The Goddess of War in the Mountains

The third eye between Li Boyang's brows combined the effects of clairvoyance and X-ray vision.

So despite how fast the leopard cat ran, Li Boyang's gaze remained fixed on it.

During this time, the leopard cat seemed to notice Li Boyang watching it, but showed no intention of looking back.

It leaped over eaves, vaulted fences, waded through muddy roads, and entered the mountain forest...

The leopard cat soon reached the depths of the mountain forest.

There stood a sheer mountain peak shrouded in clouds and mist, its summit piercing the heavens.

Across its cliff face, hideous, terrifying statues of ghosts and gods were clearly visible, covering almost the entire wall of rock.

But what truly drew the eye was the mountain god temple towering majestically halfway up the mountainside.

Though it had fallen into disrepair, though no one had swept it for years...

The mountain god temple still possessed a sense of grandeur. It was not hard to imagine how magnificent it had been in its heyday.

There's a place like this nearby?

While Li Boyang wondered, the leopard cat climbed the ancient stone steps one by one and reached the entrance to the temple's main hall.

"Big Sister, I've come to see you again."

Her body rapidly swelled, and her claws and fangs emerged.

In an instant, the leopard cat transformed into a fully grown crimson leopard, with faint clouds of fire forming beneath her paws.

Creak...

As she pushed open the temple doors, the first thing that came into view was a towering divine statue.

Unlike the dilapidated, aging mountain god temple.

The enormous statue was as clean as new, clearly tended to regularly by someone.

Its appearance also differed from that of an ordinary mountain god, bearing neither a fierce nor an imposing countenance.

It was a goddess whose features radiated compassion.

She held a sword in her right hand and a book in her left, her long dress covering her armor.

Viewed from afar, the statue enshrined upon the altar possessed both the gentleness of a god of letters and the commanding might of a god of war.

At the goddess's feet crouched a clay statue of a crimson leopard baring its fangs.

That clay statue was none other than the mountain spirit, Xiluo, the mountain god who governed this forest.

"Mountain spirit!"

"You've finally deigned to show yourself!"

Just then, a furious roar suddenly rang out from the forest below the temple.

The next second, an enormous, bizarre-looking two-headed dragon-bird flew out of the trees.

It was a bird-shaped monster with two dragon heads and a pair of outstretched white, fleshy wings.

Its two dragon heads entwined with each other, one breathing flames and the other ice, while an eerie, sinister air of death radiated from its entire body.

"I've been looking for you for a long time!"

"As long as you hand over that woman's corpse, I'll consider sparing your life!"

The two dragon heads spoke in turn, displaying perfect coordination.

For they were a deity born as twins sharing one body, a god of calamity capable of bringing disaster and ill fortune to the mortal world.

"Ruifu, you're shameless!"

"If you hadn't knelt and begged so desperately back then, why would Big Sister have spared your life?"

"Now that Big Sister has fallen, you actually want to desecrate her corpse. Even Heaven cannot tolerate this!"

Charging out of the mountain god temple on clouds of fire, Xiluo was exceptionally furious in her crimson leopard form.

"Fearing death and seeking life is merely the instinct of every living creature!"

"You, on the other hand, are a disgrace! Rather than remain a perfectly good mountain god, you willingly became someone else's pet!"

His words dripped with disdain. Ruifu truly looked down on Xiluo.

Gods were beings who stood above all living creatures, born proud and untamable.

Even after that woman had suppressed and sealed him for a thousand years, weakening his power to its utmost limit, Ruifu believed he had never submitted.

The leopard cat before him, by contrast, had first seized his position as mountain god, then willingly reduced herself to that woman's pet. She had utterly disgraced the gods.

"Enough nonsense!"

"Let's see whether you still have the right to boast after being sealed for a thousand years."

Riding clouds of fire toward Ruifu, Xiluo revealed the savage side of herself as a mountain spirit.

Claws and fangs bared, flames soaring into the sky...

Under cover of the fiery clouds, Xiluo swiftly closed in on Ruifu like a ghost.

Seeing this, Ruifu counterattacked with blasts of flame and ice, not forgetting to taunt his opponent.

"I may have been sealed for a thousand years, but what about you?"

"Since that woman died, no one has visited this mountain god temple for hundreds of years. How much strength could you have left?"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A crimson leopard rising on clouds, a dragon-bird swallowing ice and fire.

The battle between them was grand and perilous.

Even as a mere spectator, Li Boyang felt his heart pound with fear.

Since transmigrating and being reborn, this was the first time Li Boyang had witnessed a battle between supernatural beings like these.

Without any concrete standard of reference, Li Boyang could only compare them to the modern weapons of his previous life.

The dragon-bird breathing ice and fire was clearly a strategic weapon of mass destruction.

Every blast of flame and ice wrought devastating destruction upon the mountain forest for several kilometers around.

Even ordinary villagers could clearly see the billowing smoke and raging flames.

By comparison, the crimson leopard treading on clouds of fire clearly followed the "assassin" approach.

She was like an elite special forces soldier in modern warfare.

Though she did less damage to her surroundings than the dragon-bird, every strike she made was a lethal killing move.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

After just a few brief exchanges, several clearly visible wounds had appeared on the dragon-bird's body.

This was when the advantage of the dragon-bird's size became apparent.

Though those wounds looked horrifying, they could not inflict any truly fatal damage on him.

The crimson leopard, by contrast, did not dare let the dragon-bird's attacks touch her at all.

After all, with her current physique, if a dragon-bird attack struck her, she probably would not even leave an intact corpse.

Her margin for error is too small...

As this thought flashed through his mind, Li Boyang understood.

That dragon-bird could endure countless failures without affecting the outcome of the battle as a whole.

But if the crimson leopard failed even once, the battle would be over.

Li Boyang naturally did not want to watch Xiluo die like this, so he had to find a way to lend her a hand.

So what should I do?

As he pondered this, actual flames unwittingly began rising from Li Boyang's crimson hair.

His crimson hair turned into flames, and those fragmented memories of the past once again welled up in his mind.

After that strange old man had refined him into a Sword Pill, it seemed he had once fought for his life too?

Though the memories of that battle were already fragmented beyond recognition, the combat experience had been deeply branded into the Sword Pill.

-A divine being born with knowledge, a sword heart innately clear.

In a daze, a pale layer of protective Sword Qi emerged over Li Boyang's body.

Sharp sword light stirred restlessly, just like the Sword Qi that had slain the earth antelope that day.

No, this is nowhere near enough...

At this moment, Li Boyang was simply too far from the battlefield.

Expecting that Sword Qi to cross more than a dozen kilometers to kill an enemy was nothing short of an Arabian Nights tale.

If Sword Qi isn't enough, what about the Sword Pill?

Sinking his consciousness into his body, Li Boyang's gaze lingered on the golden Sword Pill within his Dantian.

Li Boyang's intuition told him that he was not without a means of interfering in the battle more than a dozen kilometers away.