The Decaying World

Chapter 182: Chapter 172: Epiphany, Part 2

"I’ve told you countless times, that move of yours is meaningless. It’s useless no matter how many times you call for it. You’re weak but you don’t even know it. Attempting to challenge the strong is your greatest arrogance." Black Death’s brow furrowed, a hint of impatience showing.

But Tao Xuehai, though barely conscious, still struggled to push himself up. He gripped his broken sword, his unfocused eyes locked on Black Death.

He struggled, wanting to call out again for his partner’s response. But his body was too weak; he no longer had the strength to even summon the power of the gales.

His throat felt as if a knife had been stabbed into it and gotten stuck—agonizing, blocked, making it almost impossible to breathe.

"Foolish!" Black Death unclenched his fists and slowly walked over. If he couldn’t recruit him, he might as well put him to sleep forever.

But in the next instant, he froze. His expression changed slightly as he looked behind Tao Xuehai.

At some point, a black-clad figure wearing a four-faced mask had appeared there.

The figure stood silently behind Tao Xuehai, bent their knees, and grasped the broken sword in his hand, enveloping Tao Xuehai’s own hand in their grip.

"Ma...ster..." Tao Xuehai sensed something and dazedly tried to lift his head, but his immense weakness prevented him from even this simple action.

"I saw everything..." Lin Hui said softly. "You did very well. You have walked a path I have never seen, and witnessed a landscape I have never known."

In the beginning, he had only cultivated Tao Xuehai as a tool, a future figurehead for the sect. But later, the boy had shown him profound respect, always considering his master’s needs and well-being.

He wasn’t made of stone, after all.

He had gradually come to truly value their master-disciple relationship, despite the small age gap between them.

And just now, alerted by the change in airflow, he had rushed over and witnessed the moment Tao Xuehai grasped his own version of Gale Swordsmanship.

Not by treating the gales as a blade, as he did, but by seeing them as a partner, merging with them, and becoming one with them.

And at the very moment he saw this, his own Body Tempering progress with Typhoon Swordsmanship had inexplicably surged. He estimated he would be able to break through to a new realm again soon.

Gripping Tao Xuehai’s hand, he helped him to his feet.

A dim red light flashed in Lin Hui’s eyes.

"Do you remember what I taught you?"

"That was my understanding of the gales. You could never learn it, no matter how hard you tried. It seems now that it was my path alone, not yours."

He raised the broken sword horizontally, looking at the grim-faced Black Death. The man seemed to sense what was coming. He, too, raised his fists, immense, ghostly blue Inner Strength gathering around them. At the same time, black patterns began to appear and flow across his upper body.

’Is it that same move again? Pointless.’ Black Death recognized Lin Hui’s opening stance—it was the same as Tao Xuehai’s just moments ago. A flicker of impatience crossed his eyes.

Lin Hui didn’t reply. He simply lowered his gaze, focusing on the body of the sword.

"Wind."

There was no shout, no plea.

It was a command.

BOOM!!!

In the next instant, gales far more violent than before shrieked to life, beginning to spin thunderously around them.

In that moment, all the fog for hundreds of meters around began to churn, forming a massive white vortex.

All the monsters in the Fog Area were involuntarily swept up, losing their balance.

Withered trees swayed violently, pulling and tearing until their roots were exposed.

Dirt and gravel were lifted by the wind, merging into the torrent.

Dry weeds and branches snapped and disintegrated, becoming a gray-black vortex that revolved slowly around Lin Hui.

The seemingly slow rotation was actually a visual illusion caused by its incredible speed. freewёbnoνel.com

"What Martial Arts is this!?" Black Death’s Inner Strength was buffeted like a candle flame about to be extinguished. He had to divert a considerable amount of his Inner Strength just to keep his footing and not lose his balance.

Witnessing the exaggerated, cataclysmic scene around him, even someone who had lived for several hundred years like him couldn’t keep his composure.

He had seen many Martial Arts or Divine Decisions with exaggerated areas of effect, but none had ever shaken him as much as this.

