By then, Zhechen had also come to his senses. His eyes filled with malice as he looked at Xu Taiping and said:
"You knew all along that Lin Qinggu would invite me down here?"
Xu Taiping rested his hand on the hilt at his waist and nodded calmly.
"You guessed correctly."
Half-Immortal Zhechen's expression grew darker still as he said coldly:
"If you already knew I was the one behind him, why didn't you flee?"
Xu Taiping met Half-Immortal Zhechen's gaze calmly and said in an even voice:
"You would have set your sights on me either way. I might as well take advantage of the Shangqing Edict's restrictions on you and kill you here in the Lower Realm. That would be a better bargain."
His words sent another uproar through the surrounding cultivators watching.
Jiang Shuoxue looked utterly stunned.
"Xu Taiping is using Lin Qinggu as bait to hunt... to hunt Half-Immortal Zhechen?!"
Yun Jiuyi's eyes were filled with horror as he said:
"Isn't that... isn't that far too bold? That's Zhechen!"
Half-Immortal Zhechen froze for a moment, then threw back his head with a wild laugh before saying with utter contempt:
"You? Kill me here in the Lower Realm?!"
With that, he burst into wild laughter again.
Someone he regarded as prey had actually declared that he would hunt him. To him, it was the greatest joke in the world.
Boom-!!
Xu Taiping answered Half-Immortal Zhechen's wild laughter with his aura, no longer suppressing it in the slightest.
Boom! Boom, boom-!
In a single instant, the aura fluctuations Xu Taiping stirred through the Ten Emperors Scripture forcibly suppressed Half-Immortal Zhechen's aura.
That terrifying, sky-filling aura even knocked all the surrounding spectators back several thousand zhang.
The mountain peaks on the ground below were crushed directly into nothingness.
In