The City God Xue Lingfu and Zhou Yihang each gave a cold snort, and their auras drew tight, binding Xu Ying all the more firmly.
The two men's presence swelled, each straining openly against the other.
The City God's gaze flickered, and he smiled. "Master Zhou, let us not play games. Does the Zhou family want him for his annotation of the Guiding Art?"
Zhou Yihang raised an eyebrow; the flagstones beneath his feet ground to ever finer shards under his aura, and he chuckled. "It seems our City God is well informed. That Xu Ying killed Master Jiang and slew several deities — none of that is my concern. But his ability to annotate the Guiding Art, this old man cannot ignore. For the City God to come in person — has Xu Ying stirred the interest of the Yin Court as well?"
Their auras sent the crowd scattering in all directions, fleeing far from the town temple. Even Huang Sanduo, Master Huang, who had but newly moved into a god's statue to become a deity, scrambled down from the shrine and hid behind the temple.
The City God Xue Lingfu laughed uproariously, his robes stirring of their own accord. "Your Zhou family digs up ancient cave-mansions, prying into the mysteries of antiquity. Do you think the Yin Court does not know? To be frank, the Yin Court has likewise come by many ancient secrets, and it needs someone to crack them open!" His divine might spread, incense qi congealing behind him into a tall god-shrine, his power swelling ever greater.
A mysterious voice spoke in Xu Ying's mind. "Had I not been wounded, a single wisp of my qi would have disposed of them both. But wounded I am. Yet you need not worry — from what they say, you matter greatly to them. Since that is so, let them carry you off for now. In a few days, once I have drawn a little of your qi and blood to recover, even a sliver of my arts will suffice to rid you of them!"
Xu Ying's spirits rose, though a doubt lingered. "Draw on my qi and blood to recover? Then could this senior be...?"
A strange energy flowed through Zhou Yihang, contending against the City God's swelling divine might. He gave a faint smile. "But my Zhou family has no wish to share the ancient secrets. If I cannot have Xu Ying..." He sighed. "Then Xu Ying had best become a dead Xu Ying. With his soul scattered and his spirit utterly extinguished — that would be his best end."
A smile spread across the City God's face. "The Yin Court means the same. If I cannot take him today, I must kill him, and not leave him to the mortal world!" Xu Ying's expression changed at once, and he let out a muffled groan. In his mind, the great bell chimed as well — clearly even the bell was a little taken aback by this turn.
"But, Master Zhou, there is one point on which I hold an advantage," the City God chuckled. "Even if you kill him, you would still need to strike once more to destroy his soul. That gives me my opening — if I cannot carry off his body, carrying off his soul amounts to the same."
Zhou Yihang's aura rose to its peak; not even the City God's unleashed shrine could press it down an inch. "Rest easy. Were I to make a move, a single blow would reduce Xu Ying to utter destruction of body and spirit alike — dead past all possibility!" Xu Ying muffled a second groan.
By now the street had emptied, leaving only the three. The horns, the suonas, the great drums had fallen silent; offerings and spirit-money and candles lay scattered. A wind rose, stirring the drifting paper ash, and a small calf let out a lonely low. Xu Ying stood in the piercing wind, a figure of some desolation, thinking: "Yuan Qi is still waiting for me to fetch his medicines back..."
Suddenly, the City God Xue Lingfu struck first! The god-shrine of incense qi behind him blazed with ten thousand rays, and as he turned his palm into a seal, the shrine erupted with the sound of myriad voices chanting — enough to scramble one's wits and shake the spirit's firmness! At the same time a radiant golden glow suffused him from within — that was the deity's golden body. A deity absorbs incense offerings: a hundred years to forge his magic power, three hundred to refine his golden body. City God Xue Lingfu, enjoying incense for five hundred years, had a golden body of iron firmness.
He turned palm into seal and cast a thunderclap that shook the world. At that sound, Xu Ying felt his soul rock — and the next instant saw himself flying up. Looking down, he saw another of himself standing in place; only then did he grasp that the City God's seal had jolted his soul clean out of his body. What was more, in his soul-bound state he could see what the naked eye could not: beneath the City God's palm-seal drifted clusters of floating flame, wreathed in a sense of utter annihilation and utter dread, as though if his soul brushed a single wisp, it would be steeped in torment — even kindled and scattered to nothing.
