Food Immortal Master

Sword Qi came slicing toward him like a blizzard, but the Immortal Lord could not even be bothered to wave it away.

Even the sharpest strands merely left a few shallow scratches on his scales, which soon returned to pristine condition.

But suddenly, alarm stirred in his mind.

An attack that looked no different from the other strands of Sword Qi in his vision of energy, yet stood out with startling sharpness in his fate sense, mingled among the countless strands and abruptly closed in on him.

It was that sword!

Its edge was already at his throat.

He thrust out a claw with lightning speed. In a contest of such pure combat, his perfect instincts would never fail.

Though there was scarcely a hair's breadth to spare, he still caught that beautiful sword firmly in his claw-no!

The sword suddenly skipped along an exquisitely subtle arc, evading his grasp.

If the Immortal Lord's combat instincts embodied ultimate simplicity and beauty, in harmony with heaven and earth, then this leap was The One Hidden by Man.

The extraordinary Sword Treatise that Ming Qitian relied upon to contend with the Immortal Lord was known as the "Master Principles of All Sword Combat Under Heaven." Though it could not enable her to defeat him in a direct confrontation, it was more than sufficient to play a tiny part in this narrow opening.

Above the ruins, the woman in torn, bloodstained white raised her head toward the sky, brought two fingers together in a sword gesture, and gently lifted them upright.

High above, the move [Commoner's Sword], which had just been concealed within the blade, erupted. The sword pierced the Immortal Lord's neck.

Of course, it remained there for only an instant before the claw following close behind pulled it out and held it across the Immortal Lord's body.

Pupil's golden gaze fell upon the strangely beautiful longsword. It was still trembling incessantly, trying to escape his control.

This was the only means by which that little creature on the ground could harm him.

His throat was not a vital point-or rather, he had no vital points at all. Even if human weapons pierced him another hundred times, he would suffer little damage.

Except for this sword.

Every time it struck him, it erased a part of his consciousness.

Chapter 78: The City Under Siege

But this would be the last time.

It was now merely a very hard, yet delicious, morsel.

The Immortal Lord gripped the hilt tightly, containing its fierce yet powerless struggle in his palm. Dragon blood formed something like ice crystals and slowly crept up the hilt.

Starting at the hilt, the Dark Blue dragon blood covered the blade little by little, like a serpent of frost slowly swallowing the sword, or some creeping skin disease spreading across its bright, lustrous surface.

And it drove downward with all its strength, trying to penetrate the blade. Some of it had already succeeded.

The Heart-Slaying Glaze's trembling hum grew weaker and weaker as dragon frost slowly covered the entire blade.

But after piercing the surface, the sharp crystals of dragon frost struggled to burrow any deeper.

The Immortal Lord gave it a slight shake. The crystals fell away, revealing a blade stained with Dark Blue lines like twisted parasites.

Pupil's golden gaze rested on the sword. It would require a considerable amount of time to "digest," but he no longer had that time.

He casually hurled the sword away. When such a sharp object tore through the air at tremendous speed, it made not an explosive boom, but a piercing shriek.

A streak of light flashed past. The sword pierced the body of the woman who had just risen from the ground, pinning her back down.

The violet lightning and frost it carried surged through her limbs and bones. Ming Qitian grasped the hilt in front of her chest, but for the moment, she could not muster the strength to pull it out.

She forced herself to raise her head. The figure in the sky was slowly descending.

But he was not coming toward her. He returned to the gate tower and looked down over the little city.

Ming Qitian frowned slightly. What was he planning to do?

The Immortal Lord stood atop the gate tower.

He slowly raised a hand, aiming at a cluster of houses at the foot of the city wall.

His claw curled gently around empty air, and that entire corner of the city shattered with a thunderous crash.

Dozens of houses were leveled in an instant. Ming Qitian barely managed to raise a hand and summon her true qi. The flying wood and stone nearly buried her once more.

Over a hundred townspeople were hoisted into the air by an invisible hand-men, women, young and old. It was as though a noose descending from the heavens hung around each person's neck, forming a scene both staggering and horrific.

The claw the Immortal Lord had raised slowly broke apart, recreating the scene in the mountains as it transformed into over a hundred tiny lumps of Dark Blue flesh.

They flew forward, each seeming to slide along an invisible thread. At the end of every thread was a terrified, struggling towns-person.

Don't.

Ming Qitian tried once more to exert strength through the hand gripping the hilt, but the numbness and agonizing pain in her body defeated her again.

In the sky, the lumps of flesh touched human bodies. The suspended people began to mutate one after another. No longer was only the head infected; they became hideous monsters from head to toe. These "scouts" no longer needed to conceal themselves.

As though the threads suspending them had suddenly snapped, the monsters dropped to the ground, then raced toward the heart of the city over rooftops, along streets, and through treetops, nimble and ferocious.

Like hounds unleashed on a hunt.

In a very short time, they would find many connected objects, bringing the Immortal Lord dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of "threads."

But the Immortal Lord would not sit there waiting.

At the same time, he began destroying the city.

Frost crawled out from beneath his feet, rapidly consuming the entire section of wall under him before spreading into the city.

Then he gently raised his newly regrown claw. Its tightly interlocking, hard scales suddenly opened, exposing the tough, writhing flesh beneath.

Viscous Dark Blue liquid rose through the openings between those scales and gathered before the Immortal Lord, gradually forming a sphere larger than his body.

