Chapter 878: At Long Last, You're Here

One man and one sword shuttled through the water.

Wherever Niu Youdao passed, the cold gleam in his hand left clouds of blood blooming behind him.

The intercepting cultivators fell into chaos.

Some clutched wounds that were pouring blood and struggled desperately toward the surface.

Others flailed their limbs a few times and then stopped moving altogether, their bodies drifting helplessly up and down beneath the water.

Some who managed to reach the surface slowly sank again afterward.

The remaining cultivators blocking him head-on were frightened into scattering.

Niu Youdao broke through the encirclement at high speed.

The five Supreme Elders of Guiyuan Sect were badly shocked.

In a single frontal clash, seven or eight Golden Core disciples of Guiyuan Sect had already been killed or wounded.

What level of cultivation did Niu Youdao possess?

The five immediately moved at full speed and personally joined the pursuit.

Yet after chasing for a while, they discovered that even with their cultivation, they could not catch him underwater.

One of them flashed a hand signal.

Two Supreme Elders continued the underwater pursuit.

The other three surged upward, burst through the surface, raced ahead along the lake, then plunged back into the water to intercept him from the front.

Several hundred cultivators likewise kept rising above and diving back beneath the surface as they participated in the interception.

The five old men had been fellow disciples for many years and coordinated with extraordinary understanding.

A single sound transmitted through the water was enough for them to know how the others intended to move and where they should position themselves.

Before long, the five once again boxed Niu Youdao in.

More cultivators appeared around him, with another group hovering above, eyeing him like tigers.

Even though Niu Youdao was somewhat wary of the five old men, he did not dare delay.

He charged hard in one direction.

The five Supreme Elders thrust both arms forward at the same time.

A terrifying pressure instantly descended.

Niu Youdao felt as though even his internal organs were about to be crushed.

The surrounding water seemed to have frozen solid.

Even moving a finger became difficult.

Under the crushing pressure, fresh clouds of blood seeped from the three arrow wounds on his body.

Fortunately, the Qiankun Art was no ordinary technique.

Niu Youdao's body gave a subtle tremor.

In an instant, he slipped free of the squeezing force like a fish, shot toward one of the elders, and swung his sword.

The five old men were greatly startled.

With their combined strength, even someone at the same cultivation level as themselves could be restrained.

Niu Youdao's cultivation could not possibly be higher than theirs, could it?

The man Niu Youdao charged toward urgently withdrew one hand.

His palm edge swept out, sending a water-cleaving force blade slashing toward the incoming Niu Youdao.

But the instant he withdrew his hand, the combined formation of the five was broken.

Niu Youdao swung his sword and blocked the attack head-on.

A deep, muffled boom rolled through the water.

His clothes whipped violently backward in the current.

Yet Niu Youdao himself seemed almost unaffected.

His body curved away.

Borrowing the momentum, he broke through the encirclement again and escaped between them.

After that exchange, the Supreme Elder who had attacked him finally understood completely why Niu Youdao had fled into the lake.

The brute had some special ability underwater.

A large group of Guiyuan Sect disciples blocking his path grew bold from their numbers and swarmed forward to attack him together.

The mud on the lakebed erupted violently again.

The water became murky and opaque.

Figures tangled chaotically within it.

Muffled impacts sounded without pause.

Cloud after cloud of blood burst through the muddied water.

The stain of blood spread farther and farther.

It was obviously not coming from one person alone.

One Supreme Elder circulated his cultivation and swept a broad hand through the water.

It was as though he had pulled aside a curtain.

The muddy water and spreading blood were casually dragged away to one side.

The chaos inside instantly became clear.

In only that short span of time, more than a dozen Guiyuan Sect disciples had already been wounded and were struggling on the edge of death beneath the water, blood continuously leaking from their bodies.

Niu Youdao's face was savage.

His figure flashed rapidly through the lake as the sword in his hand continued fighting without pause against attacks from more than a hundred people.

Even though the water suited him and allowed him to maneuver freely, the chaos of a mass brawl still cost him.

The saying that random punches could beat an old master was not empty talk.

There were simply too many attacks to guard against.

The clothes across his back had been ripped open.

Someone's sword had cut a long wound there, blood streaming from it into the water.

In the blink of an eye, dozens more Golden Core disciples of Guiyuan Sect had been killed or wounded by him.

And the casualties were still rising quickly.

