Chapter 1497: A Calamity of One's Own Making

Cursing him inwardly was one thing, but in truth, the Nine Saints knew one another’s nature all too well. Which of them did not want the others dead whenever an opportunity presented itself?

Precisely because of that, as they saw it, Yin Ji and her people were merely rebels, while they themselves were suppressing a rebellion.

The logic was simple enough. At the very least, these rebels still dared act only from the shadows. Not one of them dared step forward alone and confront the Sacred Venerables openly, much less unite and face them together. Did the reason even need explaining? They did not possess the strength for a direct confrontation. Otherwise, why go to so much trouble? Did they have nothing better to do?

Among the Nine Saints themselves, however, each of the others was a true mortal threat!

Seeing father and daughter turn on one another filled Yin Ji with boundless sorrow. Distracted for an instant, she took another palm strike and was blasted away, coughing up another mouthful of blood as she tried to seize the chance to burrow underground.

Lan Daolin reacted even faster. With a flash, he intercepted her from below and blocked her escape.

Whoosh!

Lan Daolin’s vision blurred. Luo Fangfei was suddenly hovering before him, staring straight at him, the great tail behind her swaying gently.

While suspicion and alarm flashed through Lan Daolin’s heart, Luo Fangfei attacked like a phantom. Her twin claws struck for his life with every move, as though she had chosen him as the target for all her rage and wanted nothing more than to tear him apart alive.

With someone taking pressure off her, the badly wounded Yin Ji immediately found the burden easing.

More importantly, her daughter was helping her.

The surge of emotion in her heart was something no outsider could imagine, a feeling impossible for her to put into words.

She could have used the opportunity to escape.

She did not.

Afraid something might happen to her daughter, she gritted her teeth and forced herself to keep attacking.

Lan Daolin, however, began to struggle.

The moment they exchanged blows, he could tell that Luo Fangfei’s transformed state was not overwhelmingly powerful, but it gave her a unique kind of speed.

Dragging that long tail behind her, she moved like an eerie fox apparition. Her speed was astonishing, and her movement art was somehow even stranger than the movement techniques in which Lan Daolin himself excelled.

With his cultivation, not only could he not catch her, he could barely even force a direct face-to-face exchange.

That meant it was exceedingly difficult to injure her.

Whoosh!

Several tears suddenly appeared in Lan Daolin’s clothes, with streaks of blood showing beneath them.

Those claws were abnormally sharp. They tore through his protective astral qi with ease, without the slightest sensation of resistance.

Buzz!

Red light abruptly flooded the surroundings.

In the blink of an eye, it was as though everyone had been dropped into a sea of fire.

The flames condensed.

Fire swords came whistling in, joining Luo Fangfei and Yin Ji in their combined assault.

That immediately threw Lan Daolin into disorder.

The repeated sounds of cloth being sliced open made his heart jump each time they rang out.

He wanted to hold on until Du Wuxu returned, but who knew when that bastard would come back? For all he knew, Du Wuxu might return and still hide nearby to watch and wait.

Between the fire swords and Yin Ji’s attacks, Lan Daolin’s reactions were slowed considerably. The threat posed by Luo Fangfei’s claws became increasingly obvious. One lapse in concentration and he could have his belly ripped open on the spot.

This could not continue.

Lan Daolin suddenly flashed away.

He fought Luo Fangfei at full force for several exchanges, barely suppressing her speed for an instant, then abruptly disengaged.

He smashed through the incoming fire swords by force.

Amid the explosion of flames, he appeared in front of Yin Ji in an instant.

Killing intent surfaced in his eyes.

He poured his entire cultivation into one palm and struck Yin Ji, who had been caught completely unprepared by the sudden shift.

Earlier, he had refrained from killing her because he wanted her alive. She still had value, and her willingness to fight with no regard for her own life had made her difficult to capture.

Now he had decided to kill.

Naturally, he no longer held back.

Bang!

Yin Ji flew backward like a meteor, seemingly powerless as she fell toward the swamp below.

Hei Yun burst from the mire, caught her, and immediately fled underground.

