Chapter 281: Warfire

Taotie Tu collapsed.

Physically, he was beaten by Wu Tie until his body was covered in wounds, and he didn't know how many bones were broken.

Mentally, he was so stimulated he nearly lost his mind.

He is of the Soul Clan, has Taotie bloodline, and is the current head of the Taotie Clan. From childhood onward, either he personally hunted and killed, or the Taotie Clan's Elders acted, he has devoured hundreds of genius cultivators.

His body fused the bloodlines and legacies of hundreds of genius cultivators.

Besides the Taotie Clan's own bloodline ability "Devour Heaven and Earth", Taotie Tu has at least mastered dozens of innate abilities from different bloodline clans, and through analogy has comprehended hundreds of secret techniques.

For example, he has completely mastered the Seventy-Two Transformations of Earth Fiend, and about seventy percent of the Thirty-Six Transformations of Heavenly Gang; he also has a good grasp of other powerful secret techniques and various secret methods.

But in the recent duel, Taotie Tu exhausted all his methods.

No matter what divine ability or secret art he used, Wu Tie, who acted after him, could always counter with exactly the same move.

What Taotie Tu cannot understand is that Wu Tie's cultivation is clearly not as vast as his, yet Wu Tie's mana quality is far purer and more refined.

If Taotie Tu's mana were a great river mixed with much silt and impurity, Wu Tie's mana would be a flawless gem refined to perfection; in density and strength, one unit of Wu Tie's mana could shatter a thousand units of Taotie Tu's.

The quality of his mana is absurdly high, and the speed at which Wu Tie replenishes it is insane.

Taotie Tu estimated that Wu Tie's total mana is less than one percent of his own, yet Wu Tie seems to have an endless mana source within him; no matter how much he expends, his mana never runs dry.

"This is unreasonable, this makes no sense, what on earth do you have? What is it?" Taotie Tu collapsed on the ground, spitting blood, panting heavily, muttering incessantly like a deserted wife.

"Knowing too much, are you trying to force us to kill to silence?" Lao Tie, with a big cigarette dangling, sauntered over without a proper demeanor, squinting eyes full of ill intent as he looked at Taotie Tu.

Taotie Tu immediately shut his mouth.

After a while, he raised his head and said solemnly, "Old man, I am quite cooperative with Lord Wu Tie of the Taotie Clan; I'm sure they have received the news and will bring enough Taotie bones to ransom me and that worthless bastard son."

He exhaled deeply, wiped the blood from his mouth, and Taotie Tu gave Wu Tie a bright smile: "A true man keeps his word... Lord Wu Tie, you promised that once the Taotie Clan's ransom arrives, you would immediately release us."

Taotie Tu did not look at Lao Tie.

He looked at Wu Tie with solemn sincerity.

Having been detained in Three Linked City for days, Taotie Tu also realized that Lao Tie was no mere trifle.

On the contrary, Wu Tie could be considered a "good youth", possessing all the virtues a good person should have.

Although these virtues, Taotie Tu usually scoffs at them himself.

But when Lao Tie threatened to kill to silence him, Taotie Tu suddenly felt that Wu Tie was a good person—how wonderful.

"In this day and age, to still have someone like Wu Tie who is a 'good person'... damn, it's incredibly rare." Taotie Tu looked at Wu Tie, nearly moved to tears.

"Of course, since I promised, I will naturally not break the contract." Wu Tie stretched his body.

The Tree of Abundance within him rapidly drew heavenly and earthly essence, breaking all heavenly and earthly shackles; Wu Tie now commands countless divine secrets as numerous as stars and vast as smoke seas, among which many body-side secret arts can greatly enhance physical function.

With sufficient heavenly and earthly essence to replenish, Wu Tie drew a deep breath.

Just the act of inhaling caused his qi and blood to surge like a tsunami, a low rumble faintly audible; his pores opened, traces of stagnant blood turned to black smoke and expelled, and wounds on his fists, arms, and knees nearly healed instantly in that breath.

Taotie Tu's face twitched violently.

Wu Tie's wounds retained the Taotie Clan's unique devouring power—a top-tier troublesome force like strong acid, clinging to the wound and incessantly devouring blood, flesh, essence, and mana, consuming any consumable energy or matter to strengthen itself and harm the enemy.

Ordinary people injured by this devouring power see their wounds only worsen over time, and after a while may be completely devoured into nothingness.

But Wu Tie dispels this devouring power with just a breath.

So easy and swift, it's almost as if... this guy couldn't really be a Taotie, could he? Except he is a Taotie in human form, hidden away.

