Chapter 106: Chapter 106
Shock and fury warred across Tang Jin’s face, the skin twitching — but in a heartbeat, both collapsed into raw savagery. Killing intent surged through his eyes like a flooding tide.
CLANG!
The nine-ring saber cleared its scabbard, blade gleaming snow-bright, cold light pouring off the steel.
Force resonated with the three great apertures opened within him. The nine copper rings along the spine of the blade shook in a frenzy, ringing out a jangling, nerve-shredding death-knell that set every onlooker’s spirit trembling.
Tang Jin gripped the saber one-handed, its tip leveled at Ji Ning. His voice came like a cracking whip.
“Ji Ning — where is Chen Xin?”
Chen Xin. Chenjian Wu’s Eighth Chief.
When Tang Jin first landed on the island, he had dispatched Chen Xin to intercept Ji Ning and delay any reinforcement — confident it would buy enough time.
But now, Ji Ning had broken through to Hidden Strength and appeared here unscathed…
Chen Xin was almost certainly finished.
At the question, Ji Ning halted. He stood in the last light of the setting sun, his beast-hide coat gilded in dark crimson.
He regarded Tang Jin. His expression was calm. At last, he spoke.
“He… went where he was meant to go.”
The premonition confirmed.
Tang Jin’s eyes slammed shut. His throat worked. His chest heaved like a storm-wracked sea.
He had come to avenge Qu Bushi — to crush the Ji clan’s morale and reclaim the face lost with a dead chief.
Instead, he had lost Tu Xiaotian and Chen Xin both, and the last of the three, Pang Yi, might well be dead too.
Tang Jin couldn’t imagine how he would face Duan Xiao when he returned to Chenjian Wu.
So he opened his eyes. Dense, suffocating killing intent bled outward.
“Breaking through to Hidden Strength at your age… the talent is real. But in the end, you’re nothing but a greenhorn who’s barely cracked open a single aperture!”
“I’ve steeped in Hidden Strength for years. Three apertures opened. What do you have to fight me with?”
“Today… is both the day you enter Hidden Strength, and the day you fall!!”
BOOM!
Before the last word faded —
Tang Jin exploded forward like a blood-crazed bear, the nine-ring saber raised high in both hands, carrying the mountain-splitting terror of its full weight as it cleaved down at Ji Ning from above.
Saber-wind shrieked.
The very air seemed to part before the blade, peeling away like water from a prow.
Yet facing this strike, Ji Ning’s expression didn’t ripple.
He extended his right hand and closed it around the hilt of his archaic long sword.
ZHENG!
A clear, soaring ring — like a dragon’s cry — echoed across the lakeshore.
The instant the sword left its scabbard, a bone-piercing chill blanketed the entire dock.
Then, before the disbelieving eyes of every soul present, the blade in Ji Ning’s hand began to emanate a layer of pure white radiance — barely an inch long, yet dense as solid matter.
The glow wavered like smoke, like mist. As the sword gleam pulsed, the surrounding air itself warped faintly, radiating an edge that could cut through anything.
Ji Ning turned his wrist.
The sword rose — seemingly slow, in truth faster than lightning — in a gentle upward stroke.
The gleam-wreathed blade passed through Tang Jin’s Blood-Fiend Saber as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter — silent, frictionless.
SHRRK!
A crisp snap, like silk tearing.
That saber — forged from hundred-fold refined steel, a lower-tier treasure weapon that had killed more men than anyone could count — was sheared clean in half.
FWOOSH!
The severed half of the blade spun away, embedding itself in the dirt with a wet THUNK. The steel still trembled and hummed.
Tang Jin felt his grip go light. He looked down. Half his saber was gone. The cross-section was smooth as a mirror, polished enough to reflect a face.
His eyes nearly burst from their sockets. Horror twisted his features.
“Sword gleam?”
“You’ve cultivated a sword gleam!?”
Sword gleam, sword qi, sword essence, sword intent — the four great thresholds of the sword cultivator’s path.
Only one who had achieved sword gleam could rightfully be called a sword cultivator.
