong suddenly spoke, her voice growing gentler. "Why not join the Spirit Cultivation Society and become my disciple? I can teach you the great arts of communicating between yin and yang, of seeing through the realms of life and death."

"You were born with unusual features. You're good material. Don't waste such talent for nothing."

Regardless of whether this tomb expedition succeeded, Ying Caihong had already decided to gradually retreat behind the scenes.

She needed a new disciple who could stand in the public eye and manage the Spirit Cultivation Society in her stead.

And Huang Bai before her had indeed awakened some appreciation for talent in her.

Those born with unusual traits were well suited to playing at gods and ghosts. With that appearance, he could make the masses believe.

The nearby cultists were instantly both envious and jealous when they heard this.

"Kid, the Spirit Cultivation Society has tens of thousands of disciples and hundreds of thousands of believers. This is an enormous opportunity!"

"President Ying is willing to take you as her disciple. That's a blessing cultivated over several lifetimes. Don't be ungrateful!"

"Brother Huang, don't listen to this woman's nonsense." Hu Bayi lowered his voice to warn him, truly afraid Huang Bai would be taken in by her words.

Huang Bai glanced at Ying Caihong, his expression somewhat strange.

"You want to take me as your disciple?"

He paused, smiling without quite smiling. "Let's discuss it after we leave the tomb."

The group continued forward.

As Hu Bayi observed the surroundings, he rapidly deduced the location of the gate of life in his mind.

"To seek the dragon and divide the gold, observe the winding mountains; each winding ridge is a barrier.

If the gate has eightfold dangers, it cannot escape the form of yin-yang and the Eight Trigrams."

Images of the terrain rapidly formed, broke apart, and reassembled in his mind.

The others held their breath as they watched him, afraid of disturbing the Gold-Seeking Commandant as he calculated the tomb passage.

Wang Pangzi and Shirley Yang guarded Hu Bayi on either side, wary of mechanisms that might emerge from the darkness at any moment.

Huang Bai, meanwhile, supported Big Gold Tooth, his pace neither hurried nor slow.

Then, in the next instant, he suddenly let go.

Big Gold Tooth froze. Before he could react, Huang Bai had already drawn a ritual sword from behind his back.

The sword was ancient and covered in greenish bronze rust. At first glance, it looked utterly unremarkable, but the moment it left its sheath, the air in the tomb passage seemed to grow several degrees colder.

He muttered an incantation, lightly brushing his fingertips over the blade.

Then he flicked his right hand from his sleeve, five talismans already pinched between his fingers, and tossed them into the air.

Sizzle!

The self-igniting talismans burst into flame without fire, turning into white smoke that spread through the passage.

Mixed within the smoke was powder from the Five Zhi Pill. Its scent was barely perceptible, yet it quickly entered everyone's nostrils.

Ying Caihong's people did not react at first, assuming this was merely some ritual performed by Gold-Seeking Commandants before entering a tomb.

Until the green light in Huang Bai's eyes flared fiercely and killing intent burst forth.

"Edict!"

With a low shout, Huang Bai suddenly drew his sword!

The sword flashed, and almost no one saw his movement clearly.

The gunman standing beside him only saw a blur of blue-green before his eyes. The next moment, both he and the rifle in his hands were cut cleanly in half at the waist!

Splurt!

Blood and organs splashed violently across the tomb walls, and the hot stench of blood instantly exploded through the air.

Everyone was dumbfounded.

It was like a hot knife through butter, effortless enough to make their scalps go numb.

"Not good!"

Ying Caihong's face changed dramatically as she screamed, "Kill him! Kill him now!"

She had never imagined that this seemingly worn, rusted bronze sword could be so sharp!

But it was already too late.

Huang Bai moved with terrifying speed.

Under the lock of his divine sense, those gunmen had only just raised their weapons when he reversed his grip and slashed twice in rapid succession.

Swish! Swish!

Two more bodies split apart on the spot.

The severed corpses crashed heavily to the ground, intestines spilling everywhere, the bloody stench so thick it was almost nauseating.

"Ah!"

Only then did someone finally scream in belated horror.

Hu Bayi's pupils shrank sharply.

Wang Pangzi stood with his mouth open, his entrenching shovel frozen in midair.

Shirley Yang shuddered as well, scarcely believing her own eyes.

They had seen dead people, and they had seen those unexplainable evil things lurking in tombs.

But the sight of living people being cleaved in half by a single sword still sent a chill down their spines.

Buzz!

At the same time, the pill powder dispersed throughout the area fully took effect.

Huang Bai held his sword horizontally before his chest, formed a hand seal with his right hand, and spoke in a voice so cold it scarcely seemed human, green light gleaming eerily in his eyes:

"Edict!"

In an instant, the scene before everyone's eyes abruptly twisted.

Whoosh!

A north wind howled in, its cold cutting to the bone.

The tomb passage, stone walls, and firelight all vanished. In an instant, the scene transformed. The north wind wailed, heaven and earth became one color, and as far as the eye could see was a world of ice and snow, clad in silver.

