"This fellow is a bit sinister. Make it quick! Kill him!" Right Hei shouted, swinging his giant axe as he charged forward.
"A nobody, yet you dare show off before experts! Sword technique, Frigid Snow!" Left Bai unleashed a sword technique that consumed an immense amount of spiritual energy.
As the icy sword flew, it completely froze the surrounding air.
The extreme cold descended, and heavy snow began to drift!
Amidst the flying snow and with the giant axe bearing down on him, Yun Que mustered all his strength to pull the very last bit.
"Demon power... Blood Claws!"
Clatter, clatter!
The blood-red chain was finally pulled out completely.
At the end of the chain was not a long saber, but a colossal, blood-stained talon!
At that moment, the bright moon in the night sky seemed to be stained with a layer of blood.
The blood-red talon burst forth from the Eight Gates Spirit-Sealing Array, erupting in a ring of blinding crimson light!
Within that crimson light, the eight Red Lotus Cult members all around perished instantly!
The formation collapsed in an instant!
The talon, several zhang in size, appeared and immediately grabbed the incoming icy sword.
With a series of crisp shattering sounds, Left Bai's magical artifact, the icy sword, was crushed into powder!
The talon clenched into a fist and shattered the incoming giant axe with a single punch, then came crashing down amidst the howling wind.
Boom!!!
Right Hei, a Rank Seven Spirit-Refining Martial Artist, was smashed alive into a puddle of meat!
Left Bai froze for a split second, then turned and fled at incredible speed.
The Red Lotus Cult protector was now consumed by terror, not even daring to look back, let alone capture the princess.
His only remaining thought was to run for his life!
Clatter, clatter.
Yun Que gently twirled the chain, the smile at the corner of his mouth growing increasingly eerie.
"Want to run? Too late!"
Yun Que extended his left hand.
Clatter!!
The chain went taut, and that blood-red talon mirrored the movement of Yun Que's left hand, leaping across dozens of zhang of space to hover right above Left Bai's head.
As Yun Que closed his fingers, the sprinting Left Bai was easily grabbed by the talon.
He was hoisted directly into the air.
"Let me go! You fiend! I am a protector of the Red Lotus Cult, a Fire Candle Envoy! Whoever harms me shall be hunted by the Red Lotus Cult for a lifetime!"
Left Bai was as pale as death, struggling frantically. Gone was his earlier condescending and aggressive demeanor; he was reduced to utter wretchedness.
"You commit demonic deeds yourselves, yet you call others demons. Were you people from the Red Lotus Cult raised on shit? Can't you speak like human beings?"
Yun Que sneered. "Not feeling like you have enough people? Come on, let's compare again and see whose helpers are more numerous!"
The blood-red giant talon slowly tightened its grip.
Left Bai spewed a large mouthful of blood.
As a Daoist cultivator, his physical resilience was far inferior to that of Right Hei, a Rank Seven Martial Artist. Since even Right Hei had been obliterated by a single strike from the giant talon, how could he possibly endure it?
"You dare commit such treason! My Red Lotus Cult was born in accord with the heavenly mandate. If you kill me, you will surely suffer heaven's wrath!"
Left Bai roared, spewing blood, his face a mask of despair and terror.
Yun Que said indifferently:
"A mere cult dares to falsely claim it was born in accord with the mandate of heaven—what thick skin you have! So what if heaven's wrath strikes? Who does heaven think it is?!"
Crack!!!
The giant talon closed shut!
Left Bai, a Rank Seven Inanition Realm cultivator, was directly squeezed into a blurred mass of flesh and blood!
The bloody scene made even Mu Qingyao beside him hold her breath for a split second.
She knew Yun Que was strong.
Yet she had never imagined that Yun Que could be terrifying to such an extent!
Using the solitary strength of a Rank Eight Martial Artist, he had slaughtered two Rank Seven experts!
After this battle, the entire contingent of the Red Lotus Cult was utterly wiped out.
The jungle fell silent.
Only Yun Que's heavy breathing remained, along with the rattling sound of the chain swaying on its own.
