One Person

Splash!

The boiling pool water surged into the air. Wrapped in a vast cloud of white vapor, a figure slowly rose from the churning center of the pool. Steam billowed around him like swirling clouds and mist, obscuring him from view. All that could be seen was a speck of pale golden flame burning quietly within the vapor. Every gaze in the ice cavern fell upon the figure at that moment.

The vapor gradually dispersed. Xiao Yan hovered thirty feet above the pool, a pair of jade-colored bone wings beating slowly behind him. He was soaked through, his green robes clinging to his body, and a thin layer of unmelted frost still coated the sleeve of his left arm. His face was somewhat pale, but his eyes were frighteningly calm.

His gaze slowly swept across the ice cavern: blood covered the ground; Luo God Clan youths lay on the ice, their fates unknown; the young men and women forced back against the ice wall were all wounded; Luo Feng leaned on his longsword, his left shoulder a mass of purplish black; Luo Lan shielded Luo Zhi, both fists bloodied and mangled... At last, his gaze settled on the lanky figure holding Luo Xiao by the pool.

"Brother Xiao!" Luo Lan cried, his voice hoarse and an unmistakable sob in it.

Xiao Yan did not answer. He simply watched Xue Shi in silence. For some reason, the temperature in the ice cavern quietly dropped at that moment.

"So you're the brat from the Lower Plane?" Xue Shi narrowed his eyes as he sized Xiao Yan up. A moment later, that effeminate smile returned to his lips. "You're younger than I expected."

"Let him go," Xiao Yan said calmly.

"That young fellow Luo Feng said the same thing just now." Smiling, Xue Shi tightened the fingers clamped around Luo Xiao's throat. Luo Xiao's face instantly turned from red to purple. "My terms are simple. Cripple your own dantian and come with me, and I'll let these little Luo God Clan brats go. Of course, you can refuse."

With his other hand, he pointed at the blood flowing through the array diagram on the ice. "As long as this Blood Sacrifice Array remains intact, these little Luo God Clan brats can only use sixty percent of their strength. For the people I brought, killing them is as easy as killing chickens."

Xiao Yan glanced down at the dark red array diagram beneath him, then smiled. "Heh, a Blood Sacrifice Array? Using blood as the foundation of the array?"

Xue Shi raised an eyebrow at those words, but Xiao Yan had already begun to raise his right hand. With his palm facing down, he let a wisp of pale golden flame drift from it, landing on a line at the outermost edge of the blood-colored array diagram.

Sizzle!

The flood dragon blood flowing through the line began to boil violently the instant it touched the flame, like water striking hot oil. Amid a piercing series of sizzles, it turned into wisps of scarlet blood mist and evaporated completely, and the line went dark. Immediately afterward, the flame spread swiftly along the lines. One, ten, a hundred... The pale golden threads of fire became slithering fire serpents, racing through the enormous blood-colored array diagram. Wherever they passed, the flood dragon blood boiled and burst upward as blood mist. In the blink of an eye, a scarlet haze enveloped the entire ice cavern.

The smile froze completely on Xue Shi's face. The Luo God Clan youths pressed against the ice wall felt the invisible hand gripping their Spiritual Energy suddenly loosen, and their sluggish Spiritual Energy surged once more.

"You-" Xue Shi's pupils contracted sharply, but as soon as the word left his mouth, a blur flashed before his eyes. Xiao Yan's figure vanished from above the pool.

Almost instinctively, Xue Shi raised his hand and held Luo Xiao in front of him. But at that instant, a sharp pain erupted in his mind. It was like a red-hot iron nail driven savagely into his sea of consciousness, blacking out his vision and making his entire body stiffen. Emperor Realm Soul! In this Great Thousand World, not a single Supreme Realm expert had ever known how to guard against a soul attack from a Dou Di. He stiffened for less than a breath, but that was enough.

A jade-colored afterimage swept past his side, stirring up a gust of wind. By the time Xue Shi recovered, the person in his grasp was gone. He turned sharply and saw that more than a hundred feet away, Xiao Yan had landed steadily on the ice. Holding Luo Xiao by the back of his collar with his left hand, Xiao Yan casually tossed him backward, at Luo Feng's feet.

Luo Xiao fell onto the ice and clutched his throat, coughing violently. As he coughed, he raised his head and looked at the slender back standing before everyone. For some reason, his eyes reddened too.

"Luo Feng," Xiao Yan said without looking back.

"Here."

"Take them back to the ice wall. Form a defensive array and protect the wounded."

"But you..."

"These people," Xiao Yan said, looking at the dozen or so Blood God Clan assassins in the center of the cavern, their expressions shifting. He slowly raised his right hand. "I'll handle them."

