Chapter 959: Jing Liu vs Qingque (1)

Perspective shift.

After Jing Liu removed the eye mask, her pair of wine-red pupils were fully exposed under the moonlight.

Something was burning deep in the pupils, a dark-red light flame spreading from the edges inward.

The corner of her mouth twitched upward, an arc unrelated to a smile; it was the moment something long-suppressed finally crawled out of its cage, muscles spasming uncontrollably.

With a light tap of her toe on the stone slab, she vanished instantly as if shot by a slingshot.

Qingque's pupils contracted sharply; she couldn't see Jing Liu's movement trajectory, only feeling a piercing cold blast straight from ahead, the moisture in the air condensing into fine ice crystals within a fraction of a second, exploding into a white fog barrier before her eyes.

The advantage of the Taixu Sword Heart's highest realm at this life-and-death juncture is that, no matter how panicked Qingque appears on the surface, her body and instinct will react on their own.

Only seen, Qingque opened her right hand's five fingers and pushed forward; the white bubbles spouting from her palm rapidly expanded at a position ten centimeters before her, swelling from ping-pong ball size to umbrella size in the blink of an eye.

Almost at the same instant, Jing Liu's ice sword tip precisely pierced the bubble's center, the tip sinking about three centimeters into the transparent membrane; then the whole ice sword was enveloped by the bubble, the ice-blue light along the blade wildly refracting inside, turning the entire bubble into a glowing ice crystal sphere.

Jing Liu's eyebrow twitched, she turned her wrist, and the ice sword exploded inside the bubble, shards of ice shooting outward, tearing the bubble into countless transparent fragments.

She used the explosive impact to flip backward into a neat somersault, her frost-white long hair tracing a perfect arc in the air; landing, she touched down with the tip of her foot on the stone pavement, the stones beneath her foot cracking in a radial pattern.

"Interesting."

Jing Liu's voice issued from deep in her throat, as if someone were struggling to suppress an emotion about to overflow.

The layer of icy indifference on her face had already shattered everywhere, replaced by an expression gradually twisting.

Compared to the previous stern former Sword Leader, she was now completely a different person.

Qingque had no mood to appreciate the opponent's expression changes.

At the moment the bubble was pierced, she used the force to shift half a step sideways; her gray-white hair swept a half-circle in the air, and the mist‑blue stole on her left shoulder flared up sharply in the night wind.

As her body just left the spot, a pallid sword graze swept past her back; when the sword qi brushed the edge of her stole, it emitted a strange sound, the gauze being nicked, the fragments in the air frozen by the low temperature carried with the sword qi into a stiff mist‑blue sheet, which fell to the ground and shattered into several pieces.

The sword qi did not stop, it cleaved all the way into a two‑story grocery shop thirty meters behind Qingque.

The shop's wooden facade was split straight down the middle, bursting out through the roof and exploding in the sky as a mass of white mist.

The whole building let out a groan; the splintered wood from the broken beams flipped outward from the cut on both sides, then frost spread outward from the cut, coating everything in a rapidly spreading white frost, the cracking of frozen wood sounding for two full seconds.

After the cold dissipated, the grocery shop had become a crystal‑clear ice sculpture, moonlight shining on it scattering into cold‑blue shards.

Qingque glanced sideways at the house behind her that had been frozen into an ice sculpture; a subtle emotion flickered in her jade‑green eyes.

Had it been a few minutes earlier she would likely have been scared weak‑kneed, but now her mind was in a peculiar overload state, fear and calm operating simultaneously, canceling each other out and leaving a sense of clarity in the face of impending disaster.

If that strike hit her, she'd turn into an ice pop.

She withdrew her gaze, her left hand tracing a half‑circle at her side, and a dozen white bubbles welled out from her cuff.

These bubbles differed from the earlier defensive ones; they were smaller, only fist‑sized, but more numerous, and once they left Qingque's palm they did not linger beside her but shot toward Jing Liu like pellets flicked from a slingshot.

A dozen bubbles each traced different arcs in the air, blocking every possible dodging angle straight ahead of Jing Liu.

The spasmodic twitch at the corner of Jing Liu's mouth pulled up a bit more.

She did not dodge; gripping the ice sword's hilt with both hands, she held the blade horizontally before her chest and simultaneously slashed left and right, emitting a cross‑shaped blade of light.

The blade of light burst from the sword, rapidly expanding in midair into a silver‑white cross‑cut that spanned the entire street.

When the bubbles struck the cross‑blade of light they all exploded, the transparent membrane fragments scattering, but the light itself was also devoured in a large chunk by the bubbles' transmuting ability, leaving a circular void at the cross's center whose edges slowly spread outward.

Jing Liu shot through that central void, her body spinning in midair, her right hand gripping the ice sword alone as she brought it straight down toward Qingque's Heavenly Spirit Dome.

Her speed was such that the naked eye could see only a white blur, the ice‑sword blade dragging a long tail of cold light in the moonlight.

Qingque did not retreat; she stomped her right foot hard on the ground, shifting her whole body about two meters to the left, the ice‑sword tip grazing the cuff of her right shoulder as it sliced down, the wind pressure from the blade making the few silver chains on her right arm jingle.

While dodging that sword, Qingque lifted her right hand slightly, palm aimed at Jing Liu's sword‑gripping wrist.

A bubble the size of a fingernail cap shot from her palm, sticking precisely to Jing Liu's right wrist joint.

The bubble began to expand the moment it touched the skin.

Jing Liu lowered her head to glance at her wrist; the bubble was visibly expanding, stretching along her skin upward and downward, the small section of wrist it covered—together with the cuff fabric—starting to turn transparent inside the bubble, as if someone were erasing her wrist from reality with an eraser.

Jing Liu's expression became extraordinarily vivid at that moment.

The right half of her face still held that manic grin, but the left half's muscles twitched suddenly, a deep vertical furrow forming between her brows.

She did not grab the bubble; instead she slapped her left palm onto her right wrist, the extreme‑cold frost erupting from her palm freezing the bubble together with a layer of skin on her wristwatch.

Then she flung it hard; the bubble, now frozen into an ice shell, detached from her wrist and smashed to the ground, shattering into a heap of fine ice crystals.

The small patch of frostbitten skin on her wrist showed an unnatural dark‑red hue, but Jing Liu didn't even glance at it.

"Good!"

Jing Liu said.

The tone of that single word completely changed, utterly dissolving into a low laugh welling up from deep in her throat.

Her eyes widened further; the dark‑red flame in her wine‑red pupils had spread from the edges to the center.