Devil-Slaying Bladesman (Middle)

As the great spear pressed down on the saber, their faces drew extremely close. Hu Mang's murky yellow eyes edged closer to his opponent's, and his mouth spread into a grin, baring a full set of white teeth.

"You say I'm not her, but is it possible that I'm even more dangerous than she is?"

Madman Jiang's indifferent gaze did not change in the slightest. Just as the spear pressed toward the edge of his neck, his eyelids lowered, and he closed his eyes.

His three-foot Saber Domain unfolded for the second time!

Almost at the same instant-

The sense of danger that had just swept across the sea of his mind descended again, colder and more ruthless than before.

Hu Mang did not hesitate or even think. His brow twitched, and his eyes closed as well.

Mysterious Yin Devil Moon!

With a thought, the Devil Moon hanging high above the black sea rippled out once more.

His mind was like water, an ancient well without a ripple.

His consciousness sank once again into that boundless black sea.

High in the sky, Demon-Subduing blades formed out of thin air, one after another. Their edges gleamed, packed so densely that not the slightest gap remained between them, like an iron rain falling from the heavens.

Every blade plunged straight into the pitch-black seawater.

The instant the blades broke the surface, ripples spread across the reflection of the "moon in the sea."

As the ripples multiplied, the moon's reflection broke into ever more fragments, and the outline of the Devil Moon began to sway, blur and grow unstable.

Hu Mang knew exactly what that meant-

Once the Devil Moon was completely obscured, that terrifying scene would play out again.

And this time, there would be no breakthrough in a Cultivation Method to interrupt his opponent's saber.

Hu Mang changed moves again.

Black Robe Cold Emblem Sword Scripture, seventeenth move-Wind Cuts the Black Curtain.

The spear went from long to short, from solid to insubstantial. In an instant, the "great spear" became a "small spear." Its shaft spun in his palm, sweeping up a haze of spear shadows.

In a flash, Hu Mang was enveloped in a layer of spear shadows like clouds, mist and rain.

It was not protective Gang Qi, but a succession of spear shadows, the real and the illusory giving rise to each other. Layer upon layer, they resembled the heavy black curtains swept up by wild winds during Jiangnan's plum-rain season.

The Black Robe Cold Emblem Sword Scripture was a secret art of the Xie Household. It had twenty-four moves in all. The first through sixteenth had been built up through the painstaking efforts of successive heads of the Xie Household, but the seventeenth through twenty-fourth had been completed by Xie Xianyu alone, a genius the likes of whom the world rarely saw.

And when almost every sword move was created, his mother had been there eating melon and watching the whole time, so learning the essence of the moves had been like memorizing an answer key.

This "Wind Cuts the Black Curtain" was especially distinctive.

Back then, Xie Xianyu had crossed a swollen great river with one boat and one fox.

A torrential downpour had happened to strike, black waves rose like mountains, and the boat had nearly capsized several times.

There, in the middle of the river, he had comprehended the sword beside the rushing current, kneading the speed of the driving rain and the fury of the towering waves into this one move.

Now it appeared in the world again-

The spear shadows were no longer a fierce and overbearing Demon-Subduing force. Instead, they became a curtain of rain filling the sky, layer upon layer of black drapes.

However powerful Madman Jiang's Saber Domain was, when those deadly saber rays chopped into this "wind and rain," they seemed to strike a bottomless abyss. Their force was stripped away layer by layer, dissipated inch by inch.

Hu Mang rode that dissipating force, his body like a little boat as he flew backward along the waves of the saber.

Let the winds howl and the waves rage; I shall cross the river all the same.

When Mama Hu had taught him the sword back then, Hu Mang had curiously asked what a heaven-gifted genius looked like when comprehending the sword, and whether there had been any strange phenomena.