Yet that seal was not aimed at Xu Ying at all — it struck at Zhou Yihang. If Xu Ying was shaken free of his body by the mere thunderclap the palm-seal loosed, one can well imagine the pressure Zhou Yihang bore facing the attack head-on!
"Dong!" A bell-note reached Xu Ying's ears, and he felt his body turn into a great whirlpool, dragging his wandering soul down — and the next instant he was back within his own flesh.
His panic had barely settled when he saw Zhou Yihang, facing this very seal, still standing with hands clasped behind his back, entirely at ease. Then, from the old man's armpits there grew two more arms, turned in a palm-seal to meet the City God's strike head-on. He actually meant to clash strength against strength with Xue Lingfu, whose golden body had been refined complete! The City God's golden body held power that transcended the mundane, ranked unknown lengths above the giant deity Xu Ying had faced before, and his seal worked upon souls — how could it be met barehanded?
Yet the moment Zhou Yihang's hand reached out, this spare, lean old man's bones shot up in mad growth, his sinews and flesh bursting forth, and in an instant he became a giant nearly as tall as the City God himself, sinews knotted like coiling flood-dragons — the very image of a deity made flesh!
Xu Ying's eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. He had meant, while they clashed, to study Zhou Yihang's techniques and set them against the Mud-Pellet Hidden-Vision Qi-Refining Art he had taken from Ding Quan, hoping to comprehend the Zhou family's trademark arts. But the moment Zhou Yihang moved, his style matched nothing in that art — not the smallest bit!
Ding Quan was a Nuo shaman raised by the Zhou family, serving under County Magistrate Zhou Yang, his strength far from contemptible. Xu Ying had assumed the Mud-Pellet Hidden-Vision Qi-Refining Art — which Ding Quan treasured like a jewel and had even been willing to kill a fellow officer to possess — was at least passable. But now he saw he had thought too well of the Zhou family. That art, likely, was what the Zhou family handed their servants to cultivate. True Zhou members practiced another art entirely — even another whole system of arts! Grubby low-ranking Nuo shamans like Ding Quan sold their lives and never got the true transmission!
Zhou Yihang's mere art of bodily transformation rivaled — even surpassed — the City God's golden body. With those four arms, he was practically a being who had made his flesh into godhead!
"Peng!" Their palm-seals clashed, loosing a dull, stunning sound. Xu Ying, caught at the very point of collision, had blood run from eyes, ears, and nose alike. The City God and Zhou Yihang each groaned, frames trembling. Zhou Yihang had trusted his soul fused to his body, yet this one seal all but shattered it apart. And the City God, trusting in his golden body, found on the first exchange that a crack now ran through it. "I, when I slay him, my golden body must shatter piece by piece!" — an identical thought rose in both their minds.
As though sharing one instinct, the two broke off their stare in the same instant and both landed upon Xu Ying. "Since even in death-struggle I cannot win him, then let it be done: kill Xu Ying, so the other gains no path either!" They thought alike.
The next moment they struck at once, hurling themselves at Xu Ying! Beneath the City God's palm-seal rolled the demon-subduing yin fire that devours all souls. Zhou Yihang's fist-seal reared up like a mountain, of the fiercest yang — the peerless Nuo art handed down from the Zhou family's founding ancestors, the Eastern Monarch Leveling-the-Heavens Seal! Together they would shatter Xu Ying's body and soul to powder!
Just then, a great bell, tall as a man and more, abruptly appeared and clamped down over Xu Ying. The City God's demon-subduing yin fire and Zhou Yihang's Eastern Monarch Leveling-the-Heavens Seal slammed together upon it!
"Dong —" The bell was struck ringing by them both. The City God's face changed wildly as cracks burst across his golden body with snap after snap, and he was sent hurtling back on a colossal force, crashing into and snapping an old roadside willow! On the other side, the skin of Zhou Yihang's brawny arm burst, his mighty muscles twisting to powder, followed by the snap-snap explosion of the arm-bones. Zhou Yihang spat blood, toppled backward, and crashed through the temple wall behind him, tumbling among the shrine.
Beneath the bell, Xu Ying stood dumbstruck — alarmed and overjoyed at once. Alarmed that the great bell that had once tried to lord it over him had suddenly appeared; overjoyed that it was shielding him from this disaster! Then, with a great clang, the bell thumped to the ground, rolling a few turns behind his backside.
The mysterious voice spoke. "I have spent my last strength. Fend for yourself. I'm going to sleep."
