Chapter 675: When Meeting on a Narrow Path, the Brave Wins

Chapter 675: When Braves Meet on a Narrow Path, the Courageous Prevails

The most exasperating aspect of Zhao Changhe's unnatural prowess to his enemies was that all his weapons now possessed the trait of wounding the soul.

Once nicked even slightly, the soul would instantly churn as if minced, demanding an immense exertion of strength to suppress it. What seemed a superficial scratch of no consequence to an ordinary man was in truth exceptionally severe.

Had it been someone weaker, that single scratch might well have claimed their life already.

That a mortal could possess such unnatural advantages made the old zombie, who had slumbered for an epoch, sorely tempted to weep; in the previous era, finding even one such soul-wounding treasure was exceedingly rare, yet this fellow was covered in them, to the extravagant extent of using them as common arrows to shoot at random!

Yet Zhao Changhe had not won; he was still putting on a display of formidable might, just as he had done in the previous battle.

His ability to see through Huang Yang's movements relied on the eye behind him rather than his own capacity, which proved that Huang Yang's tactic of severing his communion with heaven and earth had indeed succeeded. Since it had succeeded, it meant not only a dulling of the five senses, but more crucially, the loss of utilizing external energy and the endless cycle of replenishment.

Zhao Changhe wished to force Huang Yang to flee; should the fight truly drag on, the longer it lasted, the more disadvantageous it would become.

Huang Yang stared with suspicious uncertainty at the calm and composed Zhao Changhe, utterly unable to comprehend how he remained unaffected by the disturbance of the earth veins, a feat that should have been impossible to unravel short of the Domain of Governance.

Should he continue the assault to probe whether the man was actually weakened?

Perceiving Huang Yang's hesitation, Zhao Changhe laughed aloud: "That Your Excellency still desires a fight to the death shows quite an improvement from last time. Behold the blade!"

With the words, his arm suddenly swelled, and the Dragon-Sparrow whistled upward, executing a Toad-Leap version of the 'Gods and Buddhas Scattered Everywhere'—a form the blade itself silently vilified—and cleaved down once more toward Huang Yang.

Huang Yang looked up; beneath the moonlight, the dark silhouette silhouetted against the light and those blood-red eyes bore a frantic, ferocious momentum that, given his current wounded soul, truly began to strike a cord of dread into his heart, making him realize just how terror-stricken ordinary opponents felt when facing this brute. Huang Yang took a deep breath, instantly steadying his wavering mind, and thrust out a withered hand, persisting in a head-on clash to measure the true extent of Zhao Changhe's current condition.

His palm struck the flank of the blade, causing both sides to sway simultaneously. Huang Yang suddenly felt the malevolent qi within his body surge violently, his veins on the verge of bursting through his skin; with his soul damaged, he was unexpectedly struggling to endure Zhao Changhe's 'governance'.

Yes, this was governance. The process by which all martial artists during the Secret Realm period sought a connection with heaven and earth and utilized their surroundings was the process of discovering their own governance. To put it plainly, Zhao Changhe's previous path was a continuous exploration of how to govern the power of blood malice—his own, his opponent's, that within the environment, and that across the world. When it reached a certain threshold, it became the Domain of Governance.

Against a master of Huang Yang's caliber, blood malice could only be drawn from oneself, proving entirely useless against the blood malice within Huang Yang, unable to affect it in the slightest. But at this moment, Huang Yang's state possessed a flaw!

The tables had turned; Huang Yang could not budge Zhao Changhe's life force, yet Zhao Changhe could now move his blood malice. For a moment, Huang Yang could not tell who the hell was actually in the Domain of Governance. From this perspective, Zhao Changhe truly had not been affected by the disturbance of the earth veins in the slightest!

No one knew that within the Dragon-Sparrow blade, a brat of a female spirit was gritting her teeth to drive the power; this was not Zhao Changhe's strength at all, but the blade spirit's... Having grown alongside Zhao Changhe all the way through the power of blood malice, the blade spirit was virtually indistinguishable from her master in this regard.

This was the true worth of a natal weapon!

Huang Yang firmly suppressed the churning blood malice within his body and threw himself backward, intending to flee.

He had completely lost the courage to continue the fight. This opponent was far too bizarre; his advantage of being an entire realm above was almost entirely unapparent, and none of his methods had any effect on the man. What was the point of fighting? To persist further would truly mean dying here!

The very instant he abandoned all will to fight and turned to flee, the surrounding blood malice suddenly whistled with frantic fury, and tens of thousands of blood-colored blade rays flooded the space, as though they were plunged into a vast sea of blood, where every glimmer of crimson light was a blade's edge!

Blood Floods the Mountains and Rivers!

This was the battlefield of Tancheng; not long before, Wan Dongliu had led the host to breach the city, leaving countless aggrieved souls and bloody malice within and outside the field. Though it could not be summoned previously, the moment Huang Yang turned to flee and relinquished his disruption of the earth veins, Zhao Changhe's perception returned, and he instantly invoked it, unleashing the most frantic and magnificent strike since his breakthrough into the Triple Secret Realm!

