Chapter 629: That Great Lord Has Awakened!

With a piercing shriek, Lu Yibei collided with Qing Ji.

The Pure Lotus Sword thrust forward from her hand, sealing off the path of Qing Ji’s descending blade.

Sparks flew with the grating clang of metal against metal.

The instant he closed in beside Lu Yibei, Qing Ji suddenly asked in an offhand tone, “My great-grandson’s wife, have you ever fought a true natural disaster?”

Lu Yibei paused.

A true natural disaster?

What did Ancestor mean by that?

In his era, psychics and hauntings did not seem to have been divided into the modern ranking system yet, did they?

Although she had already encountered catastrophe-class beings such as Plague Taisui, the Haze Deity, and the Beast of Inheritance, she truly had never fought a genuine catastrophe-class entity.

During the Night Parade of a Hundred Ghosts, she had fought only Plague Taisui’s avatar and familiars. On the Dream Come True Journey, Big Boss had been tricked by the PL girl before he could display his true power. And inside the embryonic Divine Land, she had turned the Beast of Inheritance into Wang Yingying only because Wang Yingying herself had no desire to fight.

While Lu Yibei was briefly distracted and the reverberation of their colliding blades still lingered, Qing Ji spoke again. “It seems you haven’t. Then you’re in luck today. Most people at your level never receive treatment like this.”

As the words fell, Qing Ji released his sword without warning and let it drop.

He let go? Lu Yibei froze.

Then she saw Qing Ji dart out a hand as the sword fell and lightly flick the flat of the blade with one fingertip. With a hum, the sword rotated through precisely the right angle, its point facing forward, and shot straight at her face.

Lu Yibei bent backward, her pupils illuminated by the dazzling brilliance on the blade.

By the time she steadied herself, Qing Ji had caught the sword again. In one fluid movement, he adjusted the angle of his strike and, stepping forward, traced a deft arc from above to slash down at her once more.

[His sword will strike you squarely in the face.]

The premonitory thought flashed through Lu Yibei’s mind. She hurriedly gripped her sword with both hands and swept the Pure Lotus Sword upward. Psychic energy surged within her, and dazzling cyan light immediately erupted from the blade.

Taihe Gentleman Sword—Wind Chasing Order!

Qing Ji’s lips curved. His sword momentum changed, switching cleanly from a downward chop to a forward thrust. Cyan light likewise flashed over his blade as he performed the same Wind Chasing Order.

Unlike Lu Yibei’s, however, the cyan light on Qing Ji’s sword was noticeably dimmer and weaker.

It resembled a yellowed lamp that had grown old and was about to go out.

Something’s wrong! This isn’t at Ancestor’s level. It’s not even as good as the bargain-bin version of Wind Chasing Order!

The way he’s striking is completely different from what I remember, too. Instead of thrusting with a sword, it looks more like he’s…

Chopping vegetables with a kitchen knife?

The thought startled Lu Yibei. Yet Qing Ji’s posture truly reminded her of her father standing in the kitchen with a cigarette between his lips, slowly chopping vegetables.

Even the faint sorrow between their brows as they “chopped,” as though they were longing for someone, was exactly alike.

“Clang—!”

One bright and one dim, the two streaks of cyan light met. A sharp crack tore through the air.

Lu Yibei was sent flying backward in an instant, her body tracing several pale trails through the dense fog. Her right hand, which held the sword, had gone almost completely numb, and her forearm spasmed uncontrollably.

They had used the same sword move, yet Qing Ji had seized the tiniest flaw in the instant he struck. With the simplest possible method and precisely the right amount of force, he had delivered the strongest possible blow.

After regaining her footing, Lu Yibei realized no premonitory thought had flashed through her mind. Alarmed, she looked up at Qing Ji and found him standing where he was, making no attempt to continue his attack.

“That Wind Chasing Order you used just now has reached seventy or eighty percent mastery. If you change it into Jade Mountain Collapse when your blade meets the enemy, the result may be surprisingly effective.”

“…”

Ancestor really is teaching me?

Damn, this feels so weird!

It was like an elite monster appearing outside the Demon King’s castle to upgrade the hero’s skills—an act of utter betrayal.

Lu Yibei might consider Qing Ji a traitor, but Qing Ji himself did not believe he had violated the terrifying haunting’s command.

Being ordered to intercept and kill her did not mean he could not speak, nor did it restrict what he could say. So long as every attack was made with all his strength, there was no problem whatsoever.

Rather than betrayal and collusion with the enemy, this was simply a general in the field declining to obey every last order from his sovereign!

…

Lu Yibei considered Qing Ji’s words and immediately grew puzzled.

But why Jade Mountain Collapse?

