Slaughter

Zhao Xiong had ordered the mountain search not to find the murderer, but to find the person who had stolen the martial manual.

And that person was no fool. His deduction was correct.

When Zhou Yan had taken that booklet from Zhao Mo's corpse on Blackwind Ridge, he had only thought the technique was valuable.

Looking back now, Zhao Mo had carried that booklet of chants even until his death. That showed the technique was more important to the Azure Cloud Gang than life itself.

Losing the technique was the same as losing their foundation. Zhao Xiong would not stop until he had turned Qingyun County upside down.

That Song Tou'er had reached Qi Gathering Greater Achievement. Just sitting there, the presence rolling off him was far beyond any Qi-Gathering Realm cultivator Zhou Yan had encountered before.

With two more Qi Gathering cultivators and four Body-Tempering Realm cultivators, this group was strong enough to swagger through the mountains unhindered.

"Once we finish searching this area, we'll head back for drinks."

Song Tou'er slung his thick-backed saber over his shoulder. "Search upward from the north slope. Split into pairs. If anything seems off, call for help first. Don't try to play hero."

The seven men spread out.

The two Qi Gathering cultivators each led two Body-Tempering Realm cultivators to search the left and right sides, while Song Tou'er headed down the middle alone.

Zhou Yan retreated from behind the rocks, calculating silently.

The boulder field was not far from here. He could not let them find it, nor could he let them return alive.

But facing them head-on was unrealistic. They had three Qi Gathering cultivators, one of whom had reached Greater Achievement. As someone at Lesser Qi Gathering, he would gain no advantage.

Zhou Yan gritted his teeth.

He had to act, whether he wanted to or not.

If they found the boulder field, he would die. If they returned alive, he would die sooner or later anyway.

If he did not strike today, he would never get another chance.

Still, he had to take them one at a time.

He lowered his body and circled around the side slope to the rear of the group.

The forest floor was covered in a thick layer of pine needles, making barely any sound beneath his feet.

The Body-Tempering Realm cultivator on the far right had fallen behind. The other two in his group were crouched ahead, turning over rocks, while he was relieving himself in the rear.

Zhou Yan crept behind him, covered his mouth with his left hand, and struck the back of his neck with his right palm. There was a dull thud, and the man went limp.

He casually dragged him into the bushes.

He continued moving right. The two Body-Tempering Realm cultivators ahead were still flipping rocks. Zhou Yan closed in from behind and struck one with each palm. They collapsed almost simultaneously. As one fell, his saber struck a rock with a sharp clang.

The thick-browed Qi Gathering cultivator ahead turned around.

"Where are they?"

He saw two people lying on the ground and another in the bushes. His pupils shrank, and his hands were already reaching for the twin sabers at his waist.

Zhou Yan stopped hiding.

He pushed off the ground, his body shooting forward close to the earth.

The thick-browed Qi Gathering cultivator had already drawn both sabers. Saber light flashed beneath the tree shadows as the blades crossed, one above and one below, slashing toward him.

Zhou Yan twisted aside to evade the first blade, while the second grazed beneath his ribs.

The edge sliced through his clothes and opened a bloody cut across his flesh.

Before the man could withdraw his saber, Zhou Yan's left fist was already upon him.

Mountain-Breaking Fist struck upward from below, smashing into the base of the saber hilt.

The thick-browed cultivator's palm went numb. The short saber in his right hand flew free and embedded itself in a tree trunk.

He staggered back two steps, still gripping his other saber in his left hand. His eyes locked on Zhou Yan as he shouted, "Song Tou'er!"

Before he could finish shouting, Zhou Yan had already slammed into his chest.

Mountain-Breaking Fist.

The instant the Perfection Stage Mountain-Breaking Fist struck his chest, its internal force had already penetrated inside, violently erupting beneath his ribs.

The thick-browed cultivator's remaining words shattered in his throat. His mouth opened, and he sprayed out blood.

Boom!

His entire body flew backward and crashed into a pine tree, shaking loose a shower of pine needles.

He slid to the ground, his chest caved in. His eyes remained open, but he had already stopped breathing.

"Qian Huai!" Song Tou'er's furious roar came from the distance.

Zhou Yan did not turn around.

The young Qi Gathering cultivator who had been making marks earlier was already charging out from the woods on the left, a sword in hand.

The sword tip scraped the ground, sending pebbles flying as he ran.

