The sea of clouds churned; the firmament was washed clean.
Heading north from the Capital, once one crossed the plains of Zhongzhou, there came the rolling, unbroken mountain ranges and the increasingly bleak wastelands.
It was no short journey.
Were it an ordinary cultivator riding a sword, even flying without sleep or rest it would take seven or eight days—and all the while one would have to guard against the gale-winds of the high heavens and those sightless flying birds and demon beasts.
But at this moment, the "Mountain-Quelling"-class flying vessel beneath Gu Chengming's feet—a war-instrument forged jointly by the Great Qian's Ministry of Works and the Hunyuan Sect—was not only vast in scale as a mountain peak, but had its entire body engraved with intricate defensive formation-patterns; when it broke through the cloud-waves, one couldn't feel so much as a single jolt.
Of course, what set the heart most at ease was not the sturdiness of this ship, but rather that figure standing this very moment at the very foremost point of the deck at the bow.
Zhou Qingmu wore a robe of purple-and-gold office, her great cloak snapping and cracking in the gale-wind.
She merely stood there with her hands clasped behind her back—she did not even need to release any pressure of might—and the cloud layers for a hundred li around automatically parted and yielded; those airborne demon-fowl, ordinarily so vicious and fierce, plummeted with wails of grief from far off, not daring to draw a hair's breadth closer.
This was the sheer weight of the Great Qian's Director of the Night-Watch Bureau.
Gu Chengming withdrew his gaze from the bow, turned around, and looked rather helplessly at that figure sprawled in utterly undignified fashion across the soft couch, still clutching a handful of melon seeds.
"By the way…"
Gu Chengming poured himself a cup of tea and at last voiced the question that had puzzled him ever since boarding the ship:
"Elder Yu, why is it that you, too, are able to be aboard this ship?"
This ship, after all, carried the elite of the Night-Watch Bureau—men going to the Northern Frontier to risk their lives.
The Wenjian Sect, being a sect outside the worldly order, was on good terms with the Great Qian, but Yu Wenqiu, as an elder of a sect, was in theory not on the Night-Watch Bureau's roster of those it could deploy.
Hearing this, Yu Wenqiu rolled over with some displeasure and flicked the melon-seed husk in her hand with pinpoint accuracy into the wastepaper basket beside her.
"Little Gu, that's rather standoffish of you to say."
She clapped the crumbs off her hands, sat up straight, and declared with perfect self-assurance:
"Who said this elder isn't allowed to come? This elder holds an official post, you know!"
"An official post?" Gu Chengming raised an eyebrow.
"But of course."
Yu Wenqiu rummaged in her storage pouch for a good while, and finally fished out a rather worn waist-token, its corners ground smooth and rounded, and slapped it onto the table with a crack.
It was a Night-Watch Bureau "Small Banner" waist-token; by its make, it was an old style from several decades ago.
"There—see for yourself."
Yu Wenqiu pointed at that token, her tone carrying, of all things, a trace of smugness:
"Back in the day, before this elder returned to the sect to become an elder, I knocked about in the Capital too, all right? Back then I held a post in the Night-Watch Bureau—though I didn't go out on many missions… though I was mainly in charge of logistics and intelligence analysis, but no matter how you slice it, I was a genuine, card-carrying 'Small Banner.'"
She put the token away, flopped back down onto the soft couch, and said languidly:
"Later, when I went back to the sect, I never handed this token in. The Great Qian side never said a word about it either; my stipend was stopped, true, but this identity is still recognized."
At this point she blinked, and a flicker of cunning passed through that pair of pretty eyes:
"This is what they call: once a person of the Night-Watch Bureau, forever a soul of the Night-Watch Bureau. Do you understand what it means to be on the gold-plated establishment payroll?"
Gu Chengming looked at that worn old token and was suddenly enlightened.
This sort of "nominal post," though it sounded a bit like an idle sinecure for collecting phantom pay, also indirectly confirmed the Great Qian's strategy for winning over cultivators—so long as you're willing to be listed in name, even if you do no work, we'll still maintain that bond of goodwill with you.
