Chapter 294: Chapter 294

Li Xun was ruthlessly cruel. That palm strike that sent Bisu flying back was only the start. While Bi Su was still reeling and completely off guard, Li Xun unleashed his Burning Blood Primordial Breath and crushed his internal organs. And yet, he deliberately left him with just enough life to cling to, making it impossible for Yun Xing to abandon him.

By the time this brief delay was over and Yun Xing looked up again, Li Xun was already gone from the sky. In his arms, Bisu suddenly started coughing violently, mouthful after mouthful of blood spraying out. His chest was quickly soaked in red, and a faint, blood-colored mist even rose from it, scorching hot like boiling oil. It was a horrifying sight.

If I’d known it would end up like this, why the hell did I even bother in the first place?

Yun Xing let out a long sigh and carried Bisu down to the ground.

By now, he had given up on chasing Li Xun. All he could do was focus on steadying Bisu’s breathing. Based on his judgment, Old Tian Yuan and the others would arrive any moment. When they did, Bisu’s life should be saved. With some luck, they might even be able to learn what schemes lay behind all of this from him.

Just then, Yun Xing’s ear twitched as he caught a faint sound, like loose rocks sliding down a slope. Given how the area had just been torn apart by several rounds of Bisu’s rapid sword strikes, falling stones would not have been strange at all. Even so, Yun Xing’s mind was clear and alert, and his instincts told him something about it was off.

All of sudden, a blinding burst of blood-red light exploded from Bisu’s chest.

It happened right in front of Yun Xing’s eyes. Bisu’s torso ripped open with a sickening hiss. A streak of blood-shadow shot out from his heart, rocketing toward Yun Xing’s face.

And in that exact moment, whatever scrap of life Bisu had left was sucked dry. Even his primordial spirit shattered and vanished, leaving nothing behind.

A Blood Nightmare! Despicable…

That thought barely had time to flash through Yun Xing’s head before his body instinctively jerked backward.

But his clear Dao heart forcibly halted that retreat. Just as the Blood Nightmare was barely an inch from his face, Yun Xing let out a savage roar. A thunderous sound wave erupted from his mouth, blasting the Blood Nightmare into scattered fragments.

He did not even have time to feel relieved at seeing through the Blood Nightmare’s hollow threat before a surprised “Huh?” reached his ears.

A chill creeped up Yun Xing’s back. He did not need to see it. His divine sense instantly reconstructed the image behind him.

It was a long, slender hand slicing through the air, stabbing for the center of his back. The moment Yun Xing’s protective true breath sensed the intrusion, it flared outward with a deep hum.

But that hand’s true breath flickered between yin and yang, changing countless times in a heartbeat. There was almost no direct clash at all. Instead, it split and dissolved his defenses. The palm brushed against his protective energy like hot soup poured over snow, melting a gap open in an instant. The fingertips had already pierced the fabric on his back.

Yun Xing grunted through clenched teeth as the Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword transformed into a streak of razor-sharp light, whipping around his body like it had a mind of its own. The dense stellar power from the surroundings surged at the sword’s call, instantly weaving a barrier over his skin laced with jagged, piercing spikes.

Another soft “eh?” sounded by his ear. The person behind him was finally checked, if only slightly, by the edge of the Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword. Their fingers curled back for a split second before thrusting forward again.

That brief pause gave Yun Xing the opening he needed to break free.

Yun Xing couldn’t help feeling lucky that he hadn’t been scared into jumping backward by the Blood Nightmare earlier. If he had, there wouldn’t have been even this sliver of space to wrench free.

The thought flashed through his mind, and he was already darting sideways.

He had barely moved a few yards when he heard it for the third time.

This time, it was a clear, icy scoff.

The sound itself wasn’t much. But the instant it faded, a violent shiver ripped through his entire body. The rush of the Qingcang River vanished in a heartbeat. In that instant, his soul was yanked out of him and hurled by some indescribable force into a desolate void.

There, he seemed to see an endless sky. Massive crimson clouds, piled like walls and cities, stretched for thousands of li as they rode the wind. Savage gales howled around him, as if they were about to tear him into shreds.

Yun Xing spat out a mouthful of blood. Yet it was that very spray of blood that freed him from the terrifying illusion.

He quickly understood what had happened. His mind had been locked onto by the divine sense of a supreme expert, shaking his spiritual core and giving rise to those visions. What he could not understand was this. The person behind him seemed to possess cultivation even greater than Sect Master Tian Yuan’s.

Which True One grandmaster had arrived?

Even though his mind was full of questions and the situation couldn’t have been worse, Yun Xing’s resolve never wavered for a second. He clenched his teeth and forced his body to twist again, muscles stiff from the crushing pressure bearing down on him. The Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword let out a deep, thrumming hum. In the blink of an eye, he swung eight phantom slashes in a row, leaving eight identical trails of icy light hanging in the air.

“Eight Trigrams Formation?”

In that murmur, the stellar power for miles around erupted into wave after wave of unnatural ripples. Following the slashing paths, it roared inward and collapsed toward a single point.

In just a flash, eight jade-colored pillars of light sprang up within arm’s reach around Yunxing, spinning relentlessly around him.