Hum!

An enormous ruler, pitch-black from end to end, slowly formed in his palm. Every sound in the ice cavern vanished at that moment.

"Kill him!"

No one knew which Blood God Clan assassin was the first to roar, but more than a dozen dark red figures shot forward at once, attacking the figure holding the Black Ruler from every direction. Blood-red light surged skyward and palm winds howled. More than a dozen Blood Fiend Palm imprints interwove in midair, forming an enormous net of blood that covered the sky and earth as it descended.

Xiao Yan did not retreat. He did not even move, merely raising the Heavy Xuan Ruler slowly above his head. Over the past month, on the stone platform at the center of the lake, he had sensed the rivers of Spiritual Energy in this world over and over again. Now, there were rivers in the ice cavern as well. They flowed between the ice walls, over the cold pool, and past the dozen or so Blood God Clan assassins charging at him. Xiao Yan watched their currents, then swung the ruler down along their flow.

Flame Splitting Wave Ruler!

Boom!

A pale golden wave of fire roared from the pitch-black ruler. Following the flow of the natural Spiritual Energy in the ice cavern, the fire surged outward in overlapping waves, each higher and faster than the last. The net of blood descending from above was as fragile as a sheet of thin paper before the flames, torn apart in an instant. The wave of fire pressed on with undiminished force, crashing savagely into the dozen or so dark red figures. Screams rang out in an instant, only to be swallowed up by the roar of the flames just as quickly.

When the wave of fire finally subsided, a scorched trench several dozen feet wide and about ten feet deep had appeared in the ice at the center of the cavern. On either side, more than a dozen Blood God Clan assassins lay scattered across the ground. Some were still burning with pale golden flames, rolling and howling on the ground, while others had already gone motionless.

One strike.

A deathly silence filled the ice cavern. The Luo God Clan youths huddled beneath the ice wall stood with their mouths hanging open and their eyes wide, as if someone had cast an immobilization spell on them. They had even forgotten to breathe. They had seen him swallow a lamp at the family banquet, uncover a traitor in the medical cottage, break an array in the Mist Abyss yesterday, and slay a flood dragon beside the cold pool last night, but they had never seen him fight like this.

Luo Lan stared blankly at that figure's back, his lips trembling. After a long while, he managed to murmur, "Th-this is... Brother Xiao's full strength?"

"No." Luo Feng's low, hoarse voice came from beside him. Luo Lan turned to see Luo Feng leaning on his longsword, staring fixedly at the center of the cavern, his usually composed face grave. "Look at his hand."

Luo Lan was taken aback. Following Luo Feng's gaze, he saw that Xiao Yan's right hand, the one gripping the Heavy Xuan Ruler, was trembling slightly. The skin between his thumb and forefinger had split open, and blood was dripping down the ruler's hilt onto the ice. For that strike, he had borrowed the force of the natural Spiritual Energy, but he could only draw on sixty percent of the Spiritual Energy in his body. He had also just made his way up from the seventh level, nearly exhausting his mental strength. With that strike, he had depleted nearly half the Spiritual Energy in his body.

At the end of the scorched trench, one person was still standing: Xue Shi. The wave of fire had torn away most of his dark red robes, exposing his pale, gaunt body. He had several charred burns, but none was fatal. The instant the flames reached him, he had seized two of his subordinates and held them in front of himself. Those two now lay at his feet, burned to charcoal.

Xue Shi lowered his head and looked at the two charred corpses at his feet, then raised it and looked at Xiao Yan's slightly trembling right hand. He smiled. There was no trace of effeminacy left in that smile, only a nearly crazed savagery. "Good, good, good. No wonder Elder Xue Li insisted that I bring your head back. What a pity."

He slowly spread his arms. In the ice cavern, the blood flowing from the wounds of the fallen Blood God Clan assassins, whether they were howling or unconscious, suddenly stopped. Then it began to flow backward, flying out of their wounds in crimson threads that converged wildly on Xue Shi from every direction.

"E-Elder..." One of the Blood God Clan assassins who was still conscious stared at the threads of blood being drawn from his body and cried out in terror. The next moment, his body rapidly shriveled, and his voice stopped abruptly.

Xiao Yan's pupils contracted sharply as well. Xue Shi stood at the center of the countless threads of blood, his arms spread and his head raised. The blood marking on the left cheek of his pale face seemed to have come alive, writhing and spreading wildly beneath his skin. In the blink of an eye, it covered his entire face.

"Blood God Transformation-" His voice was hoarse and frenzied as it echoed through the ice cavern. "Myriad Bloods Return to the Origin!"