"Get lost!"
Whether the man had felt a stir of compassion was unclear, but when faced with Little Taiping's punch, he did not smash his iron mace into a vital spot. Instead, he jabbed it against the boy's fist to dispel the force of the punch, then kicked hard at Little Taiping's chest, intending to send him crashing to the ground.
Shing!...
Just as the foot of the man wielding twin maces was about to strike Little Taiping's chest, an ear-splitting blade cry rang out. A sheet of dazzling blade light, thin as a cicada's wing and like the reflection off a mirror, shot skyward from below, thrusting straight into the gap between Little Taiping and the man.
But the man with the twin maces reacted extremely quickly. The instant the blade light sliced past, his figure flickered and vanished from the spot.
When he reappeared, he was already a hundred zhang away, controlling the Jade Gourd to send the girl with the flying-immortal bun away.
Yet when he tried to find the person who had just struck, he discovered that Xu Taiping, who had been standing on the ground holding an umbrella, had vanished.
The mace-wielding man's heart trembled, and a sense of imminent death crept over it.
Kree!...
Just then, with the cry of a crane, wisps of blade qi shaped like crane feathers enveloped the mace-wielding man like snow filling the sky.
Shing!...
Before the man could react, one crane feather abruptly transformed into Xu Taiping, a gleaming blade in his hand, slashing straight at his face.
At the critical instant, the man raised his twin maces and simultaneously employed his shadow-following true intent, smashing both maces toward the blade.
Bang!
Amid the tremendous impact, the mace-wielding man actually relied on his formidable cultivation as a Heaven