Just a moment ago, the Demon Gate Sect’s group hadn’t thought much of it, believing the sword array was all bark and no bite, with only Lan Yang alone unable to unleash its true power. Now, stunned by that single move, they were utterly shocked.
Someone immediately grew wary. “Old Huang, this won’t do, going on like this. This array is more formidable than we thought. We need to break it as quickly as possible, or we’re in real danger.”
“Don’t panic.” Old Huang, wincing at the cost, pulled a talisman from his spatial ring.
A fifth-grade talisman was worth a million spirit stones. He’d been reluctant to use it until now, but with things as they stood, he had no choice. He pinched it between two fingers and, channeling spiritual energy into it, said, “Junior martial brothers, assist me. This array’s weak point is in the south.”
The southern position of the sword array should have been guarded by the Seventh Elder, but with him absent, there was no one covering that spot, this had become the array’s breaking point.
Old Huang activated the talisman and hurled it toward the unguarded south. The talisman exploded midair, and the golden light shield radiating from the sword array shattered like a jade plate struck by a hammer, cracks spreading across it with a sharp crack.
The Demon Gate Sect group broke into delighted cheers. Two of them held the Sixth Elder in place while the rest combined their strength for a single joint strike, and with a deafening boom, the sword array broke apart.
The Sixth Elder’s brow furrowed.
A fifth-grade talisman, no wonder it was so effective.
He swept his sword in a flourishing arc and charged forward once more.
More black-robed men emerged from the Demon Gate Sect’s ship cabin, watching the group still tangled in midair combat with an air of severe judgment ready to fall.
The Savage Continent’s regions were sharply divided, the Southern Region was famously poor, while the Northern Region overflowed with wealth! The black-robed men, sensing their opponent wasn’t easy to handle, held nothing back now, hurling array plates, magic treasures, and talismans at them without restraint.
The Sixth Elder, sword in hand, clashed against five opponents in midair. His swordsmanship was exceptional, and though the enemy’s cultivation outranked his by a full tier, all of them at late Golden Core, the Sixth Elder was no pushover either. Still, their magic tools were clearly superior, and the Sixth Elder also had to dodge and guard against the talismans they kept lobbing his way for surprise attacks, making the fight increasingly grueling for him.
Blades and swords flashed through the sky, thunder rumbling in waves, giant sword-shadows piercing straight toward the clouds. Five black-robed men surrounded the Sixth Elder, seemingly having him cornered like a turtle in a jar, but in truth, none of them could get anywhere near him.
“Damn it.” Even without the sword array, they still couldn’t capture him. This sword technique really was formidable, one black-robed man was struck by the shockwave of the Sixth Elder’s sword and vomited blood, clutching his chest as he retreated repeatedly.
“Black Three, don’t underestimate him.”
“Three Fiends in the North, Twin Heroes in the South,” one black-robed man said. “Xianhao Sect’s Lan Yue and Lan Yang aren’t pushovers. What they’ve cultivated is the Lanshan Sword Technique, unrivaled among those of equal cultivation. Don’t forget, last time Black Five, Black Seven, and Black Nine all died at Lan Yue’s hands. Even with the sword array broken, we absolutely cannot let our guard down. Old Ghost underestimated the enemy’s strength, and now he’s split in two.”
This time, the ones the Demon Gate Sect had sent were all at mid to late Golden Core cultivation.
The Seventh Elder was only at early Golden Core, and gravely poisoned besides, and yet he’d still managed to kill two mid-Golden Core cultivators and one late-Golden Core cultivator, that alone spoke volumes about how formidable he was.
“Twin Heroes in the South” referred, of course, to the Sixth Elder and Seventh Elder.
The Fifth Elder left the disciples to guard the flying ship and summoned his magic tool, flying off to assist.
The moment the Fifth Elder departed, the Demon Gate Sect disciples immediately turned their attack on the Xianhao Sect’s flying ship.
This time, the disciples the Fifth Elder had brought along were all at mid Foundation Establishment cultivation, barely enough to hold their own against the enemy.
