In his eyes, Chu Yunfei was pitifully weak now.
Earlier, in the martial arena, he had felt some apprehension over Chu Yunfei's feat of using a forbidden technique to clash head-on with four Heavenly Origin Realm elders.
But the backlash from a forbidden technique was irreversible. The spiritual power fluctuations coming from Chu Yunfei now did not even reach the Spirit Martial Realm. At best, they were merely at the ninth level of the Qi Condensation Realm.
An ant in the Qi Condensation Realm did not even have the right to resist someone in the Heavenly Origin Realm.
Nangong Wuhen raised his right hand, extended his index finger, and lightly pointed.
Yet that finger held the terrifying force of condensed Heavenly Origin Realm spiritual power. The air before his fingertip was compressed to its limit, forming a transparent column of air almost invisible to the naked eye, which shot silently toward Chu Yunfei's chest.
Chu Yunfei's pupils contracted sharply at that instant.
A finger strike blasted out.
That point of spiritual light tore through the air, trailing a dazzling white line through the night, moving so fast that Chu Yunfei's eyes could only catch a blurred afterimage.
The combat instincts honed over many years in his previous life made his body move before his mind could react.
He held the Abyss-Devouring Sword across his body, pouring out his ninth-level Qi Condensation spiritual power. The sword radiance of the Heaven-Severing Slash barely managed to gather into a dim layer of light along the blade.
The instant the sword radiance collided with the column of air.
Chu Yunfei felt an irresistible force surge through the sword. Before that transparent column of air, the sword radiance of the Heaven-Severing Slash was like thin paper, pierced effortlessly.
The column of air struck his chest without losing any momentum.
As though struck head-on by a speeding carriage, Chu Yunfei flew backward, tumbling several times through the air before slamming into a patch of grass thirty zhang away. Dirt scattered, and wild grass shattered.
A metallic sweetness rose in his mouth. He forced himself not to spit it out, but the dull pain in his chest told him that at least two more ribs had suffered damage.
Nangong Wuhen stood where he was and withdrew his finger, his gaze cold as he watched the figure struggling in the grass, as though looking at a dying ant.
"You've actually cultivated a low-grade earth-tier sword technique to grand perfection. Not bad talent. Unfortunately, driving an earth-tier sword technique with Qi Condensation Realm spiritual power isn't enough to stop even one of my fingers."
Chu Yunfei used his sword to push himself up from the grass and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, his mind racing.
Fighting head-on was impossible.
The gap between the Heavenly Origin Realm and the Qi Condensation Realm was wider than that between heaven and earth.
Even with the combat experience of his previous life, his grand-perfection Heaven-Severing Slash, and his minor-accomplishment Divine Movement Art, all technique was empty talk before the crushing weight of absolute strength.
His only path to survival was escape.
Where could he run?
His gaze swept southeast.
The Cangwu Mountain Range.
Those vast, wild mountains, stretching for thousands of li, formed a natural barrier between the Azure Mystic Sect and the outside world.
The mountains had complex terrain, poisonous miasma everywhere, and savage beasts roaming unchecked. Even Heavenly Origin Realm experts dared not let their guard down there.
If he could escape deep into the Cangwu Mountain Range, perhaps he could shake off Nangong Wuhen.
Even as the thought flashed through his mind, Chu Yunfei's body was already moving.
"Uncle Li, what brings you here?"
Nangong Wuhen's steps paused instinctively.
He did not turn around.
But in that instant, his divine sense spread out behind him, fluctuations of spiritual power sweeping across a radius of a hundred zhang.
There was no one.
Not even the shadow of a ghost.
Nangong Wuhen turned back and looked at the woods ahead, where Chu Yunfei had already vanished. His expression darkened under the moonlight, and a trace of anger rose in his eyes.
He had been fooled by someone in the Qi Condensation Realm with the crudest of tricks.
The mighty Holy Son of the Heavenly Sword Sect had actually been distracted by a single lie.
Although he had not actually turned around, that instant's diversion of his divine sense was enough to buy Chu Yunfei a few breaths of time.
For Chu Yunfei, who was proficient in the Divine Movement Art, a few breaths were enough to put some distance between them.
"Heh, heh."
Nangong Wuhen chuckled softly. There was no anger in his laughter; instead, it carried a hint of inscrutable mockery.
"If I let you escape, wouldn't I lose far too much face?"
Before his words had faded, his figure vanished from the spot.
Chu Yunfei sprinted through the dense forest, the Divine Movement Art squeezing his Qi Condensation Realm spiritual power to its limit. His movements remained exquisite, the course of his steps elusive and unpredictable as he flitted through the woods like a phantom, using trees and rocks to conceal himself. Every footfall was precisely calculated.
But none of this meant anything before absolute speed.
Nangong Wuhen's figure appeared again, ten zhang away from him.
Not directly ahead, but ahead and to one side.
He did not even block the way. Instead, he appeared beside Chu Yunfei's escape route with an almost playful air, then followed at an unhurried pace.
A cat toying with a mouse.
Chu Yunfei's scalp prickled, and his right hand reached into the storage ring on his finger.
His fingertips touched several talismans made of stiff paper. They were all second-tier talismans: a fire talisman, a wind talisman, and a binding talisman.
Chu Yunfei poured spiritual power into the talismans, activating all three at once.
The fire talisman transformed into a crimson fire serpent that lunged at Nangong Wuhen, carrying searing heat.
The three attacks arrived simultaneously.
Nangong Wuhen did not even pause. He merely waved a hand, and the spiritual power stirred by his sleeve dispersed both the fire serpent and the wind blades.
The binding net did touch his shoulder. Threads of spiritual power wound around him for an instant, then shattered inch by inch under the crushing force of his Heavenly Origin Realm spiritual power, like a spiderweb meeting a raging fire.
Second-tier talismans.
For cultivators in the Qi Condensation Realm and the early Spirit Martial Realm, these were trump cards capable of saving their lives.
But to someone at Nangong Wuhen's level, they did not even amount to scratching an itch through a boot.
"Is that all you've got?" Nangong Wuhen's voice came from behind him, neither near nor far.
Chu Yunfei did not respond. Instead, he focused all his attention on his feet.
The dense woods kept receding behind him. The terrain ahead began to change, the trees gradually thinning out, replaced by exposed rocks and steep cliffs.
The Cangwu Mountain Range.
It was the largest mountain range west of the Azure Mystic Sect, stretching for hundreds of li, with complex terrain and countless dangers hidden within.
For cultivators, the Cangwu Mountain Range was both a hunting ground and a graveyard.
It contained several death zones that even experts at the late stage of the Heavenly Origin Realm dared not enter lightly.
Chu Yunfei was heading for precisely one of those places.
But Nangong Wuhen would not give him that chance.
A punch blasted out.
This punch was not at full strength. It did not even contain twenty percent of his power.
But twenty percent of Heavenly Origin Realm strength was already a calamity for someone in the Qi Condensation Realm.
The wind from the punch became a transparent, spherical shock wave that caught up with Chu Yunfei from behind and struck him squarely in the back.
Chu Yunfei let out a muffled groan, lost control of his body, and plummeted from midair.
Branches snapped and cracked as he fell through them. Finally, he slammed down beside a boulder on the mountain ridge, sending up a cloud of dust.
The blood in his mouth no longer merely surged up. It spilled out ceaselessly, as though a floodgate had opened.
The black blood looked particularly gruesome under the moonlight, the result of the forbidden technique's backlash compounded by fresh injuries.