Volume One: The Youngest Among Three Hundred Chapter Eighty-Two: Demon Bone

Amid a thunderous blast, Ying Si came down to the ground with a pale blue, flame-wreathed sword in his hand, together with the woman A Man, while the mysterious figure in the middle, stiff-limbed and motionless, was lowered with them.

Noticing Chen Chang'an on horseback standing not far away, A Man stuck out a tongue a shade too sharp for a normal person and licked the corner of her mouth, her hungry expression unmistakable.

"Just finished with an arrest agent, and now here comes one from the Black-Robed Guard."

"We were just about to slaughter the town. You can go first."

"Who are you people? Why do you want to slaughter the town?" Chen Chang'an's face twitched.

A Man said in a low voice, "We aren't people. As for why we're slaughtering the town, you have no need to know."

To hell with you... Chen Chang'an cursed inwardly, his gaze falling on Hua Mulan by the bridge pier as he asked, "Is she... dead?"

The sword-wielding man, Ying Si, said, "Not before. Now, however, it is indeed time for her to die."

As he spoke, the sword tip rose.

"Wait!" Chen Chang'an shouted to stop him.

And then, to his humiliation, a split second later he began to doubt whether his rash decision had been the right one. In some sense, if even Hua Mulan was no match for them, then he was probably hanging by a thread, even as the cheat spirit of this world.

But Hua Mulan was one of the first locals he had met after crossing over into Great Min, and there was a certain first-bloom tenderness to her, like the opening emotion of a strange world.

At that thought, he stood firm, lifted his umbrella as though it were a sword, and pointed it straight at the man, his voice growing louder. "You can't touch her!"

"Oh? Is that so?"

Ying Si's tone turned amused. "Since you're all going to die anyway, I don't care about the order."

With a swish, before the words had even finished, the ground where he stood exploded into a deep crater. Dust flew in all directions, and his body vanished into thin air. The next instant, the space in front of Chen Chang'an's horse violently twisted, and Ying Si's figure appeared without warning, his longsword falling in a lethal arc.

Chen Chang'an swung his umbrella sideways to block.

But under the crushing force of the blue sword flames, his somewhat slight body flew backward like a broken kite. The umbrella shaft snapped into several pieces, and the little snow-white colt was cut in two on the spot, blood mist billowing out.

With a wet thud, Chen Chang'an's back smashed into the ground, scraping a muddy furrow more than ten meters long before he finally came to a halt. Blood sprayed madly from his right shoulder.

"Damn it, I can't even take one move. What the hell am I fighting for?"

Chen Chang'an was seized by bitter regret for that hot-headed impulse to intervene. Hua Mulan had mocked and looked down on his intelligence more than once since the moment he crossed over. Why had he saved her?

Peach Blossom Sister!

The Fragrant Pavilion?

The Fragrant Pavilion...

He focused all his senses and silently called for his golden finger, but it was utterly useless. The world around him was still outside Stone Bridge Town, by the Clearwater River.

Why, exactly, could he not enter the Fragrant Pavilion?

Despair flooded him. So the great calamity foretold by the divination before departure had been referring to this place.

"Hmph. The Black-Robed Guard, said to be able to keep Great Min in order, seems to be nothing more than a paper tiger."

Ying Si advanced step by step. "To become the first soul beneath Water Reflection Sword is actually something worthy of celebration."

Whoosh.

The words had barely fallen when he moved and his sword came out.

Clang!

Unexpectedly, when his blade was only half an inch from Chen Chang'an's skull, two short blades flew through the air and crossed in front of him like a shield, blocking the fatal strike. Under the opposing forces screeching against each other, sparks flew everywhere.

"What?"

Ying Si recognized Hua Mulan's blades and could not help turning back to look, only to see that she was still unconscious.

"Forgot to mention, I can control them from a distance!"

On Chen Chang'an's side, he gritted his teeth through the pain, reaching out with both hands to seize the narrow, keen blade called the Matter-Settling Blade and the broad, heavy blade called the Hidden Name, which had never once been unsheathed even in Hua Mulan's hands, and swiftly moved to put distance between them.

"Oh?"

Noticing Chen Chang'an's move, Ying Si's contemptuous gaze widened. "Interesting. Just now I sensed traces of spiritual energy fluctuation in those two blades. You can command spiritual power?"

"I can do more than command it. I can also draw it in!"

Chen Chang'an's eyes suddenly shone, his features tightening as he prepared to stake everything on one desperate blow. The Peach Blossom secret art, Soul-Tugging, operated at high speed. He raised the Matter-Settling Blade in his left hand and the Hidden Name in his right, and the first thing to respond was the mud beneath his feet.

Moisture evaporated. The mire dried out into powder and drifted away.

Then came the tree trunks farther off, red witherings and green fading, yellowing branches and wilting leaves.

Then, farther still, the river water slowed, growing clearer and clearer, transparent to the brink of nothing.

And the twin blades in his hands unquestionably began to grow heavier, fuller, even visibly swollen, as if they might split apart at any moment.

All things are born from spiritual force. At this instant, all the spiritual energy within a radius had been gathered entirely into Chen Chang'an alone.

"What is going on? Is he really a martial artist?"

"Such a method is neither martial nor daoist, neither Confucian nor Buddhist. How peculiar!"

Ying Si, who had throughout carried himself with utter casualness, finally felt a trace of killing intent. Facing the howl surging straight at his face, he gripped the Water Reflection Sword.

