This, too, exceeded Jing Ziwang's expectations. With the red pearl in his hand, he was still planning two or three more moves and had not prepared to stake his life on an immediate clash.
But the arrow was on the string; he had no choice but to loose it. Bian's might gathered in his right arm once more, without any dazzling display-only invisible pressure and a soundless eruption. Jing Ziwang thrust his arm forward to meet Qiongqi.
The outcome was decided instantly.
Like a cat pouncing on a rag doll, Qiongqi clamped his jaws around Jing Ziwang's shoulder and neck. Ill-prepared and with his true qi constrained, Jing Ziwang could offer no resistance. Bones cracked audibly, and blood burst out in torrents.
Jing Ziwang gritted his teeth. Staring into the golden eyes mere inches away, he silently extended the pearl in his left hand.
In an instant, an enormous red lotus bloomed in the village.
Countless razor-sharp ribbons sliced outward, piercing the massive tiger's body. For a moment, it was as though blood rained from the heavens, a sight too gruesome to look upon.
The magical artifact [Red Silk], refined by the Dragon Lord Dongting's sorcerers, appeared gentle and harmless, but it had always been a lethal weapon. It possessed no powers of healing or extraction.
With a simple piece of misdirection, Jing Ziwang had landed his first truly effective attack.
At the same time, scales and bone spurs rapidly sprouted from his right arm. He had removed every restraint-no, he had never been restraining it in the first place. He had been guiding it!
He had deliberately spread this deadly substance throughout his entire arm, seeking only to complete the transformation the instant he released the safeguard.
If an ordinary person could use this transformation to rival a martial artist at the Meridian Tree's second, third, or even Fourth Growth, what terrifying might could a grandmaster unleash by willingly feeding it all the true qi in his body and the flesh of his entire arm?
Chapter 36: Flight across
Pei Ye grasped Jing Ziwang's intent in an instant.
A chance of victory had appeared.
The youth's quick wits and decisiveness shone once again. This was no longer a matter of choice, only instinct.
"Lend me Quail Head!"
Pei Ye shouted, already moving behind Jing Ziwang.
Since establishing the pact, he could use this ability whenever he wished, no longer bound by time limits. But it was still something he "borrowed"; Black Chi could deny him its use at any moment.
With the situation driven to this point, however angry Black Chi might be, Black Chi would not watch him die out of spite. Quail Head came without the slightest resistance.
Everything became clear. Pei Ye reached out his right arm and pressed his hand against Jing Ziwang's right shoulder.
The instant he touched it, a sense of kinship and a ravenous thirst rose together from his abdomen.
Pei Ye had guessed correctly. The substance infecting Jing Ziwang's arm was exactly like the Dragon Tongue's secretions, and he felt he could control it freely. Had he discovered this earlier, he could have helped Jing Ziwang draw the substance out.
At the same time, however, he realized that Jing Ziwang's wariness and hostility toward him in the County Office had been justified, because this arm awakened in him a desire to "devour."
Pei Ye did neither of those things.
He poured all the dark blue liquid accumulated in his dantian over the past few days into Jing Ziwang's arm in one rush, leaving only a bare "Dragon Tongue" behind.
Under this fierce infusion, the arm became still more powerful and terrifying.
Only now did the true killing stroke emerge. A gale sprang up, and all the surrounding Profound Qi was sucked dry. It was still Bì’àn Wounds the World, but its force had grown far more than twofold.
Qiongqi was still shifting his flesh and blood to escape the Red Silk's entangling, slicing strands. An ordinary person caught by this artifact could all but be pronounced dead: amid a thousand tangled threads, the harder they struggled, the deeper the cuts became.
But against this uncanny ability to move flesh and bone at will, the Red Silk's effectiveness was greatly diminished. Its prey was slippery indeed.
Qiongqi was about to succeed.
Fortunately, Jing Ziwang was faster.
His dark blue right arm was now as thick as a thigh and twice the length of his left. Dense Profound Qi wreathed it, and with its sharp claws held together, it resembled a strange, terrifying spear of Gods and Devils.
Jing Ziwang drove the spear forward. It would pierce Qiongqi's neck, its bone spurs would carve the tiger's body into great chunks, and then the Profound Qi coiling around it would explode within, tearing that flesh to shreds.
After this blow, even if Qiongqi survived, he would have almost no strength left to resist.
Just then.
Pei Ye's vision suddenly blurred, and the scene before him abruptly accelerated.
Startled, he wondered why he had fallen out of the Quail Head state.
But when he looked closer, the dust still crawled slowly through the air, and the Red Silk still swayed in its languid dance. [Quail Head] was clearly still active.
Just now... something had sped up!
It was... that distorted tiger's body before him!
Even with Quail Head active, Pei Ye could barely make out the movements of the man and tiger, but now the tiger was plainly moving several levels faster than Jing Ziwang.
Amid the streaming flesh and Red Silk, a pair of slit pupils flashed, then settled into place as the tiger's head took shape once more.
The instant Pei Ye met those magnificent golden eyes, he felt as though he had plunged into an ice cellar.
He had [Quail Head], too.
Under an ability that saw everything as clearly as a blazing fire, the last strands of Red Silk entangling Qiongqi were no more than knots tied by a child. He unraveled them swiftly and precisely. By the time Jing Ziwang's claws reached him, Qiongqi had already slipped nimbly aside and planted a paw against his heart.
