Chapter 39 – A Sword Like a Roaming Dragon, Dancing With a Flying Phoenix
The sword light tore through the air, carrying the crimson shadows of thousands of flying fish, like a hundred-meter-high stone dike suddenly bursting, the river water pouring down.
The houses on both sides of the street collapsed one after another in the violent force emanating from this single sword strike. The entire illusion array began to tremble, distort, and teeter on the verge of collapse.
A phoenix cry pierced the heavens.
A cold light flashed past, like a bolt of lightning in the dark night.
Huai Ningjun brought his sword horizontally over his head, parrying Chou Bodeng’s downward chop, his white sleeves fluttering gently.
His sword was exceptionally beautiful, inscribed with the name “Azure Water.”
The Azure Water Sword cast a three-centimeter-wide reflection of snow-white light between Chou Bodeng’s brows.
He descended with the shadow of the fish, transformed into a crimson rainbow, the corners of his eyes and brows filled with a terrifyingly hostile aura, as if he were a demon born from the sun. His long, narrow phoenix eyes swept past in the gleam of the sword. Chou Bodeng used the Azure Water Sword as a pivot, flipping in mid-air to land behind Huai Ningjun. Without turning his head, Huai Ningjun swung his sword over his shoulder.
Clang—
The two swords collided once again, the Azure Water Sword blocking the venomous snake-like thrust of the Taiyi Sword.
Chou Bodeng didn’t turn his head either.
The Taiyi Sword tapped against the Azure Water Sword, and he once again used the force to propel himself forward.
The red robe and the white robe brushed past each other.
In a flash, both lunged forward and simultaneously turned back. The Azure Water was like snow, the Taiyi like ink. The divine phoenix and the Red Ru clashed swiftly with the momentum of the swords. At times, the White Phoenix was submerged by the scales of the fish school; at other times, the fish school was swept away by the fierce wind stirred up by the phoenix… Snow fell thick and fast between heaven and earth, and fresh blood splattered like rain, as if two completely different torrents had collided, singing and dancing madly on the edge of life and death.
It seemed Huai Ningjun had not come in person.
The one who had descended into the Ru City illusion array was only an avatar, but this avatar’s cultivation was clearly far superior to Chou Bodeng’s. As he swung his sword and shook his robes, he was like an emperor descending to the mortal world, the very earth shaking for him.
However, Chou Bodeng’s swordsmanship was extremely bizarre. He moved with the wind, his rolling sword like muffled thunder and startling lightning, his transformed sword like a dark, churning cloud. Combining his sword arts, the full power of his karmic obstructions after the Kui Dragon Bracelet was unlocked, and the aid of hundreds of millions of Red Ru fish, he not only didn’t fall behind in his fight with Huai Ningjun, but as time went on, he even seemed to be gaining the upper hand.
Large swathes of houses collapsed, and red fire and black clouds appeared in the sky.
Heaven and earth were rent asunder.
The illusion array was rapidly disintegrating between their clashes.
Neither Chou Bodeng nor Huai Ningjun paid any attention to the world turning upside down around them.
Both of them felt a long-lost familiarity… the familiarity of having crossed swords countless times, as if they were mortal enemies, yet also as if they were intimate friends. Every change in the other’s footsteps, every shift in their figure, was understood without thought or speculation.
Flowing clouds raced past them, and flying light chased the shadows on their swords. In the time it took an ordinary person to take a single breath, they had already exchanged countless blows, advancing and retreating.
“Break!”
Just before the illusion array was about to completely collapse, Huai Ningjun suddenly stepped forward and let out a clear shout.
His sword style changed from the light and agile movements of a roaming dragon and flying phoenix. The Azure Water Sword drew a solid circle in mid-air.
A moon!
A bright moon rose slowly in the darkness and then crashed down with a roar!
Silver light poured out, instantly covering a thousand kilometers… It was as if the sea had been imprisoned within a full moon, and the moment the moon shattered, the tide rushed out, roaring, churning up thousands of meters of snow, submerging Chou Bodeng, the streets, and the entire illusion array.
***
The world spun.
Zuo Yuesheng felt himself being thrown high into the air and then falling heavily, his back slamming onto the stone slabs, causing him to spit out a mouthful of blood.
“The formation is broken! The formation is broken!”
His vision went black as he heard Lu Jing beside him coughing and shouting loudly.