"So that's how it is."
Gu Chengming nodded and topped up Elder Yu's cup with hot tea:
"Since we're colleagues, then for the rest of this journey I'll have to rely on you to look after me, Small Banner Yu."
"It's nothing, nothing."
Yu Wenqiu found this form of address quite to her liking, and picked up her teacup, thoroughly pleased with herself:
"Once we reach the Northern Frontier, you just stick with this elder. I'm no good at fighting, true, but when it comes to finding a comfortable spot to slack off, this elder is a professional."
After the idle chatter, Yu Wenqiu went on slacking off, while Gu Chengming returned to the meditation chamber that was his own.
The flying vessel's meditation chamber was not large, but it won out in being superbly soundproofed, and was furnished with a Spirit-Gathering Formation.
Gu Chengming sat cross-legged upon the cushion and drew from his bosom that jade slip which Vice-Commander Liu had pressed upon him just before his departure.
——the «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula».
This was a movement art—or, to be precise, an extremely special movement art, one poised between "body technique" and "illusion technique."
Gu Chengming probed his divine sense into the jade slip, and as those rows of abstruse characters flowed through his sea of consciousness, his brows now relaxed, now slightly knit.
"Take the red-dust qi as guide, take one's own charm as anchor, transform the substantial into the void, each step a phantom…"
The conception behind this method was exceedingly lofty.
Ordinary movement arts cultivate "speed"—they are Shrinking the Earth to Inches, they are riding the wind to travel.
But this «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula» cultivates "bewitchment."
It did not pursue the utmost in speed, but rather made use of the cultivator's own "aura-field" and "charm"; during high-speed movement, through the disturbance of the red-dust qi, it conjured within the enemy's perception countless "phantom bodies" impossible to tell true from false.
These phantom bodies were no mere refraction of light and shadow, but "existences" carrying a portion of the caster's breath and karma.
Put simply, it made the enemy feel that every shadow was real—that every shadow was smiling at him, or drawing a sword on him.
"This threshold… is indeed a touch high."
Gu Chengming withdrew his divine sense and rubbed the space between his brows.
This method made extremely harsh demands upon the practitioner.
First, the physique had to be strong enough, or else it could not sustain that sort of instantaneous, explosive multiple changes of direction and shifts of qi-mechanism.
On this point, with the bolstering of the «Hundred Bones Resonance» and the «Myriad Forms Creation Fist», Gu Chengming fully met the standard—indeed, one could say he had more than enough to spare.
Next, and most crucial: charm.
Or, more precisely, affinity for and command over the "red-dust qi."
Were a cultivator of repugnant features and sinister, brooding aura to practice this method, then no matter how high his cultivation, the phantom bodies he produced would reek with ghostly menace, seen through at a single glance.
Only one who himself possessed an extremely powerful allure, and could freely steer the red-dust karma, could bring this method to its utmost.
"No wonder Vice-Commander Liu said this method had gathered dust in the vault for years with no one ever cultivating it to success…"
Gu Chengming muttered to himself.
Yet for him as he now was, it seemed practically tailor-made?
Within the sea of consciousness, the [Yin-Yang Creation Strategy] trembled lightly, as though it had taken an enormous interest in this method.
[The Yin-Yang Creation Strategy commented: Isn't this just made for you?]
[With the Charm Bone as foundation and the red dust as guide—it's only that this happens to be a movement art; were it remade into a charm technique, I'm afraid there aren't many female cultivators who could withstand a single flicker of you.]
Gu Chengming automatically filtered out the method's subsequent improper remarks.
He drew a deep breath and began trying, according to what the method described, to mobilize the true essence and red-dust qi within his body.
"Hummm——"
As his mind-intent turned, that wisp of pink red-dust qi—obtained from Fu Xiaoxiao's true transmission and ceaselessly honed through these recent days—rose surging up from the depths of his qi-sea.
It did not, as it usually did, transform into silken threads to draw upon karma; rather it dispersed into Gu Chengming's four limbs and hundred bones, entangling with that blood-and-qi power of his that had been strengthened by the «Hundred Bones Resonance».
