Chapter 671 491: Revenge (Part 2)

This talisman was bestowed only upon the direct lineage, not an ordinary Foundation Establishment talisman, but an ancient talisman, the last-resort method for preserving one's life. The Situ Family's Perfected Person had disappeared for many years, all the good things long since used up. As the newly promoted Young Master, this talisman was all Situ Chen had left for self-preservation.

Right then, he recited the spell, activating the talisman. A translucent shield slowly emerged. Situ Chen finally breathed a sigh of relief and raced north, heads down, riding the wind, utterly unconcerned about the arrows behind him.

Just as expected, six or seven arrows followed quickly, but could only cause rippling waves upon the shield. Situ Chen exhaled deeply, his face clouded, and flew on the wind into the distance.

He uttered no words of revenge, but the vicious, cold look on his face said everything. Twin sabres in hand, he stepped forward on plumes of ashen-red smoke.

Situ Chen flew for a while; Li Xuanfeng seemed to grow more urgent, with arrow after arrow tracking him, pounding the spirit shield into undulating waves. Situ Chen kept heading north, calculated the distance closely, and secretly relaxed.

"By the looks of it, I can at least hold out until Jindou Island…"

Night had already deepened. He flew on, then suddenly spotted a man in golden armor waiting ahead of him.

The man appeared to be in his fifties or sixties, with brows sharp as blades, deeply-sunken eyes of smoky grey and black, and white hair streaming in the wind. His face was nearly expressionless, yet it was chilling to behold.

"Li Xuanfeng—"

Situ Chen felt no fear but rather deep hatred. He let out a savage cry, gripping both sabres, but saw the old man step forward, palm striking the shield before him.

"Hmm?"

Situ Chen froze, only to feel a massive force strike; his whole body and the shield were knocked flying, plummeting downwards like a heavy stone plunging into water.

This stupefaction lasted only a moment—already he had sunk into the sea, and when he looked up, five golden beams like meteors came crashing down, slowly growing in his vision.

The five golden rays gathered power and struck the shield at the exact same point, one after the other. At last, the ancient talisman could endure no more, letting out crisp, glass-like cracks.

"Boom!"

Situ Chen felt a stabbing pain in his chest; the great shield before him was shattered, and a fist-sized hole now yawned between his chest and abdomen. Agonizing pain instantly cleared his mind.

"He'd fired these five arrows long ago, just waiting for me to get close!"

But it was far too late. The golden rays in the sky flickered one after another; he had no space to use his saber technique. His body dissolved, blood-red ashes dispersing through the water below.

He forced himself to steady his breath, only to see a golden flash before him—Li Xuanfeng, whose expression was terrifying, stared intently at him.

Situ Chen, desperate not to die, could only plead:

"I have no enmity or feud with you, Taoist fellow—why do this?"

Li Xuanfeng gave him not a breath to recover. He pressed a palm to Situ Chen's dantian, crippling his cultivation, then seized him up, flew to a nearby islet, and wordlessly bound him to a tree.

Situ Chen was baffled, as he watched Li Xuanfeng draw a short blade from his storage bag, peel aside his garments, and slowly slice a piece of flesh from his chest.

Situ Chen howled aloud as tiny drops of blood welled from his chest, but no matter how he screamed or begged, Li Xuanfeng's face remained savage, bit by bit scraping his chest clean to the bone, making the pale bone creak and leaving his heart thumping and exposed.

Only then did he speak:

"Still don't understand? Situ Mo also meant to kill you. If not for worry over unpredictable complications, you wouldn't have died so easily."

Situ Chen's eyes bulged with terror. But Li Xuanfeng moved swiftly—he flayed both arms and legs clean, then struck off his head with a single chop. The severed head rolled a few times on the ground.

Li Xuanfeng stood silently on the island. From the sea floor came a booming explosion, stirred by the resonance with his Immortal Foundation, spewing earth-flames into the sky. He cleaned the ground of all traces, wiped the blood from his hands, and murmured softly:

"Xu San, your revenge is done for you. My blade is better than a mortal's; your pain was no less, perhaps more."