Though the formidable enemies were dead, Yun Que's expression did not relax in the slightest.
Instead, it grew even heavier than before.
Yun Que gripped the end of the chain with all his might, inch by inch dragging the giant talon back to himself.
The process did not take long, yet Yun Que was covered in cold sweat from exhaustion.
As the giant talon drew closer, it gradually resumed the outline of a saber blade, but the crimson color on the blade was astonishingly intense. The undulating blood-red light alternately manifested as a giant talon and then vanished, repeating continuously.
Even after exhausting all his strength, Yun Que still failed to restore the long saber.
The blade body had formed, but the shadow of a demonic talon remained stubbornly at its tip.
That demonic talon gripped the ground fiercely, seemingly refusing to return to the blade body.
Mu Qingyao ran toward Yun Que, intending to ask if she could help.
"Don't come over!"
Yun Que growled, stopping Mu Qingyao from approaching.
Princess Lingyun's footsteps halted abruptly.
Mu Qingyao could tell that Yun Que was in extreme agony right now, the veins on his forehead bulging and his features twisted savagely.
"How can I help?" Mu Qingyao asked anxiously.
"Go find eggs! Bird eggs, snake eggs, quail eggs, chicken eggs, duck eggs, turtle eggs, any kind of egg will do! As long as it has a shell! Go find them, and don't come back if you can't find any!"
Yun Que's voice was low and resolute.
Mu Qingyao pressed her lips tightly together, nodded firmly, and turned to run into the distant woods.
Mu Qingyao finally understood why Yun Que had the habit of swallowing eggs whole—it turned out to be a way to suppress this bizarre and terrifying power.
What Mu Qingyao understood even more clearly was this:
Yun Que telling her not to come back if she couldn't find any was because he was afraid he might end up killing her too!
At that moment, Mu Qingyao learned for the first time that Yun Que's saber could be so terrifying.
She also finally understood why Yun Que said the current Tianshu Bureau could not forge the Demon-Slaying Division of the previous dynasty.
Because the people of the Demon-Slaying Division were indeed all monsters!
When Mu Qingyao's figure vanished into the depths of the jungle, Yun Que finally exhausted his last ounce of strength.
Within the blade body, blood-red vertical pupils opened once more.
The phantom of the demonic talon, connected to the blade body, slowly reached out toward its master, Yun Que.
Chapter 21: The Demonic Saber
A streak of rosy glow tinted the edge of the sky.
The moment before dawn arrives is often the deepest hour of the dark night.
In the dim jungle, Yun Que grabbed the hilt of the saber.
At the same time, the demonic talon within the blade body also clamped around Yun Que's neck.
If the long saber with the protruding demonic talon could still be called a saber, then Yun Que at this moment was trapped in a bizarre state.
Yun Que was holding the saber, yet the saber was pointing right at him!
Yun Que's eyes were as red as blood; one hand gripped the saber for dear life, while the other violently clawed at the demonic talon, trying to pry it open.
Yet the sheer strength of the demonic talon was terrifying to the extreme; with Yun Que's power, he simply could not shake it.
That very talon could easily annihilate Rank Seven cultivators and Rank Seven Martial Artists!
"Go back... Get back inside!"
Yun Que let out a strained, low roar, his teeth clenched in a savagely terrifying expression.
Click! Click!
A strange sound rang out, as if something was splitting open.
Yun Que lowered his gaze, staring intently at the demonic talon.
A crack had opened across the back of the talon's hand, resembling a mouth.
"Hee hee hee!!"
"Ha ha ha!!"
"Gaga gagaga!!!"
The crack twisted and writhed, emitting a hair-raising, gloomy laughter like a living creature.
Amidst the eerie laughter, a pair of blood-red vertical pupils opened directly above the mouth!
The moment those vertical pupils appeared, the crimson in Yun Que's eyes grew even more intense, overwhelming the sliver of clarity deep within them.
Puff!
Yun Que spat out a mouthful of fresh blood directly.
The bloody fluid stained the vertical pupils, slowly trickling down like bloody tears before being greedily devoured by the gaping mouth-like crack.