This sensation was marvelous, like dyeing those galloping rivers with a layer of bewitching sunset glow.
Gu Chengming closed his eyes and began to conceive that "phantom body" within his mind.
This was not a fabrication out of thin air, but required a kind of "connection."
He needed to feel those gazes and attachments coiling about him from out of the boundless red dust.
Gradually, within his perception, this flying vessel was no longer a sealed space, but a vast node-point interwoven with countless karmic threads.
He "saw" it.
Right next door, that pale-golden line, carrying a touch of languor and warmth—that was Yu Wenqiu.
She was trusting him utterly without any guard, and that emotion of "so long as you're here, it's reassuring" came transmitting slowly along the thread.
And farther off, at the bow—
that line as thick as a pillar propping up the sky, radiating purple-gold majesty: that was Zhou Qingmu.
It was a kind of appreciation, of expectation, and of weighty protectiveness.
Extending still farther into the distance…
Even separated by a thousand li, he could still faintly sense several lines extending from the direction of the Capital.
One fiery-red and fervent, yet carrying a tug of tsundere petulance—that was Fu Xiaoxiao's "don't you dare forget this venerable self."
And there was another, languid and free-spirited, yet shot through with the unfettered ease of "now that I've taught you, don't go shaming me"—that was Senior Qin Qing.
There was even a wisp of an extremely faint, extremely cold black line—that was the Eternal Life Sect karma he had severed; though the man was dead, that resentment seemed still to lurk in some corner.
"So this is… the red dust?"
A trace of comprehension rose in Gu Chengming's heart.
The so-called red dust was not merely clamor and love-and-hate, but rather this net of countless threads binding person to person, and person to world, tightly together.
The true essence of this «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula» was, in fact, not the creation of illusions, but the borrowing of these truly-existing "connections" to magnify, overlap, and dislocate one's own sense of presence without limit.
"Condense!"
Gu Chengming gave a low cry within his heart.
He abruptly mobilized that red-dust karma he had perceived, attempting to condense at his side a phantom body convincing enough to pass for real.
The qi-sea churned; the red-dust qi surged like boiling water.
He sensed that critical threshold—he had only to cross it, and this high-grade movement art could be counted as entered into.
And yet…
At the very instant the phantom body was about to take form.
"Pop."
A faint muffled sound, just like a bubble bursting.
That phantom body, whose outline had already been sketched out, suddenly and without the slightest warning collapsed and disintegrated.
It was not for lack of spiritual power, nor for insufficient control.
Rather, it was because that converging red-dust qi and karmic force… were simply too immense.
Gu Chengming had underestimated the weight of these karmic bonds he bore upon himself.
This was not merely the attention of a few people, but the renown of being tenth on the Hidden Dragon Ranking, the awe-inspiring name of the "God of Slaughter" passed from mouth to mouth among the Capital's commonfolk—even the residue of the grand momentum of heaven and earth left behind after his slaying of the flood-dragon.
This force was far too heavy and dense; the first-layer mental-method framework of the «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula» as it now stood simply could not bear up under so vast a "sense of substance."
And so, that energy which ought to have transformed into a phantom body and dispersed outward, in the instant of collapse, unexpectedly came pouring back in its entirety into Gu Chengming's body.
"Mm—"
Gu Chengming gave a muffled grunt, feeling only a swelling fullness at his dantian.
This force that came pouring back in did him no harm; on the contrary, being of the same origin and same kind, it was in an instant divided up and devoured clean by the «Yin-Yang Creation Strategy» and «Hundred Bones Resonance» within his body.
The bottleneck at which he had already been—the peak of the third layer of the Second Realm—offered not even token resistance under the impact of this energy, pure and refined and carrying the "thought-power of all living beings."
"Crack."
An intangible barrier shattered at the sound.
The spiritual-qi vortex round about had not yet even taken form before it was swallowed whole by Gu Chengming's domineering physical body.
The qi-sea expanded; the true essence was further refined.