How could Wind Chasing Order possibly transition into Jade Mountain Collapse?

Every sword move recorded in The Diagram of the Gentleman Sword of Taihe held a different symbolic meaning: heaven, earth, mountains, water, wind, thunder…

Wind Chasing Order drew upon the concept of a swift gale, while Jade Mountain Collapse embodied the ponderous weight of a mountain. The two moves possessed entirely opposite intents. Connecting them was impossible; the transition would inevitably become sluggish.

Scorching Heaven Order and Violet Firmament Blade carried similar intents and would plainly make the sequence flow much more smoothly.

“You don’t understand?” Qing Ji shook his head and explained, “The way of swordsmanship values flowing like clouds and water, going wherever the will directs. You control the sword; the sword move does not constrain you. Like this…”

Then Lu Yibei heard a gale howl and a mountain fall.

As though in an illusion, she saw an astonishing wind sweep over the hills, lift boulders as large as bushel baskets, and smash them down upon the boundless earth.

He achieved this not through the strength of his psychic energy fluctuations, but purely through his sword move? Lu Yibei stared in a daze.

Lu Yibei had originally believed that Qing Ji, now possessing nearly complete memories, would be stronger but only to a limited degree—not necessarily unbeatable.

According to Qing Ji, after resigning as a guest elder of the Great Pure Palace and returning to Hua City to start a family with Lu Yanzhi, he had never learned another new skill.

He had been twenty-eight that year.

During the more than forty years that followed, apart from teaching Lu Yuebo sword techniques and spell formations for self-defense, he had never again picked up the Pure Lotus Sword. He had likewise set aside all his spell formations and Alchemy.

Logically, after any skill was left unused for decades, even if it did not decline, it should have been virtually impossible for it to improve.

Moreover, by the time Qing Ji became a guest elder of the Great Pure Palace, the refinement of his skills alone had already reached a level few could match.

Yet Lu Yibei now discovered that after abandoning all those unfathomable, almost godlike techniques of the past, Qing Ji had somehow become even more difficult and troublesome to fight!

It was as though he could perceive every problem in Lu Yibei’s body: her sword moves, spell formations, movement techniques… He could even effortlessly see through the faint discord caused by the several powers mingled within her and those strange premonitory thoughts.

What that insight brought was a complete rejection of everything Lu Yibei did.

Ordinarily, a haunting’s true-body core was born from its legend and formed a seamless whole with the haunting itself. A psychic’s Spirit Pattern was also generally chosen with great care, then consolidated and strengthened through countless alchemical materials and incenses until it could be controlled as easily as one’s own limbs.

Lu Yibei was different. From a certain perspective, the true-body cores of her hauntings had all been forcibly stuffed into her by outside forces. Her psychic energy fluctuations might be powerful, but the psychic energy inside her was a chaotic mess.

This was her first error.

It was hardly her fault, of course. She had never been given a choice.

The wisp of Qing Ji’s remnant soul inhabiting the Broken Sword, which carried his youthful memories, possessed undeniably profound skills. Lu Ming’s Four Beasts Bright Sky Cannon and the spell formations collected by The Midnight Watchers Society likewise had their own unique merits.

But all those skills incorporated habits their users had developed over many years, along with minute adjustments tailored to their physical structures and psychic energy fluctuations.

Lu Yibei had relied on her exceptional memory to memorize them. Although she had made some adaptations to suit herself, she lacked the years of practical experience through which their creators had refined them. Most of the time, she could only copy what she remembered.

But her height, weight, reach, stride, and the attributes of her psychic energy fluctuations all differed greatly from those of the people in her memories. Copying their movements inevitably introduced deviations.

This was her second error.

Her third error was… Lu Yibei was simply far too cautious.

Even now, she used only seventy percent of her strength when attacking, always subconsciously holding thirty percent in reserve to leave herself room to maneuver. The instant an opportunity arose, she would use it to cling to life, escape, or catch the enemy by surprise and strike them unprepared.

Put simply, her current condition was like using an emulator on a computer to play a game made for another platform.

It could run, but there was always an inexplicable sense that something was off, and errors would appear in bizarre places no one could possibly anticipate.

And what that discord and those errors earned her was a horrific beating…

Qing Ji attacked without pause. Lu Yibei’s premonitory thoughts perfectly captured his every movement, and she responded flexibly enough to evade each one.

But after every dodge came an even fiercer assault.

Whatever method Lu Yibei used to respond, Qing Ji always pursued her with the most fitting move at precisely the right moment.

Beyond that, there was the terrifying impact produced by Qing Ji’s exquisitely refined sword moves.

In just a few short minutes, Lu Yibei seemed to live through an apocalypse.

