The Forbidden Path to Immortality

Chapter 289

Li Xun was mulling over this, but other thoughts kept creeping into his head.

From the way Yun Xing spoke, you could definitely call it flattery. But unlike that fake, polite kind of compliment, there was a genuine note of admiration in his voice. Put together, it came off as kind of weird.

Especially with that forceful voice of his, you'd figure the guy must have a rock-solid, tough-as-nails personality to match. Yet here he is, throwing out "Fairy" left and right and dishing out these compliments. It's rare, sure, but it feels less like pure flattery and more like he's got some hidden agenda behind it.

Li Xun's eyes flickered as it clicked for him. “So this bastard’s got his eye on the swan,” he muttered. “What a shameless piece of work.”

Cursing for no clear reason, he then heard Ming Ji’s voice again from the jade bowl. “This is strange,” she said. “If your sect has already made a decision, why are you telling me all this, Daoist Yun Xing?”

That single sentence cut as sharply as a sword in her hand. Yun Xing hesitated for a beat, then gave a wry smile.

“Fairy must be mocking me. All right. What I really mean is this. Marual Uncle Tian Yuan is a man of strong feelings. When something happens, he cannot help acting on impulse. On ordinary days, that might be fine. But right now the situation is critical. Whether it is your sect, mine, or the entire Tongxuan world, none of us can afford to wait for him to come around. So…”

Even Li Xun had to admit it... coming from a tough guy like Yun Xing, words said so gently hit a lot harder than expected.

But Ming Ji struck straight at his weak spot with another verbal slash.

“If Sect Master Tian Yuan cannot bend, then I am supposed to bend myself to accommodate him?”

Yun Xing was left with no strength to explain. All he could do was smile bitterly. After a long pause, he said, “You see things clearly, Fairy. The situation in the Star River is in constant upheaval right now. More than half of the Tongxuan world is watching this place. We truly cannot afford to waste time.

“And over these past days, the injuries inside your body have only worsened. On top of that, you are suffering from the interference of the Soul-Piercing Light. Then there is my worthless nephew stirring up trouble. If this continues, how can anyone bear it?”

Li Xun's heart skipped a beat, but Mingji was already responding in a cool, detached tone. "This shouldn't be any of your concern, Fellow Daoist. As for your martial nephew... since I killed his master, there's nothing wrong with him coming for revenge. I'll be grateful if you talk him out of it, but anything more than that isn't necessary."

Li Xun could hear Yun Xing sighing again and again on the other end. Ming Ji, meanwhile, fell completely silent, and the quiet left Li Xun restless, as if a cat were clawing at his heart. The time he had agreed on with Bisu was almost upon him. If he did not act soon, there was no telling what might go wrong on Bisu’s side.

But was he really going to stand by and watch Ming Ji suffer here?

In the end, he couldn't sit still any longer. He rose to his feet and looked down at the plain below, where two people stood. Yun Xing was pacing back and forth, clearly agitated. Ming Ji, by contrast, stood perfectly still, without the slightest movement. It was impossible to tell whether this was deliberate or whether she was bound, unable to move.

Right. There was still the restriction.

All this talk of rescuing her was just wishful thinking. It probably meant nothing at all.

Old man Tian Yuan’s mastery of forbidden arts was in no way inferior to that of Master Xuanhua. The two stood among the very greatest grandmasters of this world. A confinement laid down by someone like that was hardly something that could be undone in a short time.

Wait.

Li Xun suddenly remembered what Bisu had said back then. Once a Stabilizing Star Stone slipped out of position, the movement of the Star River would be affected. But Bisu had never said anything about imprisonment. Which meant…

...

Out on the grassland, Yun Xing paced around in circles a dozen times before he finally realized he was making a complete fool of himself. He stole a glance at Ming Ji and saw that her expression was calm and indifferent, showing no reaction at all. Only then did he relax.

But seeing how unruffled she was, so unfazed by favor or disgrace, he understood even more clearly. Her resolve in the Dao was rock-solid. She had already accepted the current situation as a trial on her path of cultivation. And she was facing it head-on, the way one meets a destined test.

That's exactly why someone like her, someone utterly convinced she's in the right, with no bias in her actions, would never lower her head to Old Tian Yuan. To do so would wreck her cultivation.

Even if Old Tian Yuan truly kept his word and imprisoned Ming Ji for a thousand years, she would likely accept it with composure, using the confinement to temper her mind. In the end, she would break through the trial and emerge on the other side.

The thought sent a chill racing through Yun Xing.

The wind picked up.

He whipped his head around. What hit his eyes was a shrill, blinding streak of blood-red shadow that swallowed his entire field of vision.

It was like a demon leaping straight out of a nightmare. Just watching the path it carved as it crossed several li of space left Yun Xing dizzy. Like heaven and earth themselves were twisting out of shape.

By the time he realized it was just an illusion caused by the other guy's overwhelmingly brutal speed, a foul, bloody gust slammed into his face. And a wisp of true qi, scorching hot like red-heated wire, was already pressed right against his chest.

In that split second, Yun Xing’s blood and qi surged into a boil.

With a sharp clang of sword cry, his Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword, which had been steeped in centuries of his heart's blood and cultivation, shot out of its sheath on its own. It skimmed right along his skin as it whipped around his body, blade edge slamming forward to meet that wisp of true essence head-on.

