Chapter 1334: One Sword Breaks a Heavenly Sword Talisman

Ximen Qingkong had thrown away the Heavenly Sword Talisman because he did not want to become entangled with these people.

More precisely, he did not want to waste what little time remained.

He wanted them to dare fight him.

Only he knew the true condition of his own body.

He would not last much longer.

Sure enough, seeing him discard the talisman and charge, the Elder gritted his teeth. "Courting death!"

He flipped a hand and produced a Heavenly Sword Talisman.

With a burst of spiritual power, immense energy surged out and condensed into an enormous sword-aura shadow that thundered toward Ximen Qingkong.

Ximen Qingkong abruptly transformed into a blue sword-shadow and shot forward.

To those watching, the vast sword-aura shadow from the talisman came like a thunderbolt, while Ximen Qingkong was a blue spearpoint driving straight into it.

The blue sword-shadow did not dodge.

It did not slow.

Instead, it accelerated again.

The onlookers stared in disbelief.

Was this madman really planning to meet a Heavenly Sword Talisman head-on?

"No self! No sword! Break!"

The words rolled over the grasslands.

The instant the blue sword-shadow struck the Heavenly Sword Talisman's sword-aura, a magnificent blue radiance flashed within it, like a sapphire catching sunlight.

The blue brilliance erupted with impossible speed and pierced straight through the enormous sword-aura shadow.

At that instant, all the scars on Ximen Qingkong's face tore open at once.

The clothes covering his upper body shredded away under the force.

His hair binding broke apart.

He was left bare-chested, every old scar across his body ripping open into bloody wounds. Beneath the torn skin, hard cords of muscle were visible, as though the skin itself were nothing more than a scrap of cloth unable to contain what lay beneath.

A lifetime of cultivation.

No thought of cost.

No thought of survival.

Mind, body, sword, and every strand of spiritual power fused into one.

Everything bloomed in this single strike.

It was a sword he had never dared unleash while he still wanted to live.

Now, everything he had was this sword.

The blue brilliance became blinding.

Like a magnificent blue meteor sweeping past.

Like the sudden flight of a startled swan.

It pierced the Heavenly Sword Talisman's sword-aura in one breathtaking instant.

Hummm...!

A strange, piercing metallic resonance rang across the field.

The enormous sword-aura shadow seemed to freeze.

The blue brilliance reappeared.

Then flashed beyond it.

Ximen Qingkong materialized more than ten zhang behind the Elder.

One knee struck the ground.

One hand held the sword planted before him.

His head was lowered.

His breathing came in violent gasps.

His hair hung loose around him.

Blood streamed steadily from his mouth and nose.

His upper body was bare. Every old scar had become a bloody tear through the flesh, revealing the heavy bands of muscle beneath. His skin looked like torn cloth that could no longer wrap around what it contained.

The hand supporting him on the sword trembled violently.

His entire body looked one breath away from collapsing.

The Elder who had activated the Heavenly Sword Talisman stood rigid where he was.

His lips trembled.

A diagonal line of blood suddenly appeared across his torso.

Bang!

His upper body burst apart.

Just like Yucang before him, his body separated diagonally into two sections.

The Heavenly Sword Talisman's sword-aura, frozen under the impact of that strange force, gave a great hum and collapsed.

Boom!

The released energy exploded outward into a storm of disintegrating qi.

Ximen Qingkong was blown away like a scrap of paper.

Yet no one watching thought he looked miserable.

They stared in horror instead.

He had broken a Heavenly Sword Talisman with one sword.

Everyone knew the power of a Heavenly Sword Talisman.

Among cultivators below the Nascent Soul Realm, it was practically regarded as unbeatable.

Today, they had watched a Golden Core cultivator meet one head-on.

Not only had he broken its attack with a single sword, he had killed the man wielding it in the same stroke.

It was almost impossible to believe.

That was the nature of Ximen Qingkong's way of fighting.

There was never any drawn-out entanglement in his battles.

Once he drew his sword, every strike was sharp, decisive, and lethal.

That was why, long ago, he had warned the three great sects of Wei:

"You'd better not force me to draw my sword."

Once his sword left the sheath, either you stopped it or you died.

There were no decorative exchanges.

Most often, there was only one sword, and then death.