Lan Daolin charged after them.

But in the next instant, Luo Fangfei entangled him again.

With Yin Ji removed from the fight, the fire swords had even more room to attack, and the frequency of their sudden ambushes increased.

Lan Daolin discovered that taking Yin Ji out of the battle had not improved the situation by much.

Harried by the fire swords, his reactions were still constrained, and the danger of something going wrong remained ever present.

He glanced toward the ground.

The person controlling the fire swords should be hiding beneath the swamp.

Lan Daolin began considering killing his way underground and eliminating that nuisance. Beneath the marsh, Luo Fangfei’s speed and reactions would probably be restricted as well.

Then Ao Feng suddenly surfaced some distance away and shouted, “Hold on a little longer! The Holy Rakshasa is almost here!”

The moment he finished shouting, he dove underground again and fled.

The Holy Rakshasa?

Lan Daolin was startled.

The Holy Rakshasa was here too?

That was not only possible, but entirely plausible.

While continuing to fight, he looked around once more.

Du Wuxu still had not returned.

Lan Daolin immediately made his decision.

He was done playing along.

Whoosh!

After shaking Luo Fangfei off, Lan Daolin suddenly shot into the sky and fled.

Luo Fangfei immediately gave chase.

Over a short distance, her speed was superior.

But once the pursuit stretched out, the difference between her sustained speed and Lan Daolin’s became obvious.

In the end, she simply could not catch him.

She could only stop in midair and watch helplessly as Lan Daolin escaped.

When she returned, she went nowhere else.

She landed on the rocky ground beside Sha Rulai’s body, sank to her knees, and stared blankly at him, the grief on her face impossible to conceal.

Hei Yun emerged, carrying Yin Ji in his arms, and landed nearby.

Yin Ji looked extraordinarily weak. Blood continued to well from her mouth and nose.

Hei Yun’s face was filled with sorrow as well, almost as though it already foretold what was coming.

He had wanted to take Yin Ji away.

But Yin Ji had said Luo Fangfei had nowhere left to go and would be in danger if she wandered off. She wanted to take Luo Fangfei with them.

So Hei Yun had brought her here.

Kunlin Shu appeared as well, his face still painted in a chaotic spread of colors, and landed nearby.

He silently watched the scene before him.

Ao Feng also emerged, though his manner was furtive.

He flashed to the tallest tree on the highest point nearby and watched the surroundings with extreme vigilance.

“Fei’er... Fei’er...”

Yin Ji called weakly several times.

Luo Fangfei slowly lifted her head and looked at her.

She tried to search her childhood memories for some image of this woman, but could find none.

From the high point, the tense Ao Feng suddenly shouted, “We can’t stay here long! Hurry!”

Yin Ji forced her voice to become clearer. “Fei’er, I often asked Little Shazi about you. Little Shazi regularly sent me letters telling me how you were doing. I still have his letters. Bring Little Shazi and come with me. I’ll show them to you.”

Luo Fangfei naturally knew who “Little Shazi” was.

It had been Sha Rulai’s childhood nickname.

She remembered being carried on Senior Brother’s back as a child and calling him Little Shazi.

Her tears instantly broke free again...

...

Lan Daolin flew at high speed, constantly watching his surroundings.

Suddenly he heard the sounds of fierce fighting ahead.

He immediately accelerated.

By the time he arrived, the battle was already over.

Du Wuxu hovered in the air, one hand clamped around a man’s throat.

The man was Luo Qiu.

Badly wounded as he was, Luo Qiu had ultimately failed to escape.

His injuries were simply too severe.

He had been defeated by Du Wuxu.

Blood still seeped intermittently from the wound his daughter had left in his chest.

On the verge of death, Luo Qiu showed neither grief nor joy.

A hoarse sound escaped his throat.

“A calamity... of our own making...”

Lan Daolin stopped in midair and watched the scene.

He sighed and shook his head.

They had fought one another for so many years.

At last, this old bastard’s road had come to an end.

