Volume Two, Mortal Realm Chapter Ninety: Slaying an Immortal in the Snow

Seven or eight cold corpses still lay in the blizzard at the mountain pass, their clouded eyes fixed on the dark heavens and the occasional violet flash of lightning that split them.

In the flicker of thunderlight, two figures appeared within those clouded pupils, moving through the snow with the black sky at their backs.

One wore a white robe embroidered with gold thread and flowing sleeves; his hair was white, his face youthful, his bearing otherworldly and serene. The other kept his head bowed, staring intently at an ancient box cradled in his arms, its surface marked with intricate golden patterns.

The robed figure drew nearer, growing larger in the field of vision. He swept his gaze over the corpses, then looked back at the other man holding the box.

"Yi Yi, open the box," Immortal Lingchen said lightly.

Seeing Yi Yi's hand tremble in fear, the immortal smiled and added slowly, "The third layer. Let the three children come out and help me take a look."

"Yes. I obey my master's command."

Yi Yi visibly breathed easier. His right hand fumbled over the old wooden case. Though not tall, it was divided into three layers by a band of crimson lacquer. Slowly, Yi Yi opened the top layer.

The instant it opened, a shrill commotion of laughing and playing burst into the silence of the snow, and one after another, white wax figurines poured out from the ancient box.

Some of the wax figures even scampered across Yi Yi's shoulders and over the top of his head as he stood rigid and afraid to move. Others perched on his shoulders, baring white teeth and bright yellow eyes as they stared hungrily at his throat, as if ready at any moment to leap and tear out a mouthful of fresh blood.

"Children, don't rush. First help your father with his work."

Immortal Lingchen spoke calmly to the figurines, who had spilled from the box and were already running about wildly, even showing great malice toward everything around them.

At the sound of Lingchen's voice, the wax figures, no matter which direction they faced, all turned at once to look at him. In each tiny grain-sized yellow eye lurked deep-seated venom and hatred.

Yet after a moment, they seemed compelled to obey. They turned and ran quietly to Lingchen's side. Some began to inspect the surroundings, some swarmed over the corpses, and some even liquefied into wax and seeped into the frozen bodies.

Watching their hopping, darting forms, Immortal Lingchen's eyes grew brighter and brighter.

As if half-delirious, he murmured, "It was fortunate that Second Brother was as meticulous as ever. Not only did he report that the corpses were uninjured when they died, he also noted that the spiritual energy here was in disarray and that there were lingering ripples of mental power."

"This is almost the residue of a curse technique. More importantly, these soldiers were suddenly killed while pursuing a pair of mortal father and daughter."

At that moment, the wax figures that had entered the corpses crawled back out, solidifying once more into little human shapes. They bounced over and gathered around Immortal Lingchen, chattering and waving their arms as if reporting something.

Lingchen murmured to himself, looking at the corpses on the ground as greed stirred in his eyes.

"Indeed, there are no traces of spiritual power. It is pure mental fluctuation. Could I really have encountered, after a thousand years, a natural-born curse vessel?"

"Though the natural-born curse vessel is not as famous as the Human Sovereign Body, that body only became renowned because of the Human Sovereign. After the changes in heaven and earth, it has long since become a useless body cursed by the world and incapable of cultivation. In terms of value, a natural-born curse vessel, one that approaches the Dao, far surpasses the Human Sovereign Body."

Thunder cracked in the sky. Immortal Lingchen laughed aloud, and with the fleeting violet glare of lightning, he looked toward the dark, heavy clouds that nearly hung to the ground over the distant plain.

"Haha, could it be that even my own cultivation废体, with only one hundred and eighty true acupoints opened, still has a chance to break through to the Prime Unity Realm? As for the Human Sovereign Body mentioned in the letter, it is probably just some ability user with slightly unusual blood. How could the Human Sovereign Body be so common and simple?"

"Besides, from the memories extracted when that Human Sovereign Body was refined, the Human Sovereign bloodline has at least been severed in the mortal world by my hand. There cannot be another Human Sovereign Body. Right now, the important thing is to find that father and daughter, and incidentally deal with that sword sacrifice too. I can also trade it in at the Grand Guard Office in Yangjing for some merit."

In a very short time, Immortal Lingchen sorted out and settled all his thoughts as he gazed at the storm before him, light flashing in his eyes.

"Children, let's go back."

Yi Yi immediately opened the ancient box in his hands, but this time the wax figures merely clustered around him, their tiny yellow eyes gleaming with greed as they watched him. They did not fully obey the immortal's command.

"Yi Yi." Lingchen called out lightly.

Yi Yi instantly understood. His body trembled, but with his head still lowered he did not dare resist.

He drew a small golden knife from his body, pulled open the front of his robe, and, gritting his teeth, plunged the golden blade into his chest.

Warm blood from the heart splashed onto the snow, and the wax figures pounced madly toward the scattered beads of blood. They snarled ferociously, trampling, biting, and tearing apart their own kind beside them. Some even swallowed the snow mixed with blood all at once.

