"Yeah, the World Pavilion is just this rotten an organization. Go ahead and curse me with your curse!"
Su Xiuxing clawed at the air with both hands, giving no ground with his mouth either. "I'm not planning to go back anyway."
Everything his hands touched was empty.
The Azure Cloud Goat he had grabbed was nothing but an illusion. It vanished before his eyes.
At the same time, chains of rushing water contracted with a howl, crisscrossing through the air and instantly sealing off Su Xiuxing's position.
He guarded his body with three rapidly spinning wind blades, barely avoiding being bound at once.
The wind blades and water chains collided furiously, mercilessly scattering wind and water elemental energy.
Hu Shaomeng had used illusion techniques to obscure Su Xiuxing's vision, yet in his own sight, the Azure Cloud Goat remained lively and nimble.
He stepped on the rushing water chains and sped forward, sending one chain toward the Azure Cloud Goat to bind it.
But suddenly, he felt dazed. The Azure Cloud Goat vanished from his sight as well!
It, too, had been concealed by illusion.
Zhu Biqiong!
Though Zhu Biqiong's figure had been concealed by illusion just like the Azure Cloud Goat, Hu Shaomeng naturally knew who his opponent was.
As someone from the Fishing Sea Pavilion, he understood better than anyone that illusion techniques did more than simply obscure direction. If he reached for the Azure Cloud Goat based on his earlier impression of its position, he would surely grasp nothing.
Because the position he "believed" in was no longer the position he remembered.
Both were in the Heaven-Piercing realm. In strength and experience alike, he far surpassed Zhu Biqiong.
Given a little time, he would have been more than capable of breaking through an illusion of this level.
But what he lacked most at this moment was time.
Rushing Water Chains, a Dao art approaching the power of a Grade-A ability, was one of his trump cards. But if he focused on breaking the illusion, the Dao art alone might no longer be enough to keep that assassin trapped.
The moment Xi Zichu discovered that the Hu Shaomeng in Jiacheng was only an illusion, he would rush over.
Once Jiang Chen and the Pig-Bone Masked One decided the victor outside the mine gate, neither would stand by and watch such a treasure slip away right before their eyes.
None of this could wait...
Time!
"Do you know why Zhu Suyao became so melancholy, extreme, and irritable?"
Standing atop the rushing water chains, Hu Shaomeng suddenly shouted, "After taking her Yin essence, I was already tired of her!"
"She put on airs all day, pretending to be a Holy Maiden and thinking herself a bodhisattva. Dull and tasteless by day, flavorless in bed."
"The moment I found someone more interesting, she changed her face."
"That proves extremity is her true nature, while gentleness was only a mask. She didn't change; she returned to her true self. You should be thanking me!"
"Dragged down by you all this time, she must have worked terribly hard to keep up the disguise!"
The Rushing Water Chains crisscrossed in every direction. Hu Shaomeng split his attention between suppressing Su Xiuxing and observing his surroundings.
His words grew more vicious by the moment. "I was the one who blocked her at the Gate of Heaven and Earth, too! Who told her to say she would take revenge on me? She deserved to have her path of cultivation severed. She deserved to die in the Celestial Residence Secret Realm!"
As soon as he finished, he bared his teeth in a cold grin, stepped on the Rushing Water Chains, and sprang forward. "There you are!"
Still in midair, surging waves had already risen beneath him.
Giant waves rose into the sky, with countless water snakes swimming through them.
Zhu Biqiong had finally failed to keep her mind perfectly steady. Unable to maintain the illusion at its peak, she had revealed her trail.
She hated him!
Her most beloved and respected sister had been hurt and insulted so horribly by the man her sister had once loved most!
When she saw Hu Shaomeng charging at her, she abandoned the illusion and unleashed all her power.
"I'll kill you!"
At this moment, she completed her Dao art faster than ever before.
The same giant waves surged into the sky. The same water snakes swam through them.
The same raging tide of Dao arts.
Attack met attack. Art met art.
She gave up all defense and evasion, resolved to die together with Hu Shaomeng...
Battle!
Everything happened in an instant.
Two identical signature Dao arts of the Fishing Sea Pavilion collided head-on.
Boom!