Taotie Tu looked at Wu Tie, both frightened and doubtful.

Wu Tie glanced at Taotie Tu, guessed his doubt, merely smiled and said nothing.

To some extent, Wu Tie could now be considered a Taotie as well.

Breaking all heavenly and earthly shackles, grasping all the profound mysteries within them...

All the mysteries of the Taotie bloodline are also within those heavenly and earthly shackles, and also in the endless data recorded in those thirty-odd billion threads of light.

In inexact terms, Taotie is now Wu Tie, yet Wu Tie is more than just Taotie.

He is Taotie, he is the giant dragon, he is the phoenix, he is the peacock... he is everything.

But he needs time for his soul to absorb these heavenly and earthly truths, to gradually master these mysteries.

He needs sufficient time to grow.

Inside Three Linked City, a sharp alarm suddenly sounded; before entering the Three Linked Realm, the preemptive seal left by Mo Zhang Wang was triggered, a huge light screen appeared in the high sky, light and shadow flickering, and a battlefield appeared on the screen.

Wu Tie and Lao Tie looked up.

On the light screen, they saw several familiar faces—those were Huaguang's close aides recruited in Great Lake City, now also pivotal officials of Three Linked City.

The Twelve Noble Clans of Three Linked City were demoted by Mo Zhang Wang; all their members had their cultivation stripped and were reduced to slaves.

Mu Shen and Huaguang became senior ministers of Three Linked City; their retinues of trusted subordinates naturally became the de facto officials handling all affairs in Three Linked City, since Mo Zhang Wang himself had no one to assign.

Before entering Three Linked City, Mo Zhang Wang sent many of Mu Shen's and Huaguang's people out to relocate as many residents of the domains directly administered by Three Linked City as possible into the city.

On the light screen, that was a medium-sized stone cavern roughly three to five hundred li in extent.

In the cavern's center stood a sizable stone fortress, its towering walls built leaning on a dozen stone pillars; the fortress's vaulted ceiling hung with countless stalactites, from which swarms of spiders dangled, spraying poison and silk toward the outer walls.

Huaguang's few aides, leading dozens of cultivators, together with the fortress's elite troops, guarded the walls, desperately resisting attacks many times their number.

Vast hordes of ratfolk, vast hordes of dwarves, vast hordes of gray dwarves.

These peoples, normally only fit to be slaves, each clad in fine leather armor and wielding gleaming weapons, advanced in orderly ranks toward the stone fortress.

Ratfolk continuously hurled poisoned throwing knives and darts, occasionally with experts blowing a few poisoned arrows.

Dwarves wielded slings made of animal tendon, formed neat ranks, and orderly hurled mountain-splitting thunderbolts at the walls; these specially enhanced thunderbolts had vastly greater power, each blast's lethal radius at least ten times that of a normal one.

Among the dwarves, those gray dwarves whose combat ability could only be considered the lowest wore metal armor, carried ram's-horn hammers, stood away from the walls, and publicly drank vial after vial of blood-red potion.

In just a few breaths, these gray dwarves' veins bulged all over, they roared "ahhh", and fearlessly charged the walls.

Gray dwarves standing just over a meter tall became even braver and more adept at combat than bronze dwarves.

The walls were over ten meters high; with a mere scrape they could leap onto the parapet, swinging their ram's-horn hammers in a wild melee against the defenders.

Dense flying knives and darts posed a great threat to the warriors on the city wall.

The dwarves' flung Opening Mountain Thunderbolts blasted the defending warriors, leaving them scorched and disheveled; occasionally someone lost an arm or leg, smoking black as they fell from the wall.

Fearless gray dwarves shouted 'ao ao', swinging hammers wildly, smashing many warriors' limbs below the knees to pulp.

When the warriors tried to attack the gray dwarves that bounced about like little potatoes, they embarrassingly discovered they were over two meters tall, while the dwarves needed only to crouch to make it hard for their weapons to reach them.

They could only bend at the waist and hack wildly.

But as soon as they bent over, their movements became sluggish, and flying knives and darts swooshed in, lightly slicing shallow wounds across their exposed limbs.

With the rat-people's strength, they could hurl flying knives and darts up a dozen meters high on the city wall, but their killing power was only that much.

However, like Old Bai, the rat-people were best at concocting all sorts of messy poisons.

Old Bai's ancestral rotten marrow, after multiple refinements by Wu Tie, can now effectively threaten cultivators of the Life Pool Realm.