"Enough... Go back!"
Yun Que was practically roaring, his voice hoarse and fraught with extreme weakness.
Yet after devouring the blood, the mouth did not vanish; instead, it uttered a bizarre human voice.
"You deliberately sent that girl away—could it be you've taken a fancy to her? Such a flaw can be fatal, you know. A demon hunter must have as few flaws as possible to live longer."
The voice sounded neither male nor female, echoing like a ghost's whisper in the desolate woods.
"None of your business! Get lost back inside!" Yun Que roared.
The mouth on the demonic talon parted and closed again, speaking:
"Whenever you need help you call me out, and when you're done you tell me to scram—you men really are heartless. It's been many years since I last smelled the scent of fresh, living humans; that girl's Xuan-Yin body is a magnificent tonic, hee hee hee hee!"
"As long as I live, don't even dream of coming out!" Yun Que growled low.
"That's not up for you to decide. You have no strength and no sacrifice—what will you use to make me go back? I'm just out for a bit of fun, why be so terrified? Is there anything left in this mortal world that you're nostalgic for? Why don't we destroy this world together instead? Hee hee hee, gaga ga!!!"
Amidst the bizarre laughter, the world began to spin before Yun Que's eyes, until it was swallowed entirely by darkness.
In the jungle, Yun Que passed out cold.
He was still clutching the hilt of the saber tightly.
Yet his body began to change: strands of his jet-black hair were turning red, one by one...
The laughter of the demonic saber gradually faded into the distance.
Yun Que could no longer hear any sounds, nor could he see anything.
All around was pitch black.
He felt as though he had fallen into the netherworld of the Yellow Springs, waiting for Impermanence to guide the way.
He had done his best...
Yun Que sighed, shaking his head helplessly.
To die would be fine too—one death ends all troubles.
He was going to die sooner or later anyway.
As a member of the Demon-Slaying Division, who could ever hope for a peaceful end?
Yun Que sat down in the darkness, resting his chin in his hands, peacefully awaiting the arrival of death.
His thoughts came to a halt, as if the world itself had frozen.
After who knows how long, a sliver of light appeared before him, unfolding into a vast expanse of heaven and earth.
Before his eyes lay a tragic battlefield!
Corpses littered the fields as far as the eye could see, stretching endlessly!
Once more, Yun Que beheld the hellish, terrifying scene from when he was three years old.
Severed limbs and broken bones were strewn everywhere.
There were no living humans.
Nor any living beasts.
A wolf's head larger than an ox hung from an ancient, towering tree.
Two bear paws the size of washing basins were embedded in a giant boulder.
Thousands of bleached human skulls were piled into a mountain of bones.
Hundreds of nicked and notched long sabers were thrust into the carcass of a giant beast two zhang tall.
The mountain on the left had split in two, forming a gorge; a giant eagle demon with a wingspan of over ten zhang lay dead at the summit, its drooping talons tangled with withered, monstrous pythons that filled the ravine like thick vines.
The small lake on the right was stained red, completely devoid of ripples, its surface choked with tens of thousands of floating corpses—both human and demonic.
In the distance, towering, magnificent palaces pierced straight into the clouds.
A blood-red path paved with remains connected Yun Que to those distant palaces.
That was the Demon Capital!
The ultimate destination of this epic battle.
When this brutal battle had ended, Yun Que did not know.
Whether they had won or lost, Yun Que did not know either.
Yun Que only remembered the sole mission of this trip:
Slay demons!
Yet his own saber had long since snapped in two; he should have died in battle right then and there, so why was he still alive?
This dead wasteland was a lingering nightmare that had haunted Yun Que all these years.
The light before his eyes gradually dimmed.
The darkness closed back in around him like a cage.
In the darkness, his mother's voice echoed in Yun Que's ears.
"Live on, Yun'er, you must live on..."
Live on.
Live on!
Perhaps spurred by his mother's injunction, or perhaps by the cold rain pelting his body, the young Yun Que snapped back to consciousness.
Around him were overgrown weeds, ancient trees, and unfamiliar mountain forests.
