Chapter 260: Underground Pursuit

Among all the people fleeing and pursuing one another, everyone except Niu Youdao at the very front was a Golden Core Realm expert.

That alone showed how much the planners were willing to spend just to kill a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator like Niu Youdao. They were determined to have his life.

By the same token, it also showed how many resources Niu Youdao had mobilized simply to stay alive: more than ten Golden Core Realm cultivators from the three sects had been deployed to protect him. The gap between their cultivation levels was too large. The men behind him quickly began gaining ground. As Niu Youdao descended from another leap, he suddenly slammed one palm toward the ground.

Boom!

Sand exploded upward. He dropped straight down into the eruption and vanished inside the blasted cloud. The tall, thin man had pulled well ahead of his companions. While still airborne, he drew his sword and sent a fierce blade of sword qi down into the exact spot where Niu Youdao had disappeared. Sand sprayed everywhere.

The instant he landed, he hacked repeatedly into the ground around him, sending sharp sword qi slashing in every direction beneath the sand. When the raining grains finally settled, he stood with sword in hand and swept his gaze around. There was no sign of Niu Youdao.

He immediately drew one arm behind his back with the sword, dropped to one knee, and pressed his other palm against the ground, sending his spiritual power outward to sense what lay below. His brow soon twitched. The palm against the sand began rotating rapidly. Spiritual power surged and churned beneath it.

"Open!"

A hole spiraled down through the sand at astonishing speed. The tall man charged straight into it with his sword in hand, and the entrance collapsed behind him almost immediately. The three men who landed afterward were momentarily speechless.

They were all Golden Core Realm cultivators, but Golden Core Realm cultivators were hardly identical. Different cultivation arts gave each person different capabilities and different ways of controlling spiritual power.

The three of them had no ability to burrow through the depths of the desert and move around underground like that. That brief delay was enough for the ten pursuers behind them to arrive. The experts from the three sects surrounded the three men and attacked without hesitation. The three naturally fought back with everything they had. The battle instantly turned vicious.

Deep underground, violently rotating protective force spun around the tall, thin man's body, maintaining an open pocket of space around him. At the same time, the revolving force bored through the sand ahead like a drill.

Sword in hand, the tall man practically ran through the underground passage his own spiritual power carved for him, racing straight toward the place where his target had hidden. Niu Youdao, meanwhile, was buried entirely inside the sand.

He did not possess the tall man's ability to create a pocket of open space tens of meters below the desert surface. But he was unafraid of the enormous pressure underground because he could find the delicate point of balance within it. Eyes closed and mind concentrated, he merged himself with the sand around his body. Stillness. Then his brow shifted faintly. Something was rapidly approaching. The disturbance of the enemy forcing a path through the sand was far too obvious to miss.

Niu Youdao was secretly alarmed. Who exactly had they sent after him? They had actually dispatched an expert of this caliber to kill him. Now it was his turn to curse inwardly.

He had known the meeting was dangerous and still dared come into the desert alone precisely because he possessed this ability to rely on. He had never expected to run into a genuine expert. This was no ordinary Golden Core Realm cultivator. This was a true expert within the Golden Core Realm.

Niu Youdao silently cursed eighteen generations of Shao Pingbo's ancestors and no longer dared remain in place. He circulated Qiankun Shift and moved through the sand like a swimming fish, rapidly fleeing downward into the depths. He wanted to see whether the other man's ability to withstand underground pressure could truly surpass his own. Once the pursuer could no longer endure it, that would be his chance to escape. One moved freely through the sand.

The other pursued by brute force, opening a path with overwhelming spiritual power. After descending another several dozen meters, Niu Youdao nearly started swearing aloud. There was no farther down to go. Stone. How was he supposed to swim into stone?

Qiankun Shift let him maneuver through water and sand, but even ordinary packed earth was beyond it, much less solid rock. He moved sideways for several dozen meters and found nothing but hard stone beneath him there as well. There was no choice. He could not keep descending, so he fled laterally. But his pursuer was simply too fast. The distance between them continued shrinking. As the gap closed, the tall man suddenly began slashing wildly with his sword.

A violent series of booms surged toward Niu Youdao through the sand. Niu Youdao thrust out one palm. Red light erupted from the center of his hand.

He was no longer the boy from years ago who possessed no spiritual power and could not control such things. At his current level, he could directly activate the Transmission Protective Talisman within his body and use its power to defend himself.

Boom!

The violent palm force and fierce sword qi collided like an explosion.

Crack!

Another strange sound followed immediately. Niu Youdao felt the sand around him suddenly pouring downward. His heart leapt with joy. The stone beneath them seemed to have been shattered open. There was apparently empty space below. He immediately followed the flowing sand downward. The sand drained only briefly before the flow seemed to stop. Niu Youdao slipped out with it and abruptly found empty space around himself. He had actually emerged from beneath the sand. Everything around him was pitch-black and hollow.

He sent spiritual power outward to probe the area and discovered what seemed to be an underground passage. A point of light appeared as he summoned a Moon Butterfly. Under its glow, he saw that it truly was an underground corridor reinforced with stone. What else was there to say?

He did not care what this place was. So long as there was a path, it was good enough for fleeing. He immediately raced down the corridor, the Moon Butterfly moving with him to provide light.

Back in the sand, the tall, thin man was stunned. The explosive force from that collision had shattered the revolving protective force around his body, and the surrounding sand instantly buried him. The enormous pressure suddenly crashing onto him nearly squeezed his internal organs out of his body. He desperately circulated spiritual power and held it back. The abrupt change had nearly killed him where he stood.

Fortunately, he reacted quickly enough and supported himself in time. Otherwise, he might genuinely have been crushed into meat paste. What left him uncertain was the violence of that collision.

