Archfiend

Chapter 277: Tianzi Mountain and the Azure Snake’s Treasury (1)

“Master, how about we have the others from the Xingtian Legion to come?

“No.” Xu Yangyi shook his head. “They have even more important things to do now.”

He had contacted his allies to prepare supplies for the heavenly paradise campaign. He was determined to obtain victory! Moreover… at this moment, his heart was saturated with killing intent. He wanted to resolve this karma on his own.

Without hesitation, the duo advanced towards the Tianzi Mountain depths. Although the designated mountain wasn’t tall, it was located in the deepest part of the Tianzi Mountain scenic area. There were no words exchanged along their journey and no danger whatsoever. Xiaoqing’s key automatically guided them ahead. Nonetheless, Xu Yangyi didn’t relax his guard because of this, instead opting to keep a constant hold of unrestricted spiritual sense. Once his spiritual sense felt tired, he immediately took a dose of restorative pill elixir.

In this place… it was child’s play to be surrounded and killed. One couldn’t help but to be on full alert.

Time passed by minutes and seconds. Even if he was slower, he was still much faster than a mortal. After advancing for no less than four hours, they reached a distance of ten kilometers away from the short mountain. The time of day had also reached dusk.

While it could be said that the mountain was on the shorted side, it was still at least fifty or sixty meters tall. Amidst the Tomb of Swords that was Tianzi Mountain, it was absolutely unremarkable. Dusk was also the time when the tourists departed. Xu Yangyi and Li Zongyuan were now on an extremely high incline. From where they were, they could see coach buses below picking up the wandering crowds.

“Master, are we going over now?” Li Zongyuan asked. 

Xu Yangyi looked at the sky and shook his head. “No, keep on waiting.”

“Master…” Li Zongyuan wanted to say something but hesitated. Nevertheless, he gave voice to his thoughts. “If we keep waiting until the day’s over and night falls… we’ll be at a disadvantage.”

Xu Yangyi laughed but didn’t reply.

A disadvantage?

“I… want them to think we’re at a disadvantage.” Xu Yangyi looked towards the remaining blood-like sunlight in the sky. “If I don’t hang their heads in Tianzi Mountain, how can their sins be absolved? And how will I get my intention across?”

His words were flat, but the killing intent contained within them caused a shiver to make its way down Li Zongyuan’s body.

Without further talk, the duo continued to sit down on the mountain slope.

One hour, two hours… After three hours, Xu Yangyi finally stood up.

“Go.”

The two of them went straight towards the short mountain. They key had already been tucked away by Xu Yangyi.

Shining moonlight cast long shadows on the ground. After another half an hour passed, Li Zongyuan and Xu Yangyi eventually reached the foot of the short mountain.

At this time, Xu Yangyi clearly felt waves of pulsing coming from his storage ring, akin to a traveler returning home at long last. In the environment, the night wind cried with vigor. He stood at the foot of the mountain and came to a halt.

“Come on out.” He peacefully looked at the ground and said apathetically, “It’s time to pay.”

There was no sound. He raised his head and looked at the moon, suddenly laughing. “That’s fine. Since you won’t, there won’t be the slightest chance to later.”

“Do you know why I’ve come here?” He looked all around, the forest so quiet that even a falling needle could be heard. “Because there’s a secret realm here. Or perhaps it could called a hidden treasury.”

“Master!” 

“Shut up!” Xu Yangyi’s voice softly finished, “Don’t you want to know what I brought out from Danxia Temple? Only I can activate the secret realm here. And once the secret realm is opened, you won’t have a chance anymore.”

“Master…” Li Zongyuan’s voice was shaking. “If they pass on your words…”

“There’s no one else around.” Xu Yangyi said indifferently, “Do you really think I’ve only been meditating for the past several hours?”

He lightly hooked his finger and a rustling sound was heard from the underbrush. Over a dozen Three-Eyed Spirit Ape Puppets had already jumped out from the thicket.