"Honestly, I very much want to know just how powerful Immortal-Slaying becomes under the augmentation of Soul-Tugging!"

Whoosh!

Crash!

Once the gathering and absorption was complete, Chen Chang'an slashed out with both blades at once. Two gales, each carrying rolling blade intent, interwove and strangled one another, then surged toward Ying Si like a heaven-filling torrent, darkening the sky and changing the colors of the wind and clouds.

Bang!

Shocked but unwilling to underestimate it, Ying Si's arms swelled like stacked hills, veins bulging in layers, making his whole body seem much larger. With a lifting slash, the Water Reflection Sword burst forth in a raging blaze carrying power enough to destroy heaven and earth.

Boom!

The two tremendous forces collided and shuddered, frightening beasts and startling birds for miles around. It almost seemed as though the foundations of all Stone Bridge Town had sunk by half a meter in an instant.

Before the reverberations had faded, a crack tore open through the sword flame, and Ying Si charged in with his sword in hand, riding fire and stepping upon flames.

"Damn it... didn't land a scratch?"

Chen Chang'an's fragile heart gave a jolt, and the thought of fleeing once again seized his mind. Unfortunately, in practical terms it was too late for anything. In less than half a breath, Ying Si was already before him.

Pshk.

The sword pierced Chen Chang'an's heart, clean and decisive, without the slightest hesitation.

"Ah!"

He let out the first scream since his transformation from a tiny tadpole, a howl fused of extreme agony and terror. Hot sweat sprang from every inch of his skin like jets from a syringe.

He could clearly feel his heartbeat weakening, his breathing failing.

No... I can't die. Putting aside the common dream of all travelers to return to Mother Earth's embrace, at the very least I have to accomplish something in Great Min.

He was unwilling to accept this.

Even properly marrying a wife, even getting to experience, once, what it meant to come and go along a frost-white wooded path, would count as some measure of success.

No, I want to live!

For that instant, in half a second, Chen Chang'an's thoughts turned a hundred times.

His outward response was the ceaseless strengthening of the force coursing through his body, rising again and again.

At last, he broke through the peak of body refinement and formally stepped over the threshold into the second rank, the Soul-Cultivation realm.

Crack, crack, crack!

Almost at the same time, a half-segment of dark black, charcoal-like bone flew out from his chest and slammed straight toward Ying Si.

"Ah, this is..."

A primal fear seized both Ying Si's heart and face. Before he could even pull out the Water Reflection Sword stuck in Chen Chang'an's heart, he flipped back on his own and retreated dozens of meters away.

The broken bone did not give chase. Instead, it hovered two or three arm-spans in front of Chen Chang'an, trembling violently. Then countless dark purple lightning bolts twisted and burst forth from within it like clawing fangs, converging on Ying Si and A Man.

"No good. Isn't Senior Brother Xing's demonic bone always controlled by the Blood Ancestor? Why has it appeared here?"

"The demonic formation aura in Stone Bridge Town last night was definitely related to him." A Man, watching from the side, was so frightened that her speech grew shaky and unclear.

Ying Si kept retreating. "I don't know. Just run!"

"But the Water Reflection Sword..."

"Run any later and we'll lose our lives."

In utter panic, Ying Si and A Man flanked the mysterious figure whose identity remained hidden, that soul-less, walking corpse of a man, and flashed away in twisted bursts, fleeing madly.

Chen Chang'an used his hand to shield his eyes from the intense divine light that stabbed painfully at his pupils, and looked on with difficulty. "Wasn't this the bone picked up from Monk One-Eyebrow's corpse? Why is its power so enormous?"

Whoosh!

As he muttered in confusion, the half-segment of charcoal bone came hurtling toward his right shoulder with a shrill howl of tearing air. The moment they made contact, it passed directly through Chen Chang'an's flesh and sinews and entered the structure of his bones.

Crack, crack, crack!

His whole arm felt as if a red-hot iron nail had been driven into it. It was searing and unbearable, making him grit his teeth until his eyes nearly split open, strings of saliva dripping down in long, endless trails.

Through the nerves conducting within his body, he could clearly sense the half-segment of Monk One-Eyebrow's charcoal bone boring and embedding itself into the connection between his shoulder blade and arm.

There was no angle to adjust and no special method to use; it simply forced its way in, crude and brutal.

One must know that where a human's bones meet, there is no gap to be found. Even water, which seeps into everything, could not do it. And yet, amid a series of cracking sounds, the front end of Monk One-Eyebrow's charcoal bone shoved through the connection between Chen Chang'an's shoulder blade and arm and ground itself inside.

"Ah!"

The pain was so violent, so heartbreakingly intense, that after a few ragged gasps Chen Chang'an could no longer endure it and fainted.

One minute...

Two minutes...

...

...

Many minutes...

Countless minutes...

When he woke again and his blurred vision slowly swept around, he found the bridge broken, the waters still, the trees withered and their leaves yellowed. Hua Mulan still lay where she had been before, never having moved, and the whole area was littered with the traces of a fierce battle.

As for his own body, the most immediate aftereffects were nothing more than a dry throat, a parched mouth, and weakness all over. Every slight breath tugged at his cracked purple lips, splitting them as though they had been burned.

He tried several times to stand and drink some water, but every attempt failed. In the end he could only crawl slowly toward the riverbank, yet the moment he extended his hand, his expression changed drastically.

Holy hell... how... how can this be?