What had that been?

Had the brat extravagantly used a Blast Talisman? The fact that Niu Youdao had managed to injure Shopkeeper Pan was strange enough. The fact that he could move around underground under this kind of earth pressure was already bizarre. And now came an explosive impact so powerful it had nearly killed him.

The tall man once again gathered his spiritual power and set it rotating. Before long, he had opened a pocket of space around his body again and finally exhaled in relief. He also felt a trace of gratitude.

Fortunately, Niu Youdao had not known what condition he had been in just now. If the brat had taken that opportunity to attack, he really might have died.

He might not be one of the very top experts on the Golden Core Ranking, but he still belonged among its first-rate experts. If he died at the hands of a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator, that would truly become a joke.

Even if he survived but let a Foundation Establishment Realm cultivator escape right beneath his eyes, that would still be a joke. He pushed aside the distracting thoughts and continued forcing his way forward in pursuit. While moving horizontally, his feet were already pressing against the stone surface below. He had taken only a few steps when he sensed something wrong. The stone beneath his feet had cracked open. After a brief hesitation, he slipped through the opening.

He soon struck another stone surface, but the enormous pressure surrounding him had clearly weakened. He forced his way to one side and ran into a stone wall. Damn it. He changed direction again. Suddenly the resistance around him vanished, and he burst out of the sand into a dark open space. Everything around him was black.

Once the spinning force surrounding his body stopped, he could feel loose sand pouring down behind him and piling around his ankles. He extended spiritual power to probe his surroundings, then released a Moon Butterfly. Only then did he realize he had entered an underground corridor. He had no idea what this place was.

He looked back at the pile of sand, then toward the dark end of the passage. Footprints were visible in the dust on the floor ahead.

He immediately flashed after them...

On the desert surface, one of the three assassins had already fallen beneath the ten-man assault. The moon wheels of Liuxian Sect whirled and hissed beneath the moonlight, displaying their greatest power in the night. Again and again, they reflected moonlight directly into the opponents' eyes. Three Fuyun Sect cultivators fought the remaining two men head-on. Four Lingxiu Mountain disciples attacked from the perimeter with metal whips.

Three Liuxian Sect cultivators stayed farther out, using their moon wheels to blind and confuse the enemy with reflected moonlight. The two assassins were beaten into a state where they could barely defend themselves. sand scorpions rushed in one after another from the surrounding darkness and were cut down without mercy.

Elsewhere, the battle had already taken another form. Large numbers of sand scorpions had converged on the scent of blood. Shopkeeper Pan was pinned to the ground beneath the foot of a Liuxian Sect disciple.

"Traitor!" the man shouted furiously.

If Niu Youdao had not repeatedly ordered them to take prisoners alive, he would have loved nothing more than to carve Shopkeeper Pan apart piece by piece. The man had disgraced Liuxian Sect completely. The second assassin groaned in midair.

Two Fuyun Sect disciples attacking from either side chopped off one of his arms and opened his back with another sword strike. Then a metal whip wrapped around one leg and brutally yanked him out of the air. The others rushed in and instantly subdued him. sand scorpions charging recklessly from the side were either killed on the spot or blasted away. Once the five had captured both men alive, they quickly discussed how to reinforce the others.

In the end, they decided that two men would carry the two prisoners back toward Boundless Pavilion, while the remaining three would go reinforce Niu Youdao's side. There was no helping it.

Niu Youdao had repeatedly instructed them to follow in secret throughout the journey, enduring exposure to wind and sleeping in the open, while he himself had even been willing to use his own body as bait. One objective outweighed everything else. Show weakness to lure the enemy in, then take a prisoner alive.

Niu Youdao's instruction had been extremely simple: the moment they were forced to act, they had to capture at least one live prisoner for him. Now they had captured two. That was more than enough to fulfill the assignment. Two men carried the prisoners away through the air.

The other three immediately launched themselves skyward, passed above the sand scorpions with raised venomous tails, and flew toward the direction in which Niu Youdao had fled... Underground, the tall, thin man stood at a three-way fork, uncertain which passage to take. His Moon Butterfly cast light down all three corridors, but he found no footprints in any of them. The tall man cursed Niu Youdao's cunning under his breath.

The bastard had probably realized the floor would leave tracks. He must have kept his feet off the ground and used the corridor walls to move forward without touching the floor. While he was still studying the situation, his ears suddenly twitched. He could faintly hear the sounds of fighting. He listened carefully and identified the source. The noise was coming from the corridor straight ahead. His spirits rose, and he immediately moved forward. But suspicion followed almost at once.

Even if Niu Youdao was ahead, why would there be sounds of fighting? Would that not openly reveal his own position?

Had he prepared a trap?

When the mission had been assigned, someone had repeatedly warned them that Niu Youdao was extraordinarily cunning and that they had to be careful. With that thought, the tall man immediately heightened his vigilance, slowed his pace, and approached with caution.

What he did not know was that Niu Youdao had suddenly fallen into an unfamiliar damned place without even knowing the layout. What trap could he possibly have prepared in that situation? Niu Youdao had gone straight down the middle passage at the fork for a different reason. He had experience.

One only had to consider what kind of work he had done in his previous life. He had a very sharp eye for underground structures. One look at the route had told him what this place probably was. This had likely once been a structure on the surface that was later buried beneath the sand. It might even be connected to the legendary ancient city. When dealing with a place like this, the safest choice was the main route.

The central passage was more likely to connect in all directions. Side passages offered fewer options and were much more likely to end in dead ends. And when running for one's life, who would deliberately choose a road that might end in a wall?

[End of Chapter 260]