Radiant Blade of the Wilderness

Chapter 215: Evil Beyond Measure

As soon as the Faith-Slaying Sword drew Frostshade aside, the spike in Sun Feiyang’s left hand shot toward his masked enemy’s chest.

Shrouded in thick black qi, the spike cut through the air silently, but the praise Ding Songyan had heard abruptly turned to insults and curses, stabbing viciously at his mind.

The Malicious Words Piercer had originally been called the Evil Deeds Piercer. The more numerous and heinous its wielder’s accumulated deeds, the greater its power. Later, a Way Master of the Accumulated Evil Way had incorporated the worldly wind of ridicule and slander into the art. Evil deeds could still lend it the power to pierce defenses and ward off calamity, but now malicious words could also wound an opponent’s mind and spirit. From then on, it had been known as the Malicious Words Piercer.

Seeing the attacker in the Golden Boy mask grow visibly stiff and slow, Evil Beyond Measure Sun Feiyang felt a flicker of delight.

Just then, he noticed something strange about his enemy’s eyes.

A cold light suddenly flared. The crystalline sword tip that the Faith-Slaying Sword had drawn aside grew larger and larger, until it filled Sun Feiyang’s vision in an instant.

Sun Feiyang’s awareness blurred.

......

He saw a wandering hero whose four limbs had been severed wriggling toward him, his face full of pleading.

Sun Feiyang grinned savagely, savoring his delight, and pointed the Malicious Words Piercer at the hero’s pregnant wife. All around them lay the bodies of people tortured to death.

With his tongue cut out, the hero could not even beg for mercy. He struggled toward his wife and unborn child, hoping to die with them.

Sun Feiyang was about to cut open the wife’s belly when he suddenly froze.

A wind cold enough to freeze all things swept through the world. Time itself slowed to a crawl.

A figure appeared before Sun Feiyang.

With his back to Sun Feiyang, the figure stood as one with heaven and earth, like a god or a demon.

Barely able to move, Sun Feiyang watched the figure turn. He wore a mask with upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face.

A Supreme Master? Sun Feiyang was frozen in time. His pupils dilated, but he could only watch as the crystalline sword tip thrust toward him.

Terror overwhelmed him. Powerless to resist, he felt the sword tip sink between his brows.

...

Sun Feiyang led a host of Accumulated Evil Way disciples in storming a city.

He surveyed it and laughed without restraint.

"Seven days of plunder! No limits on killing!"

The disciples cheered and rushed off in every direction. Soon screams, pleas for mercy, wails, and sobs reached Sun Feiyang’s ears, filling him with such joy that he felt he had entered paradise.

Some were found hiding in cellars and stabbed to death. Others surrendered their wealth and glimpsed hope, only to be beheaded as they turned away. Still others offered their bodies to the fiends to save their loved ones, only to watch them die one by one...

Whoosh!

A cold wind swept through, freezing everything. In an instant, the entire city lay sealed in ice.

Unable to move at all, Sun Feiyang saw a figure descend from the sky, like a god or a demon.

A Supreme Master? His eyes reflected a mask with upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face, followed by a crystalline sword tip.

The sword tip sank between his brows without meeting any resistance.

...

Sun Feiyang adopted a child and spent twenty years training him into a formidable fighter. He told the boy who had destroyed his family and left him an orphan.

Only after his adopted son had tortured each enemy to death did Sun Feiyang reveal the truth with a smile. His family had never been destroyed; Sun Feiyang had abducted him. The enemies he had killed were his own relatives, who had missed him dearly and never stopped searching for him all those years.

His adopted son broke down before him, succumbing to qi deviation and losing all his martial power. Sun Feiyang deliberately kept him alive.

As Sun Feiyang admired his handiwork, he noticed great feathery snowflakes drifting from the sky.

It was midsummer, in June, yet a bone-chilling wind swept in and froze him where he stood.

Again he saw that figure, godlike and demonic, and the mask with upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face.

A Supreme Master? He was no more than an ant, unable even to struggle, as the crystalline sword tip grew larger in his eyes.

With a soft thud, the sword tip sank between his brows.

......

Fear surged through Sun Feiyang as he snapped awake.

Once again, he saw that mask: upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face.

His heart nearly stopped. It was as though the nightmare that had haunted him through three lifetimes had followed him into reality.

To his relief, his Faith-Slaying Sword had already drawn the ice-crystal blade aside. It passed by his body instead of piercing his forehead.

A sword of nightmares? Sun Feiyang could not identify the exact art, but his many years in the jianghu had given him a wealth of experience. In an instant, he grasped roughly what had happened.

With his move disrupted by the Faith-Slaying Sword, the attacker could only project sword intent from a distance and drag him into nightmares of past lives. Unable to overcome Sun Feiyang’s survival instinct, he had instead created the impression that he was invincible, almost a Heaven-Man, planting a temporary weakness in Sun Feiyang’s mind.

