Chapter 162: Offering to the Qilin Lord (3)
“…” The Qilin Lord’s violet-glowing eyes went cold in an instant.
“Your answer is much like a bladesman who came some days ago.”
“Only…”
“I crushed every bone in his body, and then…”
The Qilin Lord flexed its claws in a deliberate rhythm, then mimed a motion of tossing something into its mouth.
“Ate him.”
Nie Zhao’s jaw clenched, his eyes blazing with fury.
Tianhai…
The Qilin Lord slowly raised its claw and extended it toward him: “Perhaps you will share his fate.”
“I ask you one more time…”
“Impossible.”
Before the Qilin Lord could finish, Nie Zhao had already spoken.
In the face of life and death, a man comes to view many things with indifference.
He realized that in his brief life, there was truly only one thing he could never surrender.
And that was the spirit of a swordsman.
That bastard Duan Tianhai hadn’t flinched—and he, Nie Zhao…
Could he be any less?!
In that instant, a fierce resolve erupted from within his chest. The ordinary iron sword in his hand began to shimmer with a faint, clear luminescence.
“Hm?”
From the blade, the Qilin Lord sensed an extremely faint yet disturbingly familiar note of danger.
It hesitated no longer and struck, claw sweeping down with devastating force.
At that very moment, an abrupt change erupted!
A shard of azure spirit light shot forth. The Qilin Lord’s instincts screamed warning. It recoiled sharply backward, but the projectile still pierced its palm.
“Hrrr—”
The Qilin Lord howled in pain, roaring in fury.
Nie Zhao stared in shock. He had seen it clearly—the azure shard embedded in the Qilin Lord’s palm…
Was nothing more than a chicken bone.
“Kid, you’ve got spirit.”
Turning toward the voice, he saw the fat beggar perched in a tree, gnawing on half a roast chicken.
When he finished, he tossed the remains aside and wiped his mouth.
“That just now… was that…”
Nie Zhao was dazed. He had no notion of what had just occurred.
The fat beggar leapt down from the tree and with a sweep of his sleeve dispelled the illusion: “That is called sword qi.”
The grime and filth vanished.
The disheveled appearance was no more.
In its place stood a young cultivator clad in pristine white sword robes.
“What… you want to learn?”
He clapped Nie Zhao on the shoulder: “I’ll teach you.”
“Hrrr—”
The Qilin Lord, howling in pain, lunged at them both.
But the sword-robed Daoist remained perfectly composed. He pressed two fingers together in a sword seal: “Watch closely!”
Sword qi surged around his body. Above, the firmament blazed with sword light like falling rain.
The Daoist stood upon the air, and from his sleeves ten thousand azure sword qi condensed into a grand formation.
The Qilin Lord’s expression turned to horror. Its movements froze. Then, without a fight, it fled into the distance.
But there would be no escape.
“Fall.”
The Daoist uttered a single word.
BOOM—
Ten thousand streams of sword qi cascaded like a river of heaven overturning.
Countless azure sword blades pierced into the evil qilin’s body, its claws, even its tail.
Nie Zhao had never witnessed such a cataclysmic spectacle. The surging sword qi nearly blinded him.
In the blink of an eye, the evil qilin had crashed to the ground, pinned to the earth.
“What are you waiting for?”
The sword-robed Daoist’s voice drifted down from the sky.
“Did you not vow to avenge the innocent?”
Nie Zhao, as if roused from a dream, struggled to his feet and charged at the evil qilin.
“Hrr…”
The evil qilin lay on the verge of death, its cries reduced to feeble wheezing.
All trace of its former arrogance was gone.
Nie Zhao gathered every ounce of strength and drove his sword into the crack upon its brow.
Clear light flowed, and the blade pierced clean through its skull.
Black blood gushed forth, and the evil qilin slowly went still.
It was dead. The sword-robed Daoist descended from the sky and stood beside Nie Zhao.
Nie Zhao stared blankly at the cultivator. After a long while, he found that even the words “Immortal Master” would not come to his lips.
It was the Daoist who spoke first.
“Kid, I can see your bones are extraordinary. You are destined to be a brilliant sword cultivator.”
“Who knows—perhaps the task of preserving peace in the Yue Kingdom’s cultivation world will fall to you!”
“Well then, will you take me as your master?”
The Daoist spoke with an idle air, yet Nie Zhao did not doubt a single word he uttered.
For just now, he had witnessed a “miracle” with his own eyes.
Nie Zhao gently planted his sword in the earth beside him.
He clasped his hands in salute.
“Your disciple is willing.”
…
“Master…”
“Speak.”
“The legends say the qilin is a beast of auspicious fortune, a representative of heaven’s will. If I killed it and used its essence blood to temper my body… will I be struck by divine retribution?”
In the small courtyard, Nie Zhao asked with some trepidation.
“Heh heh.”
The Daoist let out a dry laugh:
“Whenever something auspicious occurs and one happens upon a qilin, one concludes the qilin represents fortune.”
“Whenever calamity strikes and one happens upon a xie gou, one concludes the xie gou represents disaster.”
“Could it be that the creatures of this world exist only to warn us of some impending event?”
The Daoist’s tone was laced with mockery.
“People are always like this—making themselves the center of all things.”
“But the qilin is simply a qilin, and the xie gou is simply a xie gou.”
“The demon beasts have their own affairs to attend to.”
“This one represents fortune, that one represents calamity, this one’s appearance portends flood and drought, that one’s appearance means the kingdom is rife with cunning and deceit…”
“Utter nonsense.”
Nie Zhao stared blankly, half-understanding.
“Furthermore…”
“Even if all of that were true, you need not worry.”
The Daoist sipped his spirit tea and spoke slowly: “The true Qilin Lord was taken over by a demonic cultivator a hundred years ago.”
“What?”
“It was discovered by my master—ah, that is, your grandmaster—who shattered its demon core with sword qi. It fled to the Yue Kingdom.”
“All that remained was a hollow beast’s body, stripped of every trace of demonic power. Otherwise, with you being a mere mortal, you would have perished against it long ago, countless times over.”
“By killing it, you have in fact liberated the true Qilin Lord.”
“Do you understand now?”
Nie Zhao nodded: “Your disciple understands… But Master, where is our grandmaster?”
“He has gone to a very distant place…”
In the Daoist’s eyes, a rare fervor of intense longing appeared.
“Where?”
“Tch, why so many questions? Do not be so impatient.”
The Daoist glanced at him: “Once you achieve Core Formation, I will be able to follow your grandmaster there.”
“When you take your own disciple someday and pass on our lineage of sword cultivation, and when your disciple achieves Core Formation, you too will be able to go.”
“So you—hurry up and train.”
“Oh…”
“By the way. Have you chosen your flying sword?”
“I won’t look further. This one will do.”
“What?” The Daoist’s expression turned peculiar: “An ordinary iron sword?”
“I’ve used it for years, and it was with this sword that I first comprehended sword intent… Master, didn’t you say the sword body is of no great consequence? Then I see no need to change.”
“Very well.”
The Daoist nodded: “What is its name?”
“It never had one.”
Nie Zhao gently caressed the plain iron sword, unwilling to part with it for even a moment.
“Now, though…”
“I shall call it ‘Offering to the Qilin Lord.'”