Chapter 10
Although they had been caught off guard, fortunately, both of them had been mentally tense, each fearing the other might use some underhanded trick.
Shang Que was, after all, a natural-born spell cultivator. When the heavenly thunder gathered, she sensed it faintly. Seizing the chance, she pressed Wen Qingyin down and dragged her outward, trying to pull her away. Unexpectedly, Wen Qingyin’s sword was extremely nimble. From behind her back, it turned deftly from her left hand to her right. In the flip and flash of movement, she took the opportunity to slice open Shang Que’s arm, smoothly gripped the sword in reverse, then stabbed toward Shang Que’s neck. Shang Que used the chance to withdraw, and Wen Qingyin also took the opportunity to ride her sword, just about to fly forward.
But just as her momentum rose, thunder roared down. Wen Qingyin flew straight into the lightning.
Shang Que laughed aloud, the mockery in it unmistakable.
But she also knew that this bit of thunder could only scratch Wen Qingyin’s surface.
Luckily, she could count as an artifact refiner too, and she was very familiar with this kind of flying boat that could change forms.
She moved swiftly as a startled hare and diving falcon. While Wen Qingyin was being struck, Shang Que quickly hid herself among the walls that rose and fell in layered waves.
Although she had used a trick to make Wen Qingyin suffer a small loss for the moment, Shang Que knew very well that this advantage would not last long.
Wen Qingyin was extremely destructive.
Sure enough, before Shang Que had run far, Wen Qingyin’s sword shadow came crashing down.
The sword energy could practically be said to have sliced right over the top of her head.
Shang Que felt a chill across her scalp and hurriedly touched it. Fortunately, Wen Qingyin had not cut off her hair.
But when she lifted her head, she saw that this sealed space had been forcibly cut open by Wen Qingyin, revealing a stretch of sky.
Wen Qingyin’s sword had always been decisive and brutal. She did not have that many fancy tricks, and when solving problems, she usually struck from the simplest and most effective direction.
Just like now. She still did not understand artifact refining and did not know what shape this flying boat would combine into, but it did not matter.
She could break ten thousand techniques with one sword.
The flying boat was still moving. The splinters, together with the roof that had been sent flying, became a trailing tail that gradually drifted farther and farther away from the flying boat.
Wen Qingyin rode her sword, the wind whipping around her and stirring her ink-black hair. The coldness on her handsome face grew even more apparent.
Shang Que could hear the excited hum of the longsword beneath Wen Qingyin’s feet and feel the fine, threadlike strands of sword energy that could cut through skin.
She lifted her head to look at her, only to meet those dark eyes, as if they had been forged from gathered blades.
Thinking that Wen Qingyin had been tricked by her and was definitely in a poor mood, Shang Que could not hold herself back at all and decisively poured oil onto the fire.
“Sword Venerable Wen, why don’t you split the flying boat apart with one strike?”
Wen Qingyin had done such things before.
This sword venerable’s attacks had always been overbearing. It could even be said that she never considered others at all. Who knew how many people had died beneath her attempts to clear the field?
The tragic thing was that in those battles, the only ones who could leave alive were Shang Que and Wen Qingyin. And thanks to Wen Qingyin’s good reputation, the blame for the killings had all fallen on Shang Que.
Shang Que hypocritically wiped away tears, not mentioning in the slightest the fact that she had killed a portion of those people too.
After all, Shang Que considered herself a good person. She never slaughtered innocents indiscriminately. She had merely killed some enemies.
Only, some enemies did not even give her time to kill them.
Wen Qingyin’s sword was far too fast.
She was as if she disliked people. As long as she seized an opportunity, whether righteous path or demonic path, as long as they were alive, they all had to die.
Shang Que truly found this incomprehensible. She felt Wen Qingyin was basically the cultivation world’s version of an antisocial personality. And because she was too beautiful and too good at disguising herself, no one had discovered it. Now, she already held a high position and had become highly respected despite her young age.
Those famous righteous sects of the cultivation world were simply a pack of blind people. Sooner or later, they would suffer a great loss because of Wen Qingyin.
But what did that have to do with Shang Que?
Shang Que was happy to see them suffer.
Wen Qingyin directly ignored Shang Que’s trash talk. Compared to verbal sparring, Wen Qingyin preferred stabbing her with a sword.