A torrential downpour was falling.
Before him was no gentle smile from his mother, but a gigantic wild boar with a single horn, its breath blowing out like twin plumes of cloud.
"A demon..."
The young Yun Que instinctively raised his hand. Though he had no saber, he still reflexively made a slashing motion.
Crack!!
The boar demon crashed down with a thunderous roar, its massive head cleanly severed by a single slash!
The blade that killed the boar demon was a slender, pitch-black saber.
"This isn't my saber..."
The young Yun Que muttered in a strained voice. He had never seen this saber before; it felt completely alien and bone-chillingly cold.
"It is now, hee hee hee hee!"
A blood-red pupil opened within the black saber, emitting an eerie woman's voice:
"From today on, I am your saber, and I am your life. If you wish to use my power, you must use your divine soul as a sacrifice. Remember this well: if you fail to offer your soul, then you shall be the final sacrifice, hee hee hee hee!"
"My saber... what is your name?"
"Only when you become strong enough will you be worthy of knowing. A weak master is not fit to speak my name."
...
In the jungle.
More than half of Yun Que's black hair had already turned crimson.
The demonic talon extending from the demonic saber was gently stroking that half-head of red hair.
"Sleep, my little master. Next, it's my turn, hee hee! The Xuan-Yin body—a true delicacy! Hee hee, ha ha ha ha!"
The morning glow was already shining down.
Yet it could not disperse the terrifying demonic qi enveloping Yun Que.
The eerie laughter in the forest abruptly cut off a moment later.
The half-head of red hair stopped transforming!
And then it began to reverse!
Around Yun Que's neck, a soft halo of light was undulating.
That halo came precisely from Mu Qingyao's moon-jade pendant.
"A soul-suppressing artifact! Damnable!"
The eerie voice was filled with anger as it raised its right hand to grab the necklace, attempting to crush it.
Bang!
Yun Que's left hand suddenly shot up and grabbed his own right wrist.
"You still have your consciousness!" the eerie voice said in astonishment.
"Get! Back! Inside!"
A low roar tore from Yun Que's throat. His left eye had regained its clarity, while the crimson in his right eye remained intense.
This fresh clash dragged on for a long time.
Aided by the power within the pendant, Yun Que ultimately suppressed the demonic saber temporarily.
The talon retracted into the blade body.
His hair turned entirely black once more.
Yet the blood-red hue in his eyes lingered stubbornly.
Thud.
Yun Que collapsed onto the grass, panting heavily.
"I'll bury you sooner or later!"
Yun Que cursed weakly, picked up the long saber, and shoved it back into its scabbard.
He desperately wanted to bury this blade.
Regrettably, he couldn't.
Not only was it a demonic saber, but it was also bound to his very life.
He could not discard it, could not distance himself from it, and could not escape it.
The saber was Yun Que's life.
Facing the dawn light, Yun Que raised the necklace around his neck.
In the sunlight, the azure-blue jade seemed dusted with a layer of gold.
The feathers carved upon it looked as though they were about to catch the wind and soar away into the distance.
"This thing is worth way more than two hundred taels..."
A piece of moon-jade capable of harboring soul-suppressing power could hardly be an ordinary object.
Forget two hundred taels; two thousand or twenty thousand wouldn't buy it.
A true supreme treasure!
Perhaps to others, the soul-suppressing power within the moon-jade was optional, at best used to calm the mind and soothe the spirit.
But to Yun Que, this soul-suppressing power was something to be prayed for, not guaranteed.
If he hadn't had this piece of jade today, Yun Que didn't know what would have happened, but he was certain that once the creature inside the blade came out, it would undoubtedly plunge all living things into misery.
Stumbling footsteps sounded from afar.
Mu Qingyao ran back, looking utterly disheveled.
Her pretty face was smeared with mud, her clothes torn in several places by briars, and in her fair, tender hands, she clutched a dozen small eggs.
"They're snake eggs. I washed them."
Mu Qingyao carefully handed the snake eggs to Yun Que, collapsing onto the ground beside him, utterly exhausted.
