The Lair
Amid the green sea of jungle, a deep chasm stretched across the forest as far as the eye could see, like a long scar.
As soon as cultivators entered within ten li of it, they could feel waves of faint yet terrifying pressure rising from the bottom of the chasm.
Lin Sui raced toward the sky above the chasm, swift as rolling thunder. He paused for three breaths to fix his position, then suddenly plunged into its depths on his sword.
The chasm walls rose ten thousand blades high.
Little light reached the bottom, leaving it dark and damp. A blue sword light descended from the sky and landed, revealing a tall young man in simple black robes. The bluish stubble on his fair skin gave him a slightly unkempt air, but his eyes shone keenly.
With a wave of his hand, a Mystic Sword circled once above his head. Then its sword might howled as it sped toward the deep ravine ahead.
Lin Sui followed on a streak of light, spreading his spiritual sense over several hundred li. He found no sign of demonic beasts, but the farther he followed the No Falsehood Sword, the more beast skeletons he saw piled among the rocks. They littered the entire way.
"These are all remains of demonic beasts at least at the second tier, and they've been here a long time," Lin Sui murmured. He looked away, formed a hand seal, and picked up speed.
Two hours later.
The No Falsehood Sword abruptly stopped advancing. Instead, it circled low in the air, paused, and darted in the blink of an eye to a spot above a deep pool of clear blue water.
The pool was still and undisturbed. A shaft of sunlight happened to fall through the narrow opening overhead, making the water shimmer blue at the edges, clear enough to see the bottom.
Lin Sui's spiritual sense detected no pressure. He glanced at a huge beast skeleton nearby, its color fresher than those he had seen earlier.
"Down." Lin Sui formed a seal and slapped it onto himself. His figure flashed into the pool, blue light streaming from his body as he headed straight for the bottom.
The pool was deep, dark, and wide. He sank for roughly an hour without reaching the bottom; it was truly like an abyss. Lin Sui spread his spiritual sense over the entire pool. Suddenly, he and the No Falsehood Sword, which flared with sword intent and light, shot together toward a dark cavern diagonally below.
As soon as he entered the cavern, Lin Sui finally sensed the aura of a demonic beast, leaking out despite its every effort to conceal it!
"Found you."
He circulated the spiritual power throughout his body, and his blue light blazed. In the blink of an eye, he became a meteor streaking into the depths of the cavern. At last, he burst upward out of the water and stood in midair, without a drop on him.
A sweep of his spiritual sense revealed a vast chamber at the end of a tunnel two zhang high and half a li long!
In the dim chamber crouched a huge shadow, its exact shape indistinct but its pressure bone-chilling.
The tendrils of Lin Sui's spiritual sense seemed to be pricked by that icy aura, and he hurriedly withdrew them.
The No Falsehood Sword buzzed and quivered all the more restlessly.
Without another word, it shot straight into the tunnel. Lin Sui unfurled his restriction banner around himself for protection. At the same time, he formed a seal with his right hand, dark light swirling around it as he readied the God-Slaying Finger, and followed on a streak of sword light.
"Hiss! Roar-!" Before they drew close to the demonic beast, a low beastly roar reached them from afar, full of pressure and warning.
Lin Sui did not slow down. The closer he got, the more clearly he sensed that his opponent was a One-Horned Flood Dragon Serpent at the peak of the third tier, on the verge of advancing. Unfortunately, the secret realm restrained it, preventing it from advancing and fully transforming into a flood dragon.
The serpent's pressure forced the No Falsehood Sword to a halt, hovering seven or eight zhang away. It buzzed in unwillingness, continually releasing sword intent to threaten the serpent.
In the past, countless great Tribulation Transcendence demons had died beneath its blade, yet this insignificant third-tier creature dared challenge it!
Ever since the No Falsehood Sword entered the chamber, the crystal shard concealed by the serpent's pressure had begun to tremble, giving off waves of multicolored light.
The man and sword finally saw the multicolored crystal shard set into the stone wall behind the serpent's massive form, as well as the top-grade crystals filling the cavern, illuminated by the shard's glow and their own magical light!
Hiss! Lin Sui drew a sharp breath in shock. His entry onto the path had gone smoothly, and he had never lacked cultivation resources; Su Fuxi had never treated him poorly. Even so, he could not contain his astonishment.
All those densely packed crystals were spirit crystals! Spirit crystals even purer than top-grade spirit stones! Poor Lin Sui had never even seen a top-grade spirit stone.
Well, not just him. If Su Fuxi had come here, she would have been just as shocked. Top-grade spirit stones simply did not circulate in the Tianshui Kingdom; they were the private treasures of powerful cultivators, kept only as spiritual resources for breaking through to realms above Spirit Transformation.
No wonder he had sensed such dense spiritual energy the moment he entered the cavern. No wonder the spiritual energy in this vast jungle was denser than elsewhere. Lin Sui immediately realized there was a spiritual vein here.
"Roar-!" A muffled, thunderous sound issued from the serpent's enormous body. Invisible currents rippled outward in waves, carrying gusts of foul wind that slammed into the surrounding rocks, sending shattered stones clattering down.
The restriction banner, more than a zhang tall, blocked the fierce winds. At the same time, Lin Sui thrust out a finger. Wariness flashed through the serpent's red eyes, and it hurriedly opened its enormous mouth, seemingly large enough to swallow the sun, and spat out a water ball streaked with red light. It collided with the huge black finger imprint in midair.