But the Bone Thief’s cultivation was deep, and she had learned a bit of every crooked and unorthodox method. She was slippery and extremely difficult to catch.
Just like now. Wen Qingyin traveled above the flying boat and looked down from above, only to see that the boat had still not stopped changing. Every room of the flying boat was like a sliding-block puzzle, shifted at random by some unknown great hand.
And it was not just one room being shifted. Every room was changing position.
The formations inside the rooms also changed again and again, causing the attacks to vary greatly. One moment, there was a water dragon ambush; the next, sword energy flew wildly.
These attacks were even all aimed at her. Not a single one attacked the Bone Thief.
Sure enough, they were snakes and rats in the same nest.
Her first strike at the beginning had still been too light. What a pity. She had not managed to kill Yu Xuan immediately.
The dense attacks irritated her.
Even though Wen Qingyin could easily dodge them, and the attacks could not cause her much harm, these spells both blocked her vision and slowed the speed of her attacks.
If not for worrying that the dragon bone might fall and disappear without a trace, she would have cut this place apart with one sword long ago.
Wen Qingyin could only dismantle it piece by piece.
She took out another sword and swung it once. More than half the rooms turned into fragments.
Yu Xuan uncontrollably spat out a mouthful of blood. After all, this flying boat was her bonded magical artifact. With the artifact being destroyed on such a large scale, she would certainly be severely injured too.
She simply found it difficult to believe. She was only one major realm lower than Wen Qingyin, and this was even on her own bonded magical artifact. Why was it so easy for Wen Qingyin to break through this place?
Even the Bone Thief had also seen through the logic of her bonded magical artifact. She seemed to be running toward its rooms in a messy, disorderly way, as if dodging Wen Qingyin’s attacks, but in reality, she would soon reach the flying boat’s core control area.
Was this a genius rarely seen in ten thousand years in the cultivation world?
Yu Xuan gained a deeper understanding of that empty reputation.
She spat out another mouthful of blood. Her bonded magical artifact had been destroyed, and her meridians felt as if they were being cut by knives, the pain severe. She clearly sensed that Wen Qingyin was right above them. At any moment, Wen Qingyin could bring down a sword that would obliterate everything.
Worse still, the Bone Thief had finally reached the flying boat’s core control area.
Strangely enough, reason clearly told her to win over the Bone Thief. As long as they stood on the same side as the Bone Thief, they might still have a chance to survive under Wen Qingyin’s sword.
After all, the Bone Thief had never shown any killing intent toward them.
Just as she had said, she only wanted the dragon bone.
But…
Before Yu Xuan’s eyes, the Bone Thief’s damp, thick, shadowy eyes kept appearing.
Was she still afraid of the Bone Thief because of those rumors?
No. It was her intuition that feared her.
Wen Qingyin was a born killer. Did that mean this one was not?
Besides, when the snipe and clam were fighting just now, she had harbored a lucky thought and wanted to become the fisherman who benefited in the end.
But now, it seemed she could only gamble.
After all, the rumors all said that the Bone Thief’s cultivation was inferior to Wen Qingyin’s. The reason she could win again and again was entirely because she had people who could help her.
If the Bone Thief did not want to lose, then she needed Yu Xuan as a helper.
So when Shang Que arrived at the core control room, Yu Xuan decisively gave up control of the flying boat. Her reason told her that someone who could see through the various formations of the flying boat so quickly was far better at controlling it than she was.
Shang Que lifted her brow in surprise, but today, she had not come prepared to fight Wen Qingyin to the death.
She was someone who was going to enter the protagonist squad. Right now, she was hiding inside Wen Qingyin’s sect, and the author was single-mindedly trying to drive her out of the protagonist squad. If she was seriously injured and the author then threw some baffling trial at her, what would she do?
She would definitely be exposed.
“I want the dragon bone.” Like someone collecting a debt, she continued extending her hand toward Yu Xuan.
Yu Xuan seemed to know she could not escape this calamity. She only said, “You have to help me take good care of You’an.”
“Swear to the Heavenly Dao. You…” Before she could finish speaking, Wen Qingyin, who had been dismantling the flying boat, finally tore her way here.
Only one sword.
A light, airy sword. A sharp, unstoppable sword.
Shang Que scooped up Yu You’an beside her, who seemed to have gone stupid from fright, and hurriedly retreated.