Mama Hu had said that she had hardly been in any state to pay attention to that. Her little paws had been clinging tightly to the bow, her body had nearly been blown away, and the waves crashing down on her had left her dizzy and seeing stars. She had come close to being swept away by the wind and sinking to the riverbed, and had had no time to see what state Xie Xianyu was in.

After they returned, the man and fox had looked like a pair of drowned chickens. Both had come down with terrible colds and taken a long time to recover.

It was worth mentioning that Hu Mang had disliked swordsmanship as a child. It was not that he had anything against Xie Xianyu, a man of ancient times; it was simply that his mother had constantly linked swordsmanship to being a modest gentleman, having poise and being cultured.

Damn it, what chuuni teenager wants to become a gentleman during his rebellious phase?!

So he had instinctively disliked those two sets of sword techniques passed down through the Xie Household's direct line.

However, he had left his chuuni phase behind many years ago.

Now, under the State of Mind of the Mysterious Yin Devil Moon, the swordsmanship he had been forced to learn back then rapidly came together and flowed into his spear techniques. Even things he had failed to understand in those days became perfectly clear to him in an instant.

Thus, although Madman Jiang's Saber Domain had slashed Hu Mang until he was covered in blood, it had not struck a vital point and had instead given him an opportunity.

In midair, Hu Mang transformed his spear into a bow. The Heavenly Soldier Divine Office in his Niwan Palace shone brightly, and three lightning-fire arrows materialized. But when Hu Mang loosed them, they did not fly toward Madman Jiang, but toward three "void spiritual power conduits."

Almost instantly, nearly every Demon-Subduing Well let out a tremendous bang like a power switch being pulled.

The next moment, three masses of "dark clouds" surrounded Madman Jiang in a triangular formation.

These days, accidentally touching a wire was not the only way to get electrocuted. Pulling the wrong wire could cause an accident too, and an even bigger one at that!

The devil-sealing iron grates over the well mouths shuddered violently, their runes flashing wildly, as though someone had forcibly "short-circuited" the spiritual power system of the entire Demon-Subduing site.

Within a few breaths, the three dark clouds swelled to the same size as the earlier Devil-Subduing Thundercloud that had been "Rewarding Good and Punishing Evil." Lightning rolled through them, and golden light flickered.

As a member of the "system," "Madman Jiang" naturally knew how formidable these thunderclouds were. With hardly a moment's hesitation, he turned his saber, and with two swift slashes, split two of the dark clouds in half.

The last thundercloud, however, sent a thigh-thick bolt of golden lightning shooting toward him.

"Madman Jiang's" Saber Domain unfolded again. His saber moved so fast that even its shadow could not keep up, and following the bolt of lightning, he actually hacked the fully formed thundercloud apart.

But it was not without cost. "Madman Jiang's" wrist trembled slightly, and thin wisps of white smoke rose from the blade.

The Yin Saber was a ghost saber, after all. It was hardly surprising that Demon-Subduing lightning countered it.

By then, Hu Mang had already sent three more lightning arrows shooting off in three directions. This time, however, he aimed not at the void spiritual power conduits, but at three Demon-Subduing Wells.

Although he did not know exactly what was sealed inside, there was no doubt that Hu Mang's maneuver had directly activated this place's Demon-Subduing Mechanism—and one even more terrifying than the "thunderclouds."

Crisscrossing golden spiritual patterns began to appear on the ground beneath them, like a gigantic net drawing tight.

The next moment, Qianyang Devil-Subduing Nets rose one after another from below, sweeping toward both of them.

Since both were outside intruders, the attacks naturally made no distinction between friend and foe.

As a high-end civil engineering and Wood Element talent, Hu Mang had some experience in preventing safety accidents.

Although he had made one tiny mistake last time and had his foundation destroyed,

he had learned his lesson. This time, he had deliberately chosen the place covered by the fewest Thunder Nets.

Only three or four Thunder Nets swept toward Hu Mang.

His opponent, on the other hand, had already been engulfed by lightning that blotted out the sky.