The surging stellar power within a several-li radius was drawn completely into that one sword strike, then answered it in unison. A deep hum thundered through heaven and earth. The stars across the sky seemed to flare all at once, only to sink back together into darkness.

Yun Xing flared his eyes and roared, his palm flowing like water over the blade. He caught the hilt in a reverse grip and tore outward. The Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword carved a frost-cold arc of light through empty space, then triggered the raging tide of stellar power around it, which erupted in an instant.

A piercing shriek ripped across the plains. The blood-red shadow that had nearly slammed into his chest suddenly swelled in size. At a glance, it looked like a mass of crimson fog, blasted apart by Yun Xing’s storm-like strike. It churned and scattered, almost shredding into countless wisps before finally dispersing completely.

Yun Xing’s brow knotted tightly. Not for a moment did he let his guard down.

He knew that despite its overwhelming spectacle, the strike had really been nothing more than a desperate move to save his own life. The sword qi had exploded without any restraint, and once the blade was swung, most of its power had simply been wasted, striking empty air. It left him in a miserable state. And this bizarre phenomenon, though he had never seen it with his own eyes, felt oddly familiar, as if he had heard of it somewhere before...

Just as he was reeling in confusion, the ground far out on the grassland suddenly exploded in a spray of dirt. Another blood-red shadow, almost identical to the first, burst violently out of the ground. And the position it appeared in was…

Damn it.

Ming Ji!

Yun Xing didn’t even think. The Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword flashed into a streak of pure light, vanishing into the void in an instant. When it reappeared, it was right in the blood shadow’s path, planted squarely between it and Ming Ji. The sword cry, clear and piercing, as it thrust straight ahead.

Clang. Steel rang against steel. The Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword was knocked violently upward, shooting into the sky. As Yun Xing closed in at full speed, he saw it clearly. From within the blood shadow, a crimson finger had reached out. A shallow cut had opened along it, yet not a single drop of blood spilled forth.

The rebounding Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword spun once in mid-air, then streaked down from above like a bolt of light, stabbing in. At the same instant, Yun Xing shot in behind the blood shadow, hands flashing through a series of seals. He triggered every restriction in a ten-li radius at once, trying to pin the demon in place.

But right before his eyes, the blood shadow suddenly detonated. The splattering blood mist hissed as it spread, radiating a powerful corrosive force. The bizarre true qi surging wildly within it threw the carefully gathered stellar power into chaos, leaving the restrictions unable to activate.

Yun Xing had been cultivating for seven or eight hundred years and seen all kinds of techniques, but something this bizarre and unpredictable was still damn rare. He froze for a split second, then reached out and recalled the Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword. Only then did he flick a glance toward Ming Ji.

Right on cue, another crushing force slammed into his back. The sheer wind pressure from the momentum alone threw his qi and blood into chaos. It felt like his insides were about to burst.

And that was the exact moment it hit him like a thunderbolt. He blurted out loud: “Blood Demon Heart Transformation Art? No, wait... this is… the Blood-Shadow Demon Body!”

Yun Xing had no idea that the words he had just shouted had already been spoken by a fat man four days earlier. And as for how desperate the two of them looked at that moment, there was not much difference at all.

In the heat of the moment, Yun Xing triggered one of the nearby restrictions. As the torrent of stellar power erupted around him, he swayed twice, then spun and slid sideways in a blur. So damn fast that it left a rock-solid afterimage that could fool anyone. The Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword slid beneath his ribs and hung horizontally in the air, ready.

A scorching, blood-tinged gust whipped past his ear, but the Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword sliced through nothing but empty air. Out of the corner of his eye, Yun Xing caught only a fleeting streak of blood-red light brushing right by him as it shot straight toward the spot where Ming Ji stood.

It’s going after Ming Ji!

The instant that thought surfaced, Yun Xing felt the blood in his veins turn to ice.

After that split-second freeze, the surging qi and blood rushed straight to his head. Without a moment’s hesitation, Yun Xing sent the Greedy Wolf Immortal Sword flying out once more. He himself, however, rocketed into the sky. Spotting his target, he turned his palm into a makeshift blade and unleashed a burst of sword qi.

“Open!”

At his roar, the entire night sky seemed to shudder, as if a massive dam had been blasted open. A bellow, hundreds of times more ferocious than the raging fury of an ocean storm, erupted.

In that instant, human senses completely lost their grip. The ground was no longer ground, the sky no longer sky. Across the vast plain, the space seemed to tilt violently, then shake like hell... it was as if a tsunami had crashed in at the exact same moment a massive earthquake ripped everything apart.

This was what it truly felt like for the world to be turned upside down.

The entire Star River boiled. One sword light after another shot up into the sky, all racing toward the direction of the Taiwei Enclosure.

Yun Xing wrestled to keep his body steady as he plunged through the raging, churning waves of primordial qi. In that violently unstable space, the massive eruption of qi had whipped the air into chaos. Everywhere he looked, all he could make out was a warped, twisting mess of distorted shadows.

He knew this was the inevitable result of one of the Stabilizing Star Stone being thrown out of alignment. In a few breaths’ time, the Gathering Stars Platform would automatically readjust and everything would return to normal. So he was not worried about that. The only thing on his mind right now was one question.

How was Ming Ji?