"Rumble..."
Amid the thunderous crash, violent shockwaves forced Lin Sui back several steps. After all, he was several minor realms below his opponent. The serpent had grown for who knew how many years, and its brute strength was astounding.
The serpent had yet to uncoil, so there was no telling how long its body, a zhang thick, truly was. If it rammed him or landed a solid lash of its tail, Lin Sui would lose half his life even if he survived.
The cavern roof cracked, and rocks fell continuously, only to be shattered or bounced away by the restriction banner's pink light.
Lin Sui steadied himself and seized No Falsehood, its sword intent piercingly cold. He shouted in a low voice, "Remnant Star!"
In an instant, spiritual energy gathered from all directions between heaven and earth, its aura surging. A dark-red arc of light, as though formed from countless stars and brimming with sword intent, slashed toward the serpent's head. At the same time, Lin Sui launched another God-Slaying Finger, striking directly at the serpent's vital point.
The Remnant Star strike was not to be underestimated. The water ball the serpent spat out in time blocked the sword's might, but failed to stop the finger imprint. The strike shattered more than a dozen hard scales, each the size of a palm, exposing a bloody patch at its vital point.
Damn ant!
It roared in fury, its body thrashing as its long neck reared up. In the blink of an eye, it launched itself at Lin Sui!
Quick-eyed and quick-handed, Lin Sui withdrew the restriction banner, activated the divine movement talismans on his feet, and retreated down the tunnel on his flying sword!
At the same time, he formed seals and launched three Fireball Techniques carrying Golden Core power at the enormous serpent's mouth. The serpent frantically spat out water balls and charged about recklessly, thrashing its tail and nearly shaking the entire cavern apart.
Lin Sui rushed into the water without stopping and fled at speed the way he had come!
The serpent left its lair and pursued him into the water, where its enormous body was like a fish in water. It could not destroy its own lair, and the space inside was too small for it to fully stretch out its body. Otherwise, it would have slapped this ant to death with its tail long ago!
Lin Sui, meanwhile, felt it was difficult to dodge or use his movement techniques in the cavern, so he simply ran outside.
With a bang, he broke through the surface and rose from the water on the No Falsehood Sword, flying straight toward the narrow opening ten thousand blades above. His spiritual sense swept over the serpent pursuing him relentlessly from behind. As the opening drew closer, he shot out and looked down from above at the giant serpent about to emerge.
The giant serpent in the abyss had a mouth wide enough to swallow a mountain and a body 120 zhang long, but the single horn on its forehead resembled a cone half a foot in length. Spiritual power suddenly surged through Lin Sui's body, and a great mass of dark light welled up around his right hand. Four streams of black mist appeared, twisting and spinning together like a whirlwind to form a single God-Slaying Finger. He turned and struck back with it, catching the giant serpent in a parting blow. The serpent was charging too fast to form a water ball in time.
The terrain also prevented it from using the tail strike it was best at, and panic showed in its icy eyes.
The finger struck it squarely in the head with a tremendous bang. Agony tore through its skull, and its vision nearly went black. The half-formed water ball it spat out lost its support, and serpent and water ball sank into the chasm together. Lin Sui gritted his teeth and chased after it, spreading his spiritual sense. The giant beast kept sinking, letting out a long, agonized hiss, but it was not dead.
"Sword slash!" Lin Sui dared not be careless. He formed a seal with one hand and pointed downward. The No Falsehood Sword shot toward the serpent, carrying its sword intent. At the same time, Lin Sui summoned the Thousand-Soul Banner. Keeping a relatively safe distance from the serpent, he waved the banner and released ten Soul Marshals. "Soul Devouring! Devour!"
The soul banner suddenly grew three or four zhang, and black mist spread in an instant, enveloping the entire beast. Thousands of fierce gray-white souls howled forth like a gray dragon to devour the gravely weakened creature.
The No Falsehood Sword had already plunged into the giant serpent's vital point and forcibly gouged out a bucket-sized chunk of flesh. Lin Sui intended to leave the final blow to the God-Slaying Finger. The serpent's red eyes instantly dimmed, and its life force gradually ebbed away. Fearing it would counterattack and devour him, Lin Sui sent out another God-Slaying Finger, carrying killing intent that would not cease until death, and pressed it into the serpent's vital point.
It left a millstone-sized indentation without the slightest resistance. Destructive power seeped through the shattered scales into flesh and blood, and with a thunderous boom, the vital point was obliterated into a cloud of bloody mist.
A moment later, a muffled crash rose from the bottom of the chasm. Lin Sui withdrew the soul banner, and a stream of dark gray mist flew toward him, forming a vortex that coiled around him. He grabbed it and pressed it directly into his brow, sending it into his sea of consciousness.
His body dropped swiftly to the bottom of the narrow chasm. He glanced at the serpent's corpse nearby. The No Falsehood Sword flew over and circled him, emitting an excited glow. Lin Sui sat down on the ground, closed his eyes, and formed a seal to regulate his breathing.
"Let me rest a moment." His voice was slightly weary.
The lingering might of the battle filled the area, and for the moment, nothing blind to danger dared approach.
Half an hour later, having collected all the useful materials from the serpent, the man and sword sank to the bottom of the pool once more.