The Great Sacrifice of One Hundred Thousand

Smack!

The ground was stomped hard, cracking open in a ring of spiderweb-like fissures.

Whoosh! Chen Jue took the lead, slashing straight ahead. The wind howled around his blade, its force immense and heavy.

Wu Nanyuan followed close behind, her sword in her right hand darting out like a nimble snake leaving its burrow, stabbing toward the intruder's left chest from the side.

Liang Ben inwardly cried misery. The sharp sword he had just sheathed flew out again. He raised it before him and collided head-on with Chen Jue's horizontal slash.

Clang!

The longsword and saber struck together, producing the distinctive ringing tremor of metal.

Damn, what strength!

As sword and saber collided, Liang Ben felt as though a mountain had come crashing down before him. Torrential force surged back through the blade, numbing the web of his hand. His body shot backward uncontrollably, his soles scraping against the ground until they heated up. Only when he slammed into the wall behind him did he barely manage to stop.

Chen Jue did not come away unscathed either.

The instant their blades met, the tip of the longsword suddenly snapped off, transforming into a fierce streak of sword light that shot toward his face.

Chen Jue had never seen such an underhanded move before. His pupils contracted at once. No longer bothering to conceal his strength, he directly unleashed the perfected Wandering Dragon Body Technique. His body seemed to teleport in place, instantly evading the sword light inches from his face.

Bang!

The sword light wheeled around and slashed at Wu Nanyuan on the left, forcing her to halt and withdraw her strike, knocking aside the sword light that had closed in on her.

"Careful!"

Wu Nanyuan watched the sword light turn back and fly into Liang Ben's hand. With a grave expression, she said to Chen Jue, "This man cultivates the Southwestern Sword Sect's superior martial art, the Hundred-Step Flying Sword. Within a hundred paces, the speed of its sword pellet rivals a flintlock musket. Its killing power is extremely high, making it very difficult to deal with."

Chen Jue held his saber crosswise, preparing to unleash "Reverse Blood, Setting Sun" as he casually asked, "Is there any way to counter it?"

"There is. Though the Hundred-Step Flying Sword is formidable in attack, it is not suited to True Qi Realm martial artists..."

"Because controlling the sword pellet away from one's body consumes an enormous amount of True Qi. Even if a True Qi Realm martial artist forcibly bears the burden, it will drain their True Qi dry and greatly hinder their cultivation progress..."

Wu Nanyuan revealed the Hundred-Step Flying Sword's sole weakness.

This simply was not a martial art that a True Qi Realm martial artist should wield. It was fine as a trump card kept at the bottom of the chest, but using it in battle was more loss than gain.

"You mean we can use positioning to wear him to death here?" Chen Jue asked sideways.

"Hey, hey, hey! Little girl, how old are you? How can your thoughts be so vicious?" Liang Ben indignantly accused her, suspending the sword pellet disguised as a sword tip above his fingertip.

At the same time, his gaze darted around, actively searching for an escape route.

This time, he had truly learned his lesson.

Just now, he should not have been so delighted at finding worthy opponents, thinking he could befriend some heroes, and leapt down from the roof.

Who would have thought these two were not heroes at all, but chaotic demon kings who slashed at anyone they saw?

"You go ahead. I won't."

As Wu Nanyuan spoke, she retreated several steps. "He did not use his full strength just now. My lightness skill is inferior to yours. I am not confident I can evade his Hundred-Step Flying Sword if he goes all out."

The girl's gaze was easy to read: I'm afraid he'll drag me down with him before he dies.

"If that is the case, then we won't fight."

Chen Jue sheathed his saber and turned to the young man he had forced into the corner. "Brother, could we step aside and talk?"

"..." Wu Nanyuan frowned. Chen Jue clearly did not trust her, and that did not feel very good.

Still, even she had not considered that they had been partners for less than half a day. If Chen Jue truly opened his heart and trusted her, that would be the strange thing.

Liang Ben had thought he would have to fight desperately before he could leave intact.

Yet because of the girl's single admission of defeat, the situation took a sudden turn.

He immediately realized that the young man before him, the same age as him yet wreathed in Sha Qi, did not actually intend to fight him to the death. This had merely been a means of testing each other.

The two leaped onto the roof of the third floor, leaving Wu Nanyuan alone at the mouth of the alley to keep watch.

"You may call me Chen Ying, brother. What happened just now was merely a test. I hope you will not take it to heart..."

Chen Jue looked utterly sincere, every inch the gentleman.