That dragon-shaped qi-seed coiled in the center of the qi-sea also seemed to have eaten its fill; it let out a satisfied belch, the scales upon its body growing clearer still, and even faintly sprouting the first inklings of a mane.
Second Realm, fourth layer.
Gu Chengming slowly opened his eyes, sensing that power within him brimming nearly to overflowing, and his expression turned somewhat peculiar.
He lowered his head, looked at his own two hands, then looked again at that «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula» jade slip still resting upon his knee.
"What is this supposed to be?"
Gu Chengming didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
He had clearly meant to cultivate a movement art, yet in the end the movement art hadn't come together—that phantom body, requiring such fine operation, had simply blown up.
But because the blowup had been so thorough, and the energy recovered so perfectly, it had instead forcibly shoved his cultivation up a whole layer?
This sort of plot where one "cultivates wrong and breaks through anyway," however one looked at it, reeked of the absurd.
Though the «Red Dust Phantom Body Formula» could not for the moment be entered into, this attempt had deepened his understanding of the red-dust qi by a layer.
And moreover, the cultivation breakthrough was genuine, solid stuff.
Second Realm, fourth layer—paired with that terrifying physical body and his various trump cards, were he to run into the likes of that Eternal Life Sect steward from last time again, he likely wouldn't even need to shout "Hundred Heavens Emperor, aid me"; by his ordinary combat strength alone he could suppress it.
"Useful enough, then, I suppose."
Gu Chengming pushed open the door of the meditation chamber, feeling the cold wind sweeping through the corridor.
"With my cultivation higher, when I practice this movement art again in future, I should be able to bear up better under the heavy weight of that karma."
He straightened his garments and headed toward the deck.
Since he'd broken through, he ought to go get some fresh air regardless—and along the way cadge a bit of Flowing Cloud Pastry off Elder Yu.
On the deck, the wind was as biting as ever.
But at this moment Gu Chengming found that this wind blowing on his face carried a few extra measures of refreshing crispness.
He walked over to Yu Wenqiu's side. That elder still held her previous posture, only the melon seeds in her hand had been swapped for candied fruit.
Seeing Gu Chengming come out, Yu Wenqiu languidly lifted her eyelids—and then, her movement abruptly froze.
She sat up straight, looked Gu Chengming up and down several times over, and a flicker of astonishment passed through her eyes—
"You… broke through?"
How long had he even been in there? Two double-hours?
"A bit of a small insight."
Gu Chengming made no effort to hide it; he casually took a piece of candied fruit from her plate and stuffed it into his mouth, mumbling:
"Got lucky—something went off the rails while I was cultivating, and who'd have thought it'd turn out a blessing in disguise."
"Something went off the rails while cultivating… and you could still break through as a blessing in disguise?"
Yu Wenqiu looked at the candied fruit in her hand and suddenly found that this sweetness had turned rather flavorless and dull.
She lay back down again, pulled the wool blanket up to cover half her face, leaving only a pair of eyes to stare gloomily at the sky, muttering under her breath:
"This world really has no justice left in it…"
Sleep, sleep; if I don't sleep any more, this elder's dao-heart is liable to grow unstable.
Gu Chengming looked at her crestfallen, demoralized state and couldn't help letting out a soft laugh.
The flying vessel broke through the clouds, heading ever northward.
Once they crossed Zhongzhou's bustling lands of human warmth and worldly fires, the mountains and rivers beneath them gradually turned vast, wild, and desolate.
The originally mild and gentle wind began to carry fine fragments of ice; the cloud layers, too, turned from light, airy cotton-wool into a heavy leaden grey, pressing down extremely low, as though one had only to raise a hand to touch the vaulted dome of that sky-curtain.
Gu Chengming stood at one side of the ship's rail; that thin, close-fitting battle garb he had worn had long since, at Yu Wenqiu's strong insistence, been changed for a cold-warding black great-cloak.
The true essence within him, just freshly broken through, galloped ceaselessly through his meridians; the brimming fullness of the fourth layer of the Second Realm left him feeling warm all over even amid this bitter, cutting gale-wind.
