The old man was tall and broad, charging in with a speed that struck fear, like a black tiger lunging for its prey. The chill in his gaze was enough to turn an ordinary man's legs to water.
Qin Ming gripped his long-handled black-gold hammer, moving like a lithe leopard. He vaulted forward swiftly, then changed direction without hesitation, refusing to meet the old man head-on. From the side he wheeled the great hammer at his opponent.
The old man frowned. This youth's speed was not beneath his own. They were nearly upon each other, yet the boy could still shift in an instant, sweep past on the right, and bring the hammer whistling down.
Qin Ming felt a violent tremor running up the metal haft. The old man had actually struck the weapon's face with his bare palm — a feat both brutal and alarming.
That first blow had only been a test, a way to weigh what a Third New Lifer's Heaven Light Force truly amounted to. The result drew a shadow across his face.
The old man swept past, his body cloaked in white Heaven Light. The ground behind him lay cracked with the force of his footprints, a measure of the weight behind his charge. He, too, was taken aback. Any New Lifer of a lower realm, struck by such Heaven Light Force, would have had his weapon shaken clean from his hands.
When the two crossed, they had traded positions.
The old man looked down at the flattened, doughy face of the Golden Rider underfoot — a gruesome ruin, no longer resembling a human visage at all. When he lifted his gaze, his eyes burned with a cold malevolence.
Qin Ming sighed. He had only been tidying the fallen rider's features, so that no one would too soon notice the odd manner of the man's death — and then this old man had come crashing in. He had meant to quietly study the Third New Lifer, to test him with care. Now there was no avoiding a hard fight.
The two paced toward each other in silence, drawing closer, like two beasts gathering their strength, ready to lunge at any heartbeat.
"I come from Redcloud City," Qin Ming said abruptly. "Do you dare kill me, and face the consequences?"
He wore the armor Cao Long and Mu Qing had gifted him, which was deceptively reassuring. He did not truly expect to intimidate the old man — but it might buy him a moment of hesitation, a moment of weighing, for Redcloud City was the heart of this region and its great families were not to be trifled with.
A veteran like this, however, would never show mercy in the end.
The instant the words left his lips, Qin Ming erupted into motion.
As expected, the old man only faltered for a breath — but that was enough. Qin Ming seized the opening and struck first, the great hammer crashing down.
They had been close already; now Qin Ming burst forward, leaving the old man no choice but to receive the blow head-on. It was nearly too late to dodge.
"THUD!"
A dull boom rang through the empty cavern, the ground trembling. The old man wrapped one palm around the hammer while reaching out with the other. But this blow carried far more force than the first test. Qin Ming put everything into it, and the white light churning around the old man's hand nearly scattered apart.
The old man had meant to fold around the hammer like a dumpling wrapper and fling it aside. His "wrapper" had very nearly come apart.
He recoiled. This youth, who had not yet nurtured Heaven Light, hit with force out of all proportion — the impact left his palm throbbing and numb.
Seizing the advantage, Qin Ming wasted no time. Blow after blow came down, a spectacle of raw power overwhelming the seasoned veteran. Each strike erupted with the sound of wind and thunder, fast and savage, until the old man felt like coughing up blood. He slid sideways like a ghost, retreated, but could not shake free — the youth matched his every turn.
Qin Ming was secretly shaken. The old man had taken seven blows in a row, all with bare hands. That was nothing short of monstrous. In raw strength alone, even a Third New Lifer could not rival him; but with Heaven Light shielding and reinforcing him, the old man could hold against the crushing weight of black-gold.
Qin Ming's heart stirred in earnest. He ached to have Heaven Light born within his own body.
The old man's face reddened under that tyrannical force. He alternated his hands, slapping at the hammer, yet he could not bear it; both hands trembled. Now there was no room for pride. He found a stretch of ground free of rubble, threw himself down, and rolled and tumbled like a twisting serpent, bursting free.
Though it was undignified, he had escaped the other's rhythm at last.
He looked down at his hands. Even nourished and shielded by Heaven Light, they had swollen red. He suspected the bones themselves might be hurt.
"Truly a freak — it hasn't exploded yet?" Qin Ming said, his expression grim as he closed in.
The old man's eyes went cold. He wanted to ask who was the real freak — a man who had not yet fostered Heaven Light, and yet reached such a level of power.
