Chapter 641: Kunlun Sect vs Blood Thunder Sound Temple (17)

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign is not fleeing.

He has merely chosen a strategic withdrawal.

Who would have thought those despicable Orthodox curs had two Translucent experts hidden away!

A Shaolin bald donkey, no less?

The original plan was to exterminate Kunlun to the last, and while the Middle Realm rabble reeled in shock, seize Qinghai in one stroke.

The civil authorities?

So long as it’s “a martial world matter,” the Middle Realm’s incompetent, slothful officials won’t budge.

All the more so if told that Blood Thunder Sound Temple has the strength to wipe out Kunlun—they’d never step in.

Thus, once Blood Thunder Sound Temple took Qinghai’s martial world, they would plant sub-sects in every city and fill them with masters from the Plateau.

Then, when the hour of recovering their ancient lands came, they’d rise at once, wipe out every Middle Realmer and turncoat, and welcome the Plateau’s liberation army. Such was the plan.

But more precious than the plan is the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign himself.

If the Foremost of Tibet lives, the nation’s long-cherished wish can always be sought again.

If the Foremost of Tibet dies here?

Then even the Potala would surely abandon the liberation of Qinghai.

So when the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign turns his back and draws away now, it is by no means flight.

It is a great decision—a man’s willingness to swallow present disgrace for a greater cause, to sleep on thorns and taste gall.

A mid-Translucent master resolved on strategic withdrawal moves like the wind; he cannot be caught.

So the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign was just about to clear the rear wall of the Blood Thunder Sound Temple—

He checks, just as he’s about to kick off the ground.

Because Muhak stands on the wall.

Only, the posture is...odd.

He balances on one leg; the other is drawn up, knee lifted to the dantian, folded like a crane.

One arm raised above his head, the other extended toward the Celestial Sovereign, showing his palm.

There’s not a single point that isn’t a glaring opening—an absurdly sloppy, laughable stance.

More shocking than that ridiculous posture is this: the Shaolin monk, who a moment ago was guarding Kunlun’s disciples, has outrun him and blocked the way.

Muhak’s realm is known to be late Translucent.

Even if he’s a step above a mid-Translucent like the Celestial Sovereign, that speed beggars belief.

Besides, Shaolin’s arts may be legendary in all things, but their aura is Mount Tai—weighty; in lightness and speed they lag. And yet—

The Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign lifts his monk’s staff.

If this foe got ahead and barred his path, perhaps he’s stronger than rumored.

He might even have reached the next realm.

Thinking thus, even that monk’s bizarre posture cannot be taken lightly.

In truth, it can.

Blood Thunder Sound Temple is part of Qing.

And the monk is an illusion that Qing made with the formation.

In Qing’s mind, the “cool pose of a Shaolin monk” looks exactly like that.

Qing doesn’t know wuxia, but that movie where the monks play soccer and that Mr. Chow’s antics—those are lodged vaguely in her head.

Stand like a crane on one leg, one hand up, one hand out.

Perfectly natural. Perfectly “Shaolin,” right?

Absolutely not.

But man is an animal that, unable to understand, first grows wary.

Thus the Great Pagoda Celestial Sovereign tightens up, staff forward, keyed to the limit.

Why can’t I feel a hint of presence?

He gulps. Don’t tell me—he’s reached the Realm of Nature?

As if fused with nature itself, like an insubstantial phantom—no sense to seize.

Of course he’s an insubstantial phantom.

But the Celestial Sovereign’s conjecture is natural.

The Orthodox curs found the core of the formation.

By coincidence there exists someone who is a Ten-Thousand-Slaughters child—or close enough to commune with the baleful star.

And instead of breaking the formation, they hijacked the Blood Cult’s extermination array and are projecting illusions.

Who could even imagine it? Anyone who heard it would laugh and call it madness.

At that moment—

The Celestial Sovereign whirls and whips his staff—CLANG!

Namgung Daero’s sky-colored sword-qi crashes into the staff with a thunderous blast.

Ordinarily the Celestial Sovereign would stand and fight—but with a foe suspected to be in the Realm of Nature already watching,

he snaps his eyes up to the wall—Muhak’s figure has already vanished without a trace.

Where—where did he go!?

It gnaws at him!

Namgung Daero doesn’t know why, but when the enemy can’t focus and fumbles, he snatches the chance and drives like a tempest.

A sword that holds the boundless heavens.

As there is nothing to block the sky, the sword’s path is likewise infinite.

The Sword King hammers the staff; each strike detonates another roar.

The Celestial Sovereign keeps darting glances around, hunting for Muhak’s trace; he staggers back again and again, busy slapping down the onrushing qi.

Then—

“Knave!”

The Celestial Sovereign drops his staff and smack! claps both palms hard.

All around, spheres of blood-hued qi explode outward and swell in force!

Namgung Daero instantly widens the gap.

And the Celestial Sovereign—already snatching up his staff again—bellows:

“Cowards! How can those who call themselves Orthodox be so base! Face me one by one with honor! How dare the many press upon the one!”

“It’s perfectly proper for all under heaven to join hands to exterminate the Blood Cult’s abominations. It is the work of striking down evil and establishing justice.”

“My junior speaks true!”

SWI-EE-EK! A slicing sound that cleaves the wind.

Seven knives of sunset-flushed qi rush in line toward the Celestial Sovereign.

In an instant the knives all cant downward; seven blades of qi hew the target in sequence.

SMACK!

The Celestial Sovereign claps again.