But Yu Xuan had clearly already suffered a great loss of vitality, and she had never had the strength to dodge Wen Qingyin’s sword in the first place. So with just one strike, Wen Qingyin pierced through her Origin Palace, stabbed through her Nascent Soul, and the remaining sword energy rampaged along her meridians. In less than three breaths, she would certainly die.
Yu You’an, who had been frightened senseless, seemed to finally react. She screamed desperately, struggling as if she wanted to leave Shang Que. But amid layer after layer of Wen Qingyin’s sword light, she still did not dare break free and look at Yu Xuan’s body.
Tears smeared all over her face. Yu You’an glared at Wen Qingyin, as though she wanted to cut her into a thousand pieces.
Yu You’an felt as if she had become a lunatic. Her aunt, the aunt she had depended on for survival, the aunt who treated her best in the world, the aunt who had never given up on her even knowing she was a waste, had simply died at the hands of this number one sword cultivator.
And to that person, killing her aunt had been as easy as stepping on an ant.
She placed her trembling hand into Shang Que’s and stuffed the thing in her hand into Shang Que’s palm.
“Kill her.” Her voice trembled beyond measure.
“She’s a demon… Kill her for me!!!”
Shang Que glanced at the storage ring, then sent her divine sense inside briefly and confirmed that there was a section of spine bone within.
She happily blew a whistle and soothingly patted Yu You’an’s head.
“Silly child,” she said gently.
Why are you reducing Wen Qingyin’s sentence?
Only when Wen Qingyin was killing people did Shang Que feel that Wen Qingyin could still count as a good person.
The dragon bone was in hand. There was no need to keep dawdling.
Wood-type magic was activated, urging life to grow. Vines rooted themselves into the flying boat and linked countless fragments together. Their growth was far too vigorous. Almost in an instant, they spread across the entire flying boat, even hooking together the debris that had fallen around it.
A bad feeling rose in Wen Qingyin’s heart. Why had the Bone Thief started going all out so early?
Sure enough, in the next moment, those vines grew toward her, layer upon layer, blocking her vision. Wen Qingyin cut through one layer after another. Wherever she flew, the vines grew after her.
Wen Qingyin had already run out of patience. The Bone Thief should have already obtained the ring containing the dragon bone, so she no longer hesitated.
That sword was like a strip of white silk. The bonded flying boat of a great perfection Nascent Soul immortal split in two like tofu.
But the flying boat was at great perfection Nascent Soul. The Bone Thief was not. Like Wen Qingyin, the Bone Thief was at the late stage of Spirit Transformation, and under her urging, these vines were the same.
The Bone Thief had not worked on the toughness of the vines. She only urged out the vitality of the vines. The dense, tightly packed vines wrapped around the other half that had not yet fallen, like threads stitching it back together.
Wen Qingyin lifted her sword again. As long as she cut it into pieces small enough, what use was stitching it together?
In that instant, was it ten swords, or a hundred? Sword energy filled the sky, even scattering the clouds.
Wen Qingyin easily sheathed her sword. The several-hundred-meter-long flying boat collapsed in that instant, leaving only leaf-like fragments. It could no longer hold its form. When the clear wind blew, it crashed down like sand and dust.
The only two exceptions were two emerald-green cocoons wrapped from leaves.
Wen Qingyin knew this was a backup plan the Bone Thief had left behind. She did not approach. First, she split one open with a sword, only to discover that neither of the two cocoons contained the Bone Thief.
She could not help raising her guard. After waiting three breaths and still not receiving the Bone Thief’s attack, she finally looked toward the little girl who was screeching wildly, hatred bursting from her eyes.
Yu You’an, the girl whose mother had eaten a poisonous dragon’s inner core while pregnant, causing toxic blood to surge through her body.
She was actually still alive. She even had the strength to try to fight Wen Qingyin to the death?
Wen Qingyin lowered her eyes slightly and carefully looked at the little girl’s face.
Sure enough, even after eating the dragon race’s inner core, there would be no resemblance in appearance.
She pierced Yu You’an’s throat with one sword, cut through her dantian, and hooked out her golden core with the tip of her sword.
Author’s Note:
Little Wen, after waiting for a while: Where did she go? She’s not fighting to the death today? [question mark] [question mark]
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