Chapter Eighty-Nine: Alone Against an Army
At last, you have come.
Then let me bring this calamity to an end.
Baili Feihong's voice rang through the night.
It carried for miles.
His gaze fixed on the endless mass of pirates and raiders surging forward with swords and spears in hand.
Flames were already devouring everything.
Dozens of black silhouettes, like wandering phantoms, drew near and in an instant finished off the cavalry pursuing the traitors.
Elsewhere, several men in splendid robes and tall pointed hats stood upon monstrous spirits.
Familiar spirits?
Subjugated demons, turned into familiars.
Such was the means of the onmyoji.
"An ambush! It's an ambush!"
"Fall back, quickly! It's a trap. They've seen through our plan!"
The hidden traitor shouted.
But the drums of war had already thundered.
The raiders had already fallen into madness.
In their hearts there was only one thought.
Kill. Plunder.
"General Zhou, do you know why the Great Yuan Empire has stood upon this world for more than eight hundred years, yet still remains its unrivaled sovereign?"
Baili Feihong's voice softened.
Yet General Zhou heard within it a rising, fervent battle spirit.
Though Baili Feihong kept it well in check.
He could still hear it.
At that moment, his body was rigid, every nerve taut, yet he still answered, "Martial arts."
"Martial power is the foundation, and through it one may reach the divine!"
As the words fell, his figure shot into the sky, then slammed down hard into the center of the raiders.
Boom--
A violent shockwave hurled hundreds of men into the air, leaving behind a vast crater.
A demon nearly ten yards tall was crushed to death beneath his foot.
The onmyoji was blasted into paste by the sheer force.
"Subduing Demons, Five-Element Hand!"
Baili Feihong swept back with both palms and struck out twice.
Ten streams of five-element force tore across a hundred paces, piercing the ninja who had neared the city gate.
"Spanning Sweep!"
He drew his blade, and used but a single move.
His martial intent surged like a vast ocean, overwhelming heaven and earth as it swept forth.
The blade force he unleashed was like a blood-red crescent, a streaking ribbon that transformed into a river of blood.
When that one strike fell, everything within thirty feet was severed apart.
"Spanning Sweep!"
"Spanning Sweep!!"
The sixteen techniques of the Four Seas, the four moves of the Blood River Blade, were fused by him into a single stroke.
The blade's momentum was like the sea, the blade's force like the moon.
With one strike, blood sprayed through the sky and gathered into a river of blood.
Open and forceful, sweeping and mighty, each move and every form impossible to withstand.
Slaughter.
As his blade technique unfolded.
Concentrated blood aura enveloped the four directions.
The onmyoji's familiars never even had a chance to appear before they were swallowed by the terrifying blood aura and reduced to ash.
Those so-called onmyoji, beneath the furnace of blood aura, stood there with black smoke rising from their bodies.
"Spanning Sweep!!!"
The blood aura within him, deep as the sea, erupted in frenzy.
One blade swung out.
Even the blade force itself bowed before it.
Congratulations, Host, for comprehending a martial wonder: the nameless blade art, one move: Spanning Sweep (proficient, 1/10).
This move too had been blended with the martial essence of Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers.
Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers is the ultimate condensation of blood aura, burning it at full blaze into a wicked force that can incinerate all corruption beneath heaven and earth.
Spanning Sweep, by contrast, is the condensation of blood aura to the extreme, like blade qi sweeping away all things.
"Ten points of experience?"
That did not mean the move was weak.
Rather, because he had created it himself, he had formed his own unique understanding of the technique.
"Devil, devil..."
"Run, run now!"
"Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers!"
A savage grin touched Baili Feihong's lips.
His martial intent surged upward, and the luminous seed within his embryonic core shone with dazzling brilliance as the surrounding worldly energy poured frantically through his acupoints and into his body.
Embryonic Core Realm, fetal movement.
This meant he had broken through his shackles and stepped into the Embryonic Core stage.
His soul was boiling, transforming, stirring.
The sun beneath the earth blazed with brilliance, cleansing everything before it.
"Yahoo!"
Yoshigami Taro's inner energy roiled wildly. Countless blade forces revolved around his body, resisting this terrifying divine art.
The next instant.
A colossal palm appeared before him and pressed down with overwhelming might.
Boom.
It instantly extinguished the blade qi upon him and slapped him to death.
Congratulations, Host, for comprehending the third stage of the divine art Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers!
Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers was never a mass attack divine art.
In truth, Baili Feihong had never once fully unleashed it.
He merely released the power of Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers, using blood aura in concert with the art's nature to burn everything to death.
Subduing Demons, Five-Element Hand was derived from the Subduing Demons Hand.
And the Subduing Demons Hand was one of the foundation techniques that could bear Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers.
On the city wall, General Zhou stood with his mouth agape, eyes wide, face filled with shock.
Blood aura brushed his face, yet it felt as though he stood bathed in sunlight; how warm it was in that cold night.
When a divine art bears will, how could it injure the innocent without cause?
"So the so-called industrial revolution, in the eyes of the upper echelons, is still merely a ridiculous farce, unable to stir up any real waves."
Only after fully unleashing his divine art did Baili Feihong finally understand why a martial saint could suppress the fortunes of an entire region.
He had already reached the ninth refinement of blood forging, and even that was terrifying enough.
A martial saint was a walking mushroom cloud.
Using Free and Unfettered Wanderings, he stepped up into the air, one pace at a time, and made his way toward the city wall.
"General Zhou, send the soldiers to clean up the battlefield. The remaining corpses will need the garrison troops to clear away."
"This humble one... will attend to it at once!"
Terrifying indeed.
Such a powerful man, yet merely a Demon-Suppressing Envoy?
Even if a Guard General had come, the commotion he made would likely have been no greater than this.
Once more he opened his eye of divine sense and surveyed Nanxian County.
Where was there still any place shadowed by gloom?
Not even a trace of sinister qi could be found.
"So this is the meaning of the existence of blood refiners?"
To purify the environment!
At last he understood why so many blood refiners had been summoned into the imperial capital by the Guliang royal clan to guard the imperial city.
Beneath the feet of the Son of Heaven, how could even a trace of evil yin be permitted to remain?
Nanxian County is, for now, concluded.
With a few leaps and bounds across the rooftops, Baili Feihong returned to the lodging provided by the patrol office.
He immediately sat cross-legged and began to review the information in his Book of Skills.
Host: Baili Feihong
Martial realm: Embryonic Core [fetal movement]
Skill points: 78,692
Skill 1: Cooking, masterful
Skill 2: Blood Refining True Art, nine blood refinements [peak]
Skill 3: Subduing Demons Six Paths Scripture, first path (peak of soul refining), second path, Embryonic Core. Fetal movement
Skill 4: Free and Unfettered Wanderings, proficient
Skill 5: Five-Element Subduing Demons Hand, martial intent
Skill 6: Blood Suppresses the Mountains and Rivers (divine art, third stage)
Skill 7: White Dragon in the Waves, martial intent
Skill 8: Thirteen Levels of Golden Light Body Tempering Art
Skill 9: Dragon Claw Hand, martial intent
Skill 10: Spanning Sweep, proficient
Seventy-eight thousand skill points were enough for him to cultivate the Subduing Demons Six Paths Scripture to the second path.
If there were endless raiders to slaughter, would he not become a martial saint very soon?
If Baili Feihong devoted himself to cultivation, he was confident he could attain the rank of martial saint within ten years.
Thinking of this, Baili Feihong finally felt a trace of safety in this world.
Slow cultivation? That did not exist.