Blood-qi balloons in a hemisphere in a sudden, violent expansion.

The seven knives wheel in panic and race back as one—and in the next heartbeat, they array themselves above Ximen Surin’s head where she has alighted upon the earth.

At that sight, Qing fails to restrain her admiration.

Wow! Sword-Rider! Wow! Battle hairpins!

Wow! Master, you’re gorgeous!

The “daggers” driving the Celestial Sovereign were in fact special battle hairpins.

With the pins all drawn, her straight black hair falls and ripples like silk—Master’s figure is truly a painted beauty.

Lovely face-on, dashing from behind, stalwart in profile—and from above, hm, from above...hm. A crown-whorl beauty.

Qing’s heart patters with a craving like fresh-popped corn.

At last—the true struggle of Translucent, of real transcendents—begins.

Except—

“Base—base dogs! H-how! One at a time—damn it! One on one—say the word! You bast—!”

“No need for words!”

Not the picture Qing had in mind.

The Celestial Sovereign’s momentum is simply gone.

The Martial Buddha and the Sword King weren’t enough—Yeo Gwanggyeon too!?

Granted, among them the Martial Buddha is still busy pulping Blood Fiends and hasn’t joined in.

But the Celestial Sovereign, who believes the illusion, can only think he’s lurking to strike at an opening.

So the unseen monk gnaws at his mind; the vicious mad dog lashes from afar with Sword-Rider—those flying knives—again and again;

and between them, a greenhorn only early Translucent stabs in without fear.

Normally such impudence would not be tolerated, but fighting one against two—feels like three against one—the Celestial Sovereign has no leeway.

So he blocks, takes hits, gets cut, hurls his body, rolls, springs up, claps his hands; tumbles and gets smacked and goes flying; claps again and hurls Blood Handprints; twists left and right to slip the hairpins; drops flat with the Iron-Plate Bridge method—and into his vision, down comes the sunset qi—he flops his back to the ground again and tumbles-tumbles.

At this rate, who looks like the villain?

Slashed, struck, rolling, pitched through the air, getting thoroughly worked over—the Celestial Sovereign.

Pitiful to the point of wretched.

Still, he is a Translucent master; he scrapes by, just barely avoiding mortal wounds.

His eyes haven’t died; they’re the eyes of a jackal, ceaselessly hunting a gap.

He grinds his teeth.

You damn bastards! Even if it costs me years of my life, I’ll ram at least one or two of you into Hell!

Rolling across the ground, he draws out his vital source—his precious true origin—and the instant he thrusts it in a mighty flood into his palms—

A gigantic Buddha face pops up from the earth, fills his vision!

Of course it’s illusion.

He’s clearly winding up a spiteful self-detonation—die-together, you-die-I-die.

Hmph. As if I’d let that slide.

The point isn’t the Buddha’s face.

It’s that it suddenly rose in front of him and filled his vision.

The Celestial Sovereign slams that precious vital source—those shaved-off years—into the ground.

From the rebound he vaults up a sheet’s breadth—and in that sliver, seven battle hairpins stake the very spot where his torso had lain.

Qing shapes a Buddha again.

Pop—right before the airborne Celestial Sovereign, a Buddha.

At nose-touching distance it beams that peculiarly benevolent smile; turn your head and it doggedly follows, locking eyes—an eerie Buddha.

Only then does the Celestial Sovereign grasp it.

Illusion! The formation’s been hijacked!

“Begone!”

For all his humanity, the Celestial Sovereign’s martial art is true Buddhist craft.

At his shout, infused with the force of demon-subduing, the formation’s phantasm instantly loses shape and unravels.

And waiting behind it—Ximen Surin’s battle hairpins streak in.

Of course the two Translucent elders saw the sudden Buddha’s back of the head covering the Celestial Sovereign’s face.

And that was all.

Qing didn’t pick a Buddha’s visage for nothing.

If she’d conjured a ghost face, both elders would have checked, wary of some trick. She chose something familiar and benevolent—Buddha.

The Celestial Sovereign swathes himself in golden breath.

Qing feels the formation’s influence around him twist and break.

So the Buddha in his face was that crippling—fair enough.

But it’s already enough.

Behind the one getting thrashed and the two pressing him, Qing looks—simultaneously from every direction—at a new arrival, and is satisfied.

With the Martial Buddha here too, well—

my work is done.

****

A moment earlier, when the Celestial Sovereign froze stiff in dread at the sight of Muhak’s illusion—

Qing was looking from every direction at every place within the formation at once.

She doesn’t know how it’s possible.

But when you know it is possible, why bother with the why?

When an arm moves, it moves—you don’t need to know the motor principle of the arm.

The lamas of Blood Thunder Sound Temple were out of their minds.

For people of this age, there wasn’t even a concept for it: a sea of void, and above, the shape of a colossal heavenly body.

Before that overwhelming mass that made their own selves endlessly small and trivial, their eyes only quivered; they had no idea what to do.

Some lamas splutched to their knees on the slopping, flowing ground and gaped slack-jawed.

At that moment—

“[You fools, can you not come to your senses!? How long will you sit there stupefied!?]”

One man barked, as if he would not yield to fear.

His eyes shook precariously; his teeth were clenched; his tightly clenched, bloodless-white fists still trembled with a lingering fear.

Even so, his will to overcome was adamant.

A hero appears—a savior for a time of chaos—no less astonishing a resolve.

It was the temple abbot of Blood Thunder Sound Temple, Lhundup Rinchen.