The formation is broken?!
Zuo Yuesheng didn’t even bother to wipe away the blood before pushing himself up from the ground, but his vision was still pitch black, and he couldn’t see anything. Someone roughly shoved a pill into his mouth and then slapped him hard on the back. Zuo Yuesheng’s eyes bulged like copper bells, and he stretched his neck for dear life, like an old turtle swallowing a pearl, a lump rising and falling in his throat.
“Damn you, are you trying to kill me!” Zuo Yuesheng cursed.
After the pill went down, his vision finally cleared.
The familiar Circular Altar appeared before him, but compared to before they were trapped in the illusion array, everything had changed.
The four gate towers to the east, west, north, and south of the altar had their pillars broken and lintels fallen. The Oracle Maidens and Masters who had been standing by the pillars were collapsed on the ground, unconscious. The silver lake around the altar looked like a lotus pond ravaged by a storm: the gracefully standing blue and white porcelain dishes were mostly shattered, and the remnants of the candles floated on the water’s surface, the drops of wax as red as blood.
Furthermore, fifty to sixty percent of the corridors and long bridges of the entire City Divination Department were destroyed. The mist had dissipated, and there was no rain in the sky.
This was probably the first time the rain had stopped in Ru City.
Zuo Yuesheng felt a piercing pain in his head, as if a thousand needles were stabbing it. Although he had taken the pill, his vision still swam in waves. He knew it was because they had been in the illusion array. Fighting enemies in the array might seem unrelated to one’s physical body, but it was actually extremely draining on the mind. If they had been trapped in the array for much longer, even without any physical attacks, the constant illusions could have worn their minds to death.
Zuo Yuesheng composed himself and, enduring the headache, looked around.
He saw that damn madman Zhou Ziyan standing on the water far away, holding a sword, his long hair whiter than Elder Tao’s. Elder Tao stood opposite him, his gray robe also covered in blood. The two were facing off, neither sparing a glance in this direction.
Zuo Yuesheng had originally thought it was Elder Tao who had broken the illusion array, but seeing this master and disciple with their blades drawn, in a fight to the death… Elder Tao didn’t look like he had the spare energy to break the formation.
Then it could only be…
He was overjoyed and turned his head to look for someone.
“Young Master Chou! I knew you were the best in the world…”
“Damn it! Where is he!!!”
In the waterside pavilion, several people were lying or sitting in disarray: Lu Jing, Ye Cang, Monk Budu, and even Lou Jiang, who was as pale as a ghost.
Only Chou Bodeng was missing.
“He didn’t fall into the water, did he?” Lu Jing looked anxiously into the lake. “Can Chou Bodeng swim?”
As he spoke, a patch of moonlight rose from some unknown street in the city, illuminating half the sky. The moonlight swept across the entire Ru City in an instant, and an invisible pressure suddenly slammed down on everyone’s shoulders. Zuo Yuesheng, who had just stood up, didn’t even have time to make a sound before he fell to his knees with a thud.
Besides Elder Tao and Zhou Ziyan, no one else could remain standing.
Elder Tao, who was facing off against Zhou Ziyan, suddenly looked up, his gaze fixed on the direction where the moonlight was spreading.
“Who did you make a deal with?” Elder Tao asked sternly.
Zhou Ziyan didn’t answer.
He had no strength left to speak.
***
The long, sharp tail of the White Phoenix drew a tragic arc of a moon in mid-air. It turned, folded its wings, and transformed into a clear light, disappearing into the Azure Water Sword. Huai Ningjun and Chou Bodeng stood at the beginning and end of Pan Street, facing each other from afar, the wind blowing their sleeves. Stars of fire continuously fell behind Chou Bodeng, like a final, curtain-call rain.
Huai Ningjun said, “I don’t want to kill you.”
Chou Bodeng didn’t speak.
The ink-like black qi on the hem of his robe had completely vanished. Blood dripped down the bright, snowy blade of the Taiyi Sword, landing in the puddles of rainwater on the street, creating small blossoms of blood.
“An upper-grade sword dispels evil.”
Chou Bodeng said softly.
In Daoist arts, the sword has always been seen as a tool for “high masters to perform rituals and suppress all evil.”
