Free Web NovelChapter 276: Chapter 263: Sea Battle 1
"Draw your sword," Lin Hui said.
"?" Xia Si’s head snapped up, and she stared at Lin Hui.
"Strike at me," Lin Hui said calmly.
Xia Si gritted her teeth.
"Disciple... I’m afraid... I’m afraid I’ll hurt you, Teacher..."
"If you can defeat me, you will be the next Daoist Master of the Clear Wind Dao. I will bestow upon you our school’s strongest, most central, final Dharma Seal!" Lin Hui’s hand gently closed around Ruyi.
"Disciple... Disciple..." A terrifying Heart and Spirit, far surpassing that of a High Priest and even exceeding the Realm of a Palace Master-level Summoner, began to surge from Xia Si.
How long had it been?
In less than a year, the girl had actually grown to this extent.
Lin Hui was inwardly shaken.
Although his own strength had increased significantly over the past half-year, he was different. He had the Blood Seal and cultivated the Star Breath Sword Manual, a world-ending level of Martial Arts far stronger than Typhoon Swordsmanship.
Yes, that was his own classification.
If the Star Breath Sword Manual were mastered to its peak, the memories infused within it showed that a single swing of the sword could trigger the Breath of the Stars, capable of annihilating a city the size of Tuyue.
On the Earth of his past life, a few more swings of that magnitude would have been enough to exterminate all life on the planet’s surface within seconds.
But Xia Si was different. She was relying purely on her own foundation and aptitude. In just over half a year, she had seemingly leaped from a High Priest to the Blood Ancestor Realm!?
She was almost catching up to Su Yaping.
HISS.
In an instant, a vast, strange cloud of burning golden mist suddenly erupted from Xia Si’s body.
Within the strange mist, a white wooden door faintly appeared. The door had a rectangular protrusion in the center and a black handle.
The door was surrounded by a dense throng of massive, black-and-white human faces, crowding around it.
The faces had no bodies, only heads that floated like balloons.
They all pressed against the wooden door, their countless resentful eyes fixed on Lin Hui.
AHHH!!
The next moment, all the faces shrieked in unison at Lin Hui.
At that same moment, Xia Si raised her head. The golden mist rapidly retracted, flowing back into her body and vanishing completely.
Now, her eyes had transformed into a hollow, pale gold.
Seeing this, Lin Hui faintly guessed at a possibility.
But this was no time for deep thought.
His feet lifted gently from the ground as he floated into the air. With his right hand, he slowly drew Ruyi, pointing it diagonally toward the ground.
"It seems you’ve remembered some things..."
"Teacher... you... you’re truly too strong... so strong that, even after remembering my past, I still didn’t dare... to raise my sword against you..." Xia Si’s voice was low and trembling.
"But you’ve done it now," Lin Hui said with a smile.
"Yes..." Xia Si closed her eyes, holding the Black Sword level at her side. "After receiving the inheritance of the Typhoon Swordsmanship, this disciple knew that merely chasing after you would never grant me a chance of victory!"
"But do you realize," Lin Hui gently twirled Ruyi, "that if you don’t chase, you might lose even the chance to see my back...?"
"I don’t believe you!" Xia Si threw her head back. A great torrent of golden mist erupted from her golden eyes.
She took a deep breath, gripped her sword with both hands, and looked up at the smiling Lin Hui in mid-air.
"Wind!!"
In that instant, the same word erupted from both their mouths.
One voice explosive, one calm.
A gale arose.
A terrifying torrent of air formed two immense, grayish-white cyclones hundreds of meters high, swiftly enveloping them both.
The moment they formed, the two cyclones smashed violently into each other.
「Beneath the sea in the distance.」
The Fourth Princess, Song Feishi, who had long been lurking in secret, was now watching the battle between master and student with rapt attention.
Her gaze was locked on Xia Si. From the moment Xia Si had revealed the golden mist, she had focused most of her attention on the girl.