For everyone present, the myth of the Heavenly Sword Talisman's invincibility against anyone below the Nascent Soul Realm shattered that day.

They had seen it shattered with their own eyes.

He was poisoned.

He was already at the end of his strength.

Yet he had still broken a Heavenly Sword Talisman with one sword.

Did that not mean the force of his sword was even stronger than the talisman itself?

No one mourned the Elder who had just died.

It was as though they had forgotten him entirely.

Every gaze was fixed in disbelief on Ximen Qingkong, who struggled on the ground.

The number-one expert on the Golden Core Ranking.

Was this the true strength of the number-one expert on the Golden Core Ranking?

Hair loose, body soaked in blood, blood still running from his mouth and nose, Ximen Qingkong slowly forced himself upright.

He used the sword to stand.

The hand gripping it shook violently.

Several times his body nearly collapsed.

Each time, he managed to hold himself up.

He began turning slowly in place, breathing hard as he swept his gaze over the people surrounding him.

At last, his eyes fixed on another Xiaoyue Pavilion Elder.

His body swayed as he started walking toward the man.

The sword hung almost lifelessly toward the ground.

The hand holding it trembled.

But the fingers never loosened.

The blade dragged through the earth behind him.

Everyone watched in silence.

At first, the Elder also thought Ximen Qingkong was finished.

Then Ximen Qingkong's steps gradually became a run.

His speed increased.

The sword rose again.

The Elder's expression changed.

He too shook out a Heavenly Sword Talisman.

Even with the talisman in hand, he was afraid something might go wrong. He glanced to either side.

His subordinates were already shaken.

They were backing away.

The Elder did not wait for Ximen Qingkong to reach him.

The Heavenly Sword Talisman erupted.

A vast sword-aura shadow shot out.

His hands struck again and again, guiding a continuous barrage of enormous sword-aura attacks that pounded the area ahead.

Boom! Boom! Boom...!

When the bombardment finally stopped, shattered soil and stone fell from the air.

Shing!

A sword dropped from above and buried itself upright in the ground.

Then fragments of blood and flesh pattered down around it.

The Elder and everyone else stared around them.

Ximen Qingkong was gone.

For a while, the Elder said nothing.

Then he slowly walked to the sword embedded in the earth.

He reached down, pulled it free, and held it horizontally before him.

His expression was unreadable.

The others gradually gathered around.

They looked at the scattered flesh and blood on the ground.

No one spoke.

Dead?

The number-one expert on the Golden Core Ranking had died just like that?

Yes.

He was dead.

Ximen Qingkong had no strength left to fight.

He could not withstand the barrage of sword-aura shadows.

He could no longer even gather his spiritual power properly. Naturally he could not have endured a single strike, much less twelve consecutive attacks from a Heavenly Sword Talisman.

In truth, he had already died the moment he destroyed Xuan Wei's body with his own sword.

The moment he destroyed the mortal remains of the woman he had loved all his life, he was already dead.

A faint mist of blood still drifted through the wind.

He and Xuan Wei had both been scattered into this grassland.

It was a very wide grassland.

The Elder looked around but could not find the sword's sheath.

It too had probably been destroyed by the Heavenly Sword Talisman.

So he simply kept the bare sword in his hand.

Xiaoyue Pavilion still possessed Ximen Qingkong's original sword elsewhere, but this one, the Elder quietly kept for himself.

He walked toward the corpse of the other Elder and beckoned for people to collect the remains.

Then he went to Yucang's body.

Beside it, he found the Heavenly Sword Talisman Ximen Qingkong had discarded.

He looked at the talisman.

Then at Yucang's corpse.

The Pavilion Master of Xiaoyue Pavilion was dead as well.

The elaborate encirclement prepared for Ximen Qingkong had never even had the chance to function.

The deadly Heavenly Mechanism Aura-Breaking Arrows.

The deadly Heavenly Sword Talismans.

And this was the result.

When word returned to the command camp, Luo Zhao stood there dumbfounded.

...

In the allied forces' camp, within the Qi army sector, Zha Hu walked out of a tent after hearing the news.

A jug of wine hung from his hand.

He stood in silence for a long while.

Then he raised the jug toward the distant sky in offering.