A gentleman’s sword could suppress the eight directions, which was why Immortal Sects favored using swords when dealing with demons and monsters, as well as those who had fallen to the evil path. Among them, an upper-grade sword could pacify a continent and sweep away all obstacles. The Chronicles of the Eastern Continent stated that the Taiyi Sect had an ancient sword that guarded its mountain, and for ten thousand years, there had never been an incident of an evil spirit possessing a disciple and infiltrating the sect. This was because the Taiyi Sword was an “upper-grade sword for high masters to perform rituals and suppress all evil.”
Huai Ningjun’s Azure Water Sword was clearly also an “upper-grade sword.”
Unlike the tattered and heavily damaged Taiyi, Azure Water was a perfectly intact upper-grade sword.
In their final clash before the illusion array collapsed, Huai Ningjun had used his sword to guide the phoenix spirit, drawing a full moon in the air and activating the power of Azure Water to cleanse the mountains and rivers and suppress the nether filth.
Chou Bodeng knew how to receive that sword strike.
…Level the sword, raise the wrist, point the tip down, sweep the blade from left to right, with the force in the body of the sword and the qi permeating its back. After blocking, transform the sword with a wipe, then turn and chop to the right.
But he hadn’t received it.
—Because the foul qi he relied on had been completely purified by the sword’s light before it even landed.
Blood dripped continuously, continuously creating splashes.
Chou Bodeng looked around, at the continuously falling Red Ru.
They fell into the shadows of the eaves and pillars, their scales flickering. The moment the rain stopped in Ru City, the Ru fish were forced directly into hibernation. But if the rain stopped for much longer, they wouldn’t just be hibernating; they would die outright.
Like a fire that had burned out.
The karmic obstructions were purified, and the Red Ru hibernated.
He had nothing left to rely on.
“I don’t want to lose the only… old friend who can surpass me in swordsmanship just like that,” Huai Ningjun said faintly.
He had held back his sword’s momentum at the last moment; otherwise, Chou Bodeng wouldn’t be standing on the street right now.
“I told you, you are not my opponent right now.”
Huai Ningjun’s white robe transformed into silver armor, his aura suddenly surging—when he had been fighting Chou Bodeng just now, he had even suppressed part of his cultivation… It seemed he was holding back, but it also seemed he wanted to fight his old friend on equal footing once again after so many years.
“Give me the key, and you can leave.”
Chou Bodeng didn’t speak.
He pulled the Taiyi Sword, which had been plunged into the street, out of the ground.
He closed his eyes, gripped the hilt with his right hand, held the sword horizontally before his chest, and slowly placed his left hand on the blade, his pale fingers pressing down one by one. The broken blade cut into his flesh, and blood rolled over the cold iron but no longer dripped down, instead seeping into the sword’s body bit by bit. He slowly moved his left hand from left to right, washing the blade of the Taiyi Sword with his own blood.
The action was very strange.
Like an ancient ritual.
A sacrifice.
Huai Ningjun’s expression changed slightly. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
He moved, instinctively wanting to stop Chou Bodeng.
Chou Bodeng opened his eyes.
Meeting those pitch-black pupils, Huai Ningjun’s steps froze. For a moment, he couldn’t tell if the person before him remembered everything or nothing at all.
The Life Scale at the corner of Chou Bodeng’s eye burned.
The long street began to burn again.
One by one, the Red Ru rose again from the shadows. The fish shadows crisscrossed behind Chou Bodeng, their light illuminating all of antiquity. They swam and roamed, and together with Chou Bodeng, they burst forth with the most heart-stopping crimson.
“You’re mad!” Huai Ningjun’s voice was hoarse.
“I went mad long ago.”
Chou Bodeng burst out laughing.
He had forgotten life and death, forgotten the rush of blood, forgotten the cold blade entering his flesh.
He just laughed out loud, as if in a dream, as if awake, as if intoxicated. The light of the red scales crisscrossed his face, which was as pure as snow, creating a mottled and vibrant image like an ancient painting. From that vibrancy, blood and fire rolled out, igniting the flowing years… In those lonely years, he was all alone.
The Ruomu Spirit Puppet suddenly fell from his sleeve on its own.
The runes carved on the wooden puppet suddenly burst into flames, as if someone had activated a secret technique that surpassed what the runes could bear. At the moment the ritual of wiping the sword with blood was about to be completed, a long wind swept through, and the wooden puppet transformed into a young man in the wind.
The moment he appeared, he immediately grabbed Chou Bodeng’s blood-soaked hand.