Chapter 92

“Cough, cough, cough…” Qian Chen couldn’t help but cough several times; the icy chill of Bingpo Hanguang had sunk deep into his lungs and organs, leaving his face pale, and perhaps because speaking disturbed his breath, he was seized by violent coughing, a sickly crimson flush spreading across his cheeks.

Daoists are immune to illness; to manifest such a sickly state meant Qian Chen’s condition was truly dire.

After catching his breath, he said to Ning Qingchen: “Miss Ning, go up to the rafters and bring down the magic mirror.”

Ning Qingchen tapped her toe, lightly using the nearby pillar for leverage, and darted upward like a nimble cat, climbing onto the rafters. She carefully felt around, then retrieved the Lingguang Treasure Mirror and leapt down. Just as she was about to hand it to Qian Chen, he waved her off: “I was ambushed by that demon, and can only suppress a malevolent object within me using cold energy—I cannot use magic power. I’ll teach you the incantation to consecrate this mirror… you operate it.”

Ning Qingchen nodded gently and, following Qian Chen’s instructions, crudely consecrated the Lingguang Mirror.

After a short while of channeling energy, she flipped her slender hand, and the Lingguang Mirror emitted a beam of light that laid bare every inch of the Lanruo Ancient Temple, inside and out—even the soil dozens of zhang beneath the ground shone clearly in its glassy radiance. Within the mirror’s glow, dozens of figures with jet-black skin, utterly unlike the living, were closing in around Lanruo Temple.

“Are these walking corpses?”

Seeing the ghastly things shuffle slowly, their movements sluggish, with faint green glimmers in their eyes, Ning Qingchen frowned slightly: “No iron corpses at all—do they expect these filthy things to probe us?”

Qian Chen sneered: “Corpse and Gu are inseparable; these corpses are just decoys—the real killers lie within.”

He then told Ning Qingchen to focus the mirror’s light on one walking corpse. The Lingguang light pierced through flesh and blood, revealing the corpse’s internal organs through its stiff, blackened tissue. The corpse’s abdominal cavity was hollow—no organs remained. Inside lay a single white-furred fox corpse, curled into a ball.

The fox corpse bared its fangs, its body hard as iron; beneath the white fur was a corpse of solid iron—clearly an exotic iron corpse.

“That’s more like it…” Ning Qingchen’s brow relaxed slightly. She redirected the mirror’s light back toward the encircling corpse horde and nodded: “Corpses hiding corpses—when they strike suddenly, they can indeed cause us trouble. If I were them, I’d hide another weapon inside one of these walking corpses. Once they’ve probed our strength, the assassin strikes abruptly, and the rest surge forth… adding threefold lethality.”

“Now that we’ve seen through their tricks, do we wait for them to walk into our trap, or do we kill all these walking corpses outright and deter them from daring to approach again?” Ning Qingchen asked Qian Chen and Yan Shu.

At this moment, Yan Shu and Qian Chen’s opinions were strangely aligned. Yan Shu sneered: “Why spare them? Why wait passively for them to come to us? First, slaughter all these walking corpses, then track down the cowards behind them and cut them down with one sword.”

Qian Chen nodded: “These petty left-path villains—why invite them into our trap? They’re probing, so they must have spies. First, find how they’re watching us… sever the root… cough, cough, cough… then these minor irritants will resolve themselves!”

Hearing their grim, lethal replies, Ning Qingchen slightly raised her brows—clearly, their methods suited her taste.

“Er Dao Shen!” Qian Chen summoned the tiny dwarf hidden in his neck, pointing at the Lingguang Mirror: “Use your spiritual sense to find what else is strange about these walking corpses!”

Er Dao Shen shot out swiftly. It had no physical form—passing through walls and vanishing were trivial; its true strength lay in sensing qi and discerning truth and falsehood, even perceiving fortune and doom within a certain range. The mirror’s light locked onto the little creature. Er Dao Shen circled one walking corpse three times, then suddenly dove into its ear canal.

The mirror’s light followed deep into the corpse’s skull, revealing a slender red worm hidden behind its cloudy eyeball.

“So they’re using Gu insects to spy on us.”

Yan Shu said: “Pierce the orifice, extract the Gu . I’ll lock onto this person with my qi-attunement method. When I enter meditative stillness, I’ll send out my sword pellet—so long as he’s within a thousand li, I’ll sever his head and return.”

Qian Chen shook his head: “Brother Yan, you’re our most intact combatant now. Entering meditative stillness leaves your body unprotected. Zhiqu Qiu is still severely wounded, and I can use less than one-tenth of my magic power. This is too risky—if the enemy strikes now, we’ll be in worse trouble.”

After a moment’s thought, Qian Chen looked up: “Let me rest a while. I’ll temporarily freeze my body with cold energy, then use one-tenth of my power to enter meditative stillness and send my sword to slay the enemy.”

Ning Qingchen frowned slightly: “Actually, there’s no need for such trouble.”

She stood up: “Friend Qian has only one-tenth of his magic power left—focus on your own injuries first. Besides, killing corpses and extracting the Gu will surely alert them. If they activate their methods early and raise their guard, we’ll lose our advantage of anticipating them. Feng Shi?” She turned to the large yellow chicken beside her, but the sacred rooster was staring intently at Qian Chen.

Ning Qingchen hadn’t expected her usually reliable and steady “Feng Shi” to be causing so many mishaps today.

Qian Chen smiled: “If this chicken friend can eliminate this man, I won’t hesitate to offer him spirit pills.”

