Chapter 142: Chapter 142
Deep in the alley’s shadows.
Without warning, three stones — wrapped in screaming force — shot from the darkness in a triangular formation, ripping through the night.
Tian Ping’an was a Hidden Strength expert after all; his qi-sense was razor-keen.
His feet stuttered sideways, his frame slipping like an eel, and he twisted clear of the projectile by a hair.
The stone grazed his cheek. The force-wind stung his ear raw. It CRACKED into the brick wall behind him, spraying debris.
But the two men at his sides had nowhere near his cultivation.
SHUNK! SHUNK!
Two simultaneous bursts.
Both stones punched dead-center into the men’s foreheads.
Skin and bone ruptured. Scalding blood sprayed.
“AGH—”
Their screams had barely cleared their throats when a blue-robed phantom descended from the wall-top without a sound.
Still in midair, qi-blood inverted, the figure’s legs whipped out like a pair of battering rams, trailing muffled concussions of compressed air, and swept down from above.
Thirty-Six Paths of Sky-Collapsing Legs — Splitting Kick!
BANG! BANG!
Two impacts detonated at once, like a war-drum struck with a sledgehammer.
The two Bone Tempering fighters’ sternums caved in simultaneously.
Both left the ground — one flung left, one right — blasted into the hard brick walls on either side.
BOOM!
The entire alley shuddered. Plaster sheeted off. Dust billowed.
The two men sprayed a mouthful of black blood, crumpled like puppets with their strings cut, twitched twice, and went still.
Through the settling dust, Shen Xiuhan slowly lowered his legs. The long sword rode his back. His blue robe snapped in the night wind.
He stood tall as a pine, dark eyes fixed on Tian Ping’an a few paces away — twin blades not yet fully drawn.
“You?!”
Recognition hit. Tian Ping’an’s pupils shrank to needle-points, every alarm in his body screaming.
“You… broke through to Hidden Strength!”
Shen Xiuhan didn’t waste words.
The packed earth beneath his feet exploded. His figure became a gale, closing the distance in an instant.
Tian Ping’an didn’t dare take it lightly. Killing intent erupted in his eyes. The newly opened Taichong aperture roared to life.
A thread of venomous Hidden Strength force poured from his body and gathered in his right arm.
The finger-bones flushed a ghastly blue-black, reeking of blood, and he met Shen Xiuhan’s charge without flinching.
Heart-Stopping Palm!
Tian Ping’an’s face twisted into a snarl. “Your life is mine!”
Against the full menace of the strike, Shen Xiuhan’s expression was blank. He didn’t even draw the sword. His right hand balled into a fist.
In a single instant —
Three great apertures — Taichong, Guanyuan, Tinggong — boiled over simultaneously.
Hidden Strength vast as an ocean flooded into his fist. With a low, splitting roar, he threw a punch devoid of any flourish — pure, overwhelming force.
Head-on.
In the spark between lightning-strokes —
A flash of wild elation crossed Tian Ping’an’s eyes.
His Heart-Stopping Palm was a widely circulated Longxiang Army technique, but its killing power was fearsome.
At Full Mastery, a single palm-print meant death or crippling.
A pity —
The instant they collided, the glee on Tian Ping’an’s face froze solid.
CRACK!
A tide of Hidden Strength — overbearing, explosive, incomparably denser than his own — crashed through his palm-force like a wave smashing a sand castle.
Amid the crisp snapping of bone, all five fingers of Tian Ping’an’s right hand broke at the root.
His entire right sleeve was shredded inch by inch, cloth scraps fluttering like butterflies. Skin burst. Blood-mist hung in the air.
“AGH! You didn’t just open Taichong — you’re—”
Tian Ping’an shrieked, clutched the shattered arm, and threw himself backward. For the first time, genuine terror surfaced in his eyes.
That kind of mountain-toppling force could not possibly belong to someone who had just entered Hidden Strength.
“You talk too much.”
Shen Xiuhan’s voice was cold as a death-knell.
His right hand reached back and closed around Cold Granary’s hilt.
ZHENG!
A clear, soaring sword-cry rang the length of the alley — a dragon’s roar, a phoenix’s keen.
The blade cleared the sheath like a slash of frost torn from the night sky.
A flash of killing light in Shen Xiuhan’s eyes. A flick of the wrist. He drove forward, body and blade as one.