“I didn’t finish using up these puppets in Danxia Temple.” His gaze was like a lake. “I didn’t expect that I would still have to send them out. There’s no one around… but in our surroundings, there are fifteen people. And from the start of the first hour… they stopped concealing their spiritual pressures.”

His voice was neither quiet nor loud. In the silent night, it was enough for everyone to clearly hear. Nonetheless, there still wasn’t a response.

A sneer curved at the crook of his mouth. With a swipe of his finger, Xiaoqing’s key flew out from his storage ring, issuing a crisp echo. Shrouded in azure radiance, the key flew straight towards the mountain ahead!

Swish! At this moment, several white rays flashed in the sky. Xu Yangyi smiled as if he had anticipated this earlier and hooked his finger again. They key wound back and flew into his hand.

Swish swish swish… Fifteen pitch-black silhouette suddenly emerged in their surroundings. Their standing positions were extremely strange. As they fell, Xu Yangyi surprisingly felt a kind of feeling that turned his breathing sluggish.

“This isn’t their realm…” His gaze swept across the fifteen people. They were all late-stage Qi Condensation. “This is a formation.”

As they found their standing, streaks of red brilliance extended from under their feet. A hundred meters… three hundred meters… a thousand meters! Within these thousand meters was unexpectedly a blood-red formation diagram!

“Puh!” At the same time, seated in front of a computer, the company captain who Xu Yangyi had met in the morning sprayed out a mouthful of tea!

He was in a computer room. Inside the room, he was the only officer sitting down. However, the rest were men in suits. On their chests, they wore a golden “SF” badge. A tall wiry middle-aged man was looking together with him at the scene before their eyes on a surveillance monitor.

“Scale to a large image.” The man seemed as if this was already an ordinary occurrence and said to a computer operator. He turned his head and said to the captain, “Captain Liu, you’ve been stationed on guard here for a long time. Can you carefully identify if these were the people you saw this morning… Captain Liu?”

“Uhh, what?” Captain Liu finally regained his wits. He simply found this difficult to accept. What the fuck was this?! SF? Special forces? Were these people even human?

“Okay… yes!” He took a deep breath and stifled the shock in his heart. He narrowed his eyes and studied the screen, yet with just a glance, he coldly gasped. Without warning, he fell back a good few steps, even stepping on the wiry middle-aged man’s foot!

“W-W-What is this?!” Even if he was a soldier, he couldn’t escape from shock now!

Following the man’s order, a large image had been switched over on the computer. Nonetheless… Captain Liu was already frightened out of his wits, his soul leaving his mortal coil! This was because on the screen, apart from Xu Yangyi in the middle, those in his surroundings… were not human.

Fifteen things… that were two meters tall and no less than seven or eight meters long with their legs unfolded! They were monsters with the lower bodies of spiders and the upper halves of humans!

“Monsters…. MONSTERS!” Before Captain Liu even cried out in alarm, the man had already gripped his hand in the next second, his face an ice-cold expanse.

“I hope you’ll be careful with your words.” The man said frigidly, “In this world, there are things that people shouldn’t come in contact with their entire lives. Some people have the immense luck to see this side. But you’re seeing nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. Otherwise… what do you think our Special Forces Strategy Department does?”

“They’re the sharp blade of the Chinese government, but not truly monsters.”

The Chinese government was aware?

Captain Liu then took a long sigh of relief and inexplicably set his heart at ease. He carefully eyed Xu Yangyi, gritted his teeth, and nodded. “Its him!”

“That’s good…” The man also sighed in relief and cupped his hands towards the air. “Immortal Master, I’ve recorded that this is the disciple of some apex figure. He shouldn’t have executed the operation that killed the mortals.”

“Obviously it’s not him.” In the air, a woman’s voice was heard, causing Captain Liu to flinch. His entire body drenched in cold sweat, he jumped up. He had encountered too many strange things tonight! Where was this voice coming from? A celestial?

