Free Web NovelChapter 281: Chapter 267: Starry Sky I
A dark, starry sky!?
What was that!?
The bizarre and terrifying oppressive force reminded Tuyue of the shock and fear she had felt when she first saw the Wheel of Longevity.
"You... knew I would...!?" Blood trickled from the corner of Tuyue’s mouth as she stared at him in disbelief.
"I didn’t know," Lin Hui said as he drew his longsword. "I just make it a habit to conceal myself."
"As for whether it would be you or someone else, I couldn’t have known."
"Heh, don’t think... don’t you think you’ve won! You can’t kill me!" Tuyue suddenly roared. "Xie Jun! Make your move!"
Silence!
Tuyue turned her head in disbelief, only to see Xie Jun’s face etched with an expression of shocked terror.
"What are you waiting for!? Make your move!! Aaaahhh!!!"
Midway through, Tuyue’s roar twisted into an agonized shriek.
"You... your Evil Soldier!!! The Wheel of Longevity!!" Xie Jun trembled from head to toe. "It’s... abandoning you!?"
From his perspective, Tuyue’s entire lower body had disintegrated into a mist of blood. That mist was now rapidly condensing into a small, fleshy wheel, forcefully tearing itself away from her body.
Countless blood vessels and nerves from Tuyue’s upper torso were being yanked out by the Wheel of Longevity, snapping as they were torn free.
"!?" At first, Tuyue thought it was an illusion, a hallucination, but after checking again and again, she realized it was actually happening!
"No!!!" Fear finally gripped her. She let out a piercing shriek as seawater flooded into her mouth.
Lin Hui had already retreated some distance, silently watching the scene unfold. This was the first time he had used the Star Breath Sword Manual.
The Sacred Form of Life.
After using a Sword Technique from the Star Breath Sword Manual to severely wound a Fog Person, he could use his ability to control all gases to forcibly inject something of his own during their body’s reformation process...
...such as a massive amount of Disaster Energy.
This was what led to Tuyue’s current predicament.
He had used his control over gases to forcibly send Disaster Energy into Tuyue’s reforming body, all without producing any detectable energy fluctuations.
This was merely a test.
A test to determine what criteria an Evil Soldier used to identify its host.
And from the looks of it, ’it really is the simplest method: identification by flesh and blood...’
"This means... the fusion with an Evil Soldier can actually be stolen..." Lin Hui said softly.
"What did you do!?" Tuyue’s wretched shriek grew more shrill.
The sound made Xie Jun tremble, and he backed away step by step.
WHOOSH!
The next second, he turned into a blur and vanished in the blink of an eye.
Lin Hui didn’t have time to bother with him, because Tuyue had begun her final, desperate struggle.
She desperately gripped the Wheel of Longevity, refusing to let it tear away from her. Her body began to rapidly turn ashen before suddenly shattering into countless gray-white spores.
The countless spores forced the surrounding seawater aside, converging once more into a massive, gray-white hand that closed around Lin Hui.
The hand was dozens of meters wide, but its presence was far, far weaker than the previous Descent of the Heart God.
Before it could even fully clench its fist, black glints of sword light erupted from within, instantly dicing it into dozens of pieces that fell and dispersed.
Lin Hui floated out from the center, his long hair drifting behind him. The expanse of black, starry sky flickered in and out of existence behind him.
"Right now, you’re so weak it’s nauseating."
"You just wait! You just wait! I will be back!" Tuyue’s ashen fragments slowly faded, turning transparent and then vanishing as her voice trailed off into the distance.
As her body rapidly reformed, a precious relic she carried—a small, pearl-like bead—instantly shattered. A vast, bizarre, and icy power surged out, forcibly dyeing the surroundings a monotonous gray-white.
In her vision, everything slowed to a near-standstill.
She once again entered a state of divine speed. Without a moment’s hesitation, she endured the excruciating pain, grabbed the Wheel of Longevity, and darted away from the Black Cloud.
"As a noble and innately powerful Fog Person, how could you choose to flee!?"
Lin Hui’s voice came from directly in front of her.
As if he had teleported, the man who should have been slowed to a crawl by the relic’s power now stood directly in her path.
"!?" Tuyue froze. Looking back, she saw a figure of white light standing where Lin Hui had just been. Its silhouette was identical to his!
’Did some kind of body-double Secret Technique absorb the relic’s effect!?’
Before she could react, the figure of white light slowly dissipated, leaving only Lin Hui himself.
Under normal circumstances, she might have been interested in studying this phenomenon. But right now, for reasons she couldn’t fathom, the Wheel of Longevity inside her had been trying to separate from her ever since he’d run her through with his sword.
"Stay still!" Tuyue frantically slapped the Wheel of Longevity. The heavy blow, however, felt like a lightning strike to her own body, and she coughed up a mouthful of blood.
SHING!
In that instant, her vision went black.
A sharp pain shot through her chest.
By the time her senses returned, she had already been sliced into upper and lower halves.
Lin Hui appeared before her, his sword held high in one hand, his eyes glowing with a profound blue light.
The dark, starry sky behind him unfurled once more, but this time, it seemed much vaster than before.
