Chapter 50

Ang tilted his head, before he could speak, Negril had already leaned over to ask: “Why did you swap so much beet? Eating it every day, aren’t you afraid your urine will attract ants?”

Lu Se shook his head vigorously: “No, I digest quickly; since I broke through to Sword Saint, I’ve never felt full. Beet is one of the few foods that make me feel satisfied.”

Negril nodded: “True. This place is too barren—no grass at all, can’t raise livestock, can’t even get a bite of meat. How could you ever be full? Look at you, skinnier than a spear shaft.”

“And look.” Lu Se didn’t mind Negril’s mockery, pulled out a beet, shoved it into his mouth, swallowed, then activated his battle aura to digest it, and clasped his hands in midair.

Lu Se’s battle aura grew stronger and stronger, the aura glow nearly solidifying into substance, reaching its peak—he clenched his hands, and a column of condensed aura instantly materialized between them.

Negril’s eyes widened: “Aura sword? You leveled up? You were just a low-rank Sword Saint—how can you now materialize aura into a blade?”

High Sword Masters can project aura externally; low-rank Sword Saints can let aura leave the body; only high-rank Sword Saints can form aura into swords.

Lu Se shook his head: “No, but after eating the beet, I felt my whole body filled with power, able to briefly unleash much greater strength.”

Lu Se swung the aura sword a few times, then hurled it far away—it plunged straight into the hard rock wall, buried to the hilt, trembling for a moment before vanishing.

“Can it really do that? Impossible.” Negril didn’t believe it—he’d met Sword Saints before, never heard of one gaining explosive power from eating beet.

“I didn’t believe it either. I bought two more beets at high price from elsewhere, but eating them did nothing. Only Young Master Ang’s beets let me explode like this.”

Hearing this, Negril turned to look at Ang, and saw Ang clenching his hands in midair, just as Lu Se had done when summoning the aura sword.

“You don’t even have battle aura…” Negril leaned in, ready to mock—when suddenly, a black spike shot from Ang’s hand, nearly piercing its eye.

“No, that’s soul weaponry, not battle aura,” Negril grumbled.

Ang ignored it, focusing on adjusting his soul weaponry. He’d always used a scythe as the base to manifest the Reaper’s Scythe, but now that he’d seen Lu Se form a sword with bare hands, he wanted to try manifesting soul weaponry without any physical object.

The physical scythe worked, but its handle was too short—he could lengthen the blade, but not the handle.

After several adjustments, a scythe appeared in Ang’s hands: two meters tall, with a blade as wide as a door.

“So cool,” Lu Se said enviously. A fearsome skeleton, its eye sockets burning with deep blue flames, wielding a two-handed great scythe—like the God of Reaping. Too awesome: “It’d terrify half the battlefield.”

No sooner had he spoken than Ang leapt into the field, gripping the scythe upside-down, sprinting fast across the mud, the blade skimming just above the ground. When he reached the end, a whole row of beet leaves lay neatly cut and fallen.

Ang leapt onto the second row, swung the scythe upside-down again, sprinted back—and another row of beet leaves fell in perfectly aligned rows. This efficiency was several times higher than before; previously he’d had to bend and drag, but now, with the extended handle, he could simply stand and run.

Ang returned, shook the mud off his feet, and declared: “Works well.”

Negril and Lu Se both had black lines on their faces.

Lu Se was used to Ang’s standard: anything good only if it helped farming. He shook his head and walked into the field, saying as he went: “If you want to test your blade, no need to cut beet leaves—wasteful. I’ll take these leaves. I’ll Mianqiang eat some greens for two days. Too wasteful—I hate waste most of all.”

Before he could reach for the beet leaves, a cow’s hoof stepped between him and them. He looked up—it was the cow-headed aunt carrying a manure bucket, glaring at him with cow eyes full of suspicion: “Mine!”

Lu Se sneered, his eyes blazing with battle intent. Just picking up some beet leaves? Young Master Ang hadn’t said a word—how dare a cow-headed peasant block a true Sword Saint?

Battle aura surged around him—he prepared to shove past the cow-headed aunt and snatch the crisp, sweet leaves into his arms, to make a rich vegetable stew tonight to cut the greasiness.

But before he could shove her aside, something terrifying happened—the cow-headed aunt grabbed a broom from the ground, stirred it in the manure bucket, swung it up, and slammed it toward him.

“Kao Bada!” Lu Se fled faster than when he’d slain the Holy Knight—vanished in a flash.

The cow-headed aunt slammed the broom onto the ground, snorted in disdain, then cheerfully gathered the leaves. Ang had contracted her to harvest them—she’d take them to the city to sell, and they were wildly popular.

Only after the cow-headed aunt finished collecting and left did Lu Se cautiously creep back, stubbornly muttering: “I’m not bothering with her.”

Negril snorted, then asked: “Who are these two priests? And these armored shield-bearers? Did you wipe out that Holy Church squad?”

“I ambushed them several times, killed some of them, drove them out of Ice City. Now they dare not enter the city—only camp in open areas. But their posture suggests they won’t leave; they’re planning to send more troops. I came here hoping Young Master Ang will strike—use Holy Radiance to blast open their camp, so I can go in and slaughter them. These two priests are my captives—I offer them to you as servants.”

“Wow, giving a skeleton a priest? You’re trying to kill him with that old bone,” Negril said, half-laughing, half-aghast.

Everyone misunderstood Ang, thinking he was a projection of the Watcher King—but Negril knew his true nature: he was just a skeleton with insane luck, inheriting the Soul Network and the faith of undeath—equivalent to a false god, but his actual power was nothing special.

What if the priest suddenly erupted and burned him with holy light?

The moment this thought surfaced, the female priest, who had been curled motionless on the ground, moved. Her slender, powerful waist snapped like a spring—despite her hands bound behind her, she flipped upright in an instant, eyes blazing as she screamed at Ang: “Die, heretic!”

Holy light erupted from the priest, forming a beam stabbing toward Ang—Holy Word: Die!

All that the Lord speaks is law; all that the Lord does is rule; all that the Lord thinks becomes manifest—Holy Word, a divine art that ignores rank and power, its strength depending solely on the speaker’s faith and conviction.

With sufficient faith, it can unleash immense power, annihilating foes far stronger than oneself.

But what terrified her was this: the heretic skeleton before her had caught the Holy Word with bare hands.