Fast!
So fast!
Old Daoist Wei strode forward, raising his sword as he lunged close. The Eight-Foot Azure Glint flashed out of its sheath. Man and sword were already far away, yet the scabbard seemed suspended in midair, utterly motionless.
Between motion and stillness, only when the sword light pressed toward Lian Youming's brow, closing to within half a step, did the long scabbard finally fall into the rain.
With two sharp whistles, Qing came slashing in.
Every hair on Lian Youming's body stood on end. His mind focused into a single point, and he bent his knees into a crouch, like a monkey hunkering down.
This crouch was also a movement technique. Not only could it evade an attack's edge, it also allowed him to spring in any direction and seize an opening.
The foundation of Xingyi's Monkey Form lay in this Monkey Crouch.
It required not just agility, but deftness and speed-speed enough to disappear from an opponent's sight with a single crouch, shrinking into their blind spot as though concealed, waiting for an opening to win.
But the Eight-Foot Azure Glint was simply too fast, and its trajectory too devious.
The instant Lian Youming crouched, the long sword plunged after him, lashing and curling through the air like a supple whip.
Where the sword light passed, the cloth over his left leg silently split open. A woman's corpse beside him was sliced in two at the waist with a wet rush, its guts spilling out amid a gust of bloody wind and rain.
Lian Youming's eyes flickered. He lunged forward, hooked one hand around the wooden pillar, and swung halfway around it, his sword darting toward the point between Old Daoist Wei's brows. "Heh!"
Old Daoist Wei gave a low, hoarse chuckle, utterly disdainful. The sword in