Chapter 390: A Ferocious Mortal

The shock wave was savage. The mountain road had become a field of screams.

Many people had been blasted into mangled flesh. Severed limbs rained down everywhere. Most of the party had died on the spot. The amount of explosive was considerable.

Yuan Gang had originally prepared it in response to Niu Youdao's request, for use in creating chaos in the Qi capital. It had never been needed there. This time, he had used all of it in this one place. He wanted to kill the target with a single strike.

The blast wave roared through the pass. Earth and stone, severed limbs, splintered carriage wood, pieces of horses, blood and flesh all came crashing back down.

"Ah!"

Someone sprawled on the ground clutched the bloody stump where a leg had once been and howled.

Another person rolled in agony, then pulled an iron nail from his body.

Yuan Gang had packed a great quantity of metal into the explosives—iron nails and similar objects—to increase the destructive force and improve the odds of killing the target in one blow. A dangerous man even Master Dao had mentioned several times. Once Yuan Gang decided to kill him, he showed no mercy.

It was an ambush, and one so sudden that the victims had no time whatsoever to react.

Most of the group had been hurled from their feet by the violent explosion. Those killed outright were one thing.

Those thrown to the ground, stunned and unable even to rise, were another.

Regardless of how badly they were hurt, if they could still move, bolts were already hissing toward them.

Yuan Gang had gradually obtained around fifty Nine-Bolt Repeating Crossbows from Qingshan Commandery. Every one of them had been concentrated into this operation.

The penetrating power of these specially made bolts was far beyond that of ordinary arrows.

One man had only just started to push himself upright when several bolts slammed through him and pinned him to the ground.

Another had barely rolled over when a steel spike like a long needle punched straight through his skull with a wet pop. His eyes widened. He collapsed.

Two men launched themselves skyward from overturned warhorses and the explosion's raging blast. The bolts pouring out from the ambushers immediately concentrated on them. Everyone else had more or less gone down in the first assault.

The two men who shot into the air had also been stunned by the utterly abnormal nature of the ambush.

The instant they recovered and took flight, they deployed their protective auras to block the incoming rain of bolts. Steel spikes as thick as chopsticks were nothing like ordinary arrows. At short range, their killing power was ferocious. Yet the two men's protective auras caught the steel spikes in midair. They could neither penetrate nor fall away. One cultivator had blood covering half his body.

While he was still airborne, a sudden stream of blood poured from his nostrils.

The next dense wave of heavy crossbow bolts broke through his protective aura. His sword flashed wildly.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Metal struck metal in a storm of sparks. He blocked those in front but failed to stop those coming from behind. His body was shot full of holes. He fell from the air like a sieve. The other cultivator twisted in midair and plunged into the dense forest.

"Chase!" Yuan Feng shouted.

He led more than twenty "assassins," their faces smeared with mud and their bodies draped in grass, straight into the woods.

Every one of them charged like a wild wolf. They ignored the terrain and the thorns tearing at them. None was willing to waste even a breath. Strong crossbows in hand, they stormed into the forest at once. The cultivator skimmed across the treetops. Below, the group sprinted after him while firing. Some pursued and shot. Others reloaded while running. They rotated in sequence, never giving the man a chance to breathe.

The entire group chased relentlessly, firing all the way. The brutal training they endured every day now showed its worth in the mountains.

At the same time Yuan Feng led his people after the fleeing cultivator, Yuan Gang charged out with a Saber in hand. He went straight for the cultivator who had fallen to the ground.

The man had bolts sticking from him like the quills of a hedgehog. Blood poured from his mouth.

Yet he still swung his sword and unleashed a wave of sword qi at Yuan Gang. The sword qi tore through the air like an invisible blade. Yuan Gang swept his saber horizontally.

Bang!

He met it head-on and, through sheer brute strength, smashed the sword qi apart.

The blast of force ripped the branches and grass from Yuan Gang's camouflage. He landed, spun with the momentum, and slashed.

Clang!

The cultivator raised his sword and blocked. The impact hurled the sword from his hand. Blood gushed from his mouth and nose.

The bolts lodged throughout his body shook as he stumbled backward again and again. Yuan Gang drove both feet into the ground and surged forward. He gripped the saber in both hands and cut horizontally. A sheet of blood sprayed through the air. The cultivator's body was severed cleanly at the waist. Yuan Gang did not even look back.

Saber in hand, he sprinted into the forest on the opposite side.

He flashed between the trees like a hunting leopard, climbing slopes and tearing through brush as though on level ground. Any branch that obstructed him was cut apart with a single strike.

He was afraid something might happen to Yuan Feng and the others, so he rushed to reinforce them.

On the other side of the road, more than twenty men had already charged down the slope. Several immediately ran to the cultivator who had been cut in half. His upper body was still moving. Bolts hissed. A few shots nailed his head to the ground. The others communicated with hand signals and rapidly swept the battlefield. They barely spoke.

Whenever they found someone who could still move, they put another bolt through the person's forehead without hesitation. No mercy. Once they confirmed no survivors remained, they began clearing the scene.

They pulled out the bolts they had fired and collected as many as possible.

They wanted to leave as little evidence as they could of their specialized methods of fighting.

At both ends of this stretch of mountain road, men stood watch, ready to intercept any traveler who might appear. Yuan Gang quickly caught up with Yuan Feng's group in the forest. They had lost the fleeing man.

