Chapter 159: Chapter 159
“I can feel the opportunity — this is the legendary ancient sudden-enlightenment! A karmic resonance in the void! Oh, what bliss! My Dao shall be fulfilled!!”
“You—”
Jia Pingxiu’s jaw dropped, eyes bulging.
The man had been perfectly normal a heartbeat ago. Now he’d gone completely unhinged. Cold sweat broke across Jia Pingxiu’s back and trickled down his spine.
Beside them, the two women attending Gao Fu shrank into the far corner of the divan, trembling, not daring to breathe.
“Transforming Strength within reach — Astral Strength on the horizon! Ha ha ha!”
Seeing Gao Fu spiral further, Jia Pingxiu’s face spasmed. He seized Gao Fu by the shoulders and shoved him back onto the divan, snarling through clenched teeth:
“Have you lost your mind?!”
“Sudden enlightenment? You? Pull yourself together!”
The jolt struck like a bucket of cold water. A sliver of clarity flickered in Gao Fu’s eyes — a moment of hesitation, as though he might come back to himself.
But in the very next breath —
On the water.
On the reef.
The blue-wreathed figure fished a pill from his robe, tossed it back, and drove his force once more.
The invisible wave cut through the night and swept over Gao Fu.
In an instant, that thread of lucidity shattered. Greed and mania devoured him whole.
He looked at Jia Pingxiu, and a vicious light crossed his eyes. His right knee snapped upward like a sea-dragon bursting from the deep.
Twenty-Four Paths of Mountain-Collapsing Legs — Piercing-Spear Leg!
BANG!
Jia Pingxiu never saw it coming. The kick caught him square in the gut. His round body folded like a struck drum, blood-mist spraying from his lips as he was launched backward.
CRASH!
He slammed into a table across the room. Wine-pots, platters, and cups exploded outward, sauce and liquor splashing everywhere.
Several dancers, too slow to dodge, screamed and toppled, skirts tangling, hairpins scattering.
The uproar killed the revelry dead.
Every one of the several dozen men in the hall gaped at the scene.
The new Fifth Chief had just kicked the Fourth Chief across the room?
Before anyone could process it, Gao Fu vaulted off the divan, glaring at Jia Pingxiu — now being propped up by his men — with wild, burning eyes.
“I call you Fourth Brother and you repay me by standing in the way of my Dao! Fine — from this day, you and I are done! Each to his own road!”
He didn’t wait for a reply.
A manic grin split his face. He bolted for the door, laughing as he ran.
“Ha ha ha!”
“It’s happening! It’s coming! This old man’s martial Dao is about to culminate!”
“Zheng Dadao! Duan Xiao! Once I achieve the Dao, every last one of you dies!”
“I’m off!”
The laughter faded into the distance and was gone.
The hall sat in stunned silence, every face frozen — as though they’d all seen a ghost in broad daylight.
Jia Pingxiu clutched his chest, blood at the corner of his mouth, terror in his eyes. His voice came out in a quaking rasp.
“Quick — go tell the Great Chief… Gao Fu’s been hexed! He’s lost his mind!”
…
On the reef.
Shen Xiuhan’s tightly shut eyes flew open. Lightning blazed in his gaze.
“He’s coming!”
Zuo Muxian’s eyes sharpened. He peered into the distance.
Far off, a hulking figure burst from the shoreline and crossed the water in a few bounding leaps.
“Closer! Closer!”
Gao Fu’s face was twisted, his eyes ablaze.
Spotting two silhouettes ahead on the water, he bellowed without a heartbeat’s thought: “Out of the way! Don’t block your granddaddy’s path!”
Zuo Muxian smiled.
One step. He was gliding across the water, moon-white robes drifting in the night breeze — the bearing of an immortal. In a single flash, he stood before Gao Fu.
He looked the man up and down, gaze cold as midwinter.
“Gao Fu?” he asked.
Gao Fu scowled. “Who are you?!”
“Me?”
Zuo Muxian’s lips curved — a smile that wasn’t quite a smile — and his voice dropped soft.
“My surname is Zuo. My name is Muxian. I’m from Shitan County, Guangwu Commandery.”
Behind them, on the reef.
The azure glow was fading, receding like the tide.
Shen Xiuhan didn’t waste a breath. He rose and plunged into the water, channeling force into the Sea-Overturning Pearl.
The azure shield materialized, wrapping him in a crystalline bubble. He sank like a fish into the dark.
On the surface.
The crimson flush drained from Gao Fu’s face. The feverish light in his eyes guttered and died. Clarity returned to his mind.
He stared at the immortally handsome face before him, and his lips trembled — as though a buried memory had clawed its way to the surface.
“Zuo… you… Zuo Muxian!”
In the next instant —
Gao Fu’s face went white as death. Terror erupted. He didn’t think — toe-tips hammered the water and he shot backward like an arrow loosed from its string.
Too late.
A fair, slender hand struck like lightning, closing around his throat the way one might pinch a chick.
Five fingers tightened. Force penetrated.
Gao Fu’s entire body locked. He couldn’t move.
BANG!
A single punch.
Driving into the base of Gao Fu’s spine.
The force bored through bone.
Three apertures — painstakingly cultivated over decades — cracked in an instant, fissures spreading like shattered porcelain.
One breath later.
BOOM!
All three apertures detonated.
Uncontrolled force rampaged through him like a wild horse, shredding his meridians from the inside.
SHUNK!
Gao Fu sprayed a torrent of blood. His eyes went crimson. A howl of despair tore from his throat.
“NO!”
Thirty-odd years of training through bitter winters and scorching summers — countless days and nights of blood and sweat — all his cultivation, gone in a single breath.
FWIP! FWIP! FWIP!
Zuo Muxian’s face was stone. Index and middle fingers pressed together in a sword-seal, he jabbed nine points across Gao Fu’s body in rapid succession.
Each strike sealed an acupoint, froze the qi-blood flow.
Gao Fu went rigid — as though nailed in place — unable to so much as twitch.
SWISH!
Zuo Muxian’s right hand flicked upward. Gao Fu’s body, weightless as a rag, was hurled onto the reef behind them.
He lay with eyes bulging, body immobile, despair flooding through him.
‘He’s not killing me. Keeping me alive means he wants to make me suffer…’
Zuo Muxian paid him no further attention. He dusted his cuffs, set one hand behind his back, and lifted his calm gaze toward the distance.
At the far edge of the lake.
A figure strode across the water — resplendent in ornate brocade, black hair flowing loose, his bearing imperious. A middle-aged man, approaching with the unhurried authority of a king.
Duan Xiao.
“Uninvited guest. Crippled my brother. Made a mockery of my name.”
Duan Xiao’s voice was quiet, yet it rolled like a great bronze bell, every syllable pressing down with invisible weight.
“Don’t you think that’s a touch… presumptuous?”
…
Underwater.
The azure shield had condensed into a gleaming, translucent bubble, enveloping Shen Xiuhan as he glided forward in silence.
BOOM!
Roughly the time it took to drink half a cup of tea later, a massive concussion detonated above and behind him.
Even through layers of lake water, his eardrums rang. He glanced back instinctively.
On the surface, a white figure and a golden one had locked in combat.
Moon-white and brocade-gold blurred together. Every collision threw off blinding ripples of force, cratering the water for dozens of zhang around.
Geysers erupted skyward and crashed back down in a curtain of spray, like a sudden downpour.
“…Staggering power. I need to move faster.”