’Purgatory and Extreme Cold have both appeared... Is it Hui Jing’s turn now...? The decay is accelerating, and numerous calamities are re-emerging... This world...’
This world contained not only Purgatory and Extreme Cold; many other types of powers had once tried to invade it.
In fact, according to the earliest history her father had told her, this world didn’t even have decay in the beginning...
Decay was the first to invade and establish dominance.
Ever since, it had constantly expelled and suppressed other powers that also tried to invade.
And Hui Jing was a Pollution Power slightly stronger than Purgatory and Extreme Cold...
Her attention drifted for a moment, and by the time she refocused, the battle outside was already reaching its end.
Song Feishi cleared her mind of stray thoughts and concentrated her senses on the scene once more.
「In the circular martial arts arena.」
Lin Hui was still floating in the same spot. After the collision of the cyclones, he had a rough idea of the strength of Xia Si’s Gale Swordsmanship.
’It’s very strong. It’s already at the level of Han Sanmian...’
Gale Swordsmanship itself was a style adept at drawing upon unknown external forces; it was just that now, instead of the Wind Calamity, it was channeling a different, powerful force.
Furthermore, aside from its sheer strength, this power of Xia Si’s seemed to hide a strange, corrosive quality.
The moment that corrosive power touched his own, it dyed a portion of his Disaster Energy gray before shattering it, causing it to fall and scatter like sand.
This came as quite a surprise to Lin Hui.
He knew that his current Inner Strength—or rather, his Disaster Energy—was a formidable power formed from the fusion of a massive influx of the Wind Calamity’s power.
It possessed an extremely strong infectious quality of its own.
He never expected that his opponent’s power could even corrode Disaster Energy like his!
Although it required a greater ratio—about ten to one—to corrode and convert his energy, this still meant her power was on a level close to that of the Wind Calamity.
’Why does every one of my disciples have some kind of issue... That Fan Lingxi is tied to the Extreme Cold Heaven, and now Xia Si is mixed up with this unknown power... Is my luck just that bad, or are these forces deliberately choosing the people around me?’
Lin Hui had a faint feeling that the root of the problem might be related to the Swordsmanship itself.
As his attention wandered for a second, a huge, twisted, gray-black sword condensed from the gale suddenly shot toward him.
The greatsword passed right through his body with a BOOM.
Lin Hui turned to look at the stunned Xia Si.
"This is the Typhoon Swordsmanship you’ve always wanted to learn..."
SHING.
He actually sheathed Ruyi directly and then casually opened his arms wide.
"Come on, use your full strength!"
AHHH!!!
A brilliant golden light flared in Xia Si’s eyes as she landed steadily on the ground. The white wooden door faintly materialized behind her.
The crack in the door slowly opened, and a large amount of fresh red blood flowed out from the gap.
She gripped her sword with both hands. Countless streams of fresh blood mixed with the air around her blade, merging with the cyclone and dyeing it completely red.
An incredibly dangerous aura emanated from the red, blade-like cyclone.
The Longsword in her hand began to rapidly absorb the cyclone and all the blood.
The entire body of the Longsword turned from black to a dark red, its edge shimmering with a fine, flowing luster like ripples on water.
Her figure moved like lightning, vanishing in an instant and reappearing beside Lin Hui like a skyrocket before she unleashed a horizontal slash.
TSS!
The blade still passed right through Lin Hui’s body.
Completely unharmed.
The golden light in Xia Si’s eyes grew more violent, flickering erratically. She floated crazily in the air before Lin Hui, her hands a complete blur. All that could be seen was a circular curtain of red sword light that completely enveloped Lin Hui.
But it was useless.
Every single attack passed through Lin Hui’s phantom-like form, achieving nothing.
"It’s useless... This is the Typhoon Swordsmanship you’ve always yearned for but could never master," Lin Hui said calmly, standing within the furious curtain of sword strikes.