Zhou Yan casually picked up the short saber dropped by the thick-browed cultivator and hurled it into the incoming sword light.

The young man twisted aside and knocked it away. His steps paused for an instant, and in that one sluggish instant, Zhou Yan had already arrived.

Mountain-Breaking Fist blasted straight at him. The young man raised his sword horizontally to block, but the fist smashed against the blade with a clang, bending it.

The difference in strength was far too great!

Mountain-Breaking Fist was broad and forceful by nature, built to overwhelm opponents with raw strength.

His palm split open, and the sword flew from his hand.

Zhou Yan immediately followed with another punch to his shoulder. His shoulder blade snapped with a crack.

The young man screamed and rolled sideways onto the ground.

Just as Zhou Yan was about to follow up with another punch, his back suddenly prickled.

He instinctively lunged forward. A streak of saber light chopped down from behind, shaving past the back of his head and sending several severed hairs drifting through the air.

The blade struck the ground, blasting open a trench half a foot deep.

The attacker was Song Tou'er!

Qi Gathering Greater Achievement!

The thick-backed saber seemed as light as a chopstick in his hands. After missing with the first strike, he smoothly twisted his wrist and swept the blade sideways.

Zhou Yan crossed his fists to block it head-on and retreated backward. With a dull clang, he was knocked back four or five steps.

His back struck an old pine tree. Both palms split open at once, blood streaming down his fingers in two lines.

"Crouch down and don't move," Song Tou'er told the young man on the ground before turning to Zhou Yan.

He looked Zhou Yan up and down, his gaze pausing on his stance.

"Who are you? You're actually using the stance of the Mountain-Suppressing Fist." Song Tou'er held his thick-backed saber across his body. "No, that punch that killed Qian Huai just now wasn't Mountain-Suppressing Fist. It was our gang's Mountain-Breaking Fist. You stole the Mountain-Breaking Fist manual!"

Zhou Yan said nothing. He merely sneered and shook the blood from his hands.

This man was at Qi Gathering Greater Achievement. His inner qi was more than twice as abundant as Zhou Yan's.

That exchange just now had made it clear. Song Tou'er had infused internal force into his blade, and when it collided with Zhou Yan's fist force, Zhou Yan's entire arm, from palm to shoulder, had gone numb.

If they clashed head-on, his bones would shatter within ten moves.

But that collision had also revealed something else.

Though Song Tou'er had reached Qi Gathering Greater Achievement, his martial technique was only at Greater Achievement, not Perfection. His saber force was powerful, but his control over it lacked flexibility.

The thick-backed saber was heavy and forceful. Once a strike was unleashed, all its force drove forward, and changing moves required him to forcibly twist his wrist.

That was the natural weakness of a heavy weapon in the forest.

Zhou Yan's thoughts raced. He could not compete with him in strength. He had to fight with skill.

He needed to stall the saber and find an opening to close in with Mountain-Breaking Fist.

The force of the Perfection Stage Mountain-Breaking Fist was his only chance of victory. As long as he could get close enough, even the protective qi of a Qi Gathering Greater Achievement cultivator could not stop it.

Song Tou'er stepped forward, sinking the pine needles beneath his foot by half an inch.

"Mountain-Breaking Fist is the Azure Cloud Gang's exclusive fist art. Only the old gang leader and the young gang leader knew it. After the young gang leader died, the martial chants on him vanished without a trace. The gang leader has been searching for the thief ever since. That punch you used on Qian Huai—its internal force drilled in first, then exploded. It crushed his ribs and detonated inside his heart and lungs. That is not something you could achieve after merely one or two years of training."

He narrowed his eyes. "You brat truly have an astonishing talent for martial arts. Judging by your clothes, you should be from one of the county town's martial halls. In just over a year, you have trained Mountain-Breaking Fist to this level. Your mastery exceeds even the gang leader's. But you stole this art, so I cannot let you live!"

Zhou Yan neither admitted nor denied it.

He sank his qi into his dantian, lowered his center of gravity by two inches, and planted his feet on the hard ground beneath the pine needles. The foundation of his Mountain-Settling Stance settled into place.

Song Tou'er raised the saber tip toward Zhou Yan's chest and sneered. "Do you think you can still leave this mountain alive?"

The moment he finished speaking, the saber moved.

Song Tou'er's saber art was called the Mountain-Splitting Saber, one of the Azure Cloud Gang's most closely guarded techniques.

