Chapter 1021

Dao Qisha is the eldest and oldest Grand Elder of the Dao Clan, without equal.

His lifespan had already reached its limit; he could only seal himself with a secret art, accumulating killing intent with a secret method, waiting for the clan's need, then break out, releasing the accumulated deathless killing intent in an instant, causing his life to burst forth in one final brilliant blaze.

Thanks to Wu Tie's blessing.

Wu Tie awarded merits and rewards, and the Dao Clan also received five promotion slots for the Venerable Rank.

Du Qisha unquestionably became one of the five Honoured-rank elders of the Du clan.

Having reached the extreme limit of his lifespan, the bottleneck vanished; his near‑rotten flesh suddenly regained youth; the flame of his life, on the verge of extinction, suddenly blazed like the sun, a hundred times stronger than before at its peak.

Power, power, power…

Laughing 'kekeke', Du Qisha gripped a serpent‑shaped dagger in each hand, his form flickering, leaving countless afterimages as he darted between crowds of great and small demons.

Strands of faint cold light silently swept over the demons' necks; hideous heads flew up amid spraying blood. Du Qisha reveled in the joy of slaughter, in the pleasure of an Honoured‑rank assassin wantonly killing on the battlefield.

The Du clan is an assassin lineage; killing has been etched into their blood and marrow. After so many years of self‑seal, Du Qisha countless times recalled his youth, the pleasure of bringing death‑fear to the Du clan's enemies with a dagger.

Finally, he, Du Qisha, could enjoy such pleasure again.

The hundred warships under Du Qisha's command and control lined up in low altitude, each spaced three li apart; the bows' main guns were charged and ready, while the tens of thousands of secondary guns along the hulls incessantly spewed blinding beams.

On the ground, vast hordes of demons were blown to ashes by the secondary guns.

Crowds of wood spirits gathered on the warship decks, their specially made short bows emitting a low hum; dense arrows fell like rain, precisely harvesting the great and small demons hidden among the crowds.

Moreover, tens of thousands of giant god soldiers followed closely as Du Qisha charged; he merely reveled, randomly reaping the lives of demons in his sight, while those a bit farther, hidden in crowds, hiding in buildings, or appearing too weak, he lazily ignored.

These giant god soldiers were like a comb, sweeping the battlefield without missing a spot, slaying every demon in their sight.

Several Divine Manifestation realm giant demons appeared in Du Qisha's sight, clad in exquisite Buddha‑realm armor, wielding weapons entwined with spiritual light, they roared loudly and charged at him.

As an assassin, Du Qisha restrained his aura; at first glance he looked like an ordinary young man, giving no hint that he was a terrifying Honoured‑rank powerhouse whose profound foundation had condensed nine Dao seals.

Several Divine Manifestation realm giant demons: the strongest had cultivated to the tenth heaven of Divine Manifestation, the weakest had reached the fifth heaven.

Du Qisha trembled with excitement, screaming 'yoyoyo' as countless afterimages trailed him in a lunge; he seemed to become a swarm of blood‑sucking poisonous bats, fluttering up and down around the several Divine Manifestation realm giant demons.

Several giant demons screamed hoarsely.

They unleashed their innate divine abilities, but every strike missed completely, not even a hair of Du Qisha could be touched.

They swung their weapons with all their might to slash and kill, but Du Qisha was like an intangible wraith; their weapons could not touch his body at all.

They roared and bellowed, while the dagger in Du Qisha's hand repeatedly sliced their bodies, peeling off thin strips of flesh.

Du Qisha could have obliterated those giant demons instantly, but he was savoring the pleasure of slaughter, like a master chef finely slicing meat, then finely shredding it.

The roars and bellows of the several giant demons quickly turned into horrendous howls of terror; a few of the smaller‑bodied giant demons were nearly reduced to skeletons.

"Your Majesty said, your Divine Manifestation realm giant demons' bones are extremely valuable, extremely valuable… hehehe, so your bones must not be damaged in the slightest. Extract them carefully, without a single blemish."

"Hehehe, look at my skill… this set of 'Lingchi Sword Technique', I haven't used it for tens of thousands of years, hehehe, see my precious blade hasn't grown old, still proficient, still fierce."

Just as Du Qisha was tormenting those several giant demons, a terrifying pressure surged from the void, and nine consecutive bolts of furious thunder struck the warship he was commanding.

Nearly half the warships were engulfed by lightning; they exploded outright, the Five Elements spirits aboard having no time to utter a sound before being blown to bits. The other warships were hit by splashing lightning, their defensive formations shattered, hulls shattered everywhere, spewing sheets of sparks and black smoke, the levitation formation failed, and the warships plummeted rapidly from the sky.

The Five Elements spirits on those warships were likewise affected by the lightning; about half the wood spirits standing on the decks were killed or wounded, and the Five Elements spirits resting below decks, awaiting rotation, were all injured, each drenched in blood as they rushed out from the cabins.

