Archfiend

Chapter 297: The Godseal Spark (5)

“Kill!” Seven furious roars echoed out at the same time! Seven white lights, as graceful as soaring goose! Along with the screams of white tigers, the riders suddenly charged out! Crackling noises rang out from the ground, and seven trenches that were almost a meter deep violently revealed themselves!

A cultivator allied with the Xingtian Legion and his fellow comrade were the same, forming seals at great speed! As the brink of crisis drew close, a black-white Taiji shockingly formed in front of them! It was twenty meters long and thirty meters tall, endlessly cycling! Qi scattered from the diagram, aimed at the seven white lights!

“Break!!!” The vice captain’s eyes threatened to split wide in fury, his voice quaking the air. Following his shout, a tremendous boom was heard! The riders and the Taiji had locked together, a solid blast wave of white qi spreading out at the impact site!

As if responding to their intention, a crack surprisingly appeared on the Taiji!

“Break! Break! BREAK!” The vice captain wildly pulled at the reins of his mount! His black tiger stood on its hind legs and roared, their bodies becoming even more illusory! Their longevities burned even fiercer!

Crash! Several seconds later, countless beams of alternating white-black light suddenly brightened on the diagram. The Taiji had actually broke apart in two! At the same time, the riders madly speared through!

The first blockade had been broken! And yet… in the instant they broke through, they discovered that there were three people standing behind the Taiji.

“Hiss…” Qin Xueluan licked her lips and hissed. At this moment, she was unlike any human. From head to toe, she was covered in scales, her lower-half shockingly transformed into a snake’s tail. Her tail had grown to be a full several meters long! Strange talismans ran up and down the length of her body, and her fingernails were jade-green. Her sides seemed to become a nest of the Five Venoms! Lingering poisonous toads, flying snakes, wasps, and scorpions filled an area of seven meters around her! 

“I really don’t like this form…” Her scarlet snake tongue flicked out over her lips, a bloodthirsty arc rising at the crook of her mouth. “I’ll let everyone see how ugly the ‘Immortal Fall’ secret is. There won’t be need for words, I’m going to use your heads to prove it…”

At her side was a young man dressed in white clothing. His expression was calm, and he held five compact puppets in his hand. Carefully, he arranged them on the ground and folded his hands afterwards, flying through hand seals! The five puppets on the ground radiated spiritual light that rose several meters high!

BOOM!!! Five streaks of qi dazzled the eye. After their passing, a massive five-headed ten-armed ape, no less than twenty meters tall, appeared on the battlefield!

“If you want to compare size…” Mo Yeyu sneered at the riders who thought they had broken free. “Of the top three clans, the Mo Clan is the sole inheritance of secret puppetry tomes. Rank 87th in the Mo Clan’s Tomes, Blood-Refined Vajra. Please confer your teaching.”

“ROOAR!” Just as his voice fell, the arms of the giant vajra slammed down on its chest, a solid-like blast wave unexpectedly causing the black tigers below to fall back a step as their front claws trembled!

However… who brought them the most despair was the bald man in the middle. His body was covered in tattoos, and a scorpion coiled on the crown of his head. Now, the bald cultivator gingerly took out a black seed. 

“That’s…” The instant the vice captain laid eyes upon the black seed, he nearly abandoned all hope. “A Spirit Void…”

“You actually recognize this?” Jun Man chuckled heartily and softly tossed the seed into the earth, his voice cold. “If there weren’t as many people as you, how could’ve I waited so long to start a massacre… so how about testing out the flavor of the Xingtian Legion’s counterattack now?”

Swoosh swoosh swoosh! As soon as the black seed dug into the soil, it seemed to quickly contaminate the ground! Tracts of squirming blackness wildly creeped forth!

The vice captain bit down hard. They had charged up to this point with great difficulty. He had never expected to face such a trio… Any one of these enemies had the power to contend against three or five of the Screaming Wind Legion alone! This was the true Xingtian Legion! This was their blockade line!

The Xingtian Legion didn’t have many people… but their elites were the cream of the crop, one chosen from amongst a hundred!

The black soil in front of them would seal all their deaths! On the ground, streaks of black qi vaguely spread, leaving no one with the desire to set foot on this land!

Jun Man grinned icily and bit his finger. A drop of blood fell to the soil, and the black qi, having already extended tens of meters, seemed to come alive in an instant! Like a snake, it twisted onwards with great vigor! One could even hear a kind of strange, frightening noise!

Clack! The vice captain gripped his spear. So moist… so slick… was his cold sweat. He gazed on in despair. After this blockade, one of the tigers had roared and collapsed, its body stabbed with an untold number of qi weapons. But in a minor battle like this, barely seven riders remained!

Behind them was that person… the main culprit who had caused all of this. He himself dared not go against that man.

Ahead, three people firmly blocked their path! Regardless of that Blood-Refined Vajra, that terribly monstrous woman, or even the Spirit Void in front of them… all were like a heavenly moat, completely separating them from the hope of survival.

In the past, they had slaughtered. Now was the time for them to finally settle the debt!

“Huff…” He raised his head to look at the cold moon in the sky. As he entered battle, he had become complacent. Unexpectedly… a sword, merely one sword, had grounded his beautiful reality into dust.

He wholeheartedly embraced his lost to this sword, but even as he and his fellow riders were on the verge of being killed by these other insects, he wouldn’t accept it! Did middle-stage Qi Condensation deserve to encircle and kill the world-renown Screaming Wind Legion?!

Crack… He squeezed his longspear, suddenly hefting it up. His voice thundered straight to the night sky. “Charge stance, advance! No retreat!”