Had Pei Ye been able to see it, he would have recognized it at a glance-dragon saliva, an enormous quantity of dragon saliva!

As the dragon saliva continued gathering before him, the Immortal Lord extended his other claw toward the sky.

The sky suddenly darkened.

Storm clouds began to gather, and wind arose from some unknown place, sweeping up the leaves scattered along the streets.

Before such mighty power, Ming Qitian's Wind Earl and Rain Master Sword-Sacrificing Manual was no more than children's horseplay.

The Wind Lord Chapter could indeed summon wind, but the Rain Master Chapter could only command rain that had already arrived. It was said that only those in the Sky Tower realm could use the Rain Master Chapter to bring rain.

Yet before this Immortal Lord, heaven and earth seemed like servants bowing to his command. With a single lift of his hand, the world darkened, and wind and rain arrived together.

Only then did the hand gathering dragon saliva stop. The sphere was now nearly the size of a house. With a gentle lift of his hand, he sent it soaring into the sky.

Ming Qitian watched his movements. Just as she realized what he was doing, a clamor surged toward her from ahead.

Ming Qitian lowered her gaze and saw townspeople running toward her, screaming and crying in panic. Behind them, frost swept forward, with more than a dozen "hounds" racing within it.

The monsters did not actually hurt people. Their sole purpose was to find their targets faster, but the terror and chaos they brought had already caused many casualties.

Two monsters passing by suddenly stopped. Their hideous heads turned toward Ming Qitian, their golden eyes locking onto her.

They leaped at her.

But the instant they left the ground, several drops of water streaked past in a chain like a sword, piercing their heads.

An arm wrapped around Ming Qitian's waist and carried her backward in a leap.

"I've been waiting a long time. He probably isn't watching this side now," Xing Zhi whispered beside her ear.

"Thank you." Ming Qitian caught Xing Zhi's wrist and said quickly, "We need to get everyone into hiding right away. They mustn't stay exposed outdoors-"

Her voice broke off abruptly. A drop of icy rain had landed on her cheek.

She raised her head. What met her eyes was more than rain.

As though she had entered a realm of ghosts, thousands of Dark Blue flame blossoms drifted slowly down from the sky. Raindrops passing them lit up for an instant, then vanished again.

And across the vast backdrop behind it all, black frost stained the sky.

Inside the County Office.

Yue Muzhou could not see, but he heard the wind and felt the damp chill. His body, covered in injuries, began to ache faintly.

Chang Zhiyuan sat beside him. The old man was far healthier than he was, but also suffered from rheumatism, and was gently pounding his legs.

Yet his aching legs were not merely the result of the wet weather. Exhaustion was the greater cause.

Over the past several hours, he had worked without pause to coordinate every force still available in Fenghuai, tirelessly confirming every detail himself and giving meticulous instructions for every part of the city.

He was only an ordinary old man. For twelve years, his duties had concerned the people's peaceful lives and livelihoods, and the forces under his command had been used against petty thieves and bandits. He had never learned how to face an enemy like this.

He could not move the entire county town of Fenghuai away, nor could he keep the enemy outside its gates. He could only think of every possible way to help as many townspeople survive as he could.

Instructions such as locking doors from the outside to make houses appear unoccupied, or airing out cellars before hiding inside, would never have occurred to Xing Zhi and the others. Only someone truly weak and powerless could genuinely share the feelings of ordinary people.

Now, at last, the old man's work was done. The County Office's officers and the reinforcements from the prefecture had all been dispatched, leaving only one man to guard the shackled Zhu Gaoyang.

He brought a folding stool over beside the wheelchair. The two old men, neither strong enough to truss a chicken, sat together beneath the corridor eaves and waited.

"Is it going to rain?" Yue Muzhou asked hoarsely.

"Yes. The sky went dark very suddenly." Chang Zhiyuan rubbed his legs and frowned toward the horizon.

Chapter 79: A Small Gift

Over the past few days in the County Office, Yue Muzhou had met more people than he had in the entire preceding year.

Naturally, he had no way of knowing what they looked like, but blind people had their own ways of understanding others. Different people could still leave different impressions in his mind.

Of course, even among blind people, his blindness was of the most absolute kind. After all, he had lost both eyes entirely.

In daily life, he had a little method of sensing light and darkness. When the sun was at its most intense, he would cover his left eye with his left hand and his right eye with his right hand. After keeping them there for a while, he would suddenly pull them away and faintly sense a difference.

But most of the time, he remained submerged in profound darkness.

Within that darkness, his chief means of understanding the world was hearing-in truth, his hearing was not especially good either, but it was adequate.

And only when sight became completely unavailable, and all his attention was focused on hearing, did he discover how richly sound was laden with information.

Beyond the most obvious sound of speech, there were footsteps, the rustle of clothing, breathing, and even the sounds of fingers rubbing together, legs jiggling, swallowing, burping, farting, and so on. And those were merely the sounds one person made while quietly alone.

Once more than two people gathered in the same space, the information their sounds produced began multiplying over and over.

-Fingernails tapping lightly against wood meant the people nearby put him at ease; a quicker rhythm of heels lifting meant someone was feeling anxious; though someone might still sound cheerful and conversational, the constant sounds of shifting stance beneath their feet revealed impatience with the person they were speaking to...