"I... don’t believe you!!" Xia Si frantically increased her Sword Speed again.
Faster!
Faster!
Faster!!
Even faster!!
She roared inwardly, and under her frantic urging, the Black Sword in her hands began to absorb even more of the blood pouring from the door.
Its speed actually increased yet again.
Watching this, the hidden Song Feishi’s heart sank.
’This is dangerous. She’s about to enter the rift phase!!’
When Pollution Powers like Purgatory, Extreme Cold Heaven, and Hui Jing invaded, it always began with a simple infection phase.
After that came the fusion phase, which was Xia Si’s current state.
Both of these phases were still somewhat controllable. With the natural resistance from the power of decay within the mist, it wasn’t a major problem.
But the most troublesome was the third phase—the rift phase.
Once this phase was entered, the gate of infection would open completely. The reason fortresses were built to seal the Gate of Purgatory and the Gate of Extreme Cold was that the opening of a gate during the rift phase was irreversible.
Once the rift phase began, the Hui Jing rift would start to be noticed by countless dangerous creatures from the world on the other side. Countless powerful individuals from over there would swiftly converge on the rift, leading to a large-scale disaster of monster influx and pollution.
She grew slightly tense.
The power and Secret Techniques unleashed in the duel before her were trivial in her eyes, but if that rift fully opened and stabilized, it would likely attract incredibly troublesome Hui Jing monsters. Those were the truly dangerous things.
Even she would have to deal with them carefully.
So she grew more alert, ready to act the moment Xia Si truly opened the Hui Jing rift. Even if it meant exposing herself, she had to completely plug and close that rift!
A thread of golden electricity condensed in her hand. The arc wove itself into an exquisite, complex, and magnificent character.
The character spun slowly, like a top.
"Teach...er!!! I... I’m about... to lose... control..." By now, the curtain of light from Xia Si’s swinging blades had reached a terrifying speed.
The curtain of light had almost become a solid, dark red.
And at its center, Lin Hui was like an illusory existence, flickering continuously yet remaining completely unharmed.
"I taught you this long ago." Lin Hui gripped the Ruyi Sword Handle. "The difference between a man and a beast is controlling power versus being controlled by it."
"And beasts are fit only to become our food."
HISS.
He slowly drew Ruyi.
He gazed at the ever-widening crack in the wooden door behind Xia Si.
"You’re tired. It’s time to rest."
A slight smile touched his face.
BOOM!!!
In the next instant, his entire body flickered, transforming for a moment into his blue-haired Magic Body form.
Ruyi became a horizontal streak of blue light that shot through the curtain of blades, through Xia Si, and through the wooden door before slowly dissipating.
WHOOSH...
Everything fell silent.
The gale dissipated, becoming a gentle breeze.
Lin Hui sheathed his sword, back in his normal state, and looked at Xia Si, who had fallen completely still.
"Do you understand now?"
Xia Si stared at him blankly and gave a stiff nod.
In that one instant, the terrifying power she believed to be infinite had, under the Ruyi Sword, popped like a soap bubble, shattering and vanishing in a flash.
It was as if nothing had ever happened.
As if the power, the rage from just moments ago, had all been an illusion...
Lin Hui said no more. He turned and flew away, his figure blurring into an afterimage and slowly fading after only a short distance.
At that moment, Xia Si plummeted from the sky with a THUD. She sat dazedly on the ground, speechless, amidst the circular martial arts arena that had long been reduced to rubble.
Meanwhile, beneath the waves, the golden character in Song Feishi’s hand slowly dissipated.
A moment ago, she had almost made her move, but...
That strike from Lin Hui...
The memory of that incredibly fast strike replayed endlessly in her mind...
Song Feishi closed her eyes.
"Interesting... This Lin Hui is becoming more and more interesting..."
The corners of her mouth curled up slightly. She was more certain than ever that coming to Black Cloud had been an absolutely correct choice.
