Chapter 220 — The Bitter Ridge

My Dao to Eternity

Chapter 220 — The Bitter Ridge

The second claw was already inches from Li Fan's ribs. He did not withdraw. He twisted his body and allowed the attack to land.

The talons struck his side with a heavy metallic impact. Their force dispersed against bones hardened by Returning Marrow cultivation, leaving no crack. The corpse poison coating the claws met the intense heat of Li Fan's circulating qi and burned into gray ash before it could enter his blood.

"My turn," Li Fan said, his voice flat behind the mask.

The subordinate's eyes widened beneath his cowl. Violet mist still clung to his blackened fingers as he tried to withdraw his hand.

Li Fan's left hand closed around the man's wrist before he could retreat. He twisted once, breaking the arm, while his sword reversed in the same motion and cut across the man's throat. The second subordinate collapsed before he could regain control of his body.

Two subordinates had fallen in less than four breaths. The clearing returned to its cold silence, broken only by the steady breathing of the Netherworld leader.

The Netherworld leader did not shout at the sight of his two subordinates lying dead upon the earth. He showed none of Jiang Chenyu's fury or Jian Suyao's intense fixation. His gaunt face merely hardened, pale eyes narrowing as he reassessed the masked cultivator before him.

"You are no loose cultivator," he said. His right hand entered his sleeve and emerged holding a black iron dagger. Soul-severing script glowed with faint crimson light along its edge. "But your secrets belong to the Order now."

He did not attack directly. His body dissolved into a pool of oily black liquid that sank through the limestone beneath his feet and vanished.

Li Fan's physical senses lost him completely. The technique had carried the man into a secluded space filled with yin qi, allowing him to move beyond ordinary sight and physical barriers.

A freezing wind rose from the north.

The dagger emerged from empty air and thrust toward the base of Li Fan's skull. Crimson script flared along its edge. Li Fan's footsteps blurred, space fracturing around him as he vanished a heartbeat before the strike arrived and reappeared fifteen feet away beside a shattered pillar.

The leader did not pause after missing. His body dissolved into black liquid before Li Fan could counterattack. The clearing became a succession of sudden attacks and disappearances. A strike grazed Li Fan's sleeve from the left. Another descended from above and shattered the stone beneath his feet. Each manifestation lasted only for the duration of the attack before the leader withdrew into the hidden space between movements.

An ordinary cultivator would have found no means of defending against an opponent who appeared only at the moment of attack.

Li Fan maintained a half-step of distance through short, economical movements rather than attempting to defend every strike. Gradually, he noticed something the technique could not conceal. Each time the leader entered the physical world and withdrew again, a trace of cold yin qi remained in the air for several breaths. It was faint, but Returning Marrow cultivation had strengthened his physical senses enough to detect the localized drop in temperature even while the Silent Soul Domain suppressed his divine sense.

"I see your path," Li Fan said quietly.

The wind shifted toward the southwest. A sudden cold appeared three feet behind his right shoulder. Li Fan understood that the leader was preparing one final thrust toward his heart.

He did not turn to meet the attack or step away. His left hand formed a rapid sequence of signs, his fingers moving through the required movements.

This time, he did not draw power from the high atmosphere. His compressed divine sense seized upon the surrounding lightning within the sky and stone, gathering it into a dense point above his shoulder.

The lightning bolt descended through the Silent Soul Domain and struck the exact location where the lingering cold indicated the leader's next crossing would complete. The domain shattered beneath the concussive force. A ragged cry came from within the collapsing shadow-space as the crossing was violently interrupted.

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The leader was forced back into the physical world. His robes smoked, fresh burns marked his gaunt face, and the lightning had damaged the outer portions of his meridians. He struck the shattered stone hard, and the black iron dagger fell from his hand into the mud.

He dragged himself onto his knees, breathing heavily as he stared at Li Fan in disbelief. Years of specialized reconnaissance and concealment techniques had been broken by a cultivator one major realm below him through patient observation and control of elemental force.

Li Fan crossed the clearing without haste. His sword reflected the final sparks of the lightning. Apart from a shallow tear in his sleeve, he bore no visible injury from the battle.

"What kind of monster are you?" the leader rasped. His trembling hand moved toward his sleeve, reaching for an escape talisman.