"Brother Ximen, in this world there is rarely a way to have both. May you and Xuan Wei meet beneath the earth. May you have your wish in the next life. I won't see you off."

He slowly poured the wine back and forth across the ground.

Inside the tent behind him, Huyan Wuhen sat at the table and watched Zha Hu's back in silence.

At times, Huyan Wuhen found himself thinking that cultivators like these should never have become entangled in the struggles of the mortal world.

...

Inside the Qi imperial palace, the Sect Leaders of the three great sects went together to the imperial study.

After exchanging formal greetings with Hao Yuntu, all four men stood in silence for a time.

Every one of them was surprised.

Yucang had actually been killed by Ximen Qingkong.

He had been inside an army camp, surrounded by so many experts. How had Ximen Qingkong managed to kill him?

Their silence was not born of grief over Yucang's death.

What worried them was whether Yucang's death might throw Qin into disorder at this particular stage of the war.

...

In the quiet courtyard amid the bustle of the Qi capital, Wuxin stood beneath the eaves with his hands behind his back.

He too was silent.

Yan Baoru and Guo Man stood below the steps.

Neither spoke.

They had struggled to save Ximen Qingkong twice.

In the end, he had still died for love.

Had he not chosen that road, a man of Ximen Qingkong's strength would never have been killed so easily.

He had gone to seek revenge knowing it was a road to death.

To women, a man meeting his end in such a way carried a sadness difficult to put into words.

They knew the details because the Golden Core Ranking had already changed again.

Misty Pavilion had even listed the reason for the changes.

By now, the news was known beneath Heaven.

With the man ranked first dead, the second-ranked expert moved up.

Yan Baoru had become the new number-one expert on the Golden Core Ranking.

Numbers two, three, four, and five all advanced one position.

With Yucang dead as well, everyone originally ranked seventh and below moved forward two places.

"I truly never imagined he could break a Heavenly Sword Talisman with one sword. That strength really was terrifying. But what a pity..." Yan Baoru shook her head and sighed.

Guo Man forced a faint smile. "Then Sister Yan is now the number-one expert on the Golden Core Ranking."

Yan Baoru smiled bitterly. "What kind of number-one expert am I? Who knows how many genuine experts exist outside the Golden Core Ranking? Take Niu Youdao. Look how low-key he was. Where do you think he would have ranked? You know perfectly well I once lost to him."

Guo Man's gaze flickered. "There's no need to worry about Niu Youdao. Isn't he already dead?"

Yan Baoru said, "You think he's the only one? Take Zha Hu, the personal guard beside Supreme General Huyan Wuhen of Qi. That's a genuine expert. There are even rumors that Ximen Qingkong might not have been his match. I may very well not be his match either."

...

Shao Pingbo stood outside a classroom window, watching the teacher inside lecture the students.

He listened quietly for a while.

The teacher was an elderly retired minor official Shao Pingbo had invited.

The man was said to possess considerable practical experience in governing common people at the lowest levels of administration.

That was precisely what he was teaching the students now.

Shao Pingbo did not care about a man's origin or former status.

As long as he possessed useful knowledge he could pass on to the students, that was enough.

After listening for a time and confirming that the old official truly did have substance, Shao Pingbo relaxed.

The Imperial Academy complex had not yet been fully rebuilt.

He had no patience to wait for completion.

Construction continued on one side, while teachers and students had already been brought in and classes begun on the other.

He had only just turned away from the classroom and walked a short distance when Shao Sansheng came hurrying over.

He reported the news he had received.

Shao Pingbo stopped beside a flowerbed, surprise in his eyes. "Ximen Qingkong actually managed to kill Yucang?"

"Yes." Shao Sansheng nodded. "Not long ago, he killed Jin's envoy stationed in Qi, and His Majesty was furious over it. Who would have thought things would turn into this in the blink of an eye? Eldest Young Master was right. A man like that was beyond saving."

Shao Pingbo fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Still no word from the Shopkeeper?"

Shao Sansheng shook his head. "The messages we sent disappeared like stones dropped into the sea. There has been no reply at all. It looks as though he intends to cut off contact with us."

Shao Pingbo gave a dismissive snort.

"Does he think that's his choice? We've dealt with each other too many times and gone through too much together. Does he really think that because he never revealed his identity, I don't know who he is?"

[End of Chapter 1334]