Archfiend

Chapter 25: Vermilion Snow

“That’s right…” Vulture glanced at Xu Yangyi and laughed, “Why? Mr. Xu, you…”

“I'm just asking.” Xu Yangyi shut his eyes to rest. After the three representatives left, the airplane fell into silence once again.

Forty minutes later, the airplane steadily stopped and descended. After taking a car for another hour, they finally trod into the illustrious, ancient foundation of China’s history—Nantong’s Fengyi City.

Fengyi City was the capital of Nantong Province, located in the northwest, with the manpower of a major province. The city was the heart where financial resources gathered. Even if China’s western region couldn’t compare to the development and prosperity of the east, at this very instant, Fengyi City was still like a lantern blazing brightly. 

With towering buildings and neon lights that cut across the horizon, the capital was decorated with all kinds of flashing billboards, giving it a magnificence like the Heavenly Palace. It was midsummer, and men and women wore attractive clothing, becoming the most vibrant footnote in the night scenery. Waves of moving cars performed a symphony that left people unable to sleep soundly through the night.

Ten students, no—soon they wouldn’t be students anymore—looked towards the bustling Fengyi City, somewhat spellbound. 

Heavens Law was a militarized administration. They were unable to leave for over a dozen years years, so all that they knew about came from television. When they were inducted into Heavens Law, none of them were over ten years old.

They knew that there was a city called Shanghai in the east, and it was China’s nexus of social trends and finance. They knew that to the north, there was a government city called Beijing. It was China’s political center and where Heavens Law central headquarters was located, as well… however, this was the first time they had seen everything.

Xu Yangyi was like this too. He was born in a small town in the north, and had long since forgotten the image of a city within his memories. The only thing that remained was a vague destruction. Eight years later, he had cut straight across China to the western part of a major province, Nantong Province. He was like a sponge, silently absorbing everything before his eyes and swiftly adapting to it.

A group of superhumans trained by humanity, inhumans, were already standing wordlessly in the shadow of Fengyi City. All of a sudden, Xu Yangyi’s eyes flashed. His body almost braced itself out of reflex.

A gaze...

His five senses exceeded cultivators of the same realm by over a third. He had clearly felt a blade-like gaze just now coldly sweeping over his body!

A sharp blade, icy-cold and penetrating, yet without the least concern. It was a like a tiger watching its prey, permeating the air with a murderous aura, an entity that one absolutely couldn’t lower their guard around. 

Such a feeling… made his body go numb from head to toe! It was a bone-penetrating might… He pursed his lips and sucked in deeply, suddenly looking towards where the gaze was drifting over from. In the next second, as if he was confronted with a formidable foe, he froze in place.

They were inside a place called the Triumphant Virtue Plaza. Across from the square was a public park where a crowd of old men and women were dancing at night, draped under the spill of light. There were pairs of men and women standing at the side of the road who were waving for taxis, their expressions a tad bit impatient. Behind them, there was a building over fifty stories tall, the Triumphant Virtue Tower.

A building of flowing light and vibrant color. Yet the satisfied crowd were simply unable to hide from the reaper’s gaze at the tower’s summit! A gentle gaze seemed to freeze the air!

At the peak of the Triumphant Virtue Tower, there was a white nine-tailed fox no less than a hundred meters long. Beneath the illumination of moonlight, it was like a god overlooking the world. Its eyes were brilliant like rubies, carrying a hazy teasing and killing aura. Like a monarch swiftly roaming through a crowd of officials, it swept Its eyes through the crowd below!

Swish… The night wind gently blew, and its body of snow-white fur formed a turbulently surging white billow, making the fox indistinguishable from the moonlight or its fur coat. Its nine silver tails were gracefully poised at the top of the skyscraper, and its sharp claws lazily propped its chin. The beast was like a divine throne of pure silver!

Thump… Thump… In that split second where Xu Yangyi’s gaze met the gigantic fox for the first time, he almost felt all his blood roil madly! He was physically unable to control his body and shake out of this spell!

