Shi Chun also sprang up, drew his saber, and charged forward. Wu Jinliang's saber was too heavy, and before long, Shi Chun overtook him.
Neither man made any attempt to conceal himself after charging out. Together with the clattering gravel beneath their feet, the commotion immediately made the people ahead turn around one after another.
Wu Jinliang's height and his saber were both far too distinctive. Even without seeing his face clearly, Shen Youkun recognized him at a glance and blurted out, "It's Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang! Run! Run!"
He truly panicked.
Those two? Qi Ziru also looked astonished. He had thought they had already fled, yet they had actually hunkered down right under his nose, waiting for an opportunity. He more or less guessed why they had chosen this moment to attack, and praised them with genuine admiration. "Such nerve! Such cunning! Since guests have come calling, how could we refuse to receive them? Set down the sedan. We'll greet our visitors."
The two bearers stopped running, turned the sedan around, and lowered it, then stood guard on either side.
The masked burly man stopped as well, releasing the struggling Shen Youkun.
Shen Youkun was so frightened that he tumbled down the little slope and fled in a frantic scramble, repeatedly glancing back as he ran. His face had gone pale with terror. Clearly, he did not believe these men were a match for Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang.
Seeing his targets stop on the little slope to await them, Shi Chun sensed something amiss. Yet Shen Youkun's terrified flight did not look like an act, which eased much of his suspicion. He continued charging at full speed, reached his opponent, and leaped with his momentum, bringing his saber down from midair. A downpour of cold light cleaved through the air, ruthless and decisive!
The two bearers stepped in front of Qi Ziru, ready to fight, but the masked burly man stood waiting without moving. He ignored Shi Chun's descending saber entirely and fixed his gaze on Wu Jinliang instead.
Wu Jinliang had charged up as well, shouting excitedly, "Take my saber!"
The great saber's howling rush through the air was terrifying.
Once he came a little closer, the masked burly man finally acted. With a flick of both hands, he sent two yellow streaks shooting through the moonlight, one toward Shi Chun and the other toward Wu Jinliang.
Shi Chun tilted his saber's edge in midair, intending to cleave apart the incoming object, but a sudden dizzying sensation flickered before his eyes.
What was happening? Alarmed, he hastily steadied his mind and realized it was not dizziness. The empty air before him was rippling with a distortion, and he sensed an unseen slowing force enveloping his body.
He discovered that his fierce charge and powerful slash had actually become slow-motion movements. His saber's edge slowed and missed the yellow streak flying toward him. At close range, he could see it clearly: a yellow paper talisman covered in intricate vermilion inscriptions.
His gaze dropped, and he watched helplessly as the talisman stuck to his chest.
His movements were sluggish, and he had no time to dodge. He vaguely sensed some inexplicable power being released from the inscriptions, and then he could no longer move.
He did not fall to the ground. Instead, he was frozen in midair, still holding his saber in the act of striking.
Though his body could not move, his mind remained clear. He instantly realized what had happened. An Immobilizing Talisman!
He had actually encountered the legendary Immobilizing Talisman!
To him, it was indeed the stuff of legends. He had never seen one before, only heard that such things existed in the outside world. He had never imagined that these people had managed to bring even this inside.
Now he regretted it so bitterly his guts could have turned green, hating his own ignorance. Why hadn't he thought about it? They could bring in all those supplies, so how difficult could it be to bring in a talisman? He had already escaped, yet he had circled back. Wasn't that delivering himself to their door to die?
Realizing that Shen Youkun's flight had misled him, he inwardly cursed every one of Shen Youkun's ancestors.
But Shen Youkun's terrified escape also told him that this was definitely not Shen Youkun's doing. Shen Youkun might not even have known about it. It was probably the work of the man sitting so calmly on the reclining chair.
Behind him, Wu Jinliang had also fallen silent, frozen in place with fear in his eyes and his mouth still open. He understood perfectly that this time, he was truly done for. Death itself did not matter much; from the day he began risking his life, he had known this day would come sooner or later. What frightened him was being tortured endlessly and denied even a decent death.
He wanted to speak but could not. Only muffled whimpers emerged from his mouth as he tried to ask Shi Chun what they should do.
He knew Shi Chun probably had no good solution either, but right now, who else could he turn to for one?
Shen Youkun, who had been glancing back as he fled, stopped. After taking a careful look, he seemed to understand something. No wonder Uncle had said that even someone in the Advanced Martial realm couldn't escape. So that was why. A vicious grin immediately spread over his face, and he ran back.
Shi Chun saw it all. He was immobilized, not blind; he could not even close his eyelids. He knew full well that Shen Youkun would take his revenge.
He would rather fall into anyone's hands than Shen Youkun's, so he fought with the full strength of his cultivation, trying to break free. At first, he could still shake the force immobilizing him a little, but afterward, it was as though he had been cast into solid steel. There was not much sense of crushing pressure, yet he could not budge it in the slightest.
More terrifying still, even all his magical power seemed to have been immobilized, unable to act outside his body.
He had spent years in the cultivation world, but all the fighting and killing he had experienced had amounted to direct contests of personal cultivation and strength. Faced with a talisman like this, he had no idea how a mere scrap of yellow paper could possess enough power to seal him in place. He could neither fathom nor comprehend it.
What mattered was that he had no way whatsoever to escape. Even an attempt to talk his way out produced only muffled whimpers; he could not speak at all. Meanwhile, Shen Youkun kept drawing closer, and in the moonlight, Shi Chun could even see the savage expression on his face.
This time, he was truly frightened.