"Another half-day's journey, and we'll reach Snowfall Pass."
Yu Wenqiu had her whole self curled up inside a thick fox-fur, leaving only a pair of eyes to stare at that faintly-glimpsed grey-white long line in the distance.
That was the Great Qian's Northern Frontier Great Wall—and also the dividing line between the human race and the demon territory.
"Once we get there, we'll be able to see Senior Sister Luo."
Yu Wenqiu stuffed a piece of jerky into her mouth and mumbled indistinctly:
"This whole journey's been peaceful to an excessive degree. Looks like that brood of demon brats knows fear too—knowing our Director Zhou is personally holding down the line, they got scared and tucked their tails between their legs long ago."
Gu Chengming smiled and cast his gaze toward that flagship of the largest build at the very front.
There sat Zhou Qingmu, holding command.
This whole journey had indeed gone all too smoothly.
Forget attacks by great demons—even slightly larger flying birds detoured around them from a hundred li off.
That feeling was as though the entire Northern Frontier were making way for the Night-Watch Bureau.
"Perhaps it's the calm before the storm?" Gu Chengming said offhandedly.
"Pah, pah, pah! Jinx-mouth!" Yu Wenqiu glared at him: "Little Gu, do you even know how to chat? We're nearly there—where's any storm coming from? This is called 'the royal army settles the north, and demon-evil retreats and disperses!'"
Gu Chengming laughed despite himself, and was just about to follow the elder's lead and say a couple of auspicious words.
Suddenly, he keenly sensed that the wind all around had stopped.
Not the kind of natural lull, but as though something had forcibly drained dry the airflow of this whole stretch of heaven and earth.
The banners and pennons that had been snapping and cracking dropped limp in an instant; the heavy cloud layers congealed in mid-air; and even the roar the flying vessel gave off as it tore through the sky became, in this moment, exceedingly faint, as if swallowed by some intangible medium.
"Something's wrong…"
Yu Wenqiu sprang up from the soft couch almost as though catapulted, the languid air about her vanishing in an instant, her expression rather grave.
"Little Gu! Come here!"
Before Gu Chengming could even react, Yu Wenqiu had already seized his wrist in one hand, with astonishing force.
The next moment.
The sky collapsed.
Without any warning, and without any sound. That heavy leaden-grey cloud layer above suddenly, like a flimsy sheet of thin paper, was forcibly torn open from out of the firmament by a pitch-black giant hand too vast to describe.
That giant hand did not fall directly; in the mere instant it reached out beyond the cloud layer, the abundant immense force it carried transformed into a pressure of might as substantial as the real, like an inverted, hanging mountain peak, crashing down thunderously upon the very front of the flying-vessel formation.
"BOOM——!!!"
It was as though only this one sound remained in all heaven and earth.
That "Mountain-Quelling" flagship—representing the Great Qian's highest standard of artifact-forging, engraved with countless defensive formations—before this giant hand was like an exquisite toy.
Those layer upon layer of protective light-shields that lit up could not hold for even a single breath before disintegrating layer by layer amid a tooth-aching sound of shattering.
The vast ship's hull let out an enormous din as that terrifying force pressed it forcibly downward into a sinking dip, its stern tilting high into the air, very nearly disintegrating mid-air.
"Insolence!!!"
A clear, resonant long roar brimming with fury burst out from within the flagship.
A blade-light, like a fiercely rising sun newly arisen, carrying the domineering will to cleave through all things, rushed straight up into the heavens from within the about-to-capsize ship-tower, head-on against that pitch-black giant hand.
"Clang——!"
A sound of metal-and-iron clashing rang through the clouds and heavens, the shockwave it stirred up sweeping across all directions and shattering the cloud layers for several li around to pieces.
That giant hand was checked for a faint moment by this blade-stroke; a fissure, deep enough to lay bare the bone, appeared in its palm, and black demon blood spilled down like a waterfall, every drop that fell transforming into a poison-rain that corroded the earth.