Meteors shattered the heavens as they fell. Hurricanes swept up rocks and made them dance like flying petals. The deep sea raised monstrous waves, and violet lightning erupted within them. Verdant trees stretched from the thunderbolts and grew to a scale measured in astronomical units…

Lu Yibei did not see any of it with her eyes, yet she felt it all within Qing Ji’s sword moves.

And so she fell into a strange cycle.

She predicted the attack. She dodged it. But it made no difference; the danger was never resolved.

She was completely trapped in Qing Ji’s rhythm, like a marionette on a stage dancing according to its puppeteer’s will until the curtain fell, its soul departed, and it collapsed to the floor.

At first, Lu Yibei had thought Qing Ji was merely giving her a “lesson,” that this would be a simple training match. Now she realized her words had become prophetic: this was also a match for her life.

Qing Ji did not seem to want only to rid her of all her bad habits and make her start anew. He looked as though he wanted her to become a new person in the most literal, biological sense.

Stranger still, every so often as he attacked, Qing Ji would mysteriously blurt out the name of a dish. It made Lu Yibei feel like pickled vegetables and salted fish on a chopping board, and the humiliation was unbearable!

Meanwhile…

As Lu Yibei remained trapped in a one-sided beating, Huá Sāng’s task was nearing its end.

“…Water emerges from the Palace of Thunder, able to yield and able to stand firm. Tortoise and serpent form the dais, forever guarding rivers and mountains…”

“Open!”

With her sharp cry, Huá Sāng’s eyes instantly became vertical pupils like those of a cold-blooded animal. Faint cyan scales cast from light appeared over her pale face, and behind her surged the image of a tortoise and serpent battling, immense as a small mountain. Two earth-shaking roars exploded through the air.

An astonishing degree of night erosion spread outward. The drifting fog around her was instantly dyed pitch-black, while the asphalt beneath her feet aged and cracked at a visible pace. In the distance, the Shuishu Shou had only just come into contact with the night erosion when its whole body convulsed. It howled and fled far away to hide.

The next instant, the earth beneath Huá Sāng’s feet abruptly shook and boomed as though a mountain had toppled.

It was the crushing weight that had tormented her for more than a decade.

But now that she had removed the Ling Seal’s suppression of her Spirit Pattern and temporarily transformed the image of tortoise and serpent killing one another into one of their coexistence, that torment had become her means of attack!

Huá Sāng flattened both hands into palms and fixed her gaze on the writhing pale ball of flesh.

“Bang—!”

A punch bearing mountainous force slammed into the pale ball Hu Chuan had become. A tremendous boom erupted, and the blast wave instantly swept the fog from a hundred-meter radius.

Yet under the impact of that immense force, the pale ball of flesh did not fly away. Instead, it began spinning rapidly in place, changing into all manner of shapes as it turned, as though it were being continuously manipulated by an invisible hand.

Kong-meng, dong-song; feng-tong, rong-meng; chong-qiong, zhong-nong; tong-yong, gong-chong… This was the ultimate principle of the Great Pure Palace’s body technique: wherever fist or foot struck, the force carrying violent psychic energy would remain gathered rather than disperse, then erupt entirely inside the target.

(Ps: This is a rhyming, sound-patterned mnemonic for the Great Pure Palace’s body-technique principles.)

That force also carried an extraordinarily high Night Corrosion Level—enough to make a Class B Psychic’s Spirit Pattern instantly lose control—and could corrode not only humans and hauntings, but even objects.

Freed from the weight that had burdened her whole body, Huá Sāng felt incomparably light, as though a single push from her toes would send her flying.

Acting on instinct, Hu Chuan formed hedgehog-like spikes from pale flesh across his surface. But against Huá Sāng’s high-speed assault as she constantly shifted position, they appeared exceptionally feeble.

“Bang—bang—bang—!”

Muffled impacts like rolling thunder erupted ceaselessly along the deserted highway at night.

Before long, a layer of gloom stained the pale ball’s surface. It gradually turned black, until at last, with the muffled splatter of flesh bursting apart, Huá Sāng punched it away.

The mass of flesh, its original shape now utterly unrecognizable, arced through the air like a sandbag blasted apart by a single punch, spraying thick black slurry in every direction.

In a hazy daze, bathed in the chaotic colors shed by the Calamitous Corruption, Hu Chuan suddenly felt his life draining away at tremendous speed.

Only then did he abruptly realize that he had made a mistake.

He had believed Lu Yibei alone could not possibly break through the interception of more than a dozen figures. He had overlooked the possibility that she might call for help.

But it was not over yet, because… that great lord had awakened!

That great lord would avenge me… Hu Chuan thought.