The five old men were badly alarmed.

If this continued, the losses would be too great.

One Supreme Elder clapped his palms repeatedly beneath the water, transmitting signals.

Then he swept both arms apart and ordered everyone else away.

Leave this to them.

The cultivators tangled with Niu Youdao immediately scattered.

Niu Youdao wasted no time.

He shot away from among the drifting corpses and blood-filled water.

The five old men pursued him again.

The rest followed behind.

Others burst above the surface to race ahead and continue the interception.

Although the five Supreme Elders had ordered the ordinary disciples not to fight him directly anymore, they still could not allow Niu Youdao to leave their sight.

The broader encirclement continued.

...

Far away beneath the lake, a massive green serpent rose from the bottom and began searching through the water.

It was Yun Ji.

She had already pushed herself to her fastest possible speed.

But Jiao Lake was simply too large.

Finding someone underwater was difficult even for her.

Fortunately, sound carried well over long distances through water.

She quickly detected the distant disturbances of battle.

Joy surged through Yun Ji's heart.

There was still fighting.

That meant Niu Youdao was still alive.

How could she dare delay?

Her long body shot through the water.

Like a green dragon beneath the lake, she sped toward the sound of battle.

Serpents were naturally suited to water.

...

Niu Youdao held an advantage underwater.

But no matter how fast he swam, he could not outrun an entire group that repeatedly surfaced, raced ahead above water, and dove back down to intercept him.

Before long, the five veteran elders surrounded him yet again.

Niu Youdao intended to use the same method as before to break free.

Instead, the five suddenly thrust their palms forward and then violently pulled them back.

In an instant, they tore open a spherical empty space at the bottom of the lake, almost like a vacuum.

Niu Youdao was caught completely off guard.

The water he had intended to borrow force from was suddenly gone.

He landed awkwardly in the mud on the lakebed.

The five old men had already drawn their arms back and gathered strength.

Then all five slammed both arms forward at once.

The surrounding water crashed inward like a collapsing mountain.

Niu Youdao was badly startled.

He immediately used the Qiankun Art's method of balancing yin and yang to dissipate the incoming force.

But never before had he faced an attack in which overwhelming power struck simultaneously from every direction.

For a moment, he had no idea where to redirect the force.

Only when the mass of water smashed into his body did desperation bring sudden insight.

His body twisted and spun sharply.

He succeeded in dissipating the force.

But he had understood the method too late.

The attack had been far too violent.

Now immersed in water again, Niu Youdao coughed out great clouds of blood from both nose and mouth.

Blood mist burst from the three arrow wounds across the front of his torso.

The long sword wound across his back bled just as heavily.

Even so, he did not dare hesitate for a single instant.

Still spinning through the water, he had barely even seen what surrounded him before he lunged desperately toward the nearest gap.

He remained rational enough to know he had to escape before the enemy attacked again.

Two old men struck from either side.

Niu Youdao desperately swung his sword, broke through their combined attack, and once again forced his way between them.

The five Supreme Elders were deeply shocked.

The brute had actually withstood a combined strike from all five of them.

No wonder he had dared enter danger alone.

If he truly possessed this kind of ability, the five old men no longer dared hold anything back.

They absolutely could not let Niu Youdao escape.

Otherwise, they would become a laughingstock.

Niu Youdao had barely flashed between two of them when one elder flipped his hand.

A Heavenly Sword Talisman appeared.

A gigantic sword aura took shape beneath the water.

Underwater, the enormous sword projection looked even more solid than it did in open air.

It slashed brutally toward him.

The huge disturbance made Niu Youdao whip his head around.

His speed underwater was indeed superior to everyone else's.

But his reactions were still slower than they would have been on land.

The sudden strike made every hair on his body stand on end.

When it came to using Heavenly Sword Talismans, there were probably not many people in the entire cultivation world who had used more than he had.

Single releases.

Full barrages.

He had played with both more than once.

He understood the talisman far too well.

Once activated, it did not release only one sword aura.

It held twelve.

He might evade one.

Could he evade twelve?

For an instant, he thought he was dead.

Then he desperately ordered himself to remain calm.

His experience in life-and-death combat had taught him long ago that the more dangerous the moment, the calmer one had to become.

Panic only made danger worse.

Unexpectedly, something he had never anticipated happened.

Once the Heavenly Sword Talisman released its enormous stored power, that energy was difficult to control.