He had already drawn the long blade from his back, silently vowing never to carry it sheathed on his back again. In the crisis he had not even had time to draw it; his two hands had whirled like windmills, clashing with the black-gold hammer that kept crashing toward his face. Now, with the blade in hand, he used Heaven Light to purge the clogged bruises, easing the pain for a time.
"A pity my Heaven Light Force was never perfected," he said. "Had it been, I would have needed no weapon at all." Every Third New Lifer gave birth to Heaven Light, but that mysterious Heaven Light Force was wretchedly hard to master.
Qin Ming understood the principle well enough. With each rise in realm one could refine rarer, more peculiar forms of Heaven Light Force, until even weapons could be torn apart like paper. But to reach such heights within the Third New Life stage was clearly impossible — even the vaunted Giant Spirit Force or Tathagata Force required the support of a higher realm.
He had no intention of giving the old man time to recover his hands. Hammer in one hand, short sword in the other, he chopped, smashed, rent, and battered: fifty-eight blows of the hammer, forty-two cuts of the blade, not a single breath of respite.
The old man grew furious. When in all his days in this region had he been so put upon, beaten down by a mere youth? His whole body blazed with Heaven Light as he counterattacked ferociously.
Then his heart chilled. The youth before him had tossed aside his earlier berserk manner. The long-handled black-gold hammer swung with undiminished violence, yet its character had changed — it was no longer hammerwork but bladework.
As he whirled the great hammer at speed, Qin Ming's wrist kept shuddering as if trembling a blade. The hammer hummed as it descended, trailing afterimages, and when it met the saber it carried a terrible tearing force.
The old man's long blade was nearly wrenched from his grip. His face grew grave.
Qin Ming shifted again. The hammer fell like successive thunderbolts, and the dreadful black-gold luster crisscrossed through the underground space. It all came down to raw speed — the hammer's paths swept together so thickly that they merged into sheets of lightning.
With a thunderclap, the old man was flung back into the stone wall, his right hand shaking. Even with Heaven Light protecting him, he could hardly endure it.
His eyes were cold slits. He leaped from the wall and launched a fierce assault of his own, and this counter-wave did press Qin Ming to his limits.
The old man had gone mad with battle — saber in one hand, the other still slapping aside the great hammer.
A sharp clang sent sparks flying from Qin Ming's shoulder. The old man's left hand grazed his armor and tore four or five plates clean off. The sight made Qin Ming's pupils contract — the menace of Heaven Light Force was not to be underestimated.
He grew cautious, keeping a constant distance so the old man could never close in, whirling the hammer into a windmill of dense shadow that hammered ever forward.
The old man was certain that without his Heaven Light he would long ago have been battered to pulp. What sort of monster was this? Not even born of Heaven Light, and already this absurd.
After a while, amid the thick haze of hammer-shadows, the great hammer roared — the clouds parted and the sun spilled through, and from within the shadowy blur burst the strongest blow of all. His speed was too great; the other hammer-images had not yet faded, clinging about like swirling lightning, when the main hammer crashed down. This time the old man's long blade very nearly flew from his grip. He marshaled his Heaven Light to endure, but the effort drained him utterly.
Qin Ming delivered nine such crushing blows in sequence. The old man could bear no more; his Heaven Light dimmed, and he spat out great gouts of blood.
Seeing this, Qin Ming swept the hammer again, this time carrying a blade's piercing intent like a bolt of lightning rending the night. The whole dark cavern shuddered under the thundering blows, loose stone flying, wind roaring.
The collision of hammer and blade was deafening. At last the old man could not hold his weapon. His arm spasmed, the long blade clattered to the ground, and he coughed up blood in great strands.
Qin Ming struck again and again, battering his protective Heaven Light apart.
With a sickening first sound, the old man's right hand turned to a red ruin. Without Heaven Light Force to reinforce it, he could no longer withstand the hammer's crashing weight; his finger bones snapped.
The next instant, foam and blood filled his mouth. He felt a searing agony in his chest, and his whole ribcage caved inward before he was hurled seven or eight meters away.
"A Third New Lifer really is hard to kill," Qin Ming panted, genuinely weary. Heaven Light Force was a troublesome thing.
The old man had not quite died. Rage made him vomit another mouthful of blood. He found the youth's words inhuman — how could one who had not yet fostered Heaven Light presume to think he could slay a Third New Lifer? And yet the bitter truth stood: defeated by such a man, and about to die at his hands.
Qin Ming stepped forward to finish it. "I'll give you a nice flat dough-face too," he said.