It had six forms in all. The first three were Horizontal Saber, Vertical Cleave, and Diagonal Slash.

The last three were Returning-Wind Saber, Mountain-Cleaving, and Mountain-Opening.

The names were straightforward, but every move was a killing technique honed on the battlefield.

He had practiced the Mountain-Splitting Saber for twenty years, hacking his way from Body Tempering to Qi Gathering Greater Achievement. No one knew how many souls had died beneath his blade.

Opening move: Vertical Cleave!

The saber rose over his head, force originating from his waist. His entire body pressed down like a mountain.

Zhou Yan sidestepped. The blade grazed his shoulder and struck the ground, exploding the pine needles and scattering broken stones from the dirt.

Before Song Tou'er could raise the saber again, Zhou Yan's Mountain-Suppressing Fist had already answered. His left fist smashed into the side of the blade while his right fist shot toward the wrist gripping the saber.

Rather than retreat, Song Tou'er advanced. His combat experience was rich. With a twist of his wrist, he turned the blade sideways.

Horizontal Saber!

The edge swept toward Zhou Yan's ribs, forcing him to withdraw both fists and retreat.

Zhou Yan pushed off the ground, his body sliding backward two steps. The saber tip skimmed across the front of his chest, tearing open his clothes.

Before he could steady himself, another saber strike came.

The blade slashed from upper right to lower left, sealing off his path of retreat.

Zhou Yan stomped his left foot to the side and tilted his body right. The blade passed beneath his armpit, cutting away a strip of cloth from his lower back.

Thud!

After three strikes, Zhou Yan had retreated seven steps.

Song Tou'er gave him no chance to catch his breath.

Returning-Wind Saber. The blade curved in an arc and swept upward from below.

Seeing it, Zhou Yan crossed his fists and pressed downward. His knuckles collided with the back of the saber.

With a clang, he retreated another three or four steps.

"For someone at Lesser Qi Gathering to take four of my strikes, not bad," Song Tou'er said, raising his saber overhead again.

Zhou Yan panted heavily and looked up at him. This man's inner qi was deeper than his.

Every saber strike carried not only the blade's force, but also the internal force infused within it.

He had relied on the foundation of Mountain-Settling Stance to block them head-on. Though his feet had not moved an inch, his arms were already nearing their limit.

Then Zhou Yan suddenly released his stance. His hands dropped naturally to his sides, his shoulders sank, and his knees bent slightly.

Song Tou'er frowned slightly, but his saber did not stop.

Mountain-Cleaving!

This was the Mountain-Splitting Saber's killing move. As the blade descended from overhead, it would change direction midway, shifting from a vertical chop into a diagonal slash. It was specifically meant to break an opponent's guard. Of those killed by this technique, nine out of ten had blocked the first chop but failed to stop the following diagonal slash.

Sure enough, halfway through the swing, the saber changed.

The blade suddenly shifted angles and slashed diagonally toward Zhou Yan's left shoulder.

This was exactly what Zhou Yan had been waiting for.

He stomped his right foot fiercely, assuming the Mountain-Settling Stance.

His stake stance, at Perfection and on the verge of Limit-Breaking, had not been trained for nothing. The instant his foot came down, his body was rooted in place like a nail driven into the earth.

As his left hand rose, his right fist whipped out from beside his waist. He twisted slightly, allowing the saber to graze past his left shoulder.

A chunk of flesh was sliced away from his shoulder, and droplets of blood sprayed into the air.

But he ignored it. His eyes were bloodshot, and a savage grin spread across his face. He intended to trade injury for life!

His right fist had already struck out.

Mountain-Breaking Fist.

The Perfection Stage Mountain-Breaking Fist was incomparable to Greater Achievement.

From the outside, it looked like only one punch, but the person hit knew there were two layers of force within it.

Song Tou'er sensed it. The instant the fist struck his left ribs, his expression changed, and he did not even have time to withdraw his saber.

Zhou Yan's internal force drilled inside and exploded against the surface of his ribs.

Song Tou'er's Qi Gathering Greater Achievement was no empty title. His protective qi forcibly blocked half the force.

His ribs did not break, but his internal organs churned violently. Sweetness surged up his throat, and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.

He roared in fury and smashed his left elbow down toward Zhou Yan's head.

Zhou Yan withdrew his right fist and crossed both arms above his head.