Collapse, compression, rupture.
Like the flat of a knife smashing a clove of garlic.
Pallid bone shards punched out of his chest, accompanied by great sprays of blood pumped from the grandmaster's powerful heart.
Though the damage each could unleash was evenly matched, the Immortal Hunter's resilient body was not something a human could easily rival. Beneath that single paw, Jing Ziwang fell with his eyes wide open.
The grandmaster's formidable vitality was still at work. His face drenched in blood, Jing Ziwang gasped for breath and lifted a hand. Profound Qi obediently gathered around it.
He still tried to muster another strike, but Qiongqi pressed a paw onto his shoulder, bent down, and bit off his head.
Pei Ye stood rooted to the spot, watching, his body as cold and stiff as a corpse.
His previous victory against hopeless odds had indeed restored the self with "a crane's bones and bamboo's resolve." He had been brimming with confidence, his sword heart bright, never bending his back, never fearing hardship.
Thus, although this enemy was a hundred times stronger than the last, he had still chosen not to leave.
Abandoning others to save himself was a course he had already rejected on that rainy night.
But in the real world, no one could win forever.
A crushing defeat might await in the very next battle.
And this time, even if he learned all the remaining sword moves at once, he would have no chance at all.
"There is too little trust between us."
Black Chi suddenly spoke.
Trust... yes.
From the beginning, he had harbored suspicions about this Black Chi who had inexplicably entered his dreams. Even when they established the pact, he had still doubted Black Chi's motives.
Though two days together had brought them a little closer, that was clearly still far too little time.
Far too little to wear away the barriers between them, let alone build the complete trust an Immortal Hunter and pact-bearer should share, entrusting their lives to one another.
So even after Black Chi had explicitly told him, "Jing Ziwang will certainly die. You have no chance of victory," he had arrogantly chosen to trust his own eyes, trying to analyze the battle and find an opening with his crude judgment and meager knowledge.
Yet reality proved that no opportunity had ever existed.
"It could not be helped. I do not blame you." Black Chi gave one final, soft sigh and fell utterly silent, seemingly prepared to accept defeat calmly.
Pei Ye's face was bloodless. He said nothing.
Qiongqi ignored him completely, lowering his head to savor the grandmaster's body.
Despite suffering such heavy blows and shedding so much blood, his body bore no visible trace of the battle.
He must have sustained damage; it had simply been concealed entirely.
Like that monster which had repaired its bones and tendons first, Qiongqi possessed a similar ability on a far higher level.
If a person lost an arm, the wound might not be fatal, but they would almost certainly be unable to keep fighting. For humans, injuries diminished both vitality and combat strength.
Not so for Qiongqi. His injuries seemed only to deplete his life. Even if he were to die in the next instant, in this one he could still fight at his absolute peak.
Unfortunately, this discovery was of little use now.
Pei Ye refused to stand by like a lamb awaiting slaughter while Jing Ziwang was slowly savored. He gripped his sword hilt, drew the blade, and attacked the enormous demonic beast without expression.
Without raising his head or pausing his chewing, Qiongqi casually swung the sharp hook of his tail.
Before Pei Ye could react at all, the sharp, icy chill at his throat instinctively caught his breath.
But that icy point did not pierce him.
Pei Ye raised his head. Qiongqi, too, turned his enormous, dreadfully imposing skull and stared at him with eyes of radiant gold.
Confusion flashed through those eyes. Qiongqi shook his head irritably, as though some will had interfered with his killing.
In the end, that will seemed to prevail. He turned back, swallowed the remaining half of the body whole to digest at leisure, then coiled his tail around Pei Ye and spread a pair of enormous wings.
The sun had set and the moon risen. Wind stirred, and an enormous beast's silhouette crossed the night sky, carrying a human figure in its tail into the dark, distant mountains.
Chapter 37: The lair
Pei Ye did not know where he was being taken.
Pitch-black mountain silhouettes passed beneath his feet. Fenghuai fell far behind, and the mountains grew ever taller, steeper, and more unfamiliar.
Why wasn't he killing him? Was he taking him back to his lair?
Suddenly, amid the fierce winds high above the ground, a possibility occurred to Pei Ye-could he have seen through the Shared Fate Pact? Was he taking him to Black Chi to kill him there, then strike Black Chi down while weakened?
Ignoring the guilt surging into his heart, Pei Ye hurriedly called to Black Chi in his mind, urging Black Chi to dissolve their pact at once.
"Do not panic. This has nothing to do with me." Black Chi's tone was intent. "Let us see where this is."
Pei Ye froze. His body suddenly plunged downward as Qiongqi abruptly dived into a steep, secluded mountain valley.
Something like firelight flashed through his field of vision. Before Pei Ye could look closely, he was hurled roughly to the ground, the impact sending pain through his chest and abdomen.
A great gust of wind and dust rose behind him, accompanied by the beating of wings. Qiongqi did not linger for even a moment, but departed at once.
Pei Ye braced his hands against the ground. He was just about to rise and see where he was when two pairs of boots landed before his eyes. The pair on the right was lightly dusted; the pair on the left was exceptionally clean.
That familiar cleanliness startled Pei Ye, and he snapped his head up.
But the dead had not returned to life. Before him stood two unfamiliar figures in purple robes, their heads lifted as they watched Qiongqi recede into the distance.
"More and more are awakening..." said the one on the left.
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