Zhou Qingmu's figure hovered in mid-air, her hair disheveled, that robe of purple-and-gold office snapping and cracking in the raging wind.
She held her long blade, her face frost-cold, staring fixedly into the depths of that torn-open cloud layer.
"You skulking, tail-hiding vermin! Get out here for this venerable one!"
At her furious shout, several mocking low chuckles came from the depths of the cloud layer.
The laughter shook heaven and earth, carrying a nauseating reek of blood and rankness, and a violent savagery.
"Director Zhou is in quite the temper."
"This king only saw that this flying vessel was exquisitely made and wished to borrow it for a bit of amusement—why resort to blades and spears?"
The clouds and mist scattered fully.
Three figures slowly surfaced upon the firmament, arrayed in a triangular formation that sealed Zhou Qingmu's flagship tightly in their encirclement.
The one on the left bore a ferocious wolf's head; the one on the right had twin wings sprouting from its back, a green face and protruding fangs—a single beat of its wings was a gale-wind howling, that keen, edged aura cutting at one's skin until it stung.
And the one in the very center was the very party who had struck just now.
It was clad in heavy armor, shaped like a savage bull, those crimson-red eyes flowing with magma-like firelight, its whole body radiating a heavy, dense demonic qi enough to crush a mountain peak flat.
"Xuanshuo Wolf Lord… Azure-Vault Bat Lord… Yueting Pan Sovereign."
Zhou Qingmu narrowed her eyes, reciting these names one by one, the fingers gripping her blade going faintly white from the force, her voice cold as though squeezed out through the gaps of her teeth:
"Good… very good indeed!"
"Three Fifth-Realm demon kings arriving hand in hand—looks like you mean to thoroughly tear up the treaty established with my Great Qian?"
That Yueting Pan Sovereign let out a muffled-thunder sneer:
"Zhou Qingmu, spare me these set-piece speeches meant to overawe this king."
"Strike!"
At a single violent shout, the qi-mechanisms of the three great demon kings erupted; wasting no more words, they each unleashed their divine abilities, and with a heaven-destroying, earth-annihilating might bore down to slay Zhou Qingmu in their encirclement.
"Everyone! Scatter! Break out each on your own!"
Zhou Qingmu had time to issue only this single command before her whole self transformed into a stream of purple-gold radiance, actively meeting those three demon kings head-on.
She had to drag these three beasts down, or else by the aftershocks alone this fleet would be wiped out to the last.
At the same time, the originally orderly flying-vessel formation fell into utter chaos under this terrifying pressure of might.
"Quick! Turn! Scatter and break out!"
"Activate the backup formations! Pull away at full speed!"
The vast ship-hulls laboriously swung their direction about in the air, trying to flee this place of death.
The flying vessel where Gu Chengming was lay on the formation's left flank, and was at this moment likewise running at full power, racing madly toward the mountain ranges to the southwest.
Within the ship's cabin was a dead silence; everyone gripped their weapons tightly, faces ashen-pale.
"Something's wrong…"
Gu Chengming stood on the deck, gripping the railing fast, his gaze sweeping all around.
Three great demon kings besieging Zhou Qingmu—this was indeed a certain-kill setup.
But… the demon race's hidden moves were surely not these three top-tier combat powers alone.
"Roar——!!!"
As if to confirm his conjecture.
From within the mountain ranges below, beast-roars suddenly rose up, one after another.
Countless black dots rose up from the mountain forests like locusts—these were uncountable flying demon beasts.
And within that black, oppressive tide of beasts, a dozen-odd great demons of particularly fierce, overbearing aura—clearly having reached the Fourth Realm—were charging toward those flying vessels scattering in flight.
"Careful!" Yu Wenqiu cried sharply.
That worn old waist-token in her hand had, at some unknown moment, already been put away, replaced by a long sword crystalline through and through, radiating a chill, cold sword intent.
"BOOM!"
The flying vessel shuddered violently.
An enormous wind-blade came striking from the lower side without any warning, slashing fiercely into the flying vessel's protective shield.
The light-shield flickered on and off, gave out a wail of unbearable overload, and then shattered with a roar.