The poison on the rat-people's flying knives and darts was not as potent as Old Bai's rotten marrow, but the warriors on the wall lacked Life Pool Realm cultivation; they were merely low-level Foundation Establishment and Sensing Mystery Realm cultivators, with extremely weak resistance to poison.

Many warriors' wounds quickly festered, swollen, with pus and toxic blood spraying; within the span of a tea cup, poisoned warriors lost over half their strength and collapsed to the ground, gasping continuously.

Gray dwarves wielding ram's horn hammers and scrambling about quickly swarmed over, smashing the heads of the poisoned, exhausted warriors into pulp like rotten eggplants.

"Help, help…" Huaguang's subordinate, whom Wu Tie remembered as Yu Qi, a burly man wielding a large blade, kept shouting at the jade talisman hovering before him.

Yu Qi was a native of Lakeside City, his family making a living by fishing for generations.

Several generations ago, Yu Qi's family found a Three-Leaf Golden Book inside a great fish's belly, from which they obtained an extremely profound cultivation method; thereafter the Yu Qi lineage shifted from fishermen to a cultivator clan.

Yu Qi possessed extraordinary talent; in just a few decades he had cultivated to the twentieth level of the Chonglou Realm.

After Huaguang took office in Lakeside City, he promoted Yu Qi to his personal aide.

Yu Qi was honest and upright; Huaguang valued him greatly, and Mo Zhang Wang and Wu Tie also held him in high esteem.

Yu Qi brandished his blade, which faintly bore countless rippling water patterns; a single swing sent forth a hundred-meter-long, mighty surge of blade-light and water waves howling outward.

With such momentum, if it struck the assaulting troops below the city, a single blow could easily overturn hundreds of squeaking rat-people.

But outside the city there was a huge-bodied python person standing over five meters tall.

Covered head to toe in a grid-patterned scale armor that looked fierce and dreadful, the python person wielded a bone staff; when Yu Qi made a move, a swing of the staff sent forth a howling great serpent of condensed black qi.

The blade-light water wave and the black-qi great serpent collided, and both were instantly annihilated.

Not only Yu Qi, but the dozens of cultivators he brought were also locked in a stalemate with the enemies outside; no matter what divine abilities they used, the opposition always had someone who could precisely neutralize their attacks.

In the light curtain, Wu Tie could see that a dozen cultivators outside had not yet acted, standing a dozen li away, chuckling as they pointed toward the wall, seeming not in a hurry to assault.

"Looks like a trap." Lao Tie tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"It's a trap, but we have to jump." Wu Tie sighed helplessly: "Three Linked City currently has few usable people; Yu Qi is a fine piece of material… we must rescue him."

Lao Tie nodded and slapped a claw onto the Taotie Diagram's head.

The Taotie Diagram's head hit the ground hard, and Lao Tie's claw knocked it unconscious.

The Rebirth Pagoda rose slowly from Lao Tie's head, as great black dust swirled and drilled into the Taotie Diagram's seven apertures, completely sealing all its bodily functions.

Wu Tie also acted, waving his hand to place hundreds of different seals on the Taotie Diagram, then threw it back into the special prison of Three Linked City.

Taking out a jade talisman, he left a message for Mo Zhang Wang, who had not yet emerged from the Three Linked Realm; Wu Tie unfurled his metallic wings and shot up as a golden rainbow.

The Soaring Earth Golden Light was indescribably swift, crossing over thirty thousand li in a flash, and Wu Tie swiftly burst out of Three Linked City.

"Soaring Earth Golden Light… Yang Jian that rascal used to love this move… tsk, what's so great about it? And they claim that anyone who can't perform the Soaring Earth Golden Light is of illegitimate birth… pfft, isn't it just one of the Daoist Sect's authentic Heavenly Gang Secret Arts?" Lao Tie muttered on and on, turning into a vast black dust storm that hurriedly chased after.

"Daoist Sect… Daoist Sect… I don't know… I really want to know…" Lao Tie murmured.

Wu Tie charged out of Three Linked City.

He produced a jade talisman, flicked it with a finger, and the talisman turned into a stream of light that sped forward along the passage.

Wu Tie closely followed the light formed by the talisman, flying toward the stone cavern where Yu Qi was.

The Soaring Earth Golden Light was extremely fast, but the talisman's light had limited speed.

Wu Tie could only patiently follow the talisman's light in flight.

After flying for two ke, Wu Tie was over a thousand li from Three Linked City when he plunged headfirst into a stone cavern spanning several li.

Inside the cavern, light suddenly flared brilliantly.