No sooner had he spoken than the large yellow chicken shot off in a flash of golden light, vanishing instantly from their sight. Yan Shu turned to the Lingguang Mirror and saw the chicken flapping its short, overly robust wings with astonishing speed, leaving a blurred afterimage even within the mirror’s glow.

The yellow chicken flew swiftly to the gate of Lanruo Temple and planted one claw directly on the head of the walking corpse.

Before the corpse’s slow movements or its controller could react, it lowered its head and struck with blinding speed.

A fist-sized blood hole appeared in the corpse’s eye socket.

The chicken snatched up the red corpse-worm and darted back to the main hall with incredible speed, swallowing the worm mid-flight like an earthworm. Qian Chen clearly saw: that claw and that peck were both devastating sword techniques.

The claw on the corpse’s head was exquisitely precise—using no more force than a chicken could muster, it shattered the corpse’s entire coordination. With one claw, both the walking corpse and the iron corpse-fox within its belly went limp, their vital energy scattered, unable to move. Then the peck was clean and decisive, carrying a sword intent aimed directly at life itself.

Yan Shu was momentarily stunned… in terms of sword intent’s sharpness, his own swordplay was grand and majestic, yet in its clean, decisive efficiency, it might not even match this large yellow chicken.

“Feng Shi?” Qian Chen thought to himself: “Could this sword-immortal girl’s sword technique really have been taught by this chicken?”

At this moment, the large yellow chicken stood atop the eave of the main hall, stretching its neck to crow at the rising eastern sun…

“Oo-oh!”

The rooster’s crow—when it sings, the world turns white…

This crow sounded like a sound piercing metal and stone, with the force to split mountains and shatter rocks, echoing far away. Far off, a gray-haired old man hiding within a giant banyan tree, his neck swollen with a massive tumor resembling a second head, suddenly screamed in agony. The tumor burst open, oozing pus and blood, within which crawled countless tiny, rice-sized worms.

The rooster’s morning call rang like a divine sword, carrying a stern sword intent.

Ning Qingchen leapt instantly from the hall, her sword-light crisscrossing the air, leaving behind golden sword auras. These auras were not solid like Yan Shu’s fragmented blades, but manifested from sunlight itself—mere illusions, like a meteor shower, pouring down across the sky and surging toward the wild hills beyond Lanruo Temple.

The sword auras plunged downward, slicing through the sea of trees. The vast forest near Tiansha Peak stretched for hundreds of li, filled with giant trees requiring a full embrace. As the sword auras cut through, countless branches and leaves fell. With a soft cry, Ning Qingchen channeled the auras into a single massive banyan tree.

Countless sword auras erupted in a chain of terrifying strikes—but the old man inside the tree had vanished.

The chain of sword auras struck only a single meaty tumor, one man-high. The tumor burst under the sword strikes, spewing forth countless pus and blood, which upon hitting the ground transformed into dense swarms of Gu insects, rushing left and right. Wherever they landed, they drained all life-force. The banyan trunk collapsed, yet from within emerged ten times more Gu insects than before.

At that moment, boundless sunlight transformed into countless sword-feathers, falling like rain. Each ray of sunlight became a sword aura, piercing every gap, flooding the forest. The wildly multiplying Gu insects struggled fiercely for only a few breaths before dissolving into nothingness within the sword-light sea.

Only the old man who wielded the Gu had escaped, hiding somewhere unknown.

Ning Qingchen’s figure was now hidden within the boundless sword auras born of sunlight…

Qian Chen looked up toward her direction, his eyes wide with awe, shaking his head in wonder: “Sword auras swell like feathers, all show and no substance. The real killer lies in a single strike… like a peck.”

“Her sword art truly came from a chicken!”

Suddenly, from within the sea of sword-light, a lightning-fast blade shot out—touching and retreating instantly, flashing once.

It plunged beneath the ground where the banyan’s roots spread…

Deep underground, a hundred chi down, the gray-robed old man felt a piercing sword aura pierce through him. His vision darkened, and he lost consciousness. Long after, the insects within his body slowly crawled out, devouring his essence and blood. In the dark earth, his corpse gradually melted into a pool of pus, merging into the surrounding soil.

Even before Ning Qingchen located the old man’s hiding place, the corpse horde had erupted, storming into Lanruo Temple.

Yan Shu stood at the hall’s entrance, his sword pellet flashing as golden light, each strike cleaving through a walking corpse and the demonic fox within it. Suddenly, countless bolts of thunder and fire erupted from outside the main hall, smashing through doors, windows, and walls, raining down into the chamber. Yan Shu’s sword-light flashed, and countless sword shadows struck the thunderbolts before they could explode.

The sword-light held a mysterious power, causing the thunderbolts to vanish soundlessly before detonation.

At that moment, one walking corpse outside the hall split open. A dwarf-like child, his face twisted with malice, rolled on the ground, activated his evasion technique, and shot forward in a flash of yellow light, aiming to burst into the hall. He clenched his fingers in a spell, ready to unleash a vile magic—his corpse’s accumulated death-qi had formed into thunder, and if triggered, it would explode into a poisonous thunderbolt, immensely powerful, capable of masking the iron corpse-fox within…

In the hall, pale and still severely wounded, Qian Chen suddenly tore his gaze from the Lingguang Mirror.

At that instant, the golden sand beneath the dwarf-child surged upward. Countless beams of golden light swirled, instantly grinding away the child’s protective spells. Amid his terrified screams, his flesh and bones turned to mud, then to ash in an instant.

Qian Chen, as if stirred by his own internal cold energy, burst into another violent coughing fit.

He sighed softly: “I have only one-tenth of my power left—I can’t help much. All I can do is clean up the riffraff, kill a couple of uncored left-path sectarians!”