"I... wash my hands of this!" the old man coughed out, cursing weakly. The injustice of it choked him — to die like this at a boy's hands.
"The people of Golden Ridge are too crude," Qin Ming remarked, shaking his head, "always cursing." The hammer fell, flattening the old man's face, crushing his brow.
He searched the body, then composed the old man's features once more.
"Later, if those mutated beasts rush in, they should dispose of both corpses for me."
Qin Ming prowled through the great stone cavern, brows knit. In other tunnels he had spotted at least three more old men — likely all Third New Lifers.
"This is a problem," he muttered. He had no wish to take reckless risks.
"Hm?" He caught sight of another familiar figure: the very Golden Rider who had once bellowed at them, and lashed an old man's face until a deep gash welled with blood.
"Boy, where have all the villagers gone? Come here, I'm talking to you!"
In answer, Qin Ming executed a single technique of the Great Qin Flying Hammer. A dull thud, and the stretch fell utterly silent.
Dragging the body into the darkness, he vanished.
The underground cavern was a webbing of tunnels. A pack of strange creatures burst in along one road, plunging everything into chaos.
Qin Ming fell back to a distance away, entering a region shot through with Heaven Light. He set aside the hunting of Golden Ridge and Three-Eyed men for now and turned to searching seriously for the mysterious produce.
He pressed deeper, walking a long way.
Faint drifts of luminous mist flowed here, so the underground world was not wholly dark.
"Could luck truly be turning?" At a spot where Heaven Light gathered thickly, Qin Ming sensed a faint trembling of power.
Before long he crushed a stone the size of a fist, revealing a glimmer of blue luster — another kind of jade iron, half a walnut in size.
"It could make only a single arrowhead." Still, he was pleased. Any gain was good, and this was precious beyond compare.
"Well now, double blessings!" Two figures emerged from another tunnel, eyes bright with delight as they looked upon the jade iron in his hand.
Qin Ming recognized them at once — men of Redcloud City. Unbidden, he had walked so far that he had crossed paths with another party.
"Eh? You're Qin Ming?" One young man showed a curious expression.
Qin Ming studied him with care; the young man seemed familiar. He had watched from the sidelines when Qin Ming fought Nie Rui and Shen Jiayun.
"Oh, so this is that hunter boy of startling spear skill who defeated Nie Rui?" Another, middle-aged man spoke up. He was in his thirties, draped in crimson armor, a light smile on his face. "Qin Ming, is it? Come over, let's have a talk."
Qin Ming did not move; he stood where he was.
Earlier, he had thought well of the Redcloud City nobles — from Cao Long, Mu Qing, and Wei Zhirou to Nie Rui and Shen Jiayun. But now he sensed malice from the two nobles ahead, likely coveting the blue jade iron in his hand.
Clearly, not everyone was good-hearted. Some smiles and graces were meant only for public view; in a place without witnesses — like this underground realm — the masks of pretense could be torn away.
He recalled the young noble ahead. After he had bested the Twin Stars, the man had chatted warmly with him at parting. Now, however, the young noble's smile was gone, his tone flat. "Qin Ming, come along. Do us a favor."
"Third New Lifer?" Qin Ming ignored him, fixing his gaze on the middle-aged man, who, at the lightest clench of his fist, let Heaven Light surface.
"Hm. You should keep proper respect for a man like me. Out here in this dark underground, all that praise others heap on you counts for nothing," the middle-aged man said.
Qin Ming said nothing, but walked toward them.
The two had never feared he might flee — after all, when Qin Ming had fought Nie Rui and Shen Jiayun, his strength had neared seven hundred jin, and he was a youth who had but once undergone New Life.
Qin Ming meant to get close to them, but the middle-aged man cast him a look, and he did not press nearer. He followed them to a broad, open space.
"That..." Qin Ming was stunned. Ahead, the luminous mist was dense and churning, and within it bloomed a three-colored flower, dazzling and radiant, about to burst into full bloom.
The middle-aged man smiled. "Young friend Qin Ming, I see you took Heaven Light into yourself and seem no worse for it. Do us a favor: once this three-colored flower is fully ripe, pluck it for us from within the Heaven Light."
"What is it for?" Qin Ming asked.
The middle-aged man answered, "Great use. It can help a man master Heaven Light Force. After the Third New Life, who does not yearn to cultivate several kinds of Heaven Light Force? Yet even a single one is hard enough to learn. This flower is truly extraordinary!"
"Enough to stir any man's heart!" Qin Ming marveled.