Du Wuxu, however, looked at Lan Daolin’s torn and ragged clothes and asked in surprise, “What happened to you?”

Lan Daolin considered himself unlucky. “That lovestruck fool turned demonized. Her movement and speed are unusual, and those claws of hers are viciously sharp. She scratched me up.”

Du Wuxu looked startled. “That half-breed is that formidable?”

“I wouldn’t call her formidable,” Lan Daolin said. “Someone was also attacking from the shadows and coordinating with her. It made things troublesome.”

“Did you deal with them?”

Lan Daolin shook his head slightly.

Luo Qiu’s eyes shifted faintly to one side.

He understood that his daughter had escaped danger.

A trace of relief surfaced on his face.

Du Wuxu asked, “You didn’t capture Yin Ji either? Then why did you come running over here empty-handed?”

Lan Daolin had already begun suspecting, on the way over, that he had been tricked.

But there was no way he could admit he had been frightened off by someone shouting that the Holy Rakshasa was coming.

He could only answer without expression, “With that half-breed interfering, taking Yin Ji alive was inconvenient. But Yin Ji took a heavy strike from me. Unless something unexpected happens, she should not survive.”

At those words, grief gradually returned to Luo Qiu’s face.

Du Wuxu knew Lan Daolin would not say such a thing without confidence.

He looked at Luo Qiu, whose throat he still held, and smiled faintly. “Luo Qiu, husband and wife couldn’t be born in the same year, month, and day, but at least you can die in the same year, month, and day. The two of us have treated you well enough, haven’t we?”

Luo Qiu no longer had the strength to retort.

He forced out only one sentence.

“We’ll meet again.”

Those were certainly not kind words.

He was plainly saying he would wait for them below.

Du Wuxu sneered.

Spiritual power began surging around his body.

“No need!” Lan Daolin raised a hand to stop him and sighed. “We’ve known and dealt with each other for many years. Leave him a whole corpse.”

Du Wuxu fell silent for a moment.

The surging spiritual power around him gradually subsided.

He looked at Luo Qiu’s face for another couple of breaths.

Then the hand around Luo Qiu’s neck suddenly twisted.

Crack!

His five fingers opened.

Luo Qiu plummeted rapidly and struck the swamp below with a heavy splash.

Lan Daolin stared down for a moment, sighed, then said, “Let’s go back and take another look.”

Du Wuxu had no objection.

The two quickly flew back together toward the previous battlefield.

Several demon foxes emerged from the swamp and hurried to the place where Luo Qiu had fallen.

They watched as his body slowly sank beneath the mire.

...

Inside the underground palace, Luo Fangfei knelt before Sha Rulai’s body.

Her claws held a stack of letters as she read through them one by one.

She discovered Yin Ji had told the truth.

The letters recorded details of her life in Daluo Sacred Land.

Some described events she had personally experienced and matched her memories exactly.

The handwriting was not Sha Rulai’s, but the manner of narration was intimately familiar to her.

It was undeniably his.

Clearly, the original secret messages had been decoded and copied out.

Only now did Luo Fangfei understand.

Sha Rulai had known her true parentage long ago.

He had also known where her missing mother was and had remained in contact with her all this time.

Yet he had concealed everything from Luo Fangfei.

He had never told her.

As she continued reading, tears blurred her vision and quiet sobs escaped her.

Yin Ji’s eyes had already gone dim.

She simply watched her daughter, as though she could never look long enough.

Kunlin Shu and Ao Feng sat cross-legged behind her, one on either side.

Each pressed one palm against her back.

Both simultaneously circulated their cultivation to sustain her, their expressions grave.

With the cultivation the two men possessed, the fact that both had to act together said everything about Yin Ji’s condition.

Hei Yun and all the Demon Fox Clan elders in the underground palace were kneeling before Yin Ji, sorrow on every face.

They had all examined her injuries.

Although she had taken a Heavenly Succor Pill, her internal organs had been shattered.

She remained alive only because her demon power was holding her together, while the cultivation of two Nascent Soul experts forcibly prolonged what little time she had left.

[End of Chapter 1497]