"The great bell is the senior who has been guiding me!" Xu Ying turned and saw the bell lying on its side, its knob aimed at his backside, its mouth facing outward like a great trumpet. He turned again, and the bell clang-clang-clanked after him through half a rotation, forever keeping behind him. This seemed to be the bell's way of protecting itself — sunk in a deathlike faint, yet still locked onto his form, refusing to leave him!
"Which is to say, if I run now, this great bell will trail along behind me clanging like a gong and drum all the way..." Xu Ying blinked, rather in despair. How, exactly, was he to escape like this?
"Cough, cough, cough..." All of a sudden, coughs came from behind the temple.
Xu Ying turned around to see the giant that was Zhou Yihang, blood and flesh running, clinging to the wall as he slowly heaved himself upright, coughing blood and staring at him all the while. The old man's sinewed frame was hideous to behold, most of it shattered by the shock of the bell — yet the secret hidden treasury of his body held infinite vitality, keeping his flesh alive! Only, the bell-note had also wounded the soul fused to his body, leaving him fogged and muzzy, his strength curtailed by seven or eight parts. But even so robbed, he still had power enough to hold Xu Ying's life and death in his hands.
"So you had a magic treasure to shield your body. That was my carelessness." Zhou Yihang staggered, clumps of flesh slapping from his bones, yet new flesh grew — only for the newborn flesh to split and slough away again. His injuries were graver than Xu Ying could imagine; yet the Zhou family's hidden-treasury arts were so wondrous that, wounded even so, he still did not die.
Zhou Yihang fixed his gaze on the great bell. "A treasure that could block a full-strength blow from me and the City God is not bad at all. But its power is spent — a dead weight now, powerless to protect you any longer." His eyes slipped past Xu Ying to the City God, and he saw Xue Lingfu's huge frame crashed head-first into a house wall, pinned beneath a willow, alive or dead unknown. "Heh heh. As it turns out, I am still the stronger of us two."
He swayed toward Xu Ying, flesh still peeling from his bones, a strange light in his eyes, and reached out a hand, laughing, "Xu Ying, you shall be the treasure upon which my Zhou family rises..."
His words were not yet done when Xu Ying spun abruptly. The moment the clang-clang-clank reached Zhou Yihang's ears, it was too late. Behind Xu Ying, that great bell, a man's height even fallen, swept whistling around and, with a clatter of clangs, crashed down hard upon his body! Zhou Yihang, crushed beneath the bell, was sent clean sweeping through the air. Halfway aloft, his head still befuddled, he thought: "What on earth happened?"
"Peng!" He crashed through the wall on the far side of the temple, tumbling over and over some dozen zhang before slamming against a stone wall, where at last he stopped. Zhou Yihang fought to rise, but his legs cracked and popped — the sound of shinbones snapping! A cold shock ran through him. That blow had hurt his shins, and if he acted rashly, the bones of both legs would snap apart at once!
He threw his head up and saw Xu Ying's leaping figure, and fury rose in him: "The brat does not flee, but comes to kill me — courting death, truly!" Xu Ying, midair, whipped a kick toward his face — a move straight from the Elephant-Force Ox-Demon Fist. To Zhou Yihang it looked crude and contemptible, yet with the kick there came a great bronze bell swinging squarely around with a whoosh! "Dong!" Zhou Yihang was clubbed, both legs broken, and smashed back into the temple.
Foggy-minded, Zhou Yihang had only just fought to his feet when he saw Xu Ying already before him, back turned, leaping straight up and landing. The great bell smashed down on his head, burying half the old man in the earth. Xu Ying leapt again and landed again, and clang, clang, clang — a dozen or more times — hammered a great pit into the temple floor. Xu Ying peered in. Zhou Yihang still lived. Xu Ying frowned — the City God's cough came from the distance — and charged out of the temple: "I cannot let the City God get his breath back. He gets a couple of strikes from me as well!"
The road was none too clean. When the bell smashed down on stray pebbles, it ground them to powder, and a puff of smoke burst from the bell's mouth like a chimney spitting fumes. Xu Ying walked, and the great bell behind him smoked all the way.
"A desperate rogue, and a brazen one!" Zhou Yihang, both legs broken, clawed himself out of the pit on his arms, glaring at Xu Ying's retreating back, grinding his teeth in fury. "Fleeing, and still smoking from the backside! You are provoking this government office of Lingling!"