He narrowed his eyes. It seemed he had found little relief from the act. If anything, his unease only deepened. With a flick of his left hand, a tattered suit of armor flew up; its strap dangled a swaying storage bag, black-red in color and faintly glowing.

At his side, a golden mysterious arrow hopped restlessly, full of spiritual nature, darting through the air.

Li Xuanfeng had forged three more mysterious arrows—now eight in total. This one was slightly smaller than the others, refined with both fire and "Ceasing Spear," marked by dense patterns and exceptional agility.

Li Xuanfeng naturally picked up the storage bag, took from his breast the jade talisman Yuan Su had given him, and tied the bag to it to frustrate divination, breathing lightly before flying northward.

...

Qingdu Mountain.

The sun blazed overhead. Today's spell battle saw Xiuyue slightly prevail; dazzling sunlight drenched the mountain in gold. Li Yuexiang lifted her pale face up, lips tightly pressed, and silently watched the glaring sun above.

Her mother had been in secluded cultivation for a long time, and the jade pendant Li Yuexiang always carried had grown dimmer with each passing day. She saw it, utterly powerless to intervene.

Foundation Establishment succeeds or fails over the smallest misstep. Rarely does one's aura fade by the day like this. The Li Family's background had deepened of late; Li Yuexiang, of course, understood why.

"Mother cultivates 'Clear Evening Rain', a water-based Taoist Foundation. The celestial signs originally favored her breakthrough, but then Xiuyue Sect cast an eruptive fire, crossing right into her course, probably disturbing her spirit mechanism."

Had the blazing sun held steady, it might have been fine. But between the two sects' spell battle, the days wavered between rain and sun. Even Li Xijun atop Jade Court Mountain was affected. His jade pendant flickered, nor was Xiao Guiluan spared—her vitality faded day by day.

All Li Yuexiang could do was watch the light in her jade pendant grow dimmer and dimmer, kneeling before the cave mansion's door in helpless despair. When today's duel saw Xiuyue win a round, the sun scorched the land for seven hours, and her jade pendant finally crumbled to dust.

Her lamb-fat hands cradled the shattered pendant in a daze. She knelt dumbly on the stone floor, watching the sun fade and blue wind and rain rise in the sky.

"Mother…"

Li Yuexiang did not even know what expression to bear. How could she reckon with her mother's death? She only rose in silence, groped at the door before her, and gently pushed it open.

"Click… click…"

Tendrils of blue mist drifted out from the door's crack, sinking Li Yuexiang's heart. The anomaly was plain as day; judging by this, it was not merely recent—her mother's body had long since dissolved.

"Mother…"

Li Yuexiang entered the cave quietly. On the central jade bed lay only a few chunks of jade-green spirit stones, cold as ice, sending forth pale blue mist. She numbly shaped a spell to seal them, and found only a solitary black robe on the vacant bed.

She vaguely recalled that her mother disliked black, but her father liked it.

Li Yuexiang found herself calmer than expected. She gathered the storage bag left on the table. There was little else—Xiao Guiluan had failed her breakthrough, not perished from Foundation Establishment, so left few spiritual objects behind.

Scanning that empty cave mansion, she finally spotted on the floor a wooden talisman, two fingers wide, strung with jade beads by a red cord, as if it had fallen from her mother's person.

Li Yuexiang bent to pick it up. It was just a simple wooden talisman, a palm long and two fingers wide. Four characters were carved on the side facing her, ink-black and sharp, vigorous as dragons in motion:

"Fortunate to have met."

Li Yuexiang turned it over gently. On the back, the handwriting was small and lovely, flowing and touching—a clear script belonging to her mother Xiao Guiluan, warm and gentle. Four more characters read:

"Long have I awaited."

Aside from this, it was a simple piece of wood, likely written on in a moment of conjugal affection and treasured by Xiao Guiluan ever since, kept close at hand.

Li Yuexiang stowed it close to her heart, took out a jade box for those few jade-green spirit stones, and walked out of the cave mansion alone. Outside, the blazing sun still scorched the sky, making the trees smoke with heat.