His heart pounded like a drum, and he raised his head to look around in a circle a couple times, yet his face paled as he discovered… that there was no woman here!

The woman seemed not to care for him at all and said, “These are people from the Nalan Clan… they’ve always been demons part of the hawk faction. With regards to humans, they pursue a policy of slaughter… hmph, don’t tell me they think that we, the law enforcers of the Hidden Dragon Guard, are just for show? If the Chinese government couldn’t withstand the cultivation world’s power, how would it even be able to stand on equal footing with them up to date?”

“The slaughter of mortals… Their sin deserves ten thousand deaths. If Branchmaster Xu kills them tonight, then dismiss, but if a single one of them makes it out alive… This Palace is going to have a nice chat with the Nalan Clan.”

Compared with watching all of this on a screen, Xu Yangyi’s senses were even more realistic. The red talismans that took shape under his feet was silk! The same silk as that giant spider who had tried to assassinate him!

Xu Yangyi coolly fiddled with a strand in his fingers as he softly rolled and rubbed it. He then severed the silk. “Compared with the Ming Clan, it’s far lacking.”

“But as long as the Nalan Clan’s heels stand firm on the heavenly paradise, there won’t be a Ming Clan in 200 years.” At the lead, a man-spider, no less than three meters tall, laughed brightly. “The moon is bright and stars find themselves scarce, crows and magpies fly south. Branchmaster Xu, consider this place as your tomb divined by Feng Shui. Are you satisfied?” [1]

“The Nalan Clan, eh…” Xu Yangyi laughed. He didn’t want to waste another word on these people. The first dot of white light on his left arm began to shine, and a stretch of complex talismans suddenly twinkled on his shoulder. Soon afterwards, a pair of two-meter-wide machine wings unfurled without warning, and he leaped into the air.

“There are a lot of people who want my head, but… you still need the ability to take it.”

Swoosh! The wings fluttered, and he gracefully flew in the air. Looking up from below, he resembled a demon soaring in the night sky.

“Third Master?” At the side, a man-spider said lowly.

“No worries…” Thirsting for blood, Third Master licked his lips. “An explosion won’t really be effective. At least we know that he has this pair of magik treasure wings. From this morning until now, I’ve been arranging this large-scale formation. It can even be said that my savings have been emptied out. Fuck… this was something I was originally planning on using in Nanzhou…”

“Don’t concern yourself with what pittance he dredged back. How could it match all the great care that I’ve put in?” He began to laugh eerily, “I truly didn’t expect that he would have a secret realm key, but it’ll be mine soon.”

“Third Master is wise.” The man besides him laughed, “He’s also foolish enough to actually speak of such a great secret.”

“You don’t understand a damn thing!” Third Master clenched his teeth and laughed. “He’s pressuring us out… Although ‘we won’t have the slightest chance once I enter the secret realm’ sounds like a lie, what on the off chance that it’s true?”

“So even if we set up an inescapable net, we still have to show ourselves. This mongrel is pretty smart…”

There was still something that he didn’t give voice to. Xu Yangyi speaking these words symbolized that he wanted to force them out and exterminate all of them. 

And yet… didn’t he still wish to dismember Xu Yangyi’s corpse?!

Bring his head to Nanzhou! Place it over the Featherwood Guard! This was their Nalan Clan’s proof of sincerity in marching towards the treasured heavenly paradise!

“Therefore… you must die…” The spider-demon took a deep breath and suddenly yelled, “Attack!”

1. “The moon is bright and stars find themselves scarce, crows and magpies fly south.” This is a line from Cao Cao, a famous warlord during the Three Kingdoms period. The context of the moon part tries to convey that something greater outshines something else. The birds part is followed up by another line where they are unable to find a safe place to retreat. In context, Cao Cao says this line to asylum seekers from Jiangdong to turn back. He tried to convince them that there is no good conclusion on relying on Sun Quan of Wu.