Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 214: Underground

Within a few breaths, Ding Songyan had learned Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang’s exact hiding place from the unconscious disciple’s dream.

The foremost Malevolent Envoy was recovering in an underground chamber. It had three entrances: one in the main house, one in a small building in the rear courtyard, and one beside the water channel outside the lane. Each also served as an escape route.

The main house was closest to Ding Songyan.

He opened his eyes. His face became deerlike again, his eyes bulging outward.

He did not finish off the unconscious disciple. The evil entities inside Sun Feiyang might be sensitive to flesh and blood, able to sense bloodshed and death from afar.

That would alert his target.

Furthermore, if he only used the strength at the early Great Proliferation Realm, it would allow "name" and "reality" to match. It would not cause the change of name and reality to fail. Otherwise, his previous stealth would have been exposed.

Using the walkway’s wooden pillars and the house’s doors and windows, Ding Songyan crept unseen to the main entrance.

Two Accumulated Evil Way disciples stood guard inside, both with visible physical anomalies.

Their vision blurred, and a figure suddenly appeared before them.

Dressed in short brown clothes, the figure rushed forward, sweeping his longsword sideways at an unhurried pace, still in its black scabbard.

One disciple had just drawn a spike when the black scabbard, seemingly slow enough to block, abruptly accelerated and struck the side of his head with a thud. The other opened his mouth, but before he could shout a warning, a wisp of dark, chaotic sword qi shot into it, as though his response had been anticipated.

The disciple struck by the scabbard lost consciousness at once and began to fall. Without breaking stride, Ding Songyan passed him, reached out with his left hand, and pushed him into a chair four meters away. He slumped there without any noticeable disturbance.

With Unifying Sword Qi ravaging his mouth, the other disciple nearly lost his senses from the pain. Blood and consciousness alike seemed to be drawn into the sword qi, sucked inward without a trace escaping.

He stood frozen where he was.

Ding Songyan flashed past him and casually swung his sheathed sword, sending him flying into a chair to one side with just enough force to seat him without a sound.

The disciple’s head lolled as he lost consciousness. Unifying Sword Qi still spun inside his mouth, absorbing blood to sustain itself.

Having subdued both men in a single breath, Ding Songyan reached the rear hall without slowing.

He took a painted mask from inside his clothes and put it on, then pressed a concealed loose brick in the wall and turned it three times.

In a corner of the rear hall, a bluestone slab slid silently aside, revealing a dark opening and a flight of stone steps leading down.

Clearly, there would be little wood or vegetation in the secret passage. Ding Songyan stopped deriving the Treatise on Sharing the Shadows of the World and returned to his Chaos state. Keeping to the shadows beyond the sparse wall lamps, he hurried down with barely audible footsteps.

Fan Chunlin’s stealth tips had come in useful again.

......

Inside the underground chamber.

Resembling an old, gaunt, savage tiger, Sun Feiyang sat cross-legged on a cushion. His eyes were closed as he circulated his true qi, concentrating on healing.

The wrinkles around his eyes and mouth were as deep as knife cuts. The character for "evil" formed by the black markings on his forehead seemed much dimmer. His dark beard, previously streaked with gray, had turned mostly gray overnight.

The wound Sun-Shooting Divine Arrow that Yi Beiwang had inflicted was not especially severe, but it was troublesome and stubbornly slow to heal.

The Yi clan could vanquish the savage and evil. He was both, leaving him at a crushing disadvantage.

Otherwise, with his strength, even an arrow shot by Yi Beiwang from high ground could not have wounded him this badly. As it was, he needed several days to recover despite taking miraculous healing medicine.

The blazing, virtuous arrow qi roamed his meridians, tearing at his flesh and destroying his accumulated evil deeds. He could only wear it down bit by bit with Accumulated Evil True Qi, then slowly mend his body with the medicine’s power.

When he finished a cycle of qi circulation, Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang’s short, thick brows twitched. He opened his eyes, their whites showing on three sides.

Once again, he recalled yesterday’s events. The trouble had begun with that fellow who could suppress evil entities.

If that power had not affected him, the shop’s mechanisms and secret passages were so well hidden that the Martial Prohibition Bureau would have had to turn the entire Treasure Market upside down to find him.

Why did the Martial Prohibition Bureau suddenly search the Treasure Market?

Who disturbed the evil entities inside me? Who entered the medicine shop at the time?

There aren’t many arts that suppress evil entities, but there are more than one or two. Which faction is meddling? The Returning Abyss Order?

Aren’t we supposed to be working with them this time?

Greedy bastards. Trying to pick up something extra along the way?

Once the Way Master reaches the Flame Capital, we’ll settle this with them.

As the thought crossed his mind, Sun Feiyang’s gaze suddenly sharpened.

He sprang up without hesitation. His right hand drew the bloodlit longsword lodged in a crack in the stone beside him, while his left pulled out a coldly gleaming spike. Thick black qi swiftly coated the spike, each wisp seemingly formed from illusory scenes of evil deeds.

BANG!

Someone kicked the chamber’s stone door open, sending dust and fragments flying.

Sun Feiyang’s white-rimmed eyes caught sight of a figure.

The intruder stood more than eight meters away, dressed in short brown clothes, a black scabbard in his left hand and a translucent, crystalline longsword in his right. He wore a Golden Boy mask with upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face, and was staring coldly into the chamber.