And every martial artist who had achieved it was a prodigy with innate talent for the sword path.
Such a person could bypass the usual prerequisites and enter directly into the prefectural city’s two great sword powers — Qingyuan Sword Tower or the Sword Sect of Bixia Mountain Estate.
Once admitted, they would start as inner-gate disciples at minimum, with treatment and resources on par with a preparatory true-transmission disciple.
With talent like that — why would he be rotting on Yunyi Island?
Tang Jin would get no answer.
Because Ji Ning gave him no room to breathe.
After slicing through the saber, the sword gleam’s momentum carried on, sweeping horizontally with unstoppable force.
HISS!
The sound of a blade entering flesh.
Blood sprayed.
Before Tang Jin’s horror-stricken gaze, his right arm was severed clean at the shoulder. It flew high, trailing an arc of crimson, tumbling end over end before landing several zhang away. The fingers still twitched.
“AHHH!! My arm!”
Tang Jin’s face went white as a corpse. A soul-rending shriek tore from his throat. Agony buckled his legs and he staggered backward.
But the white gleam followed like a shadow. The sword tip pivoted and drove straight for his heart.
SHRRK!
Tang Jin couldn’t dodge in time.
The razor-sharp gleam tore through his clothing and thrust toward his heart.
But at the very instant the point was about to shred the organ —
SIZZLE-CRACK…
A long cascade of blinding sparks and the screech of metal grinding on metal erupted from Tang Jin’s body.
Beneath his robes, pressed against his skin, he wore a suit of scale-mail that shimmered with a dark sheen.
Its fine, black scales were layered in dense, overlapping rows, each one glinting with a cold luster — like the skin of a serpent.
A mid-tier treasure weapon of Chenjian Wu!
The Ink-Scale Armor!
Forged from the hardest plates taken from the shells of several second-tier Ink-Scale Tortoises, combined with dark iron and meticulously crafted.
Impervious to blade and sword. Resistant to fire and water.
The treasure armor caught the remnant force of the sword gleam. A deep white gouge scored the scales — but the blade did not punch through.
Yet it held for only an instant.
Ji Ning’s wrist moved again.
From the Taichong aperture, Hidden Strength surged like a flooding tide. Force penetrated straight through the armor, and Tang Jin’s sternum gave a sickening CRACK. He vomited a great spray of blood.
BANG!
Riding the recoil, Tang Jin flew backward like a kite with its string cut, crashing to the distant ground and skidding a long, bloody trail.
Once down, the fearsome Fifth Chief of Chenjian Wu had lost every last shred of his earlier swagger.
His face was ghostly white. He didn’t even pause to retrieve his severed arm. Clutching the blood-gushing stump of his shoulder, he turned and fled toward the lake like a stray dog.
TAP TAP TAP…
His movement arts were considerable. In a few leaps, his figure was already shrinking into the distance.
And this sight shattered every last nerve among the several dozen Chenjian Wu bandits still on the dock. Despair twisted their faces.
Ninth Chief Tu Xiaotian — killed on the spot!
Eighth Chief Chen Xin — vanished without a trace!
Sixth Chief Pang Yi — fate unknown!
Fifth Chief Tang Jin — arm severed, fled!
CLATTER…
Someone’s weapon slipped from numb fingers and hit the ground. A desperate scream followed.
“We’ve lost! We’ve lost! The mark’s too hard — run, RUN!”
In the next heartbeat, the tree toppled and the monkeys scattered.
The bandits disintegrated into a wailing, scrambling mob, shoving and clawing toward the warboats moored at the shore.
“Brothers — the scum are broken!”
Wang Jindao watched the rout. He choked down the shock, raised his broad saber overhead, and roared, eyes blazing red.
“Kill! Avenge our dead!”
“KILL!”
The remaining Patrol Envoys and guards surged with renewed fury. Sabers cleared scabbards. Like tigers charging downhill, they poured across the rubble and blood.
Steel flashed. Blood flew.
A one-sided slaughter engulfed the western dock of Yunyi Island — and ended in a resounding Ji clan victory.