Power… Unimaginable power! A kind of situation like leisurely strolling through a tempest on the ocean surface. Already, this power left his heart with not choice but to frantically speed up! His pulse was like a beating drum at the side of his ear! His intuition was telling him that if he moved, he wouldn’t last longer than three seconds!

“Huh?” The fox’s vision had originally shifted away, but It seemed to have sensed something. It turned back again to a place that no one could see, and the luxurious silver hair on its throat stirred. “A bit interesting…”

“There.”

 In Xu Yangyi’s eyes, the fox moved and one of its tails lazily stuck up. Bored senseless, it faced where Xu Yangyi was standing and waved its tail, spitting out a vague syllable. 

In the next second, a ten-meter-long wind edge wildly raced towards Xu Yangyi like gushing mercury to behead him! It carried a striking silver light that made even the surrounding air tremble!

In this wink of time, Xu Yangyi’s scalp numbed! He couldn’t dodge...

This was his first physiological response, an attainment in combat he had gained from his long training at Heavens Law. It caused him to initially feel that the wind edge was extremely light yet extremely dangerous, revealing a mortal danger!

It wasn’t a level he could contest. A demon with a hundred-meter-long body… It was an old Foundation Establishment monster!

“Stay your hand!” At the same time, Zuo Lun roared, but he simply didn’t dare to charge forward!

Xu Yangyi’s pupils suddenly needled. In a breath, the wind edge was pressed to his throat! He seemed to have already witnessed the miserable scene of his head soaring into the sky!

But in the blink of an eye, the edge dispersed, the wind scattering like it had never come to decapitate him. Roughly a centimeter away from Xu Yangyi’s throat, it suddenly dissipated.

Drip drip… The sweat on his forehead quietly pitter-pattered onto the floor, and Xu Yangyi pursed his lips. He felt his entire body grow ice-cold. Even now, he could sense the hot blood within his body slowly make its way back into his arteries. 

The violent beating of his heart was a kind of life-death sensation. This was truly the first time he had experienced it. In that instant, he had deeply felt the disparity between Foundation Establishment and Qi Condensation. It could be said to be the insurmountable difference between heaven and earth!

A casual pinch of the fingers, willfully sent out. The fox hadn’t even formed a seal. Such control over strength and precision symbolized that its degree of perception regarding qi was complete levels above!

If the demon wanted to, it wouldn’t need three seconds to grant him a certain death!

Swish… His jacket was originally fine, but it split open in two parts from the center. Xu Yangyi lowered his head. Not because of fear but to conceal the eruption of killing intent within his eyes.

He had never been a well-mannered person, even in this kind of face-to-face provocation… He sneered, and his murderous will grew madly in his heart like a wildly spreading vine. 

Whoosh! At nearly the same time, the sound of a wrist-mounted crossbow suddenly broke the air. Five seconds later, someone else had caught clear sight of the monster atop the Triumphant Virtue Tower, so fearsome that it caused the entire body to tremble. The immense pressure had simply rendered him thoughtless, so the student had immediately fired his weapon.

Bang! Just as the wrist-mounted crossbow was about to fire, it was wrest away into a hand. Zuo Lun glared at the sweat-drenched student, and fiercely spat on the floor, suppressing the roar in his throat. “Rookie! Take a good look for me! Where is this place?!” 

“This is Fengyi City! A major provincial capital in the west that’s appeared in the news a few times in the last day! Where do you think you are? Your home? You’re just going to do as you want?”

It was then that the student seemed to regain his wits. A moment ago, it wasn’t that he wanted to act, but this atmosphere… It was the kind of mood where if one didn’t move, they would die. A physiological instinct that was basically uncontrollable!

Only two people hadn’t moved. Xu Yangyi and Chu Zhaonan.