Li Fan gave no answer.

His remaining qi, compressed divine sense, and Sword Intent gathered into his sword. He brought it down in a single committed vertical cut. The sword passed through the raised arms and the half-drawn talisman before continuing through the leader's head in one uninterrupted motion.

The Netherworld leader's body fell apart upon the ruined earth. The cold yin pressure that had filled the clearing disappeared, leaving only the ordinary bitter fog of the ridge.

Li Fan stood over the three bodies for a moment. He then cleared his sword with a single movement of the wrist and sheathed it. He searched the three cultivators methodically, collecting their storage pouches and the black iron dagger. He did not inspect the pouches here. The lesson of the tracking marks remained fresh enough that he would not risk bringing an unexamined pouch into his storage ring without precautions.

He placed everything into a separate compartment of his storage ring and marked the items mentally as unverified. Then he turned back toward the formation current, still glowing faintly beneath the shattered stone.

The arrival of the Netherworld Demon Sect revealed something Li Fan had not fully accounted for. The struggle within this Secret Realm did not belong solely to the righteous sects competing openly for its opportunities. The Demon Sovereign Order had reached this depth as well, moving quietly and without announcement. Their interest appeared no less serious than that of the Seven Great Sects.

Li Fan adjusted the position of his storage ring, gave the three bodies one final glance through the gray mist, and followed the formation current deeper into the western peaks.

Three days after the battle on the ridge, many miles from where Li Fan continued westward, another silence settled over a low camp covered by black tents at the edge of the Secret Realm's deeper wilderness.

The reconnaissance patrol had been expected to report at dusk. Dusk passed as the false sun descended behind the peaks with its regular movement, but no signal reached the formation array maintained by the Netherworld Demon Sect for this purpose. An hour later, another attempt at contact produced the same silence. By full darkness, the highest-ranking cultivator of the Netherworld Demon Sect in this region, a woman named Mu Yin, had already opened her eyes. She sat cross-legged before a low brazier, her expression calm and thoughtful.

"Three life signatures disappeared within the same breath," she said. Two junior disciples standing near the tent entrance immediately straightened. "They did not flee. They were not injured and hiding. They simply disappeared."

She did not immediately send anyone to investigate. A patrol disappearing completely, without even a fragment of a distress signal reaching the formation array, told her more than a search party might discover at the site. Demon beasts did not usually kill with such precision. Rival sect disciples, regardless of their arrogance, rarely eliminated an entire reconnaissance group without at least one survivor escaping to report the loss.

She considered the rumor that had reached the camp two days earlier. Information traveled through the informal channels maintained by every faction within the Secret Realm. A masked stranger. Eleven cultivators from two Great Sects dead in a single clearing weeks earlier. A formal notice bearing three sect seals now circulated through the wilderness, asking that any information about his movements be reported rather than immediately pursued.

At first, she had dismissed the story as another rumor that had grown larger with every retelling, the sort of account loose cultivators exchanged around campfires to make their journeys sound more dangerous.

She reconsidered that judgment now.

"Send word to the Sovereign's outer circle," she said after several breaths. "There is no need for urgency. A reconnaissance patrol was lost near the western ridge, in the same general region where the notice concerning the masked cultivator originated. The Order should know that the pattern is spreading, even if we cannot confirm a connection."

One junior disciple bowed and departed to carry out the instruction. Mu Yin remained before the brazier, watching the low flame burn against the cold mountain air. She did not send anyone to recover the bodies. Whatever had happened on the ridge, the remains were unlikely to reveal more than the silence already had. Preserving their remaining strength was more important than sacrificing additional cultivators to confirm what she already suspected.

Far to the west, Li Fan continued along the formation current, unaware that his name had entered the attention of another faction.

After another four days of careful climbing, the ridge gave way to broken highland filled with deep fissures. Some descended so far into darkness that even Li Fan's full divine sense could not find their bottoms. He maintained a wide distance from the largest cracks. He had no intention of discovering what inhabited depths that the Secret Realm had left undisturbed for countless years.

On the sixth day after leaving the ridge, Li Fan's divine sense swept across the broken terrain ahead. It touched something that made him stop in the middle of a step.