Flowing Cloud Sword — Parting Clouds to Reveal the Sun!
Fast.
Killing speed pushed to its absolute limit.
The sword-light was a bolt of white silk, ripping through the darkness, crossing several zhang in an instant, shrieking toward Tian Ping’an’s heart.
“No!”
On the brink of death, Tian Ping’an’s eyes blazed — but his face contorted into a mask of feigned panic. Feet stumbling, he staggered backward.
TING!
A clash of metal. The sword-point struck Tian Ping’an’s chest — and couldn’t advance a hair’s breadth.
‘Treasure armor!’
Shen Xiuhan’s gaze flickered. He understood at once.
“HA HA HA HA!”
In that same heartbeat, Tian Ping’an’s terror transformed into venomous, exultant glee. He howled with manic laughter.
“You fell for it, brat! Now die!”
SWISH!
His feet shifted with a fish’s agility, his body dropping low. His good left hand shot behind his back.
A short blade — pitch-black from end to end — fell into his grip.
The blade was barely a foot long, utterly black, non-reflective, dark patterns crawling along the edge, radiating a sinister chill.
Hidden Strength flooding in, it lunged like a striking viper — faster than thought — stabbing for the wide-open gap beneath Shen Xiuhan’s ribs.
‘Inside three feet, once my Bone-Eroding Edge bites, I don’t care how many apertures you’ve opened — even a Transforming Strength fighter would drop on the sp— huh?!’
Tian Ping’an’s mind was screaming triumph — then froze mid-thought.
At point-blank range, a sudden flash of gold blazed through Shen Xiuhan’s left eye, like ghost-fire leaping.
The Void-Gazing Eye!
In the slowed instant of perception, Shen Xiuhan’s legs crossed and slid like serpents in a dance.
His upper body twisted at an impossible angle, narrowly — by the width of a blade — threading past the black edge and dodging the killing blow.
Riding the torque of the twist, his body launched skyward. His right hand — somehow already a talon — raked downward with a scream of displaced air.
“WHAT?!”
Tian Ping’an’s eyes bulged to bursting. In mortal desperation, he wrenched his head aside.
A fraction too slow.
Five iron-hook fingers sank into the flesh of his left jawline, then clenched — Hidden Strength detonating — and tore upward.
SHRRK!
A palm-sized strip of cheek, trailing half a blood-soaked ear, was ripped clean away.
Blood erupted from Tian Ping’an like a fountain — spraying wide — exposing the white of jawbone and the ridge of his cheekbone beneath. A ruin of a face, ghastly beyond words.
“AGHHHH THE PAIN — THE PAIN!!!”
Tian Ping’an let out a scream like a wraith from the deepest hell.
The agony shattered what was left of his nerve. He twisted and fled — footwork driven to its absolute limit — hurtling toward the alley’s end without a backward glance.
BOOM!
The rush of split air surged from behind, closing fast. A wave of bone-deep cold crashed against Tian Ping’an’s back, and every hair stood on end as though he’d plunged into a frozen lake.
‘It’s over — I can’t outrun him…’
Despair flooded Tian Ping’an’s eyes. He bit down savagely, spun, and hurled the Bone-Eroding Edge like a throwing knife with his remaining hand.
FWOOSH!
The short blade screamed through the air — a streak of black light aimed straight at Shen Xiuhan’s face.
Shen Xiuhan’s figure flickered to one side, evading the flying blade.
At the same time, the long sword in his hand became an untraceable phantom — sweeping left to right, slashing upward in a rising diagonal.
The two figures crossed paths.
HISS!
A faint sound — like silk being torn — rippled through the night breeze.
The storm of sword-light vanished in an instant.
Shen Xiuhan’s figure had already come to rest a full zhang behind Tian Ping’an.
He straightened slowly. A casual shake of the wrist, and a chain of crimson beads slid down Cold Granary’s frost-white edge, dripping to the ground.
Behind him, every trace of movement and sound from Tian Ping’an ceased.
He stood like a wooden puppet, rigid in place, eyes bulging, his one remaining hand pressed to his throat.
A thin red line crept slowly across the skin of his neck.
In the next breath, the line burst.
A scalding geyser of blood erupted like a fountain.
THUD.
Tian Ping’an’s body toppled forward onto the cold mud, twitched twice — limbs spasming — and then was utterly still.