“Look clearly! That’s an old Foundation Establishment monster! A hundred of you aren’t enough to get stuck in between its teeth!” Zuo Lun waved his right hand, and a thud rang out. There wasn’t a single crossbow bolt that hadn’t fallen onto the street. Afterwards, he brought everyone over to the front of the public park and then bowed deeply towards the Triumphant Virtue Tower. “Senior… hasn’t this joke gone too far?”

No one answered him. Or perhaps it could be said they disdained to.

Zuo Lun’s expression didn’t have a shred of embarrassment, and he nodded, straightening his figure. He looked at everyone and said loudly and clearly, “Remember it clearly, newcomers. This is the provincial capital, the heart of the northwest. Any demon living here and any demon that dares to take form in public has a life expectancy of over 200 years! If you don’t want to die, then don’t fucking go picking fights with them!”

He laughed coldly and walked in front of the student who had almost fired a bolt, and raised his chin. “You know it, don’t you?”

“Heavens Law Wanted List, A-rank, code name: Vermilion Snow, bounty: 7.235 billion. Great Circle Foundation Establishment. It’s been alive since the reign of Emperor Daoguang of the Qing dynasty. It’s over 200 years old, and during the final years of the Qing, it caused a great upheaval by murdering enough people to fill fields in Hegu Province. Rivers of blood flowed, and it even massacred three provincial-level cities. You won’t find anything like this in the history books! Several hundred thousand people were used as its Foundation Establishment blood sacrifice for its withered bones! It was only a foot shy from becoming China’s eleventh Core Formation Greater Demon… Don’t fucking tell me none of you don’t understand what the significance of Core Formation is. You wanna die… How about sending another arrow to that beast?”

He neared the student and dangerously narrowed his eyes. “You really believe… they're called living fossils in vain?”

Xu Yangyi didn’t speak. He only deeply memorized this name. Today’s event was the demon’s “joke”. There would be a time where he would come back to find it. The student’s face was already ashen, his entire body coldly trembling.

Without word or movement, Xu Yangyi swept his gaze over and discovered that there wasn’t a single other demon within a 50-kilometer radius of Vermilion Snow’s surroundings.

The fox had already returned to its own hunting ground… His eyes narrowed, and he carefully gazed into the distance to discover another tremendous shadow at the city’s end. However, the distance was too far, and beneath the darkness of night he wasn’t able to see anything clearly, but… this demon’s aura seemed far, far weaker than Vermilion Snow’s, yet it also made him tremble in his heart.

It was still an old Foundation Establishment monster.

Was this the present situation within the provincial capital? He stuffed his hand inside his pants pockets and leaned against the side of a tree in the park. His eyes gradually turned from red to black, and the silver nine-tailed fox slowly rippled away. The beast was still more vulgar than he imagined...

Sure enough… only strength could serve as a protective amulet to move freely without obstruction!

“Let’s go.” Zuo Lun nodded and brought the crowd away from the park.

“Instructor.” A student looked around and furrowed his brows. “Aren’t we… going to the branch?”

“Of course.” Zuo Lun glanced puzzledly at him. “What do you think otherwise?”

Could it be that the branch wasn’t this skyscraper? Or perhaps it was established in a deserted lot?

“What do you think?” Zuo Lun looked at the student's expression and coldly laughed. “Follow closely, rookies. Today, your eyes will open to the world!”

At night, the park was lonely. Following Zuo Lun, all of them walked below a pavilion that that had a sign hung up on the outside that said “no trespassing”, and ceased their steps.

With half-lidded eyes, a sixtyish-year-old man had a radio by his side that was in the middle of playing the Beijing opera piece, The Battle of Changban. His face was covered in wrinkles, and he wore a white singlet that already has a good couple of holes in it. The tank top was slack on his body. Clad in shorts and flip flops, and with a thermos at his side, the old man rocked a palm-leaf fan in his hand, idly swatting at mosquitoes. The pavilion behind could accommodate fifteen people at the most...

This was a Heavens Law branch?