For Grandmasters at the perfected Dharma Realm, contests of spirit and clashes of minds were a vital part of combat. If an opponent found and exploited a mental weakness, defeat often followed.

Sun Feiyang knew his wounds had not healed, and he had injured himself further by destroying one of his arts. If he lost, he would not even be able to escape with his life. He forced himself to focus, rousing his ferocity to fight the involuntary fear that rose whenever he saw that white-and-gold mask with its upturned eyes and straight brows.

With a low roar, he unleashed the Faith-Slaying Sword and Malicious Words Piercer. One disrupted his enemy’s moves, interrupting or diverting them; the other disturbed his mind and spirit. Sun Feiyang pressed the attack, trying to end the fight or open an escape route before the intruder could exploit his mental weakness.

Ding Songyan did not draw his sword back to defend. Shifting his feet, he let Frostshade follow the bloodlit sword’s diverting force and circle toward Sun Feiyang’s neck from the side.

This time, he held nothing back, bringing everything he had learned to bear.

His Chaos Realm let him clearly perceive every change in Sun Feiyang’s muscles and the true qi at the surface of his body, allowing him to predict the foremost Malevolent Envoy’s responses. At the same time, he entered the Celestial Heart state, sensing every shift in the qi of the surrounding void.

Only with both abilities supporting him could he bring the Unified Way Sword to the limit of his current standards.

Ding Songyan’s sword whistled through a succession of strikes: chopping, sweeping, slicing, flicking upward, adhering, drawing aside. There were no unnecessary variations, only the most basic moves—all offense, no defense.

Under that relentless assault, Sun Feiyang broke into a cold sweat, something he rarely experienced.

His Faith-Slaying Sword seemed to have stopped working.

He had never encountered anything like it.

If he tried to disrupt the variations that followed a move using Faith-Slaying, there were none. Each attack was utterly direct. His opponent waited until Sun Feiyang responded and severed the move’s faithfulness before launching a new one, always directed at an opening.

If he disrupted the move itself using Faith-Slaying, the enemy’s every move did indeed fail to land. But his enemy switched to the next move with extraordinary speed, each flowing into the next without a hitch.

Moreover, through all those attacks, the crystalline longsword had never once clashed with his Faith-Slaying Sword or Malicious Words Piercer. Without contact, the Faith-Slaying Sword could not fully disrupt any moves and variations, nor could his evil deeds corrode the blade.

Sword shadows crossed and recrossed the chamber, a mere twelve meters across. The luminous pearls dimmed, and everything sank into deep gloom.

Streams of illusory black qi rose like demonic shadows baring fangs and claws.

These evil deeds of Sun Feiyang’s joined with the eight worldly winds to assail Ding Songyan’s mind and spirit. They sought to fill him with revulsion, fear, anger, doubt, and panic, and rouse the malice hidden in his heart.

Candlelight Sword Intent was already blazing in Ding Songyan’s sea of consciousness. Its warm yellow light shone into the depths, barring the fiends outside and dissolving the evil taking shape within.

Black qi, malicious words, and evil deeds kept burrowing into his sea of consciousness, only to dissolve in the dim yellow glow. Like moths, they sought to smother the candleflame through sheer numbers.

The Accumulated Evil Divine Art’s influence over the surroundings could do little against him.

Even in the thick of battle, Ding Songyan could not help marveling inwardly.

No wonder the Brightnight Sect’s arts are called the bane of demons and heretics!

Indoors, the limited range of his Chaos Realm was barely a disadvantage. It could have dissolved the illusory black qi around him, though it could not stop the eight worldly winds from assailing his mind. But he relied solely on Candlelight Sword Intent, keeping that ability hidden from Sun Feiyang to give him a surprise at the crucial moment.

Ding Songyan moved with the Southern Dipper Calamity-Averting Steps. Frostshade sliced between the Faith-Slaying Sword and Malicious Words Piercer, sweeping toward Sun Feiyang’s eyes.

Sun Feiyang drew his sword back to disrupt the move. Ding Songyan pressed his wrist down, letting the diverted blade fall into a downward cut aimed precisely at the left hand gripping the Malicious Words Piercer.

Sun Feiyang had been about to counterattack. Instead, he was forced to use Borrowing the East Wind again, drifting backward out of the sword’s reach.

Ding Songyan gave no ground and made no defensive stroke. Cold light flashed through thirty-one consecutive attacks, each aimed at an opening, none touching Sun Feiyang’s bloodlit sword or black-qi-shrouded spike.

At least three times, Sun Feiyang nearly ran onto the crystalline sword tip himself.

Drenched in cold sweat, the thin, savage old tiger-like Sun Feiyang suddenly realized something was wrong.