Du Qisha stared blankly, then lifted his head to see dozens of warships trailing smoke and fire plummeting straight down from the sky, and he shouted in fury: "Who did this? Damn it……"

Du Qisha's old face could barely hide it; as a newly promoted Honoured‑rank expert, Xiahou Wuming had these old monsters each take charge of a subsidiary fleet to exterminate the demons.

He himself had not taken command of a warship, but had run to the ground to slaughter wantonly; the result was that the fleet under his responsibility was ambushed and killed by the enemy's thunder arts……

Du Qisha's old face flushed crimson; he let out a hoarse scream, and countless strands of cold light instantly engulfed the nearby several giant demons, pulverizing them into the finest particles in an instant.

What bones are valuable, what Wu Tie ordered them to collect—like gathering the bones of these Divine Manifestation realm giant demons—Du Qisha had no time for any of it now.

Turning into an afterimage, he shot up to high altitude; Du Qisha bellowed: "Prepare for battle! Form the formation… well, who among you will command the battle array?"

Under Wu Tie's command, among the generals and clans, the Du clan excelled in the art of assassination; aside from that, they had no interest in, nor talent for, military formation command or battlefield conquest.

Du Qisha alone could roam ten thousand li, plucking enemy commanders' heads from among myriad troops.

But to have him command soldiers in battlefield melee, his mind was a complete blank.

Fortunately, the forces Wu Tie brought from the Glazed Buddha Realm were all elite of the Heavenly Martial Army; a Heavenly Martial Army commander quickly stepped forward, and at his order, masses of troops and Five Elements spirits evacuated from the fallen warships, together with the giant god soldiers forming a defensive‑offensive square of seventy‑to‑eighty thousand troops and tens of thousands of giant god soldiers.

A bolt of lightning wrapped in a gale surged from the northeast; within the lightning, a figure instantly appeared before Du Qisha, a lightning‑radiant spear thrusting with a hissing sound straight at his heart.

Du Qisha's body flickered, and instantly countless afterimages of him appeared simultaneously in the void.

"Not bad," a teasing jeer came from within the lightning; the lightning‑radiant spear instantly turned into hundreds of thousands of lightning bolts, almost simultaneously piercing the myriad afterimages Du Qisha had left in the void.

With a tremendous crash, Du Qisha's true body gripped both daggers, blocking the spear thrusting at him, and was involuntarily hurled backward at great speed by the spear's recoil.

The spear shuddered violently, wave after wave of terrifying thunder accompanied by deafening thunderclaps bombarding the two daggers.

These two serpent‑shaped daggers are heavenly‑crafted divine weapons Du Qisha inherited from his Du ancestors; they were forged by his ancestors extracting three great Dao principles they had comprehended, combining them with quintessential metal essence.

After obtaining this pair of daggers, Du Qisha spent tens of thousands of years painstakingly refining them with his own essence‑blood, nurturing them with the Dao rhythm he had comprehended, and, leveraging the Du clan's influence, ceaselessly gathered countless rare materials to further strengthen them.

Although this pair of daggers are man‑made artifacts, their power absolutely surpasses that of ordinary innate spiritual weapons.

Yet the lightning on the spear came in waves, and this pair of daggers, whose lives were intertwined with his, were actually pierced by the lightning into countless extremely tiny holes.

Moreover, the daggers were gradually heated to red‑hot by the lightning's heat; Du Qisha gripped them tightly, his palms emitting a hissing sound as white smoke continually spewed forth.

On the ground, the Heavenly Martial Army commander directing the formations bellowed a command.

Tens of thousands of giant god soldiers simultaneously lifted their heads, their eyes suddenly turning blood‑red, then dozens of thousands of extremely fine red rays shot from their pupils, precisely converging on the heart of the figure wildly spearing at Du Qisha.

That person never dreamed the ground‑based giant god soldier formation could pull off such a maneuver.

A single giant god soldier's red light from its eyes can indeed melt metal and possesses tremendous killing power, but to that person, a single giant god soldier's attack is nothing.

But when tens of thousands of giant god soldiers attack in unison, and they manage so harmoniously and precisely to concentrate dozens of thousands of searing red rays upon that person's heart.

The area where those dozens of thousands of red rays finally landed on that person's heart was no larger than a mung bean!

The figure's chest armor suddenly flared with red light, emitting terrifying heat; layer upon layer of divine patterns transformed into lightning, surging wildly to resist the concentrated barrage of red light.

Layer after layer of lightning was violently shattered; then a miserable howl rang out as the figure dropped his spear, instantly turning into a bolt of lightning and fleeing backward in disgrace.

His gorgeous heavy armor had a transparent hole the size of a bean punched clean through at the chest; nearby plates had been softened by the heat, and some even melted into liquid that trickled down the armor's surface.

From that tiny transparent hole, black smoke kept spraying out, and a faint smell of grilled meat spread in the air.

Dao Qisha felt the pressure in his hand suddenly lighten; he followed the motion, putting away the two daggers that were almost destroyed, his figure like a ghost, closely pursuing the fleeing, disheveled silhouette.