Who is it? The thought had barely crossed Sun Feiyang’s mind when the intruder lunged forward without a word, sword thrusting straight at him.

The foremost Malevolent Envoy gave a savage smile and slashed diagonally with the bloodlit sword in his right hand.

I may be badly wounded and alone, but I’m not someone any passing nobody can challenge!

Apart from those whose arts counter mine, there are no more than ten Grandmasters who could kill me even in this state!

As Ding Songyan darted forward, the corners of his lips lifted beneath the Golden Boy mask.

His aura suddenly surged.

He stopped maintaining his altered name and reality, revealing cultivation close to the perfected Dharma Realm.

Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil was no longer confined to four meters, nor limited to the strength of the early Great Proliferation Realm.

Before the sword’s cold gleam reached him, the trait had already enveloped Sun Feiyang.

Sun Feiyang himself was neither a yao nor an evil entity, nor a creature of yin, so Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil could not affect him. But he had cultivated the Demon Swallowing Evil Devouring Technique as a secondary art, leaving many evil entities inside his body. Now some panicked, some seethed, some went berserk, and others tried to break free of their shackles. Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang froze, his attack halted as he instinctively fought to contain them.

The cold gleam blazed brighter, crossed eight meters, and sank into Sun Feiyang’s forehead with a soft thud.

Between accomplished fighters, the smallest opening often decided victory or defeat. Ding Songyan would hardly waste the chance he had deliberately created.

Sun Feiyang’s eyes widened. Yet what poured from between his brows was not blood, but stream after stream of black qi. Wailing and screaming, it gathered into human shapes, scattered into drifting clouds, then swiftly formed another pitch-black Sun Feiyang.

The black, sinister Sun Feiyang dissolved beneath Frostshade, leaving no trace. The real man appeared in a corner of the chamber, pale, aged, and savage. A little blood seeped from the shallow wound between his brows.

An evil entity he had absorbed through the Demon Swallowing Evil Devouring Technique had taken the killing strike for him.

The evil entities’ reaction to Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil had left him fatally exposed, almost costing him his life. Yet an evil entity had also saved him. Loss and gain seemed bound together by fate.

"It’s you!" Sun Feiyang knew who his attacker was now.

The man at the Treasure Market medicine shop who disturbed the evil entities inside me!

Ding Songyan did not answer. Undeterred by his preparations falling short of a killing blow, he pushed off with his toes and turned, sending his sword streaking toward Sun Feiyang’s face like a meteor.

Sun Feiyang had no more evil entities that could die in his place, and those that remained were in turmoil under Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil. He dared not block the strike. His body floated backward, then a sudden gale swept him diagonally aside, clear of Ding Songyan’s sword.

This was Borrowing the East Wind.

Qiongqi, a descendant of the Wind God and an incarnation of evil, commanded the eight winds. These were both the winds from the eight directions and the eight worldly winds that stirred people’s hearts, such as pleasure, suffering, ridicule, and praise. The Accumulated Evil Way had developed these powers into the Eight Winds Art.

Sun Feiyang had spent decades at the perfected Dharma Realm without reaching Heaven-Man. Naturally, he had cultivated every art available to him, taking each as far as his current realm allowed.

As he evaded the attack with Borrowing the East Wind, a savage look suddenly sharpened Sun Feiyang’s sagging features.

He reversed both the bloodlit longsword and the black-qi-shrouded spike, plunging them into his own body.

No blood flowed. Instead, evil deeds of every kind surged madly inward, driving out the entities inside him and devouring the sinister qi they left behind. Within two breaths, not a trace of that sinister aura remained. Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil no longer left him stiff and sluggish.

The heretic known as Evil Beyond Measure had acted decisively, destroying his own Demon Swallowing Evil Devouring Technique. Even at the cost of worsening his injuries, he had to escape the influence of Banishing Demons and Warding Off Evil!

Otherwise, never mind repelling his attacker, he doubted he could survive ten moves. Escape would be all but hopeless.

How could he fight an enemy of the same realm while constantly battling the evil entities inside him?

When two opponents were closely matched, an art that countered the other’s could make all the difference.

To free himself from that disadvantage, Sun Feiyang had chosen to expel and consume his remaining evil entities. It amounted to destroying his Demon Swallowing Evil Devouring Technique, but once he escaped, he would have ample opportunity to cultivate it again.

As long as I’m alive, there’s hope!

It’s only one martial art. Why shouldn’t I give it up?

With his body moving freely again, Sun Feiyang abruptly stopped and dispersed the East Wind.

An invisible breeze stirred, and delight suddenly welled up in Ding Songyan’s heart. He seemed to hear waves of praise, as though the whole world were applauding him for nearly killing a Grandmaster at the pinnacle of the Dharma Realm with a single move.

Even a Heaven-Man Supreme Master might not have managed that.

At the same time, Sun Feiyang swept his bloodlit sword upward to meet the weapon that looked as though it had been forged from ice crystals.

Before the blades even touched, the bloodlit sword drew Frostshade away from its intended path.

The Faith-Slaying Sword specialized in destroying faithfulness in all its forms. A move’s adherence to its intended path and variations was also a kind of faithfulness.

This sword art had no fixed moves of its own, but excelled at disrupting an opponent’s.