After most of the figures had fed on the blood, Yi Yi, now pale as paper, withdrew the blade and drew his robe closed over the wound, which had already begun to heal under the influence of spiritual energy. The chest beneath was covered in countless knife scars.

The wax figures, having fed, let out greedy but unsatisfied roars. Yet this time they no longer dared disobey Immortal Lingchen's order. One by one, they jumped back into the box and vanished.

Lingchen turned first and walked toward the storm ahead. He gazed at the whipping snow and flashing thunder in the distance, at the dark clouds that pressed down over the whole vault of heaven, and softly murmured, shaking his head, "What a blizzard. Rarely seen in a hundred years."

He looked forward, greed shining in his eyes. Behind him, Yi Yi, after putting away the wooden box, again kept his head lowered and stared at it in his arms as he trailed after him step by step.

The two figures grew ever smaller, receding into the dark night of howling snow and flickering lightning.

...

"Guess... how many breaths before I kill you?"

The blood-soaked youth, as though come from hell itself, laughed wildly. His killing intent crashed straight toward Yi Eleven.

The instant that murderous intent struck his face, Yi Eleven's heart constricted. He instinctively stepped back, but the moment he did, he knew something was wrong.

Because, through the pull of their auras, his own momentum had already been completely overwhelmed and broken by the other side, and the monster-like youth had seized the opening to stamp the ground like thunder and charge at him.

Passing the fallen archers, he stamped even harder. Arrows on the snow and a bullhorn bow were jolted up. Leaning low, Ye Mingke scooped up the long bow with his left hand, snatched in the air with his right, and already had three arrows nocked and loosed in one motion. They shot in a line toward Yi Eleven, whose aura had faltered for an instant in fear.

Fear and remorse surged in Yi Eleven's heart. In a fluster, he conjured a fire shield to block the three sharp arrows. But just as he had barely stopped them, he realized that Ye Mingke, having sprinted all the way while picking up the scattered arrows on the snow, had already loosed more than twenty arrows at him from multiple directions.

This youth, advancing in a circling, gliding pattern, had actually sent a rain of arrows at him all by himself.

Yi Eleven desperately urged his fire-born spiritual power. A crimson halo spread outward from beneath his feet, and in the freezing wind and snow, a ring of blazing fire surged from his body to meet the incoming hail of arrows.

The arrows were swallowed by the fierce flames or flung aside by the gale raised by the fire.

But when the volley was spent and the flames weakened, a figure rolling with snow suddenly burst from the sea of fire and lunged toward Yi Eleven, whose spiritual power had temporarily run dry.

Within the ring of fire, Yi Eleven tried in panic to retreat, but the figure suddenly accelerated again, so that only after taking a step back did he realize it was already too late.

His ugly face twisted completely. Having never found the rhythm throughout the battle, he let out a frantic roar in the face of this desperate situation, and the spirit sword wrapped in flames slashed downward toward the youth charging at him.

The youth, who had landed, crouched, and sped across the snow to close in, merely shrank back slightly. He did not directly evade the blazing sword light cutting toward him. Instead, a blade flash, brilliant even in the night, rose from below.

Clang.

The fire sword striking Ye Mingke gave off a clear, ringing note. As the flames shattered, Ye Mingke lowered his body even further and rolled outward using the force of the blow. With toes and palms touching snow, he spun away in an instant, several zhang distant.

He knelt in the snow, gently picked up A Ru, whom he had set down earlier before charging the fire ring, and placed her back on his back, tying her in place with a rope.

He did not look again at Yi Eleven. After securing A Ru once more, he lifted the snow-white long blade again, picked up the bullhorn bow and the arrows from the ground, and once more walked forward against the wind and snow.

The blood flowing from Yi Eleven's body had already begun to freeze and congeal in the bitter blizzard.

In that instant of swords and blades crossing, Yi Eleven's spirit sword had been blocked by the sword case Ye Mingke had not removed from his back, and the blade light Ye Mingke had raised from below was the sole sword technique taught to him by Sword Uncle: Do Not Yield.

When he could cleave the scale-covered body of a giant serpent while wielding a wooden sword and using Do Not Yield, then with a long blade in hand, cutting down a cultivator who had not even tempered his body with spiritual energy was truly no difficult matter.

The entire battle had taken only a dozen breaths. From the initial psychological sparring, to the repeated interruptions that ruined Yi Eleven's rhythm and momentum, to the single hasty sword he had finally managed to strike, Ye Mingke, after his battle with the fat immortal, had become utterly familiar with dealing with cultivators of the same Spirit Acupoint realm.

Yet there was not the slightest trace of joy in his heart. That tall, thin immortal clearly knew he had once killed a cultivator of the same realm. Although he was terribly afraid, he still had no choice but to strike at Ye Mingke.

Someone was clearly forcing him from behind: a cultivator of a higher realm whom the tall, thin immortal did not dare defy.

That person should be somewhere ahead of him.

Against the wind and snow, Ye Mingke stepped forward, one step at a time.