Half a month later, somewhere in a sprawling mountain range.
A man led a blue-gray mule slowly through the mountains. The narrow, rugged trail stretched into the distant peaks.
It was Wang Yu, who had set out two days earlier to find Guangyuan Market.
Although he now had a Storage Bag, it was not spacious enough, so he had bought a mule to carry his excess belongings.
He did not know Guangyuan Market's exact location. He could only head northeast from Tongzhou City, eventually plunging into this nameless mountain range.
After the man and mule passed along a difficult stretch of trail, a junction where three paths met appeared ahead.
Wang Yu glanced at the junction not far away. His expression changed slightly, and he abruptly stopped.
More than a dozen corpses lay in the open space at the junction. There were men and women, most dressed as guards in close-fitting clothes, swords and sabers still in their hands. The carcasses of seven or eight pack animals laden with heavy bundles lay among them.
Overclocking.
Almost instantly, Wang Yu silently entered the Overclocking synchronization state. With his five senses amplified, he could make out every detail of the distant corpses.
Black blood had flowed from the seven orifices of humans and animals alike, yet there were no wounds anywhere else on their bodies.
The guards' faces all bore faint, eerie smiles, as though the entire party had dropped dead in a single instant, without any sign of pain or struggle.
Swish!
Wang Yu seized the iron essence saber at his waist and swiftly scanned the surrounding area.
Suddenly, his ears twitched. His gaze instantly settled on a patch of ground only a few dozen feet ahead, and a trace of surprise crossed his face.
Boom!
Dirt sprayed into the air ahead as two figures burst out of the ground, one after the other.
The slender figure in front seemed to be struck by something from a distance. With a startled cry, she fell before Wang Yu-a woman in a white dress, with a peach-blossom face and a graceful figure.
The beauty looked barely twenty. Blood stained her waist, the Yellow Short Ruler in her hand had been broken in half, and the pale yellow barrier around her body teetered on the verge of collapse.
"Fellow cultivator, save me! This man is a bandit cultivator! My father is the Prince of Celestial River in Celestial River Prefecture. If you help me, the Celestial River Prince's Manor will reward you handsomely!" Only after struggling to raise her upper body did the woman in white notice Wang Yu right before her. Delighted, she immediately pleaded for help. With her alluring features, her pitiful beauty made one want to sweep her into one's arms.
The Prince of Celestial River? This woman belonged to the imperial family!
Wasn't Celestial River Prefecture one of the Wu Kingdom's twelve prefectures, right next to Great Ming Prefecture?
Wang Yu paused in surprise at her words.
"Someone actually came along at a time like this. I wonder whether your luck is rotten, or this girl's is good."
The figure behind her strode out of the dust. He was an ugly man holding a silver hammer, with a tangled head of long hair and a mouthful of uneven yellow teeth.
He, too, seemed a little surprised to see Wang Yu, but immediately pointed his silver hammer casually at him from afar as he spoke viciously.
Not good!
Wang Yu's five senses were extraordinarily keen in the Overclocking synchronization state. Without time to think, he darted aside and threw himself out of the way. The woman in palace attire also went pale and leaped in the opposite direction.
Boom!
The ground where they had stood suddenly burst apart, leaving a large crater half a meter deep.
Caught in the shock wave, the white-clad woman's protective barrier flashed twice before shattering and dissipating completely. She staggered several steps and fell onto her backside, unable to rise again for the moment.
"You actually dodged my strike?"
A trace of surprise appeared on the ugly man's face.
His silver hammer Magical Artifact could injure people invisibly from a distance. When he had used it to ambush opponents unfamiliar with its abilities, eight or nine times out of ten, a single strike had done the job.
"I'm not blind. I saw perfectly clearly how you struck her from a distance just now. I'm only passing through. Do you really have no intention of stopping? Are you going to deal with me too?" Wang Yu looked at the crater beside him. His spiritual sense could faintly detect fluctuations of Dharma Power from the ugly man far stronger than his own, and his expression darkened.
His opponent seemed to be a mid-stage Immortal Cultivator at the fifth or sixth level of Qi Refining. The weapon in his hand also appeared to be a graded Magical Artifact; otherwise, it could not have possessed such terrifying power.
"Fine. Leave at once and stay out of whether this girl lives or dies, and I won't make more trouble for myself." The ugly man narrowed his eyes at those words. With one hand, he planted the silver hammer heavily against the ground, its head sinking halfway into the earth with a rumble, and answered coldly.
The man's physical strength seemed astonishing as well.
"Then we have a deal."
Wang Yu's gaze flickered a few times. He immediately sheathed his saber and led the mule off along one side of the mountain path, apparently intending to give the ugly man and the woman in white a wide berth.
"Fellow cultivator, please don't believe his nonsense! This man is despicable and shameless. He deliberately lay in ambush here to rob and murder fellow cultivators. He already poisoned my guards, and he has an Earth-Drilling Talisman.
"Once he kills me, he'll certainly kill you to silence you! Also, I have a powerful companion fighting one of his accomplices on the other side. If the three of us join forces, we still have a chance of winning!" Seeing this, the woman in white panicked and hurriedly pleaded with Wang Yu.
Wang Yu's steps paused briefly, but he immediately quickened his pace, showing no intention of stopping again.
"Haha! You're a wise man, fellow cultivator. This girl announced her identity earlier because she clearly wanted to drag you into these muddy waters and set us against each other, so she could seize the chance to escape." The ugly man burst into laughter at the sight.
Wang Yu ignored them both and simply strode away with his head down. In moments, he was seventy or eighty feet away.
Watching him go, the woman in white weakly tightened her grip on the short ruler, despair spilling across her lovely face.
As the ugly man watched Wang Yu's retreating back, his smile slowly faded. A cold gleam flashed in his eyes, and a yellow talisman concealed in his sleeve suddenly burned on its own. A ball of yellow spiritual light silently sank into the earth beneath his feet. At the same time, he snatched up the silver hammer and swung it through the air toward Wang Yu's back.
The instant the ugly man attacked, Wang Yu spun around as though he had been ready all along, his iron essence saber appearing in his hand again. But the ground beneath his feet abruptly collapsed, trapping most of both legs in the soil and leaving him unable to move.
At the same time, a great mass of invisible wind pressure appeared out of nowhere overhead and bore down savagely, leaving him nowhere to dodge.
A crystalline gleam contracted in Wang Yu's pupils. With a low shout, he drove his legs upward, wrenching himself from the earth with tremendous strength and leaping more than ten feet high. He merely turned his empty palm over, and the Silver Folding Fan appeared in it. He swept it forcefully upward.
Whoosh!
A raging white gale surged into the sky and collided with the invisible wind pressure overhead, unleashing a thunderous roar. Fierce winds swept outward in every direction, sending sand and stones flying and making it impossible for anyone nearby to keep their eyes properly open.
The ugly man's expression changed slightly. Another talisman appeared in his hand, and he swiftly slapped it onto himself. Then he began chanting with practiced ease. Yellow light flickered around him, and a faint, pale yellow barrier took shape.
Amid the flying sand and stones, Wang Yu flipped over and descended. The instant he landed, however, he quietly slipped his saber back into its sheath and pressed one hand against the hilt. Veins bulged along his right leg. With another powerful push, he shot forward like a cannonball through a spray of dirt.
Draw-Cutting Art!
With a fierce shout, a streak of snow-white saber light flashed before the ugly man.
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