The Feint

"Heh, Duke Cheng truly was a pillar of Great Tang. What a Peerless Strike! One swing of your axe broke through my Heavenly Ghost Claw," said the smiling black-robed man Cheng Yaojin had called Yuan Zui.

"Enough talk! Our last fight left me wanting more. Let's have another go!" Cheng Yaojin pointed his great axe at the black-robed man.

"If Your Grace wishes to test me, I'll gladly oblige. But our fight would affect too wide an area. Shall we take it up above, as we did before?" Yuan Zui pointed at the sky.

"Just what I had in mind!" Cheng Yaojin roared with laughter and was about to soar into the air.

At that moment, a rumble rose from the distant ground. A black pillar of light, a full hundred zhang across, erupted toward the heavens like a column holding up the sky.

Across the southern part of the city, black light flashed as more than a hundred smaller pillars sprang up like bamboo shoots after rain.

"What!" Yuan Zui's expression changed sharply at the sight.

Cheng Yaojin's eyes, by contrast, lit up with delight.

The towering black pillar flashed wildly. Bulges rose across its surface and swelled violently until the whole pillar burst apart.

The smaller pillars seemed linked to it and shattered one after another.

The black clouds overhead seemed connected to the pillars below as well. They churned like raging waves, then rapidly began to disperse.

The many ghosts fighting Great Tang's cultivators turned translucent and vanished into thin air, one after another, as though a mysterious force had dragged them away.

Within a few breaths, nearly all the ghosts in the air were gone. Only the Body Refining Altar cultivators and a handful of ghosts that had not been summoned remained.

The battle, once evenly