It was not like spiritual power personally wielded by a cultivator, where every subtle variation could be directed at will.

And this was underwater.

The talisman's power was simply too great.

Precisely because the burst of energy was so immense, so coarse and violent, the underwater currents it stirred up were themselves terrifying.

Niu Youdao sensed the change almost instantly and moved with it.

The Qiankun Art excelled above all at detecting force and borrowing it through subtle changes.

His body became like a leaf on the water, drifting with the surging hidden current.

The gigantic sword aura swept past him by a hair.

His heart nearly leapt from his chest.

Just as he expected, when the first strike missed, a second sword aura followed immediately.

Again, Niu Youdao barely drifted aside in time.

One strike.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

After four or five consecutive attacks failed even to graze him, the elder wielding the talisman stared in astonishment.

Niu Youdao himself, forced into the experience, suddenly gained a new layer of insight into the Qiankun Art.

Some realizations could never be reached without living through the circumstance itself.

Seeing what was happening, the talisman wielder naturally had no intention of continuing the game one strike at a time.

Both hands stabbed forward repeatedly.

The remaining sword auras erupted in a berserk barrage.

Niu Youdao could no longer play along.

There was nowhere left to dodge.

Within this limited stretch of water, with massive sword auras blanketing the area, one of them would inevitably hit him.

In desperation, just as when he had broken out of the Tiandu Secret Realm, he had no choice but to take the strike head-on.

Both hands drove his sword forward.

The Qiankun Art erupted as he forcefully received the sword aura coming directly at him.

The lakebed mud exploded upward beneath the tremendous collision.

The entire bottom of the lake seemed to overturn.

Everything became chaos.

Boom!

Niu Youdao took the strike through his sword.

Blood burst from his mouth and nose.

The three arrow wounds in his chest sprayed three streams of blood.

His body shot backward through the water.

A mass of bubbles escaped from his mouth and nose.

His spiritual power had fallen into disorder, and lake water flooded into him.

He had already been enduring the three arrow wounds.

Then the five old men had gravely injured him with their combined strike.

Now, after forcefully taking this blow as well, his arms and legs went weak.

Dizziness struck.

A violent, overwhelming dizziness.

He could feel himself becoming light, slowly drifting down toward the lakebed.

Through his reeling mind flashed one thought:

A man rides through the jianghu; sooner or later, the horse stumbles...

Seeing him shoot from the muddied water with no strength left to resist, the cultivators surrounding that direction immediately rushed in to finish him.

Then the entire group suddenly snapped their heads around.

A long green shadow was shooting through the water like an arrow.

Its tail lashed from side to side with terrifying force.

The cultivators clustered together were forced to scatter rapidly.

A huge green serpent raced toward Niu Youdao as he slowly sank toward the bottom.

As it passed, an arm suddenly emerged from the serpent's body.

A hand covered in scales seized Niu Youdao.

The serpent's long body whipped through the water without slowing.

Dragging him with it, it shot toward a ravine at the lake bottom and plunged directly into a crack in the rock.

The pursuing Guiyuan Sect disciples immediately bombarded the underwater cliff.

By the time they blasted the rock face apart, not a shadow remained.

The cultivators scattered in every direction to search.

...

"Cough..."

Niu Youdao spat out a mouthful of bloody water and regained consciousness.

He was too weak to use his Dharma Eye.

The surroundings were pitch-black.

Even at close range, he could not see a thing.

But he could hear a familiar rustling sound.

It was the sound of moving through earth.

Niu Youdao smiled.

Weakly, he said, "At long last, you're here."

Yun Ji's voice was grave.

"I came too late."

"You came at exactly the right time," Niu Youdao joked feebly. "Any later really would have been bad."

Then he suddenly remembered something.

"My sword."

"Forget the sword for now," Yun Ji said. "Staying alive matters more. I'll help you find it later."

"You're badly hurt. Can you hold on?"

Niu Youdao replied, "A minor injury. It's nothing. I took medicine when I jumped into the lake."

"Are the Commandery Princess and the young prince all right?"

"Don't worry. I settled them somewhere safe. They're fine."

"Good."

After saying that, Niu Youdao fell silent.

His eyelids felt unbearably heavy and kept trying to close.

The dizziness remained.

He forcibly kept himself awake.

He did not like the feeling of losing consciousness.

[End of Chapter 878]