The elbow struck his arms, driving him down onto one knee. His knee slammed a pit into the ground.

Song Tou'er used the force to retreat two steps. He pressed a hand to his left ribs, and blood stained his fingers.

The look in his eyes as he watched Zhou Yan had changed completely.

He had never expected someone at Lesser Qi Gathering to force him into such a state.

It seemed this boy had not only trained Mountain-Breaking Fist to the legendary Perfection Stage, but had also brought his stake stance to Perfection.

When had such a monster appeared in the county town?

And he even knew how to hide himself, remaining unknown all this time!

If he ever broke through and became a Martial Adept, the Azure Cloud Gang would likely face annihilation!

"Both Mountain-Breaking Fist and the stake stance are at Perfection." Song Tou'er wiped away the blood at his mouth and gripped his saber again. "You will die today!"

He pointed the saber tip at Zhou Yan's brow. The layer of inner qi covering the blade thickened by another thirty percent.

Zhou Yan rose to his feet. Blood on his knee mixed with mud, while blood from his left shoulder ran down his arm.

That man's internal strength was deeper than his, but his protective qi could not fully block the force of Mountain-Breaking Fist. As long as Zhou Yan could land a hit, he could injure him.

The two men faced each other in the forest, separated by seven or eight steps. Pine needles rustled beneath their feet.

"Mountain-Splitting Saber, Mountain-Opening."

Song Tou'er moved. This time, the saber's momentum was heavier than the previous five strikes combined.

Zhou Yan stepped forward with his left foot, drew his right fist back beside his waist, and bent his body slightly.

The blade slashed down past his right shoulder, tearing open the dark gray cloth on it with its saber qi.

His right fist flipped out from his waist—Mountain-Breaking Fist.

His fist slammed into the side of the heavy-backed saber with a crisp clang, knocking the blade three inches off course.

Song Tou'er's grip shook. The instant his saber was knocked aside, his front was left completely open.

Zhou Yan had already crashed in.

His left hand struck the bend of Song Tou'er's right elbow with the Mountain-Suppressing Fist. The joint went numb from the impact, and the heavy-backed saber nearly slipped from his grasp.

His right fist followed with the Mountain-Breaking Fist, blasting Song Tou'er in the chest—at the exact same spot on his left ribs.

One punch, two bursts of force!

This time, Song Tou'er's protective inner qi could not withstand it. With a crack, one of his ribs broke.

He let out a muffled grunt, and the heavy-backed saber finally fell from his hand, clanging onto the ground.

But he still fought desperately, gritting his teeth as he chopped a palm into Zhou Yan's right shoulder.

Zhou Yan was sent flying. He rolled twice across the ground and only stopped after crashing into the roots of a pine tree.

His shoulder felt as if it had been struck by a hammer. The bone had not broken, but he could not even lift his arm.

Song Tou'er clutched his left ribs and leaned against a tree, blood already running from the corner of his mouth to his chin.

The heavy-backed saber lay on the ground two steps away.

Zhou Yan staggered to his feet, his mouth full of the taste of blood.

Song Tou'er stared at him, blood filling the gaps between his teeth as he spoke. "You're only at Lesser Qi Gathering, yet you took the first five forms of the Mountain-Splitting Saber head-on and even broke through my protective inner qi. Among everyone in Qingyun County's Qi-Gathering Realm, you're the first. Kid, what's your name?"

"Once I've killed you, you'll know," Zhou Yan said through gritted teeth.

Song Tou'er did not rush to attack either. He was waiting. Every breath hurt.

But he was at Qi Gathering Greater Achievement. His inner qi was more than twice as abundant as Zhou Yan's. Zhou Yan was no less injured than he was, and his realm was lower. He could not outlast him.

"It doesn't matter if you won't talk. Once I take you back, the gang leader has plenty of ways to make you open your mouth."

Zhou Yan moved his right shoulder, took a deep breath, and drew up the last strand of inner qi from his dantian, pouring it into his right arm.

He clenched his right fist again.

There were no techniques left. He had used everything he could. From here on, it would be a head-on clash.

A thought flashed through his mind: if he died here, the two hundred taels of silver under the bed behind the tea stall would go unspent.

He laughed, kicked off the ground, and charged forward.

Song Tou'er's right palm came up to meet him. He no longer relied on his saber; the palm force of Qi Gathering Greater Achievement could kill just as well.