Liang Ben rolled his eyes fiercely inside.

Though this was his first meeting with the young man before him, the methods Chen Jue had used against those gang members made one thing clear: this was absolutely a ruthless and vicious figure.

Just now, only because his strength was sufficient had things ended this way. Had he been even slightly weaker, the other man would certainly have pinned him to the ground with his saber and tortured him for information.

"It's fine. No friendship without a fight."

"My name is Liang Ben. Liang as in Liangzhou, Ben as in huben."

Liang Ben put on a magnanimous front. "Since we are both investigating the Room Fire Cult, we can count as temporary allies."

"To let Brother Liang know, I have a relative who was targeted by the Room Fire Cult because of her special physique."

"And now the Room Fire Cult is running rampant in the outer city, with forces from every side entangled in the matter."

"I have uncovered a few clues, but I am alone and weak, unable to glimpse the full picture. Thus, I dared not trust others."

"Since Brother Liang comes from a righteous force such as the God-Understanding Organization, why not tell me what exactly is going on with the Room Fire Cult running rampant in Linjiang?"

Chen Jue struck first, appealing to both sentiment and reason, firmly placing Liang Ben upon the moral high ground.

"..." Liang Ben was impressed. Since venturing through the martial world alone, he had never encountered a peer so shameless.

But Chen Jue spoke with such heartfelt sincerity that he found it difficult to keep hiding things.

"It's a long story..."

"Since the eighth year of Zizheng, when Emperor Chong of Great Ming failed in his attempt to 'attain the Yang Spirit' and withdrew into the depths of the palace, no longer attending to state affairs."

"The Nine Sages governed the court, while local laws and order fell into decay."

"The faith in Star Gods, once considered taboo, rose from the ashes for various reasons."

"Among them, the Medicine King Sect of Henan Province was especially egregious. It nearly rotted away an entire province, leaving corpses strewn across the fields and turning the land into a grim ghostly domain."

"As for Linjiang's Room Fire Cult, it first preached in Ling Province. After the Lingnan Xu Family wiped it out, its believers scattered in all directions. One group traveled tens of thousands of miles before arriving in Linjiang, Southern Province..."

"Come on, man. Your windup is way too long, isn't it?" Chen Jue said speechlessly. "I only want to ask what the Room Fire Cult and the various factions tangled up in the outer city are actually trying to do..."

Liang Ben had been speaking with great enthusiasm, but after being interrupted, he became rather angry. "Why do you have no patience at all? Just tell me, do you want to hear it or not? If not, I'm leaving."

"..." Chen Jue.

"Fine, fine, I was wrong. Go ahead and start with Pangu splitting heaven and earth, then work your way up to the Martial Emperor's restoration..."

Chen Jue gave in. The young man before him, his own age, was most likely a chatterbox.

"Actually, the Star God corresponding to the Room Fire Cult is not powerful."

"Even without the four great first-rank clans of Linjiang or the Linjiang Protectorate acting personally, the Room Fire Cult could be eliminated with a mere turn of the hand if some second- and third-rank clan forces took action."

"Yet, just as you said, certain clan forces in Linjiang have not only failed to stop the Room Fire Cult from spreading through the outer city, but have even secretly fanned the flames. Their conduct is utterly baffling..."

"Later, after an in-depth investigation by our team leader, we discovered that the inner-city clans actually wanted to help the Room Fire Cult complete the 'Hundred-Thousand Grand Sacrifice'—sacrificing one hundred thousand living people to the Room Fire God, thereby calling down a wisp of the divided soul of one of the three thousand true demons of Room Fire Star..."

"No, no." Chen Jue shook his head. "The information I gathered was that the inner city wanted to borrow the Room Fire God's power to refine the souls, bones, and flesh of one hundred thousand Room Fire believers into Barrier-Breaking Pills for 'Inner Landscape experts' to break through and become Martial Kings."

Liang Ben's expression froze. He sneered. "Is that so-called Barrier-Breaking Pill really something so precious?"

"The Linjiang clans would risk playing with fire and burning themselves just to have the Room Fire God refine them?"

"And even taking ten thousand steps back, if the Room Fire God truly refined dozens of Barrier-Breaking Pills with one hundred thousand lives, would the people of those aristocratic clans really dare to consume them?"

"The information you received was most likely rhetoric used by the upper clans to fool the lower clans into doing their dirty work..."

"Because only the lower clans would desperately long for a Martial King-level expert to emerge within their family."

"As for the upper clans, they can refine Barrier-Breaking Pills themselves."