The gale poured in, wood-splinters flying. A monstrous bird, its wingspan a full several zhang, its whole body covered in green scales, came down heavily upon the deck on a gust of rank wind.
It folded its wings, and that pair of turbid vertical pupils swept over the people on the deck just as though it were looking at a flock of lambs awaiting slaughter.
Early Fourth Realm—the Green-Scaled Hawk Demon!
"Not bad luck at all—the blood-feast on this ship is quite to my liking."
That hawk demon let out a piercing, eerie laugh, its gaze finally fixing upon Yu Wenqiu, who had the strongest aura.
Yu Wenqiu's expression was grave; though she ordinarily looked slovenly and idle, when it truly came to such a critical juncture, her caliber as an elder of the Wenjian Sect was laid bare for all to see.
Without the slightest hesitation, she turned her sword-edge and interposed herself directly before Gu Chengming.
"Little Gu, hold on to me tight!"
Yu Wenqiu's voice was exceedingly rapid: "This beast is Fourth Realm, and it's a flying demon beast—up here in the sky we can't outfight it. The flying vessel's already wrecked; we must abandon ship!"
As she spoke, a strange silver light suddenly lit up within her pair of eyes.
That was not sword intent, but a kind of even more profound, mysterious fluctuation, as though it could see through the very essence of the void.
——Clairvoyant Eye, open!
Within her field of vision, the originally chaotic space turned clear in an instant; countless threads representing spatial nodes interwove before her eyes.
She swiftly locked onto a safe node several hundred li away.
"Trying to flee?"
Though that Green-Scaled Hawk Demon did not know what means Yu Wenqiu possessed, a demon beast's instinct made it sense a faint anomalous fluctuation in space.
"Playing spatial displacement before this venerable self? Naive!"
"Screech——!"
A sharp, piercing cry burst out. The hawk demon beat its twin wings violently, and countless green feathers transformed into a sky full of sharp blades, sealing off all the space around.
At the same time, its talons—as though cast from refined iron—carrying a terrifying, void-rending force, shot straight for the face of the spell-casting Yu Wenqiu!
Too fast! The explosive speed of a Fourth-Realm great demon was simply not something a Third-Realm cultivator could easily react to—all the more so when most of Yu Wenqiu's mind was at this moment immersed in constructing the spatial passage.
Were she to withdraw her move and defend, the spatial passage would collapse, and both of them would be ground to shreds by the chaotic void currents.
Were she not to withdraw… this talon-strike would gravely wound her as well.
At the very instant those talons were about to touch the space between Yu Wenqiu's brows.
A figure thrust itself sideways into this killing situation.
It was a back not especially broad or thick, clad in a black great-cloak, not even holding a sword in hand.
Gu Chengming had blocked the way before Yu Wenqiu.
He had no time to draw a sword, no time to set up a formation.
Facing this talon-strike capable of piercing metal and stone, there was only one thing he could do.
——Hundred Heavens Emperor, aid me!
[This Emperor has come!!!]
In the depths of the sea of consciousness, that long-dormant silver-haired phantom suddenly snapped open its eyes in this moment.
A vast, domineering, sole-self-supreme imperial will took over Gu Chengming's physical body in an instant.
The qi-strength within his body was drained dry in this single instant, all of it gathering upon that utterly ordinary right fist.
Time seemed to grow exceedingly slow in this moment.
Gu Chengming could clearly see the shift in that hawk demon's eyes from contempt to shock, could see every single line upon those talons.
He did not retreat, did not dodge. He simply, plainly, delivered a single fist.
This fist was only to open the way!
"BOOM——!!!"
Fist-edge and talon collided fiercely in mid-air.
There was no flesh-and-blood spraying as imagined, no sound of bones shattering.
There was only a wave of white qi visible to the naked eye, spreading madly outward in a ring with the two of them at its center.
The deck planks turned to fine powder in an instant, and the wreckage of the flying vessel was blasted away by this shockwave for dozens of zhang.