Everyone stood amid a frigid, silent ice field.

A thick frost rapidly formed over the members of the Spirit Cultivation Society. Their teeth chattered and their limbs stiffened, as though they had been sealed within an eternal frozen hell.

Hu Bayi and the others shivered from the cold as well, their blood seeming to freeze in their veins.

"Th-this is fucking sorcery?" Wang Pangzi's voice cracked.

Hu Bayi stared dead ahead, breathing heavily.

Shirley Yang had always been calm, but for the first time, her face showed nearly vacant shock.

There really was such a thing as sorcery in this world!

Huang Bai, who usually obsessed over Daoist texts and spoke little, had not been pretending to be mysterious.

He truly knew sorcery.

And it was sorcery that could kill!

Though they had raided countless tombs over the years and witnessed innumerable strange incidents beyond ordinary reason, those past experiences seemed insignificant compared to what lay before them.

What happened next became something they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

Huang Bai carried his ritual sword and walked across the snow, step by step toward Ying Caihong and the others.

Wind and snow whirled around him, his Daoist robe snapping in the gale.

His originally rather handsome face, illuminated by the eerie green light in his eyes, now took on a chillingly demonic aspect.

With every step, he swung his sword.

Splurt!

Splurt!

Splurt!

Wherever the blade passed, bodies were severed at the waist.

Those cultists who had once swaggered about like tyrants now seemed like rows of clay and wooden dolls. They could not even dodge, and could only watch helplessly as that ancient rusted bronze sword cut them in half.

Some looked down to see that their upper bodies remained while their waists and abdomens were already gone. Before the terror could fully appear on their faces, they collapsed.

Some tried to fire their guns, but their fingers were frozen too stiff to obey. They could only be split apart in despair.

Some cried and begged for mercy, only for their voices to end abruptly the moment they left their mouths.

Within the ancient tomb, blood flowed like a river.

Hu Bayi and the others were completely stunned.

Wang Pangzi's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed with difficulty, his palms drenched in cold sweat. "Old Hu... Brother Huang, this is just too..."

He could not finish the rest.

Shirley Yang stared at Huang Bai's back, her gaze incomparably complicated.

This young Daoist who had traveled with them, who seemed the quietest and most refined among them, was so fierce and decisive when he acted.

Huang Bai himself wore a somewhat strange expression at that moment.

This was the first time he had truly killed someone.

He had thought he would feel sick, that his hands would shake, that he would not dare strike.

But after his first sword sliced through flesh and blood, that hesitation was instantly torn to pieces.

Deep within his heart, it was as though a fire had suddenly ignited.

It burned hotter and hotter, scorching his chest and reddening his eyes, making him want to slash everything before him to pieces.

Kill!

Kill!

Kill!

Sword in hand, crossing Azure Dragon; demons subdued between heaven and earth.

After cutting his way through them all, only Yoko and Ying Caihong, whom she shielded behind her, remained.

"Ahhh! Mother!"

Yoko suddenly threw back her head and howled, her eyes bloodshot.

The ice crystals covering her body shattered inch by inch.

Crash!

The frozen hell abruptly broke apart in the next instant.

The wind and snow scattered, and the illusion vanished.

The dim ancient tomb reappeared before everyone's eyes.

Corpses lay scattered in every direction.

There had never been any world of ice and snow.

Everything they had just seen was merely an illusion brought on by inhaling the pill powder.

Yoko clung to her obsession with protecting Ying Caihong and forcibly broke free from the illusion's restraints.

She yanked out her dagger, lunged forward, and pounced at Huang Bai like a cheetah!

"Good!"

Instead of retreating, Huang Bai advanced, gripping his sword in both hands as the green light in his eyes grew ever brighter.

Yet the glow on the ritual sword had begun to flicker, clearly signaling that the spell's effect was about to end.

Clang!

The dagger collided with the ritual sword. It held for barely half a moment before being severed on the spot.

The sword light then swept downward.

Splurt!

Yoko's head flew into the air, blood spraying more than two feet high.

Her headless body staggered forward two steps before collapsing to the ground with a thud.

"Yoko!"

Ying Caihong finally broke down completely. She threw herself over the body, clutching it as she let out a heartrending wail.

The entire tomb passage fell deathly silent.

Hu Bayi, Wang Pangzi, Shirley Yang, and Big Gold Tooth all stood frozen in place.

They looked at the mangled corpses strewn across the ground, at Ying Caihong weeping over the body in the pool of blood, then at the blue-robed Daoist slowly approaching with a blood-dripping ritual sword in hand. All they felt was an overwhelming sense of unfamiliarity.

Huang Bai stopped before Ying Caihong. Blood dripped from his blade, yet his expression was terrifyingly calm, even carrying the faintest hint of a smile.

"I heard you can communicate with the realms of yin and yang. What do you think of my spell? Am I qualified to be your disciple?"