He waved his right hand forward, and a strange long sword nine chi long but only as wide as a pinky finger, thin as a cicada's wing, appeared in Dao Qisha's hand. The extremely thin, extremely fine sword brought a trace of sword light almost like an illusion, piercing precisely into the hole in that person's chest armor.

With a 'puchi' sound, Dao Qisha let out a hehe dark laugh.

That familiar feel, that perception already honed to instinct, told Dao Qisha that this sword thrust squarely pierced the enemy's heart.

The enemy's vitality was extremely vigorous, his heartbeat extremely strong.

At the instant the sword pierced the opponent's heart, Dao Qisha could even feel the rebound of the heartbeat transmitted through the blade.

With a twist of his wrist, an unforged killing intent erupted; Dao Qisha was about to shake the blade, thoroughly crushing the enemy's heart.

Another bolt of lightning flew forward, and with a roar, dozens of furious thunderbolts howled down from the high sky, the lightning bolts thick as a hundred zhang, clusters of thunder-fire swirling chaotically around the lightning, the thunder still thousands of zhang above Dao Qisha's head, but the terrifying pressure already shook his coarse hemp short shirt to pieces.

Dao Qisha let out a long whistle, not caring to completely kill the enemy before him, and with all his strength he lunged backward fiercely.

As an assassin, landing a hit and then fleeing a thousand li is instinct.

Dao Qisha's attack power certainly isn't the strongest among the Venerable-rank old monsters under Wu Tie's command, and it's hard to say he could even rank in the middle, but his speed in escaping and his survival skills are absolutely top-notch.

With a flick of his form, Dao Qisha instantly retreated over a hundred li backward.

The thunderbolts almost grazed Dao Qisha's nose as they fell; the lightning lost its target and slammed heavily into the ground, squarely striking a city below that was over two hundred li long and wide.

The entire city, including the monster clans garrisoned inside and the millions of humans imprisoned within, vanished in smoke and mist amidst the lightning.

A mushroom cloud shot up hundreds of li high, rings of murky white shock waves mixed with firelight spreading outward; in an instant it swept across the surrounding hundreds of li, lifting countless villages and fields, killing and injuring untold numbers of monster clans and humans.

Dao Qisha looked expressionlessly at the mushroom cloud slowly rising.

He was indifferent to the deaths of the Monster Clan, and even to those of the Human Race— they were not subjects of Wuguo, nor descendants of his Dao Clan; given Dao Qisha's cold, ruthless nature cultivated over tens of thousands of years, he simply couldn't be bothered with their lives and deaths.

But Dao Qisha's heart was tied in knots.

He didn't care about the lives and deaths of the citizens of the Glazed Buddha Kingdom, but rescuing these common folk was Wu Tie's will.

Dao Qisha failed to perfectly fulfill Wu Tie's will; Dao Qisha allowed the people originally under his responsibility to rescue, right before his eyes, to be killed by someone using a powerful Thunder Technique.

"Old man, Wuguo's offering, Dao Clan's Dao Qisha. By the Martial King's decree, I have come to the Glazed Buddha Kingdom to sweep away the monster clans and rescue the common folk." Dao Qisha held that long, nearly transparent thrusting sword, and coldly shouted: "You evil heretics, how dare you ruin my great undertaking?"

Lightning flashed, and a sheet of flowing cloud surged through the lightning to Dao Qisha's face.

On the flowing cloud, a bearded man seated firmly in a large chair raised his eyebrows and said coldly: "You... are you killing monsters and saving people? Hmm, we thought you were monster folk who had broken through the Glazed Buddha Kingdom."

He smiled faintly, the bearded man said indifferently: "Then, this is just a misunderstanding. We, too, have come to reinforce the Glazed Buddha Kingdom."

Dao Qisha stared, then let out a strange-sounding laugh: "Ha, you killed tens of thousands of my Wuguo soldiers, destroyed dozens of my Wuguo warships... and you say this is a misunderstanding?"

The bearded man coldly glanced at Dao Qisha: "Otherwise? What do you want?"

The dozens of heavily armored men standing before the bearded man simultaneously released an aura not inferior to Venerable-rank.

Dao Qisha's face twitched slightly; he conjured a jade talisman in his left hand out of thin air, then crushed it in his grip: "Old brothers, someone's come looking for trouble—stand shoulder to shoulder and kill them!"

In just a breath, dozens of Venerable-rank auras shot up to the sky, far and near, echoing Dao Qisha's killing intent.

After another two breaths, a Space Gate suddenly lit up hundreds of li behind Dao Qisha; Xiahou Wuming's flagship, thousands of zhang long, accompanied by over a thousand warships, slowly slid out of the Space Gate.

"I say, this is no misunderstanding." Dao Qisha straightened his waist rigidly: "You are maliciously provoking the dignity of Wuguo... maliciously provoking the dignity of my sovereign!"