Hu Mang drew a deep breath, shook his spear and began to block them head-on.

He swept his spear horizontally, its shadow like a shield, and forcibly caught the first Thunder Net descending on him.

Golden lightning exploded. Scorching Yang Qi raced up the spear shaft and into his arm, instantly charring his skin black, only to be forcibly suppressed by his Qi and Blood.

Hu Mang felt as though he had been thrown into a furnace.

The second net, the third...

Then, as the Qianyang Devil-Subduing Nets, a Yang-path method of subduing devils, fully evolved, extreme Yang turned into extreme Yin. Soon, Taiyin Divine Thunder spewed from the Demon-Subduing Wells, blotting out the sky as it swept toward them.

Wherever the ice passed, even the void froze brittle. The Mysterious Yin Devil Moon hanging high above was also consumed inch by inch by frost, gradually losing its luster.

Taiyin, Shaoyin and Jueyin could transform into one another to begin with.

And whether it was the Mysterious Yin Body-Refining Instruction or the Mysterious Yin Devil Moon visualized through that method, both were, in essence, evolutions of the path of the three Yins.

Almost instinctively, the pores all over his body closed, and his flesh instantly entered the Profound Yin Body Refinement state.

The Shattered Star Great Spear shook, its tip piercing an incoming ball of Taiyin lightning-

"Sizzle!"

A wisp of extreme cold traveled up the spear and burrowed into his meridians, making his teeth chatter. Yet the Mysterious Yin Body-Refining Instruction forcibly swallowed and refined it.

As for Hu Mang himself, he had long since chosen a hiding place: a Demon-Subduing Well that had already cracked and exploded at the first opportunity.

The density of Taiyin Divine Thunder here was only a tenth of what it was elsewhere.

However, the sinister Devil Qi in the well was also drawn into Hu Mang's body, though the Mysterious Yin Devil Moon quickly suppressed it.

After this Devil Qi was transformed by the Mysterious Yin Body-Refining Instruction, the speed at which Hu Mang absorbed the Taiyin chill increased considerably.

He did not know whether that was good or bad.

Both sides were testing their perseverance and endurance.

But the first to give out were unexpectedly the Demon-Subduing Wells here.

"Boom-!"

The first Demon-Subduing Well exploded from within, sending rubble and fragments of its seal flying in all directions.

Immediately afterward came the second, the third...

One after another, like a string of firecrackers set alight.

Every explosion sent a terrifying fluctuation of restrictive power sweeping in all directions, tearing the remaining Thunder Nets to even smaller pieces.

After Hu Mang spat out what he did not know was his fourth or fifth mouthful of Essence Blood, all the violent commotion abruptly ceased.

"Damn, wearing this Thunder-Warding Robe really wasn't for nothing."

Atop the wreckage of a Demon-Subduing Well, Hu Mang looked at the Thunder-Warding Robe on his body, blasted to tatters and riddled with holes, and spoke from the heart.

This robe had truly died a worthy death.

Moreover, this Thunder-Warding Robe had blocked at least thirty percent of the lightning's power for him.

Besides that, there was also that thing...

Across from him stood an ice sculpture, and inside it, there seemed to be a figure wrapped in a golden Thunder Net.

Compared with Hu Mang, the "Devil-Slaying Bladesman" opposite him had endured at least several dozen times as much restrictive power.

Even so, Hu Mang did not dare let his guard down. An "iron apricot" appeared in each of his hands. Soon, the "iron apricots" floated above his palms and rapidly grew hot.

A terrifying pressure of Demon-Subduing, annihilating power spilled from the surfaces of the two "iron apricots."

Judging by sheer power alone, these two Evil-Subduing Divine Thunder were a hundred times more powerful than the divine thunder generated by the restrictions.

The next moment, just as the two "iron apricots" became "red apricots," Hu Mang flicked his fingers in quick succession, shooting them at his opponent while he himself shot backward.