That Green-Scaled Hawk Demon felt only an indescribable, terrifying immense force transmitting from its talon-tips.
That force was domineering to the extreme; it not only ignored the demonic qi guarding its body, but surged straight along the meridians of its arm into its viscera, shaking even its demon core into violent trembling.
Its vast body was, under this immense force, forcibly struck flying backward!
Though it was only knocked back several zhang, though it took no substantial injury, for a Fourth-Realm great demon, to be driven back by a single head-on fist from a Second-Realm human ant—this was simply an utter, shameful humiliation!
The hawk demon steadied its form, the mockery in its eyes utterly transforming into rage: "Ant! You're courting death!!!"
Yet it no longer had the chance.
The single breath's worth of time this fist had bought was, for Yu Wenqiu, already enough.
"Go!" Yu Wenqiu bit through the tip of her tongue.
She paid no heed to that enraged hawk demon, and swept up Gu Chengming's now strength-drained waist in one arm.
Space underwent an uncanny distortion in this moment.
The figures of the two grew blurred and indistinct in an instant, like a reflection in water shattered by a tossed pebble.
The hawk demon's second strike, sent forth in its fury, raked fiercely across that blurred residual afterimage.
"Riiip——"
The void was torn apart, but there was no one there any longer.
Only a few shredded corners of black cloth drifted slowly down in the raging wind.
The wreckage of the flying vessel burned in the air; yet of the three demon kings' roars, only two remained at this moment.
At some unknown point, Zhou Qingmu had already struck off the head of one demon king.
The taste of spatial teleportation was no pleasant thing.
That sensation was like being stuffed into a drum washing machine, then madly churned at a speed of three thousand revolutions per breath, and finally—person and soul together—hurled hard onto the ground.
The instant Gu Chengming landed, his stomach heaved as though rivers and seas were overturning within it.
His body, already drained dry of strength by that single fist of [Hundred Heavens Emperor, aid me], was at this moment weak to the utmost extreme.
In his ears was only the howling sound of the wind, mingled with the faint stinging prick of snow-grains striking his face.
He had already prepared for the worst.
Such as landing in some godforsaken depth of a snowy plain, or a primeval forest swarming with great demons, and then putting on a whole show of "Wilderness Hunter" or "Wandering the Wilds with an Elder" together with his own Elder Yu, who could only eat and drink.
Gu Chengming laboriously propped himself up, and through his blurred vision saw a white figure standing before him.
The wind and snow were too heavy, and with his spirit-soul overdrawn besides, for a moment he couldn't see clearly—he only felt that figure to be coldly aloof and solitary, yet shot through with an inexplicable familiarity.
"Little Yu… Elder?" Gu Chengming called out instinctively.
He thought to himself: how had Elder Yu not taken a face-plant in the dirt this time? She could even stand so steady?
Yet that figure gave no response to his call.
She merely lowered her head slightly, looking with a gaze tinged faintly with puzzlement, and a measure of scrutiny, at these two "refugees" who had suddenly tumbled out of the void.
And at that figure's waist, there hung—plain to see—a pendant that was at this very moment clinging desperately to her thigh.
Gu Chengming: "…"
He blinked, and finally saw clearly that the "pendant" was none other than his own Elder Yu Wenqiu—who just now had been so awe-inspiring and majestic, opening her Clairvoyant Eye to whisk people away in flight.
And that white-robed woman, whose thigh she had clutched onto—a face full of helplessness, yet who had not kicked her away…
"Boo-hoo! Senior Sister Luo!"
Gu Chengming looked all around, and only then discovered that they were not in any wilderness, but atop a towering, lofty black city-pass that pierced straight into the clouds.
Beneath their feet were hard obsidian floor-tiles; at their side was a city-wall inscribed with intricate formation-patterns.
And beyond the city-wall was that boundless, endless Northern Frontier snowy plain, its demonic qi surging to the heavens.
This was… Snowfall Pass?
——Even though he'd long ago heard Elder Yu say she had a rather formidable escape technique.
But wasn't this just a bit too formidable?
She could even precisely lock onto a thigh to escape to?
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