The six riders behind him suddenly realized something. They raised their spears towards the sky and roared together, “Break through enemy lines, we return to death unafraid!” [1]

“All forces…” In the vice captain’s gaze that seemed to suddenly calm, there was a wisp of absolute determination. His longspear pointed at the trio ahead. “CHARGE!!!”

The seven riders charged. 

War chariots rumbling, and horses neighing, warriors with bow and arrow strapped at their waists. [2] The reddened eyes and twisted faces of the Screaming Wind Legion clashed together with the heavy expressions and the hate-filled gazes of the Xingtian Legion and its allies, seemingly tangible. The eyes of both sides were red with murder. The Linghu Clan was going to completely exterminate the Xingtian Legion, yet they had suffered the enemy’s frontal assault!

No one knew their names. Perhaps they had resounding names, or perhaps they were the Linghu Clan’s favored seeds. Maybe they were simply nameless cultivators. War buried too many such characters, and he was just another.

“This is their last attack…” Behind them, Xu Yangyi finally took a long sigh of relief. This gathered cavalry would be annihilated. This battle could even be said to be a complete victory!

He was no longer able to support himself, and immediately began to meditate. As he closed his eyes at last, he deeply eyed the vice captain leading the charge. His face was without a ripple of emotion.

This was war.

The vice captain wanted to destroy the Xingtian Legion, so Xu Yangyi would return to him an even bloodier battle. If not for his sword, the enemy would be raising his head now.

There was no right or wrong, only winning and losing.

“To die to the hand of my Xingtian Legion can be considered a rightful death.” He shuttered his eyes. The treasured Dragonslayer Saber had no need to kill a nameless soldier.

The final scene in his eyes was Qin Xueluan screeching as she wrapped around two soldiers, and forcefully wrung two tigers into shreds. The fingers of Mo Yeyu’s Blood-Refined Vajra surprisingly crushed four riders to death!

These riders were already cloaked in rising white light, their longevities almost burned and exhausted away. In the sky, they transformed into dazzling lightning bolts, proving their footprint in the human realm.

At the doorway of Longsu Province, cold air accompanies the night watch’s golden rattle, and armor is illuminated by frosty lunar rays. Longsu’s first battle had finally met its conclusion. [ref]“Cold air accompanies the night watch’s golden rattle, and armor is illuminated by frosty lunar rays.” Poem from an anonymous poet during the era of the Northern dynasties. Supposed to depict cold and lonely nights of soldiers.

However, no one knew that at the same instant the bugle horns droned, in an immense web-covered skull only second to the old woman-spider’s within the Nalan Clan’s Bluedawn Winding Corridor, a withered old man suddenly raised his head!

“Its him!” Nalan Cuo stood up with a whoosh, his eyes flushed red and penetrated with a hatred carved into his very bones. “He’s come… the person who killed Feng’er… He’s here! And… he even acted! No! Something’s wrong!” 

His gaze sobered in a flash, and he dipped his head down and mumbled to himself. “Just now… I dare confirm that was a Foundation Establishment cultivation… Furthermore, an absolutely uncommon Foundation Establishment, a powerhouse among Foundation Establishment!”

“It can’t possibly be the Xingtian Legion… Whether or not the Xingtian Legion has Foundation Establishment was already asked. So long as they dare mobilize those with Foundation Establishment cultivations, the other clans’ Seniors will crush them to death. And… such a strong Foundation Establishment. I fear that among the cultivators on the battlefield, only one group can take action…”

His bloodshot eyes quickly looked towards the sky. “Daomaster Ancientpine… was it you… was it by the hand of your Heavenraiser Palace?”

Things in the world were not absolute. A minor divergence of meaning could possibly lead one’s deductions elsewhere. The Nalan Cuo of this moment was as such.

His train of thought fell to his only child, Nalan Feng. But now… at the true summit of the other clans, all of Nanzhou’s Foundation Establishment cultivators opened their eyes, in unison!

“This is…” Within a meeting room in the Kindling Mulberry Wall, there were ten Foundation Establishment seniors. The one with the worst realm was still at the late stage, but he quickly raised his head to now look outside the window. A second later, the meeting room was empty. Soon, their figures appeared at the highest level of the Kindling Mulberry Wall. 

Foundation Establishment qi spread without the slight slightest concealment, locking down on the entrance of Longsu and Chengdu in almost an instant!

“That is the… Xingtian Legion?” Zhao Zhiqiu’s gaze shook, and his pupils suddenly shrunk. Because he clearly saw… everything there.

The ground was ruined in a chaotic jumble of scars. Their scale of depth and greatness of scope was undoubtedly the work of a Foundation Establishment cultivator! But in that gorge, corpses were laid strewn on the ground!

“Heaven Eye open!” Without a moment’s delay, his hands swiped towards his eyes. As he opened them again, his pupils had already become red. Everything became obvious with a glance!

“That’s…” He took a deep breath. “the Screaming Wind Legion… the Linghu Clan’s main legion! Why didn’t we feel the qi fluctuations there? Why are we suddenly sensing it now?”

“That’s the Screaming Wind Legion!” Above the night sky, at the crown of the Sky Universe Palace’s giant crane, the pupil-less eyes of the old man from the Lou Clan rippled with waves. At his side, four old men waited at rapt attention.

1. “陷阵之志,有死无生!” - “Break through enemy lines, we return to death unafraid!”. This is a particular phrase from a general named Gao Shun under Lu Bu during the Three Kingdoms era. This general’s force was well-known for their battle prowess and discipline. Not an exact translation, but maybe closer to the intent.

2. Poem by Tang poet Du Fu. General mood of the poem is to describe a party of soldiers.