Lightning flashed through the valley. Sword Qi and sand and stone rampaged through the Imperial Mausoleum like yellow and white dragons and pythons, destroying some of the completed buildings over the course of half an hour.
Li Jing's robes were in tatters, several bloody wounds marked his body, and his graying hair hung loose. After so many attacks, his sword, Brocade Flood Dragon, was as hot as a branding iron.
As a cultivator of the Immortal Dao, Zhang Guan had powerful spells, long range, and numerous Divine Abilities at his disposal, but his weakness was that his Qi had nowhere near the endurance of a Pure Martial Artist's. His Qi Sea was running dry, and his attacks had visibly slowed. Without confidence in a guaranteed hit, he dared not attack lightly again, nor did he dare use the Ten-Thousand-Mile Divine Movement Spell to blink about unless his life was threatened.
Meanwhile, the burly, six-and-a-half-foot figure's injuries kept healing. Even now, his long, dark-red hair streamed behind him, his skin scarlet and scorching. The only difference from before was that the blood energy around him was nearly exhausted, and faint bloody mist had begun steaming from his body. He looked like a fire set ablaze.
After fighting for so long, Li Jing had also realized something was wrong with this Demon Path cultivator. He seemed to be drawing things out and stalling all along, neither fighting desperately nor fleeing.
Seeing that Zhang Guan was nearly unable to fight any longer, Li Jing asked gravely:
"The Directorate of Celestial Observation's Immortal Officials haven't noticed anything wrong here?"
"I don't know."
As the hulking figure trailing red mist fought, he too kept glancing north out of the corner of his eye.
Until the work at the Mine was finished, the moment he