Chapter 226: No Dead End Before the Blade

Chapter226: No Dead End Before the Blade

*Clang!*

Long saber braced against short blade, two pairs of eyes brimming with murderous intent nearly collided.

A nauseating stench of rot filled the nostrils; the hatred for the Sequence Traitors etched deep into his genes drove Li Jun to press every ounce of his strength onto the blade without reservation.

"It's that look in your eyes again, another fool warped by genetics! Those warriors of old were simply outmatched, dying miserably at others' hands, yet they carved their hatred into their genes to bequeath to us, forcing us to exhaust our lives avenging them."

"Li Jun, tell me, on what grounds?"

Zhao Tong shouted fiercely, yet the short blade in his left palm suddenly slid sideways along the edge of the Xiu Chun Saber.

The instant it touched the hilt, it violently left his palm, spinning like a flying circular saw, slicing toward Li Jun's sword-holding wrist.

This change of move came with insidious cunning; Li Jun felt a chill race from his tailbone to his crown. He decisively released his right hand, pivoted on his heel, and his right elbow smashed toward Zhao Tong's temple with the momentum.

Having coldly observed that massacre earlier, Zhao Tong knew well the killing power of Li Jun's Bajiquan; naturally, he would not choose to take that elbow head-on.

He decisively abandoned the most ferocious frontal thrust, his body contorting into a bizarre evasive posture, flashing to Li Jun's flank, the short blade in his right palm stabbing viciously at his waist and abdomen.

But in that moment of hesitation, Li Jun's left hand snatched the falling Xiu Chun Saber like lightning, riding the force of the swung elbow to flick the blade up in a cleaving strike at Zhao Tong!

*Clang!*

Zhao Tong's figure slid straight back, his feet plowing a shallow, mud-churned trench.

A straight section of blade plunged into the mud with a *puff*, only then arresting his momentum.

"Strength is decent, looks like your internal force has reached the Great Perfection realm too?"

Zhao Tong's expression was gloomy; he pulled the short sword from the mud, retracting it back to the length of a forearm. His empty left hand likewise spat out another sharp edge.

"You chose the Martial Path Sequence initially just to covet its combat strength, for the thrill of killing, didn't you? Now that you lack the guts to keep fighting the Buddhist and Daoist factions, you blame your genes."

Li Jun switched the Xiu Chun Saber back to his right hand, sneering, "You're incompetent yourselves, yet blame the road for being uneven. Truly, a ripe old age wasted on a dog's belly!"

"Shut your mouth!"

Zhao Tong flew into a rage out of humiliation, his legs bending and extending; his figure shot toward Li Jun like an arrow loosed from a bow.

"I'll teach you how to use a saber!"

"A body of rotten flesh, fit to teach me?"

Two figures shot out once more, crashing together!

The Xiu Chun Saber was domineering in momentum, fierce as elite troops breaking formation.

The Palm Sword was cunning and vicious, sinister as a venomous woman's heart.

The gleam of waving weapons eclipsed the moonlight spilling from the heavens; the sharp clamor of their crossing explosions surpassed the weeping of dark clouds.

Another clash of blade and sword, the two entangled figures suddenly separated.

Li Jun lowered his head to glance at the bloody sword mark on his chest, his sword-shaped brows furrowing involuntarily.

It wasn't that the gain or loss of this move affected his state of mind, but Zhao Tong's condition was simply too bizarre!

Clearly, there was no Gear Heart humming in his chest, yet he could still freely manipulate the mechanical bodies buried beneath his skin.

Clearly, his original flesh and blood had rotted away, yet traces of internal force circulation could still be seen in the shifting of his techniques.

Neither human nor machine, neither weapon nor martial art.

Though he could not use Weapon Path Overclocking or Martial Arts Completion, this bizarre balance made the martial swordplay in his hands strangely unpredictable, impossible to guard against.

*Whoosh!*

Zhao Tong, face twisted in a ferocious grin, lunged forward again; his footwork was extraordinarily agile, his speed in no way inferior to Li Jun's Chu Wu Dan Ying, closing the distance in a flash, his right sword nailing straight for Li Jun's brow.

Sword wind struck his face, faintly stinging; Li Jun instinctively raised his saber to block upward.

But in that very instant, the bizarre erupted!

Zhao Tong's right hand suddenly folded backward as if broken, bypassing the interception of the Xiu Chun Saber in a way that defied human joint limits, then violently snapped out again, carving a deep gash across Li Jun's shoulder.

This distorted striking method again, identical to the sword strike that had gashed his chest moments ago.

Li Jun's eyes turned fierce; the tendons and bones of his shoulder tightened, clamping the embedded short sword fast. His left fist smashed aside Zhao Tong's follow-up strike, while his right hand powered a reverse upward sweep of the Xiu Chun Saber.