Yet the moment that fear arose, it felt as though someone had thrust a rod into his head. He suddenly felt something split, and his spine instantly seemed to be gnawed by countless insects and ants. That dreadful pain, which he had never wanted to experience again after enduring it once, had returned.
This time, he could not clutch his head or roll around to ease the pain. He could only pant violently, making harsh rasping noises in his throat.
Sure enough, when the pain came, those bizarre, fantastical sights appeared in his right eye again.
The difference was that his body now seemed covered in glowing tendrils, like translucent strands of hair. They spread in all directions, long and swaying, giving off a faint blue light. They were strikingly beautiful.
At this point, he could barely shift his gaze either. His eyeballs were also restrained, and moving them caused friction against something unknown in the empty air. It was deeply uncomfortable. Afraid of going blind, he dared not move them carelessly.
But his raised arm and slashing saber were still before his eyes. He could see many threadlike tendrils wrapped around his arm and saber, and could imagine that the other parts of his body he could not see must be much the same.
Strangely, although these tendrils could bind him, his body could not feel their existence at all.
Yet he was certain that the tendrils restraining him did not possess such powerful suppressive force themselves, because he could sense and see where the real pressure came from.
Within the bizarre scene visible to his right eye, that pale turquoise hue forming the background had a presence and abundance like the earth and mountains found everywhere in the real world, stable and fixed. Before, he had considered it illusory and could not sense its existence at all. Now, however, a substantial portion was rapidly gathering in response to the faint blue glow of those tendrils, condensing upon them.
After changing form, it seemed to have entered the real world, wrapping around Shi Chun like solid matter and suppressing all his magical power as well.
The tendrils spreading in every direction continued winding outward and growing longer, attracting still more pale turquoise substance to condense upon them.
Those tendrils and the condensed pale turquoise substance even passed through the bodies of Qi Ziru and the others without affecting them at all. Qi Ziru and the others seemed like people and objects within an illusion, leaving Shi Chun uncertain what was illusory and what was real, or how to distinguish between them.
Once the talisman's power had been fully released, the countless swaying tendrils stopped growing, and the condensation of the pale turquoise substance gradually ceased as well. Clearly, the tendrils' influence was related to the extent of their reach.
At this point, in a certain sense, Shi Chun and Wu Jinliang resembled giant spiked balls embedded in the earth. Viewed from ground level, they seemed pinned beneath a small mountain bristling with peaks. Its heavy, solid mass left the two unable to shake it in the slightest.
When he could not see it, all he could do was struggle blindly. Now that he could clearly see the talisman's power came from those glowing tendrils, he naturally had to direct his efforts at them. Even if he could not break free, Shi Chun refused to sit and await death.
He tried to use his magical power to burst apart the threadlike tendrils around his body, only to discover that they were elastic. They could stretch and grow thinner, but would not snap.
Perhaps it was not that they could not be snapped. Rather, the pale turquoise substance pressing against his body meant his magical power could only act upon his skin. The space he could force open was insufficient to reach the tendrils' limit of elasticity, so he could not stretch them until they broke.
But he made one surprising discovery: although he could not feel the tendrils' existence, his magical power could affect them.
Since he could not stretch them apart, he tried severing them with his magical power, only to find that this was useless too. His power could easily cut through the tendrils, but they automatically reconnected afterward. It was like drawing a blade to sever flowing water, strangely uncanny.
Since they could reconnect after being severed, he tried cutting them and using his magical power to keep them apart for longer.
He had no choice. He truly had no other choice. He had to try any method he could think of, treating a dead horse as though it might still be saved. He could not simply sit and await death.
Yet sometimes, good fortune really did arrive rather suddenly.
After roughly five or six counts, a trace of astonishment flashed through Shi Chun's frightened eyes. Several tendrils on his saber hand slowly drifted away. Even after leaving him, they continued emitting a faint blue glow. The pale turquoise substance attached to them did not disperse either, drifting away together with them.
Once they moved away, it was clear they were no longer connected to that heavy little mountain pinning him down. They had drifted out of the mountain itself, vividly displaying the difference between illusion and reality once more.
Though Shi Chun's successive physical and mental struggles and experiments took time to recount, the entire process had actually happened very quickly.
To everyone else, he had merely charged out abruptly and then been frozen in midair for a moment. Shen Youkun had not yet finished running back.
The saber clutched in Shi Chun's hand, poised in its downward slash, was only half a zhang from the masked burly man's head.
The masked burly man stared intently at the blade above him. Only after confirming that it no longer moved at all did he slowly lower the hands that had thrown the two talismans. He turned to look at Qi Ziru, who remained calm and composed on the reclining chair. He had to await this man's instructions on how to deal with them.
Qi Ziru raised a hand, signaling the two bearers shielding him to step aside, and took the opportunity to study the two attackers properly.
Shi Chun was suspended in midair with his saber raised in a slash, while Wu Jinliang had just sprung upward, one toe only about two feet off the ground. With the enormous saber he was dragging along, the sight of the two frozen in the air looked rather comical.
After looking them over, Qi Ziru could not help clicking his tongue in admiration. "As expected of the chief of the Eastern Nine Plains. That move alone, leaving only to return, was truly unexpected. Without a few treasures to protect me, I would certainly have fallen into your hands. No wonder that nephew of mine was nothing more than a plaything to you!"
Then he turned to the masked man and said mockingly, "With opportunities, sometimes whether you can seize one is one matter, and whether someone is willing to give you another is something else entirely. He escaped from your hands, and just as we were worrying about having to fish a needle out of the sea, he delivered himself right to our door. How could we fail to entertain him properly? There are things I still don't understand. Bring him down for questioning."