One demonic cultivator stood outside the fray, watching the two sides clash in fierce combat, clicking his tongue a few times as he stroked his chin. “Ooh, this fish has quite a few bones in it. Not so easy to chew.”
“No matter. Consider it playing around with them a bit.”
Both flying ships had already activated their protective barriers, but they still shook and swayed violently from the fierce sword energy and gale-force winds. Xu Yifan, jostled around inside the ship, felt his stomach churning, nearly on the verge of vomiting.
Outside, the fighting seemed to be raging fiercely.
He poked his head out to look, and happened to catch sight of a black-robed cultivator breaking through their protective barrier and landing on their ship’s deck. That person summoned a Soul-Binding Banner, chanted an incantation, and the banner grew wildly in the wind. With another wave, countless evil spirits transformed into black skulls, howling as they flew out of the banner, attacking the Xianhao Sect disciples.
The deck instantly filled with the wails of ghosts and howls of wolves.
The skulls transformed into thick smoke one moment, into ferocious axes the next, into seven-foot-tall jackals after that, running rampant across the deck without restraint. The Xianhao Sect disciples brandished talismans and threw out array plates, but none of it could harm the specters even slightly.
These were all inanimate constructs, naturally immune to formation talismans and magic tools. Sliced through with swords, struck down, the smoke would disperse only to reform its shape the very next second.
No matter how they fought, they couldn’t be killed.
What made the Demon Gate Sect most feared was precisely this technique of soul manipulation, one that had almost no counter.
The moment the ghosts appeared, the Xianhao Sect disciples were instantly pushed back, screaming without pause as the ghosts tore and bit at them. One disciple had his throat ripped open by a ghost, blood gushing out instantly, before he could even manage a scream, he collapsed stiffly to the ground.
“Elder, help, help me…”
Up in midair.
The Sixth Elder nimbly dodged a talisman hurled at him, slashed it apart with his sword, and turned to fly back to the ship to protect the disciples, only to have his path blocked by another opponent. Worried about the disciples, that single moment of distraction was all it took for him to plummet below.
A black-robed man seized the opportunity to strike, detonating a talisman not far behind the Sixth Elder, the aftershock rattled his internal organs completely out of place.
The Sixth Elder staggered several steps and spat out a mouthful of blood. Taking advantage of this opening, a demonic cultivator channeled spiritual energy and struck a palm blow at his back.
The Fifth Elder’s eyes went wide with shock. He wanted to rush over to save him, but was blocked by a charging black-robed man, who taunted him in an ambiguous, mocking tone. “Where are you looking? I’m your opponent here.”
The Sixth Elder was trapped by a fourth-grade array plate that had come flying at him, rendered instantly immobile like a chick caught in a giant hand. Watching that palm strike bear down on the Sixth Elder, the Fifth Elder’s eyes nearly split with rage, and he shouted out.
“Sixth Junior Martial Brother…”
The Sixth Elder, attacked from both front and back, swept his spiritual sense backward and saw the enemy’s spiritual energy forming into a giant palm bearing down on him. His heart sank instantly, he knew this was very bad. He desperately tried to break through the array with all his remaining strength.
The fourth-grade binding array wasn’t indestructible, but it wasn’t easy to break either, even at full strength, breaking through this fourth-grade binding array would take him a full day and night, let alone now, gravely wounded as he was…
The Sixth Elder’s heart instantly turned to ash. He glanced toward the ship and saw Xu Yifan pressed against the window, his head poking out from inside, staring straight at him. The Sixth Elder, straining, gave a small wave, signaling Xu Yifan to hide quickly, to hide well, not to watch.
Xu Yifan sighed. His master really couldn’t stay cool for even three seconds.
That palm-strike wind drew ever closer.
“Old Seven…” The Sixth Elder glanced toward the direction of Lianyun Mountain, murmured softly, and closed his eyes.
“Sixth Elder!” A Xianhao Sect disciple couldn’t help crying out in panic.
The Demon Gate Sect members could no longer contain themselves and burst out laughing toward the sky.
“The Southern Region’s Twin Heroes? Looks like they’re about to become Twin Ghosts instead.”