That strange quality, as if summoning a natural disaster to do one’s bidding, created an immense, suffocating pressure in his heart.

This was a completely different domain from the Temporal Perception Domain of a Palace Master. It was also the polar opposite of Mingji’s ultimate enhancement of self and Inner Strength.

It wasn’t just him; Tao Xuehai also witnessed this scene, this exaggerated spectacle that resembled a natural disaster.

The surrounding fog was swept up by the wind, entrained within it, and spun violently all around.

It suppressed everything in the vicinity, forcing it all down.

Even Black Death, the arrogant Vice Sect Leader of the Qinghe Sect, could only grimly struggle to maintain his stance, fighting not to be thrown off balance by the gales.

His eyes widened, the haze in his mind seemingly blasted away by an adrenaline shot from the scene before him, his consciousness returning to sharp focus.

"Tao Xuehai, watch closely."

Lin Hui lowered the broken sword.

"The ultimate goal of the gales... is to bring stillness."

This was his enlightenment, his profound understanding from practicing the Gale Sword and Typhoon Sword.

Gripping the broken sword tightly, Lin Hui swung it lightly.

SHING!

In the next instant, he vanished from his spot.

The swirling gales propelled him, accelerating him instantaneously to his maximum—his fastest, his strongest!

PFFT!!

The next moment.

A silver light, like a streak of silver lightning, flashed across Black Death’s chest.

Power so immense it was terrifying, stacked with Sword Speed pushed to its absolute limit, brought forth the ultimate destructive force.

Black Death was still in his fighting stance, not even having had time to strike, when he felt a sharp pain in his chest.

A massive, bloody gash appeared on his body as if from nowhere. In the blink of an eye, a sword wound as wide as a fist had been carved into him.

The wound cut clean through his entire torso, from front to back. One could even see the fog behind him, which had also been sliced open by the sword, through the gash.

Lin Hui’s figure appeared like a phantom behind him. The broken sword in his hand silently disintegrated, turning to dust that scattered in the wind.

Turning back, he saw Black Death’s body also crumble with the wind, dissolving into countless black particles before vanishing completely.

’Another one fused with a counterfeit Insect Scripture?’

His body twitched, wanting to follow the enemy’s now much fainter aura, but he stopped after taking only a single step.

He turned to look at Tao Xuehai, who had collapsed and fallen unconscious again.

With a sigh, he flickered over, grabbed the boy by his sash, and vanished swiftly into the fog.

*

*

*

「Qinghe Sect Headquarters.」

BAM!

Black Death crashed down heavily from mid-air, landing on one knee. He then stood up, straightened his robes, and walked toward the spot where Sect Leader Situ Ye usually stared into space.

"Well, if it isn’t Brother Black Death, who went out to lead the capture team?" a sarcastic female voice suddenly drifted from a stone door behind him.

A fair-skinned woman with a black shawl of hair slowly walked out from the doorway.

The woman wore a luxurious black robe with gold trim and a golden, eye-shaped ornament on her forehead. Her face was bewitchingly beautiful, her figure full and curvaceous. Even the way she walked exuded a strange allure that uncontrollably brought carnal thoughts to mind.

"It seems you’re injured? And not lightly? Who in the Outer City could possibly harm our esteemed Vice Sect Leader Black Death?" the woman said with a beaming smile.

"Shouldn’t you be serving your Fog Spirit? Did you run all the way here just to laugh at me?" Black Death Cao Xianzhong said coldly.

He never had a good impression of these lunatics who served the Fog Spirit. Although he wasn’t exactly normal himself, compared to these madmen who would torture and sacrifice their own kind at the drop of a hat, he was practically a saint.

"I came here for a reason, naturally," the woman smiled.

Black Death snorted coldly and didn’t press the matter. One after the other, the two of them quickly arrived behind Sect Leader Situ Ye’s stone throne.

Looking at Situ Ye from behind, one could see that the Sect Leader’s entire body was constantly covered in a thin, purple-black barrier of light.