He was trading half his shoulder for Zhao Tong's head severed by a single slash!

*Click-click~!*

Zhao Tong shook his wrist; the restrained blade detached directly from his palm. He stepped in a circle, evading the Xiu Chun Saber's upward sweep, and dealt another slash to Li Jun's waist.

"This old trick of trading lives again. Do you know how many Martial Path Sequence experts were worn to death alive back then precisely because of your pedantic mindset? And the others? They just turned around and achieved Nirvana Reincarnation or Weapon Transcendence, living carefree all the same!"

Zhao Tong's words were sharper than the sword in his hand, constantly using secrets unknown to 'wild' Martial Path Sequence members like Li Jun to disturb his thoughts.

Though half his body was stained with blood, Li Jun's face remained calm; the Xiu Chun Saber in his hand shifted from offense to defense, his eyes hidden behind the blade's glow, patiently awaiting an opening.

"The Huangliang Reform launched by the Empire brought nothing but a chicken-rib-like Martial Arts Injector; all other reforms have nothing to do with our Sequence. Do you understand what this means?"

Words drifted with the sword light, circling Li Jun ceaselessly.

The saber light, rippling like a mirror, wrinkled from time to time; each time, there would be either the sonorous clang of blade meeting sword, or the tearing sound of sharp steel rending flesh.

"This proves that even if the 'World Divides the Martial' incident hadn't happened, this Sequence would eventually be discarded by the times. Only by replacing flesh with machinery is there a way out!"

"So tell me, since you know it's a dead end, why do you cling to these genes destined to become trash?"

At the tail end of his words, Zhao Tong nearly roared.

His mouth gaped wide until the corners aligned with his eyes; the surrounding skin cracked piece by piece like porcelain!

"This state ultimately cannot be maintained. Since you remain obstinate, I can only take your head to exchange for a top-grade Gear Heart!"

In the gloomy rainy night, amid the clanking sounds of mechanical transformation, the edges of the blades in Zhao Tong's palms began to spin wildly on their own.

Raindrops falling from the sky struck the blade edges, instantly shattered into mist.

"Even if the bullshit you speak becomes reality in the future, so what?"

"If the blood spurting from veins is no longer scalding, can it still be called hot blood? If the soul and memories can be repeatedly rewound and replayed, can that still be called a goddamn human?"

[Consumed 62 Proficiency Points, Muscle-Twisting Bone-Displacing Hand (Seventh-Rank Technique) upgraded to Seventh-Rank Great Perfection.]

Li Jun gripped his saber and stepped forward; his robes billowed ceaselessly as he walked, as if the towering bandit qi surging within him stirred the air!

"If all that can count, then I'll use this saber to change them back one by one!"

"A mantis trying to stop a chariot, courting death!"

Zhao Tong roared in rage, charging forth as well, twin chain-saw swords thrusting forward simultaneously!

Sword light rose, saber light fell; the two crossed paths!

Zhao Tong's feet suddenly halted; the cracked skin on his face peeled away piece by piece under the rain's assault.

He stared with blank eyes, lowering his head to look at his own hands.

Both arms severed at the elbow; exposed mechanical bones were wrapped in grayish-white withered tendons; filthy, reeking blood gushed from vessels, yet only a mere trickle flowed before grinding to a halt.

And those two terrifying chain-saw swords, unknown when they had fallen into the mud behind him, had already ceased their rotation.

The blankness in Zhao Tong's eyes turned to doubt; after a moment of stagnation, it was as if he realized something, a sudden comprehension dawning.

"Your Muscle-Splitting Bone-Displacing Hand—how did it suddenly reach Grand Perfection?! How did your martial arts suddenly reach Mastery?!"

The sudden acceleration of fleshly decay caused Zhao Tong's vocal cords to rapidly lose function; after uttering that sentence, only unintelligible whimpers remained in his mouth.

*Pfft!*

A curved, razor-sharp blade tip pierced straight through his chest.

"Shut it, I couldn't understand a single word you said!"

[Gained 120 Proficiency Points]

[Remaining Proficiency Points: 128]

Zhao Tong's corpse collapsed into the mud with a wet *thud*. The flesh on his body scrambled to flee deep into the soil, and in the blink of an eye, only a mangled, incomplete skeleton remained on the spot.

"What a spectacular mid-battle breakthrough, a counter-kill against an enemy—truly magnificent! But tell me, were you playing the pig to eat the tiger, or is your talent truly that monstrous?"

The Lone Wolf had just died, and now a Vicious Tiger arrived.

Li Jun narrowed his eyes at that bright yellow monk's robe, baring a mouthful of blood-red teeth.

"The world of geniuses, Monk, is not for the likes of you to understand."

[Consumed 128 Proficiency Points, Chu Wu Shadow Dart (Seventh-Rank Movement Technique) advanced to Seventh-Rank Late Stage 46/100]