“He fought so fiercely just now, and yet he’s still going to die at our brothers’ hands.”
“Damn it, what a waste of my fourth-grade binding array though.”
“Enough, as long as we can kill him, don’t even mention the fourth-grade binding array, even using a fifth-grade one wouldn’t be a waste. Without these two, Xianhao Sect is nothing to fear. Before long, the entire sect will be ours for the taking. Not a single one of these people gets to leave today, wait, what is that?” one black-robed man cried out, his face draining with fear.
At the last possible instant, a black shadow, wrapped in a whirlwind, shot toward the Sixth Elder at tremendous speed, blocking behind him and intercepting that palm strike in his place.
A deafening boom rang out, the shockwave sending the Fifth Elder and several black-robed men staggering backward several steps.
Up ahead, the explosion produced a thick plume of smoke.
The Fifth Elder’s heart raced in panic and confusion.
If that fist had truly landed on Old Six, his Sixth Junior Martial Brother would surely have perished on the spot.
He was about to fly straight toward the trapped array when, from within the thick smoke and dust, an abrupt, eerie laugh suddenly rang out.
“Kekeke~”
The instant this uncanny sound echoed in everyone’s ears, every scalp instantly prickled. A terrifying force slowly surged up through midair, and then everyone’s pupils contracted sharply.
The dense black whirlwind dispersed, revealing the shadow’s true form, and a vast, overwhelming pressure instantly blanketed everyone present.
In that instant, the Sixth Elder and the demonic cultivators all wore expressions of astonished shock, their faces flickering with unmistakable terror.
“This, this, what the hell is this thing?”
The Fifth Elder’s eyes practically bulged out of their sockets. Others might not recognize this thing, but as someone who primarily cultivated artifact refining, having studied this art for many years, he understood it better than anyone.
This…
This was a sixth-grade high-tier puppet!
The puppet was forged from special-grade high-tier Nether Steel Stone, dressed in the guise of a mortal general, standing over three chi [1]a traditional unit of length, roughly a third of a meter jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3015890_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3015890_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); tall, with a mouth full of ferocious fangs.
The puppet gripped an imposing spear over two meters long. With one downward slash at the binding array, the once impenetrable fourth-grade array plate shattered instantly, as if it were nothing at all.
A sixth-grade magic tool, truly, terrifyingly formidable.
A wave of shock rippled through the black-robed men.
The Fifth Elder’s eyes had genuinely popped out at this point.
Six, si, sixth-grade high-tier Azure Dragon Spear!
Holy hell, whose puppet was this?
A puppet forged entirely from sixth-grade Nether Steel Stone was already extravagant to a nearly outrageous degree, and now it turned out that Azure Dragon Spear was also a sixth-grade magic tool.
Never mind the Southern Region, even in the far more resource-abundant Northern Region, a fifth-grade magic tool was a rare sight, let alone sixth-grade.
A sixth-grade magic tool was something one might never see in an entire lifetime, whether in the Southern Region or the Northern Region, a treasure that gold couldn’t buy, no matter where you were.
At this moment, not just the Fifth Elder, but even several black-robed men had eyes gone red with envy, staring at the puppet and the Azure Dragon Spear with pure, unabashed greed.
The Sixth Elder was somewhat dazed. The Azure Dragon Spear gleamed with a cold, chilling light, killing intent rolling off it in waves. As a martial cultivator, he lacked the Fifth Elder’s discerning eye for such things, but just from that single fierce sweep of the spear’s wind, which had shattered the fourth-grade binding array outright and also sliced clean through the mountain peak opposite, cleaving it neatly in two, he understood enough.
His throat had gone completely dry. The puppet now stood right beside him, and he couldn’t tell whether it was friend or foe. He held his expression rigid, not daring to move rashly.
“Ssss, big fat man, hide behind me,” the puppet suddenly spoke.
The Sixth Elder: “…”
Several demonic cultivators exchanged glances, and one, mustering his courage, pointed his sword and asked, “Who are you?”
The puppet, utterly shameless, flipped its spear and hurled it aside, declaring with great excitement,
“Ssssss, I’m your grandpa!”
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