If anyone thought he was just spacing out and tried to launch a sneak attack, they would be courting death.

This layer of purple light was the result of a special Divine Decision that Situ Ye cultivated. It could continuously accumulate power through daily practice until the moment it was triggered, at which point it would unleash all its stored power at once, destroying any attacker.

"You’re here?" Situ Ye had sensed their auras.

He slowly rose and turned to face them.

The moment he saw them, his gaze suddenly focused on Black Death Cao Xianzhong.

"You’re injured? And badly?"

"Yes... I received a report that the Profound Eagle Sect’s Dharma Protector, Profound Mysterious Sword Wu Hai, had secretly gone to Qingfeng Temple. I’ve taken an interest in this Profound Mysterious Sword fellow; his talent is absurd. I thought if I could recruit him into our sect, he would definitely..." Cao Xianzhong didn’t finish his sentence before Situ Ye cut him off.

"So you couldn’t defeat Profound Mysterious Sword?"

"Of course not. That kid, Profound Mysterious Sword, may have astonishing talent, but he’s still young. At his limit, he’s a one-slap affair. The problem was his master showed up afterward... That Sword Speed... it was countless times faster than his disciple’s... I was careless, I wasn’t paying attention, and so..."

"But that still shouldn’t have been enough to injure you this badly," Situ Ye frowned.

"I’m not sure either, but I did feel a scorching power rush into the wound at the time, burning away a lot of my Insect Fog," Cao Xianzhong recalled. "I was originally going to continue fighting him, but I was too heavily injured in that one blow. My condition faltered, and I couldn’t recover, so I had to retreat first."

Although he felt it was unlikely he could have beaten that person even if he had stayed, admitting he was that useless in front of his own people would not be a good look.

"As long as you know what you’re doing. Don’t let your personal matters delay our main objective," Situ Ye reminded him.

"Don’t worry." Cao Xianzhong nodded. Although his chest felt a little hot and itchy, he figured it was just an aftereffect from before, or maybe just his imagination.

*

*

*

「The rear residence of Qingfeng Temple.」

Lin Hui stood silently by the window, gazing at the dark, deep night fog swirling outside. His fingers caressed the Silencing Stone, a relic he had just gotten from his disciple.

Suddenly, a pained groan came from the bed behind him.

Tao Xuehai slowly woke from his coma. His entire body ached with excruciating pain, but fortunately, it had fully recovered, having regrown completely.

He slowly propped himself up, and the first thing he saw was his master, Lin Hui, standing by the window with his hands behind his back.

Instantly, a flood of memories from the recent events rushed back into his mind.

A series of images flashed by, finally freezing on the moment his master, holding the broken sword, had rematerialized behind Black Death.

"You’re awake?" Lin Hui turned around and looked his way.

"Your injuries are fine; they’ve all healed. The counterfeit Insect Scripture is truly extraordinary, as expected."

"Master..." Looking at Lin Hui now, Tao Xuehai suddenly felt that all his previous suspicions had been confirmed and connected.

He had suspected from the beginning that Lin Hui couldn’t possibly have only the strength of the Circulation realm. The person who could create a Martial Art as formidable as Gale Swordsmanship couldn’t be a mere ordinary Circulation practitioner.

And the scene that had just unfolded undoubtedly proved this point.

His master... he was an incredibly powerful Grandmaster-level Martial Artist who had been hiding his strength all along.

He had experienced firsthand how strong Black Death, the Vice Sect Leader of the Qinghe Sect, was. He was a top-tier expert, a cut above even a typical High Priest, and only a hair’s breadth away from the realm of a Palace Master.

Yet an expert of that caliber had become so frail and weak before his master.

As he recalled the recent events, the emotions in Tao Xuehai’s heart grew even more intense.

That sword, that wind... it had shown him another path for Gale Swordsmanship, one of extreme power.

"Wait, Master, the medicine! I left my medicine in the Fog Area! The new one I found!" Tao Xuehai suddenly remembered something.