The two people at the center of the clash were swept away by surging water elemental energy.
Zhu Biqiong was sent flying backward.
Amid the splashing waves and dissipating water elemental energy, a wet hand suddenly broke through, reaching straight for Zhu Biqiong's delicate face, a face filled with hatred, pain, and fury.
"You've dragged your sister down long enough! Your weakness is your greatest sin!"
Hu Shaomeng's voice was cold.
Five thin streams of water shot from his five fingertips like needles.
For an instant, time seemed to freeze.
A sword gave a soft hum.
A sword like a shooting star chasing the moon, like a rainbow piercing the sun, suddenly plunged down.
Jiang Chen landed with his sword between Zhu Biqiong and Hu Shaomeng.
His half-long hair was simply tied back. Only a single strand at his temple drifted down, clinging to his increasingly angular cheek.
Blood dripped from his long sword, and five severed fingertips fell abruptly to the ground.
The thin streams of water had lost their force. Less than a finger's breadth from Zhu Biqiong's face, they dropped like little snakes that had suddenly died.
"Ah!"
Only then did Hu Shaomeng finally let out an unbearable scream.
...
...
Outside the mine gate, the Pig-Bone Masked One suddenly erupted with the Power of Gluttony.
Through a crooked yet powerful interpretation of the White Bone Twelve Divine Aspects Secret Method, he had forged a twisted but formidable path.
An enormous suction force tore at everything around him.
The Power of Gluttony made him stronger, but it also drove him mad.
He was like a frenzied beast. He wanted not only to devour the opponent before him, but this entire mine as well—every blade of grass, every clod of earth, every stone.
Jiang Chen stared straight at his opponent.
Hatred?
How could he not hate him?
Anger?
It was far more than anger.
"You ask how much I hate you..."
Jiang Chen spoke softly.
The crown of thorns above his head flashed and vanished.
The hand that had finished forming its seal pressed against the sword hilt.
The long-awaited secret of the Hu Family Mine had been unlocked, and the Azure Cloud Goat had emerged.
Jiang Chen no longer needed to hold back.
Even in the Celestial Residence Secret Realm, he had already been a top-tier cultivator of the Heaven-Piercing realm. In Nanyao City, he had even defeated the Qi prince Jiang Wuyong.
His rate of progress was so astonishing that even Chongxuan Sheng marveled at it and felt inferior.
Day after day, night after night, in every spare moment, he cultivated and worked hard.
His strength had not appeared from nowhere. Every bit of it could be traced to the drops of effort he had accumulated.
Under the frenzied tearing of the Power of Gluttony, the gatepost Zhang Hai was holding shook and teetered on the verge of collapse.
Jiang Chen's clothes seemed ready to be ripped from his body, but his feet remained planted.
Like a green pine rooted on a sheer cliff.
Like a reef standing proudly against the crest of the tide.
Wood elemental energy surged wildly, disrupting the Five Elements within the Pig-Bone Masked One's body.
The Binding Tiger layered over by the crown of thorns collapsed the instant it bound him.
It only made the Pig-Bone Masked One pause for an almost imperceptible instant.
Perhaps half a breath. Perhaps less.
Jiang Chen's entire body had already floated up. He abandoned all resistance and let the suction force pull him away.
He did not merely refuse to resist; he used the force to accelerate.
In the blink of an eye, he was close.
When the man arrived, the sword arrived with him.
He struck three times in succession!
Longing for You rang out!
Love, hate, dreams—like the sun, like the moon. The sun and moon crossed the heavens; home remained forever distant.
The first strike: the Sword of Sun, Moon, and Stars.
Everything he had heard and seen, everything he had endured and experienced. What had brought him all the way here?
The second strike: the Sword of Mountains and Rivers.
I came into this world as if wandering through a sea of suffering.
People came and went.
The sea of humanity had already become vast and boundless.
The third strike: the Sword of the Boundless Sea of Humanity.
Sword light—surging sword light, brilliant sword light.
Dazzling, breathtaking sword light!
All the sword light exploded in an instant, swirling into the Pig-Bone Masked One's gaping maw and sweeping through him.
When the sword light passed, no one remained.
Jiang Chen turned his sword and turned away.
He left behind only one sentence—
"As you can see."