When braves meet on a narrow path, the courageous prevails.

As long as Huang Yang did not run and managed to persist in the fight, the one to lose would certainly have been Zhao Changhe, for he had no remaining endurance! Yet with this flight, heaven and earth overturned, and victory was decided!

"Boom!" A deafening explosion resounded as Huang Yang exerted all his might to receive this terrifying blood malice that felt like an endless execution by a thousand cuts. Looking up, he saw the River of Stars Sword flying in midair, the sky brilliant with starlight, heaven and earth reflecting each other's radiance, the moonlight blazing as an infinite multitude of stars came crashing down.

There was yet another ultimate technique?

Around him lay a sea of blood; above him, a starfall.

Huang Yang truly felt as though he had fallen back into the doomsday of old, the spectacle of an epoch collapsing.

The one responsible for this scene was merely a martial artist of the Triple Secret Realm. His resolve utterly broken, Huang Yang felt that even if the Night Emperor were reborn, it would be nothing more than this...

"Boom!" The power of the falling stars struck the battlefield. Huang Yang used every ounce of his strength to withstand it, fleeing the encirclement of the mountain of blades, sea of blood, and cascading meteors. His entire corpse-like frame was blasted into something resembling tattered rags; there was no telling how long he would have to slumber this time to recover.

Zhao Changhe spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, leaning weakly on the Dragon-Sparrow as it propped him against the ground, breathing with great difficulty.

Even like this, he could not kill him... The Domain of Governance was indeed the Domain of Governance, not something anyone could easily leap across realms to slay; the tale of catching the Sea King off-guard would be difficult to replicate.

He did not pursue, but extended a finger toward the River of Stars suspended in midair. The River of Stars suddenly shot forward like a piercing dart, rushing into the darkness far behind him.

"Clang!" A sound of metal clashing against metal rang out, and the River of Stars coiled back. The Black Piebald Steed came galloping from the other side with a long neigh; Zhao Changhe caught the River of Stars in one movement, vaulted onto the horse's back, and galloped south.

A dark silhouette emerged from the night, pursuing like a phantom.

—The reason he had chosen that area-of-effect mode of a mountain of blades, a sea of blood, and a sky of falling stars, rather than concentrating his power into a single point, was precisely because there was another oriole lurking behind. Only an all-encompassing attack of this scale could prevent a sneak attack.

And at this moment, Zhao Changhe's condition was entirely inadequate to deal with the oriole; he could only rely on the speed of the Black Piebald Steed to escape.

The pursuer followed behind, sighing with considerable emotion: "The Blood Asura's name shakes the world, and indeed, no false reputation precedes a worthy man... We old zombies truly feel old looking at this."

Zhao Changhe threw a glance back while holding the horse's neck, sneering: "Since you know you're an old zombie, why aren't you lying back in your mother's grave instead of coming out to make a fool of yourself?"

The pursuer declined to engage in a war of words and continued the chase.

Zhao Changhe's heart settled considerably; earlier, he had been uncertain of the oriole's nature, fearing the creature might go to slaughter the forces of the Cui family and the Canal Gang. Seeing this now, this individual had nothing to do with Huang Yang.

Everyone had their own desires, and the gods and demons were no different. Only someone like Huang Yang, who required the power and veins of the earth, would seek out mortal factions as proxies, whereas to most gods and demons, the battlefields of the mortal realm did not concern them by a single copper coin.

This one was eighty percent likely after the Heavenly Book... A mortal war was utterly meaningless to him, not even worth a single glance.

Possessing a jade brings its own blame; Zhao Changhe had known from the start that his Heavenly Book would draw a vast amount of covetous eyes, and it had been a mere dozen or so days before one truly arrived.

He had not expected them to be so degraded, actually lurking in the shadows to watch his duel with Huang Yang in an attempt to pick up the scraps...

And these were called gods and demons?

Zhao Changhe felt no vexation at the troubles coming thick and fast; instead, an boundless, heroic pride welled up within his heart. Galloping beneath the moonlight, his wild laughter echoed through the night sky: "Old Xia was right... A bunch of withered bones in a tomb, plotting in the dark, falsely called gods and demons! You should have died long ago in the destruction of the previous epoch; even the Heavenly Way felt there was no need to keep you insects in this world!"

"The Heavenly Way failed to finish it, and Old Xia failed to finish it... Then I shall continue the task!"

A medicinal pill entered his stomach, the Rejuvenation Technique silently operating as the power of heaven and earth flooded his entire body. The energy just spent and the concussive injuries suffered gradually mended amidst the rapid flight.

"Strike with one fist to prevent a hundred fists from coming." Zhao Changhe reined in his horse, turned his torso, and drew his bow to notch an arrow, his fierce shout reverberating through the night: "The Heavenly Book is right here! If you have the ability, come and take it!"

"Swish!" The arrow tore through the air, acting as a signal fire declaring war upon the gods and demons of the world.

Within the River of Stars Sword, an infant-like spirit opened its eyes, its form gradually stretching, showing signs of growing up.