He could skim across the treetops while they were forced to pursue through the woods below. The disadvantage was too great. They could not keep up. Yuan Gang rushed over. Neither side wasted words.

Yuan Feng gave a hand signal and pointed in the direction the enemy had fled.

Whoosh!

Yuan Gang shot past them like a gust of wind and continued the pursuit. Yuan Feng raised a hand, stopping the others from following.

He tapped the crossbow in his hand, then pointed back the way they had come.

The group of grass-covered men, their faces impossible to make out beneath the camouflage, immediately turned around and began searching for fired bolts and erasing as many traces of themselves as possible... The cultivator burst from the forest and landed on the grassland. He looked back. No one was following.

He guessed the assassins running on the ground could no longer catch him.

Moving slowly, he planted his sword into the earth for support and drew great, ragged breaths while looking down at his blood-covered body. His wounds had not come from the pursuit. Those crossbow bolts had not struck him. It was the completely unexpected explosion that had inflicted the injuries. It had happened too suddenly. He had barely had time to circulate any spiritual power in defense.

To endure such a violent blast with his fleshly body and survive at all was already fortunate. Both his ears were still ringing. The vision in one eye had become blurred. He reached up and touched it. There was something lodged in the socket. Enduring the pain, he pulled it out. His eyeball came out with it. He looked down. An iron nail. He could sense that those who had ambushed him were not cultivators.

The grief and humiliation in his heart were difficult to describe. A cultivator like him had actually fallen victim to a group of ordinary mortals.

He tossed the nail away, reached for the ruined eyeball hanging from the socket, and tore it off despite the agony. Then he straightened his body and circulated his spiritual power.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Blood spurted from dozens of places. The foreign objects blasted into his body by the explosion were forced out one after another and dropped into the grass.

He had only just finished using spiritual power to seal the wounds large and small across his body when he heard movement behind him. He turned.

A tall man with mud smeared across his face had charged out of the forest, a Saber in hand. He was coming straight for him. The cultivator was shocked and enraged. Shocked because he was severely wounded.

Enraged because a mere ordinary mortal actually dared chase him alone and try to kill a cultivator. One man alone did not frighten him.

What he feared was that the rest of those men with their strange, powerful crossbows would follow. His injuries were too severe to risk any accident.

Without another word, he launched himself away, skimming toward the depths of the grassland. The newcomer was none other than Yuan Gang. Seeing the man flee, Yuan Gang immediately broke into a full sprint.

The waves of grass on the ground split violently to either side as he tore through them.

With nothing obstructing him on the flat grassland, his speed became even more savage. The cultivator ahead leaped, landed, and leaped again. Yuan Gang pursued on foot, saber in hand.

The scene looked almost like a toad trying to eat swan flesh, refusing to give up no matter how impossible the chase.

Or like a leopard racing madly across the grasslands after a bird already frightened from the bowstring. The cultivator occasionally looked back. Every glance left him more alarmed. He wanted to ask one question. Was this bastard even human?

Never in his life had he seen anyone run this fast on two legs.

He had no idea what kind of rotten luck had struck him today.

First, dozens of ordinary mortals had dared wage war against cultivators—and not in self-defense, but by attacking first. Now this strange lunatic was chasing him without end. The crucial problem was that he had been badly wounded. His body was covered in injuries that required spiritual power to suppress.

He could not seal too many acupoints without interfering with the circulation of his spiritual power.

At the same time, he was forcing his severely injured body to keep flying. His spiritual power was being consumed at a furious rate. One fled. One chased.

The distance covered by each leap of the fleeing cultivator grew shorter and shorter. Yet the pursuer's speed did not slow at all. The cultivator had hoped to shake Yuan Gang off. Instead, genuine panic began to grip him. He had never seen an ordinary mortal like this.

Not only could the man run at such speed without slowing, he seemed incapable of tiring. Was that kind of stamina human? The deadlock continued for a while. At last, the cultivator's body could no longer take it.

He saw that Yuan Gang was still the only person in pursuit and that no one else had appeared in the distance. The instant he landed again, he suddenly turned. Then he charged back toward Yuan Gang. One man flew forward. The other sprinted to meet him. They collided head-on in an instant.

The cultivator swung his sword in midair and released a fierce wave of sword qi. Yuan Gang abruptly leaped. His movement was explosive. He cleared the sharp sword qi in a single bound.

His jumping power was astonishing—one leap carried him three zhang into the air.

Both hands gripped the saber as he brought it down violently toward the cultivator.

Bang!

The sword qi gouged a trench through the ground, spraying grass and earth. The two men collided in midair. The cultivator had never expected Yuan Gang to jump that high.

Startled, he hurriedly raised his sword across his body to block the saber crashing down with a roar of displaced air.

Clang!

The impact rang out like a bell. A terrifying force traveled through the sword into his arms. The sheer strength behind the blow was monstrous. He was a Golden Core Realm cultivator.

Even severely injured, to have the sword blasted from his hand by a single strike still frightened him out of his wits. What kind of monster had he encountered?

This was the first time in his life he had seen such a ferocious ordinary mortal. Could this still be called an ordinary mortal? His sword flew away. Both arms went numb.

The wounds across his body, no longer fully suppressed, burst open and began bleeding again. The force of the collision knocked him downward. Yuan Gang's weapon had not escaped unscathed either.

The other man's sword had cut straight through the Saber, snapping it in two.

The quality of Yuan Gang's saber was clearly far inferior to the cultivator's sword.

[End of Chapter 390]