If before it had only covered a radius of dozens of meters, it now enveloped hundreds. All the seawater within sight was painted over with the backdrop of a dark, starry sky.
Most terrifying of all, his already horrifyingly oppressive aura had now intensified by an unimaginable degree.
"No, that’s not it!" Tuyue suddenly realized.
"It’s not that he’s gotten stronger... It’s that I’ve gotten weaker!"
She jerked her head down to look at the Wheel of Longevity, only to find that even this simple movement was now incredibly difficult.
From being inexplicably too slow to react to his stab, to being sliced in two, and now this...
Time and again, she had been struck without understanding how. He didn’t seem to be doing anything special—just simple draws and swings of his sword, with no Secret Techniques to be seen.
And yet, inexplicably, she had been hit before she even knew what was happening.
’What... what in the world is this!?’ An inexplicable panic began to grip Tuyue’s heart.
"Can’t figure it out?" Lin Hui raised Ruyi again, a cold smile on his face. "A pity. I have no intention of explaining it to you."
This was the first level of the Star Breath Sword Manual: The Sacred Form of Life.
A powerful domain that reigned over all surrounding gaseous fields.
This domain didn’t have the massive area of effect of Typhoon Swordsmanship. Instead, it had a Special Effect that attached to an enemy upon contact, pulling them into his domain.
This domain was only visible when Lin Hui wished for it to be.
It did not exist materially in reality, nor did it exist within the Heart and Spirit. It was the most unique domain Lin Hui had ever encountered.
The Star Breath Sword Manual’s dominion existed in a special dimension called the Star Energy Layer, a dimension that could influence the very source of many things in both reality and the plane of the Heart and Spirit.
Once touched by a longsword imbued with the power of the Star Breath Sword Manual, one would forever suffer this special domain’s powerful suppression of all gaseous substances within their body, unless it was dispelled by a power from the same dimension.
In truth, he hadn’t changed at all. His constitution, strength, and speed remained the same.
But Tuyue had.
Her speed grew slower, her reactions more sluggish.
In short, a single touch from him was all it took to gain control over every gaseous substance in her body.
Fog People didn’t need oxygen, but their bodies still contained many special gases dissolved in their blood. They also possessed numerous gaseous, bizarre powers and special gases within their joint cavities.
These gases were indispensable to the structure of their bodies. Now, with them under complete control, the strain on Tuyue’s body was pushing it to its absolute limit.
And for good measure, Lin Hui had directly stuffed a bit of Disaster Energy into her body...
However, even Lin Hui couldn’t understand why the Wheel of Longevity would abandon Tuyue. If it were as simple as adding a foreign substance into a reforming Fog Person, someone would have figured it out long ago.
He wouldn’t be the first to discover it now.
Reason told him it was likely related to the Star Breath Sword Manual.
But now was not the time for research.
"For my head disciple, Tao Xuehai." Lin Hui gently swung his blade downward.
SHHCK!
The blade sliced directly through the fleshy connection between the Wheel of Longevity and Tuyue.
"No!! Don’t!" Tuyue shrieked, attempting to block, but her speed was no match for Lin Hui’s.
In an instant, the sword strike cleanly severed all connections between her and the Wheel of Longevity.
The dark red flesh snapped back to either side like springs.
Tuyue felt her connection to the Wheel of Longevity rapidly fading, growing more distant.
Once it was gone, she would revert to her original body of flesh and blood—the body of an ordinary Grandmaster Martial Artist.
That was right. When she had first fused with the Evil Soldier, she was just an ordinary person. It was only by occasionally practicing martial arts over the subsequent millennia that she became what could be considered a qualified, though unremarkable, Little Sanhe Grandmaster.
No... that’s not right!
Suddenly, there was a faint, soft sound.
Strange tumors began to bulge from Tuyue’s face. Her body began to rapidly swell and expand.
Slender, sword-shaped black crystals began to sprout from her body, piercing through her skin in a chaotic mess.
At the same time, her skin began to rapidly putrefy, its fair and delicate surface turning a sickening, rotten dark red.
"No... This is... decay!?"
She shrieked, her voice filled with utter despair.
"Why!? Why would I... lose to you!?"
Taking advantage of the last vestiges of her connection to her Heart and Spirit, she forcibly activated an Evil Energy technique: Lifespan Drain.
But the moment the Evil Energy surged out and made invisible contact with Lin Hui, it was repelled by a boundless, tyrannical force.
PTUI!
Tuyue coughed up another spray of blood mist, dyeing the surrounding seawater red.
The black starry sky behind Lin Hui seemed to have been provoked; it began to shimmer with countless points of silver starlight.
Those countless points of light were like innumerable silver eyes, constantly opening, closing, and blinking—a bizarre and skin-crawling sight.
Thwip.
Lin Hui flashed behind Tuyue, and Ruyi glinted.
A swollen, hideous, dark red head flew high into the water, tumbling with the current toward the dark Sea Abyss.
Finally, all was silent.
The process of decay in Tuyue’s body was forcibly halted. The headless corpse hung motionless in the water for a few seconds before silently crumbling into black dust that dissolved into the sea.
As for the severed Wheel of Longevity, it flickered a few times like a phantom before silently vanishing without a trace.