Centered on those eight pillars, the raging stellar power became like a silent undercurrent in the depths of the sea. It was soundless yet endlessly shifting, neutralizing, warping, and breaking apart every external force that touched it.

The wave of killing intent that followed only rattled the Eight Trigrams Formation in its opening moments; after that, it couldn’t touch him at all. Now that he’d finally steadied his footing, Yun Xing had a split second to spare. He turned his head and glared at the True One grandmaster… the bastard who actually had the nerve to launch a sneak attack from behind.

At a single glance, he could not help but reel in shock. “Yin Wanderer!”

With a light flick of her whisk, Yin Wanderer did not press the attack right away. Instead, she let out a wistful sigh. “If this weren’t the Star River, how would you ever have had the chance to pull off an Eight Trigrams Formation?”

Yun Xing held his sword level across his chest. Sheltered inside the Eight Trigrams Formation, he pressed his lips and said nothing. His thoughts, though, were racing.

For decades, Yin Wanderer had been a figure who appeared and vanished without a trace. Now he had suddenly shown up in the Star River, and judging by the situation, he was traveling the same path as that Li Xun. He had even disregarded his own status to launch a sneak attack on a junior disciple. What on earth was going on here?

Seeing Yun Xing remain silent, Yin Wanderer gave a half smile and was about to speak. Then something tugged at her senses. She turned his head and glanced behind her. “Tch. They got here fast.”

She snapped her arm upward, the whisk whipping high into the air. Its three thousand silver threads streaked like brushes wielded across the sky, tracing intricate, crisscrossing patterns through the hazy night.

As the whisk danced wildly up and down, Yun Xing’s heart couldn’t help but start racing. He had a gut feeling that woven into those flickering, overlapping trails was a wave of suffocating power. The thought had barely crossed his mind when the whisk finished its final stroke.

For no reason at all, Yun Xing felt his scalp prickle like a thousand needles. Deep in his ears, a long, ancient, desolate chant echoed straight into his mind.

In the blink of an eye, that long chant exploded outward. Wind and thunder crashing like dozens of thunderbolts detonating inside his skull. The clashing forces overwhelmed him. Blood burst from Yun Xing’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, and he toppled backward. From beginning to end, he never understood how he’d been hit.

Barely a heartbeat later, on the far horizon, a pale violet sword light streaked down like a falling meteor, tearing through the air. As the sword aura collided with the atmosphere, it let out a sound that was strangely reversed, descending from sharp and piercing to deep and heavy.

It was that heavy, rumbling sound that sliced into the space between heaven and earth, drawing a low, resonant hum from mountains and rivers alike. It was as if, within the Star River, the spiritual essence of the Three Enclosures and Seven Peaks, the Nine Marshes and Three Rivers, had all been summoned and compressed onto the blade’s edge.

Even dozens of miles away, Yin Wanderer could still feel that unstoppable, razor-sharp edge bearing down. Her delicate brows furrowed for a moment, but then she curled her lip in disdain. With one final flick of the whisk, she let it settle lightly back into the crook of her arm.

Yun Xing hit the ground. The eight jade-colored pillars of light hummed together, shrugging out one wave of incoming force. But after that final flick from Yin Wanderer’s whisk, the Eight Trigrams Formation, now without Yun Xing’s control, didn’t collapse outright… it just staggered. Though its rhythm went straight to hell in a chaotic mess.

Seizing that brief opening, Yin Wanderer strolled into the chaotic current of stellar power as casually as if she were walking through a garden, reaching out to claim Yun Xing’s life.

Three steps away from him, all Yin Wanderer had to do was reach out, and she could slice his head clean off. She did reach out. But just before her true breath could slit his throat, she heard the single, clear drip of a water droplet.

This was the bank of the Qingcang River, where the constant roar of rushing water usually drowned out all else. And yet Yin Wanderer heard it crystal clear. That sound belonged only to the deepest, most silent reaches of a cavern, the purest, most delicate plink…

The very next instant, that single droplet transformed into a raging ocean. Storm clouds churning, furious waves surging skyward. In a blur, it tilted and poured down across thousands of miles, flooding straight into the Star River.

Eight Arts of Sea Suppression, Fierce Measure Strike!

Yin Wanderer forced herself to halt. In that brief moment of hesitation, the void above his head split open. A pale violet swordlight speared down, missing her feet by a hair before plunging into the ground.

The entire Qingcang River seemed to shudder. The Eight Formation Diagram, already somewhat unstable, suddenly flared back to life. Within the jade-white pillars of light, faint streaks of soft purple appeared, dazzling and magnificent.

Yun Xing let out a low groan. Thick stellar dense poured into his body, instantly sweeping through and straightening out his clogged meridians. In a heartbeat, strength flooded back into him.

He gripped the Greedy Wolf immortal sword tight, using it like a crutch to haul himself up from the ground, looking pretty battered in the process. The Eight Trigrams Formation hummed, countless threads of qi tugging at the thick stellar power all around, locking him safe and sound right in the center.

Taking in that fortress-like defense, then sensing the powerful enemy already close at hand, Yin Wanderer shook her head and laughed.

“You really have terrible luck.”

Clearly, those words were not meant for Yun Xing.