Without a second word, Yun Que swallowed all dozen-plus snake eggs raw.
It was a bit choking.
With no water nearby, he had no choice but to force them down his throat.
Once the snake eggs reached his stomach, the crimson in Yun Que's eyes gradually faded.
The aura of the demonic saber was completely suppressed.
"Thanks," Yun Que said.
"We've been through life and death together; why stand on ceremony?"
Mu Qingyao offered a radiant smile—her smile was breathtakingly lovely, yet her pretty face was as pale as a sheet, devoid of any color.
Right after, Mu Qingyao fell straight over.
"What's wrong with you?!"
Yun Que caught her in his arms in a panic.
Looking closer, he noticed snake-fang bite marks on the back of Mu Qingyao's hand. The wound was a bluish-purple, a clear sign of severe poisoning.
"Nine-star snake, highly venomous. I looked around nearby, but there are no variegated antidote grasses..." Mu Qingyao said weakly.
"Knowing it was a poisonous snake, and you still dared to steal its eggs!" Yun Que scolded.
"You saved me; how could I abandon you?" Mu Qingyao whispered, her breath faint.
"You fool! Once you left, why didn't you just stay away!" Yun Que said.
"You were willing to fight to the death for me; what harm is there in walking through the Yellow Springs for you?"
Mu Qingyao's smile was sorrowfully beautiful, like a pear blossom about to wither. Leaning in Yun Que's embrace, she murmured, "The mortal world is like a net, and we are all trapped within it. Just bury me on a mountain where flowers grow... Yun Que, promise me you'll live a good, long life..."
With those final words, she passed out completely.
"Damn this mortal world!"
After an exasperated curse, Yun Que began sucking the venomous blood from the wound.
The snake venom was violently potent.
After spitting out several mouthfuls, Yun Que's mouth went numb, yet the venom spot on Mu Qingyao's arm was still spreading upward.
First-aid measures wouldn't do much against this kind of snake venom; it had to be neutralized as soon as possible.
Yun Que found a sturdy hemp rope and tightly bound Mu Qingyao's bitten arm to slow the venom from reaching her heart.
Then, he wrapped Mu Qingyao in a wolf skin and strapped her securely to his back.
A living person with limp limbs was the hardest thing to carry while running, because they had no strength in their hands or feet and couldn't hold on to anything.
Only by wrapping and tying them securely, treating them like an object, could they be carried more easily.
Yun Que unleashed the maximum speed of a Rank Eight Martial Artist, sprinting frantically through the forest toward Baiyu City.
Baiyu City had renowned physicians; as long as they made it to the city, the snake venom could be easily resolved.
Shortly after,
A red swallow flew in from afar, landed on a branch, and quietly stared at the corpses littering the jungle floor. Its little eyes blinked before it spread its wings and flew away.
Chapter 22: Running Really Fast
Baiyu City was one of the largest cities in Zhiyuan County, and its prosperity was dozens of times that of Cangshi Town.
Early in the morning, a long queue had formed outside the city gate, with well over several hundred people waiting to enter.
The queue consisted mostly of traveling merchants and peddlers, many carrying shoulder poles or pulling carts, along with quite a few caravans laden with goods of all sizes.
"With the grand bazaar in Baiyu City today, my basket of big fish is bound to fetch a fine price!"
"What are fish even worth? If you want to make money, you need good jade. Every year the Baiyu City bazaar produces a few pieces of peerless fine jade."
"I heard a blood-jade was unearthed in Wuji Town, dug right out of an old Wuji chicken that died of old age!"
"What old Wuji chicken? That was a demon! The Wu Family raised it for several years, feeding it flesh and blood every single day, just to cultivate a piece of blood-jade!"
"No wonder Wuji Town always holds grand sacrifices. Are they raising demons with living humans?"
"Hush! Quit talking nonsense. If the Wu Family hears you, your little life won't be worth a copper!"
"What kind of world is this? Not only are demons and evil spirits everywhere, but people are intentionally raising demons too... Hey! What just flashed past?!"
A figure rushed past like a violent gale, sending the crowd into a brief flurry of commotion.