Holding the Nine-Sectioned Li Staff, Zhang Lingjun gazed into the distance in the direction Lu Changfeng had gone before finally speaking, his voice low and tinged with gravity. "Please calm your anger, Your Highness. It was not that I was unwilling to act, but... times have changed."
He struck the ground with his long staff.
Humm-
A strange vibration spread outward from the tip of the staff.
In an instant, the exceedingly sophisticated illusions and visual deceptions that had shrouded the tea stall were silently dispelled!
The concealed scene emerged-within a radius of a hundred feet around the tea shelter, a full eighteen ancient swords of differing designs, radiant with spiritual light, stood embedded in the ground and treetops or floated in midair!
Some of these ancient swords had blades as clear as water, others as crimson as fire, as weighty as mountains, or as nimble as wind... each radiated its own spiritual brilliance and piercing Sword Qi. Every one was a rare treasure, tempered through countless hammer blows and already possessed of a spirit!
Until then, all their tips had pointed toward the center of the tea shelter-the very spot where Lu Changfeng had been sitting. Their blades hummed, killing aura held within them. With a mere thought from Zhang Lingjun, the Heavenly Dipper Northern Dipper Sword Formation built around these eighteen spirit-bearing ancient swords would activate at once and shred the person inside!
And yet.
The sight now revealed before Li Chongfu was utterly unlike the murderous scene he had imagined!
The eighteen spirit-bearing ancient swords, which should have been poised to strike, had all bizarrely reversed their tips to point outward from the formation! More than that, every blade trembled slightly, its spiritual light flickering as though it feared and resisted something, desperate to keep away from