He had been driven into a corner of the chamber, his back almost touching the wall. Left or right, his opponent seemed to have anticipated every move. That sword was waiting for him either way.

Nor could he break through the wall and escape. No secret passage lay behind this wall, only solid earth.

Ferocity surged within Sun Feiyang. Invisible wings snapped open behind him, and he soared upward.

The chamber was only four meters high. Had he been outside, he would long since have taken flight and attacked his enemy from above.

At the sight, Ding Songyan’s lips curved slightly beneath the Golden Boy mask.

All those sword strikes had been meant to force Sun Feiyang into this desperate gamble: taking flight in a chamber with such a low ceiling.

Almost simultaneously, the dark, indistinct Chaos Realm manifested. With its twenty-meter reach, it enveloped the entire chamber.

The illusory black qi filling the room swiftly dissolved. Sun Feiyang’s invisible wings froze in midair like insects trapped in amber.

Without direct contact, the Chaos Realm’s innate traits—Bringing All Things Into Unity and Establishing the Six Directions—had limited effect on an enemy at the perfected Dharma Realm. But against insubstantial things created by external apertures, such as illusory evil deeds and invisible wings, they worked quite well!

With his invisible wings caught in the Six Directions, Sun Feiyang hung suspended in midair for a moment.

Ding Songyan’s gaze turned cold. Without hesitation, he used the Celestial Heart state to merge with the qi around him.

As Sun Feiyang struggled to break free, his awareness blurred again.

He was truly seeing the figure from his nightmares of past lives.

One with heaven and earth, like a god or a demon!

Once more, his eyes reflected the mask with its upturned eyes, straight brows, white forehead, and golden face—and the sword of ice crystal.

The sword rose, bringing a bitter wind that seemed to freeze everything and slow all things.

Sun Feiyang felt as though he had truly returned to those nightmares. The weakness in his mind lay starkly exposed.

Intense fear surged through him. Instinct told him he could not block the strike, but when he tried to dodge, he was still hanging helplessly in midair.

Yet Sun Feiyang was a veteran fiend. Amid his terror, his savagery erupted. He drew the Malicious Words Piercer back in front of him, coating it in the black intent of years of evil deeds stored within his body, ready to block.

He also discarded the Faith-Slaying Sword. Evil deeds gathered into the index and middle fingers of his right hand, turning them pitch-black as he tried to strike at Ding Songyan from a distance.

With the illusory evil deeds outside his body already dissolved into unity, this Metal-Melting Finger was clearly weaker than the strike he had used against Sun-Shooting Divine Arrow.

The Sword Intent of Winter slowed Sun Feiyang’s movements, but he did not panic completely. His enemy’s crystalline sword was slow as well, caught in the same freezing effect.

Just then, four wings appeared behind Ding Songyan.

One was the fresh green of spring, brimming with life. One was the fiery red of summer, its heat unspent. One was the gold of autumn, rich with grain and fruit. One was the white of deepest winter, an endless expanse of ice.

It was the white winter wing that had been beating. Suddenly, the red summer wing took over, bringing unbearable heat.

The bone-chilling wind vanished, and a golden-red sun blazed throughout the chamber.

The Sun-Shooting arrow qi still lingering inside Sun Feiyang stirred in response. His movements faltered, and all his evil deeds were suppressed.

Under the flood of sunlight, the black qi of evil deeds churned and receded. The freezing intent gave way to a howling, scorching wind.

Frostshade, slow a moment before, suddenly accelerated, swift as lightning in a summer storm.

Before Sun Feiyang could complete either his Malicious Words Piercer or Metal-Melting Finger, the ice-crystal blade flashed through the gap between them.

No, this wasn’t how it happened before... The thought had barely crossed Sun Feiyang’s mind when he saw the crystalline sword tip.

Thud!

The sword tip sank between his brows.

His gaze froze on the Golden Boy mask now close before him.

Upturned eyes, straight brows, a white forehead, and a golden face.

Ding Songyan gave a low chuckle.

"The Dream Sword didn’t just plant a weakness in your mind. It also deceived you into thinking I’d kill you with Sword Intent of Winter.

"Sun-Shooting Divine Arrow wounded you. How could I not take advantage of the remnant arrow qi, with its power to vanquish the savage and evil? Of course I’d find a way to make it respond."

A flicker of bitter disbelief crossed Sun Feiyang’s eyes. A rasp escaped him, and he fell from the air, hitting the floor with a thud.

Dark blood kept seeping from between his brows.

Drip!

A few drops of blood quickly gathered on Frostshade’s translucent blade and fell onto Sun Feiyang’s still-open eyes, staining them completely red.

Today, the foremost of the Accumulated Evil Way’s ten Malevolent Envoys had finally answered for his evil beyond measure.