"Come on!"
As soon as the old general fired his arrow, he heard a humming sound from above and immediately struck back.
He flicked a fine cavalry lance off the ground with his foot, then alternated his hands to thrust and sweep it upward in one motion.
Clang!
Only then did the crisp clash of metal ring out in midair.
With his keen instincts, the old general sent three iron shards flying sideways, while the other two were also in the path of his lance.
With another thrust and horizontal sweep, the old general stirred his Internal Energy, using force that combined hardness with softness to knock the shards off course.
The power of a Martial Dao Grandmaster was not to be underestimated. Even with their naked eyes, they could hardly make out the supersonic iron shards Xu Xiao controlled with Telekinesis.
But decades of practicing martial arts, combined with the instincts honed in countless battles, still gave them a keen reaction to danger.
Clearly, it would be all but impossible to dispatch them as casually as he had slaughtered the soldiers.
But Xu Xiao had more than that up his sleeve.
"You scoundrel, your hidden weapons... oh no!"
The old general had just been about to say that Xu Xiao's hidden weapons had been knocked away when he suddenly saw them turn back the very next instant.
Not only that, Xu Xiao, high in the sky, held out a palm toward him from afar and made a squeezing motion.
The next second, invisible Telekinesis struck the old general from all sides, slamming violently into his protective True Qi.
"Pfft!"
The old general felt as though he had been struck from front and back by a hammer weighing ten thousand jun. His protective True Qi spontaneously formed a wall of Qi to resist it, and the Qi and blood within him fell into turmoil.
What! What kind of attack is this?
Before he could circulate his Qi to calm the churning Qi and blood within him, a piercing hum rang out around him once more.
The five iron shards came from five directions, faster than before!
Head, neck, heart, dantian, groin.
All five attacks were exceptionally tricky, aimed at vital points that an ordinary person would have no choice but to defend.
"You bastard!"
His instincts warned him to dodge, but the old general knew there was nowhere he could escape.
Old and frail, he possessed profound True Qi cultivation, but his body was no longer what it had been in his youth. As long as he remained uninjured, he could rely on his formidable Internal Energy and True Qi to maintain his peak condition.
But Xu Xiao's invisible Telekinesis strike just now had sent his Qi and blood surging and injured the meridians within him.
For a young and vigorous martial arts expert, surging Qi and blood and damaged meridians would cost at most two-tenths of their strength. But for an old bag of bones like him, it was a deadly crisis.
Yet as an imperial retainer of Zhao Song, he could only die fighting, not retreat. With a furious roar, he gripped his cavalry lance tightly and fought back with all his might.
The abundant Internal Energy he had cultivated over more than eighty years surged outward, forming a wall of Qi over three feet around him.
"Come on! This old man isn't afraid of you!"
Clang!
Half the lance, its spearhead still attached, flew into the air, followed by the old general's severed limbs.
Amid a vast mist of blood, the five iron shards swept through the old general's vital points, leaving a bloody mess on the ground.
"What a pity."
Xu Xiao shook his head in regret. He certainly did not pity the old man below; he regretted losing a meat pig whose True Qi he could have absorbed.
Judging by the old man's martial arts, the old fellow should have been an expert on the same level as the Sweeper Monk of Shaolin Temple.
Even from dozens of meters away, he could feel the wall of Qi projected outward and the searing heat of the surging True Qi.
If Xu Xiao had landed and fought him one-on-one, even with the trump card of invisible Telekinesis, he would most likely have been tied up in a long fight and perhaps even wounded before he could defeat him.
Unfortunately, Xu Xiao had always been cautious. There was clearly no chance of him giving up the advantage of flight and landing.
Internal Energy was merely a means of nourishing his body. With his ability to control objects through Telekinesis, his favorite method was to take heads with a flying sword like a sword immortal.
"Elder Qin!!"
The other four imperial retainers nearby also rushed over, watching helplessly as Xu Xiao killed the old general.
It was not that they had refused to save him, but that everything had happened far too quickly.
Although Xu Xiao and the old general had exchanged blows three times, it had all happened in an instant.
From the old general arriving before the hall and launching a sneak attack with a spear, to probing him with an arrow and Xu Xiao killing him in return, only two short breaths had passed.
Who could have imagined that someone like them, exalted imperial retainers who stood at the pinnacle of martial arts in this world, could die so quickly?
For a moment, the remaining monk and Daoist both slowed their steps. Only the two gray-haired eunuchs dressed as palace attendants attacked without hesitation.
One flicked his sleeve, sending countless golden needles as fine as ox hair toward Xu Xiao in the sky.
The other stomped on the ground, sending the spears and lances scattered across it springing into the air. Then the old eunuch bared two lean arms and punched the ends of the airborne weapons.
"Ha!"
This, too, was an attack with thrown spears, but the old eunuch had seemingly turned into a machine gun, his hands striking nonstop.
His fierce fists sent every spear and lance on the ground screaming out like cannonballs, more than twenty in all.
"The same trick won't work on me!"
Xu Xiao shouted and grew serious, only to notice the difference in a flash.
Although both attacks struck from a distance, the two old eunuchs had used entirely different methods.
The golden needles were fine and densely packed. If Xu Xiao chose to deflect them with Telekinesis, he would have to lock onto thousands of needles in an instant, which was clearly impossible.
Besides their own weight, the long weapons carried the old eunuch's fierce Internal Energy. Defending with Telekinesis as a shield would work against one or two, but with dozens coming at once, Telekinesis had its limits too.
Fortunately, Xu Xiao was no pushover. Ever since gaining Telekinesis, he had imagined countless scenarios for dealing with enemies and had prepared plans for them in his mind.
He divided his Telekinesis into two streams. One condensed into an invisible shield in front of him to block the needles as fine as ox hair; the other split into dozens of strands, applying pressure to the long weapons charging at him and deflecting their angles just as he had with the arrows.
The golden needles were dense but light, so a resistance shield formed from Telekinesis was enough to stop them. The long weapons were heavy, and meeting them head-on would be too reckless; deflecting them was the better course.
He did it all in an instant. Fortunately, he could control his Telekinesis with a mere thought.
Had he been using martial arts moves, even if he had thought of a countermeasure against such completely different threats, he would not have been able to adjust his response in an instant.
That was the advantage of Telekinesis: it moved with the mind, and force followed thought.
It did not depend on the body's reactions, but entirely on the speed of thought.
And there was very little in this world faster than thought. In the Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils World, there could be no martial arts move faster than a thought.
The next second, the golden needles were intercepted by the Telekinesis shield as intended, suspended in midair. The long weapons close behind them were also knocked off course by an invisible force, just like the arrows before them, and shot into the distance.
"What! How is that possible?"
"He neutralized our attacks without projecting even a trace of Internal Energy or force."
The two old eunuchs exchanged a glance, each seeing the terror in the other's eyes.
"This isn't martial arts!!"
The two reached the same conclusion and immediately stood back-to-back, ready to defend themselves.
Unfortunately, this time Xu Xiao, up in the sky, no longer intended to match moves with them. He went straight for the kill.
"You think I can only control objects? Die!"
Xu Xiao held out a hand toward the two below and clenched it fiercely.
The next second, invisible Telekinesis suddenly struck from every direction, squeezing the two together.
The Qi and blood within them surged, and their protective True Qi spontaneously formed walls of Qi around them. Unfortunately, this was neither a physical attack nor a strike of True Qi, so the walls of True Qi offered limited defense.
The force pressing in from every direction was the maximum Xu Xiao could currently exert with his Telekinesis-ten tons.
Pressure like that, striking in an instant, was enough to crush a small car into scrap metal.