This duel wasn’t the usual win-or-die affair, not for Li Yuan and not for Qing Hancheng.
It was similar to breaking through to fifth rank, with three sixth rank martial artists comprehending and merging the ancestral seal seeds of their peers through battle. Tonight these two shared that goal.
Defeating the opponent would temper one’s own flesh and blood, making it more powerful.
Destroying the enemy would harden the will until conviction gleamed like polished steel.
Drenched in blood they would study themselves, study the other, and together push into unknown territory.
They meant to kill, yet neither struck first. Each treated the other as a banquet. Only one dish would remain at the end.
The moment Qing Hancheng judged the big oaf in front of him a worthy opponent, he actually worried the man lacked a decent weapon. He’d even postpone the fight just to forge one for him. Only a strong foe could trigger a flawless breakthrough.
Lose? Not in his vocabulary. Qing Hancheng had always possessed the heart of the strong.
Who struck first made no difference.
Li Yuan simply raised a finger and waited.
Qing Hancheng decided to move first. He did not immediately invoke a blood domain. Any fourth rank could do that. Using it here felt beneath him, and pointless besides.
His thoughts might be shadowed, but his eyes blazed bright. Gripping the Wither Growth Sword, he listened as the ground began to rustle, like the first spring rain, like a newborn tide, soft and everywhere at once.
In the next heartbeat thick green vines and creepers burst from the earth, weaving themselves into an ancient, colossal garden.
Aerial roots hanging like curtains, mats of crumbling creepers, piles of dead branches losing their bark, fresh trunks thick as temple columns, red flowers no larger than ants, grass as tall as a grown man, fruit exuding a syrupy sweetness—
“An illusion?” Li Yuan asked, not really expecting an answer.
Qing Hancheng gave him one anyway.
“If this world holds untouchable ghost domains, what’s illusory and what’s real? Mortals think thoughts are vapor. You switch one on, snuff one out, no reverence required. They don’t know a thought is a divine seed. Give it Yin-Yang soil and—one thought, one world. Taste my world. I mastered this power only recently, and it exists only because of this sword.”
Li Yuan felt it. He stood in the garden and sensed a door to a new realm swing open. Every blossom and stalk radiated fierce malice. This was no daydream.
“So that sword houses the wills of every former temple master before you,” he said. “Add yours to theirs and you build this garden. But the moment you unleash the power, your will joins them inside the sword, right? Your thought is just one more among many, so this strike comes not from you alone but from all your predecessors, not just you. Tell me, Qing Hancheng. Have you considered what the implications of this are?”
Qing Hancheng met the hulking man’s calm gaze. He didn’t bother with a cliche back-and-forth. That would be an insult to bother the intelligence of both of them. He simply gave an honest answer.
“You know what I mean, then?”
“You think I’ll end up like the others, one more thought trapped in this sword. Honestly, I’m not worried.”
“If you fret over every what-if, how would you ever break through?”
His ink-black plum blossom robe billowed like a storm.
Floating in midair, Qing Hancheng said, “Take this first move. Don’t disappoint me.”
The words barely faded when night fell. On the black curtain flashed scores of savage eyes, ones grown on every plant in the garden. Their gazes all bore into their target relentlessly.
Li Yuan remembered how Jing Shuixiang had used this trick too. It was similar to the Intimidating Glare, the special ability that manifested in those who cultivated the Cycle of Withering and Growth. But hers was a toy compared to this.
The essence is still the dance of Yin and Yang, he mused. Yang rules flesh and form. Yin rules spirit, the formless. Thought is formless—Yin. But how did a Yin seed sprout a garden this huge in some Yin-Yang soil? And what exactly is this garden?
Whatever the outcome, he was learning. This was his first taste of combat at the fourth rank level.
Shall I attack then? He tilted his head, fingers twitching. A dull red light flowed out of his body, gathered on his fingertip, and shot toward a vine whipping out of the darkness.
Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle! The vine dissolved.
Li Yuan’s pupils widened in shock. The vine was real, conjured out of thin air..
“He’s creating something out of nothing…”
Suddenly, Li Yuan’s thoughts jumped to his son. Ping'ans strange shadow clones also appeared to pop out of thin air.
“No, not out of thin air. A thought seed had simply dropped into Yin-Yang soil and morphed in a way that skirted true reality, so close one could scarcely tell the difference.”
Yet Ping'an was nowhere near fourth rank. How did his son pull it off? Innate shadow blood? Or was there some other reason?
The questions flickered past as Li Yuan lifted his head to meet the next assault.
A barrage like chained tempests burst forth; vicious lights and shadows slashed across the sky. Every vine, every eye attacked him at once.
One finger wouldn’t cut it this time. He drew a long breath. A dark-crimson radiance seeped from within and plated his skin, turning him into a blazing kiln with flame-serpents writhing from every pore.
The crossing beams slammed into the serpents. Some were snuffed out instantly, others punched through and tried to burrow inside him. Where they dug in, his flesh went sickly green, rotting in a blink.
Each time he washed the spot with fire, the poisoned meat burned away and drifted off as green smoke. His body became a pitted wasteland. Then, almost as quickly, fresh muscle boiled up and left him whole again.
When the vines finally withdrew, Li Yuan still stood, frowning in thought.
Not Yin, not Yang… These are real high ranking vicious plants, all right. Pure toxins, potent enough to chew through my flesh and overwhelm my poison resistance.
A voice drifted down. Qing Hancheng appeared openly impressed.
“Excellent! So you’ve reached this realm as well. And here I was showing off. My thoughts sprouted a garden; yours sprouted fire. Thought borrows Yin and Yang and births the five elements. I am wood, you are fire, so naturally you counter me. Had you brushed my garden unopposed, poison would have raced through you; once your strength dipped, I’d have cut you down. You’d lose, wait for blood-drop rebirth, end of story.”
He nodded, suddenly enlightened. “So there are seniors outside of our Five Elements Alliance after all. Hahaha!”
Li Yuan knew the man was mistaken. His flames weren’t born of thought at all. But Qing Hancheng’s theory intrigued him. Back before he crossed into this world, sages loved to repeat that Yin and Yang birthed the five elements, yet no one could explain how. A thought seed buried in Yin and Yang sprouting into one of the five elements? The elements were neither Yin nor Yang, but the very stuff of creation itself. Was this the power of creation? Was this the world beyond?
Across the field, Qing Hancheng finished his epiphany, drifted to the ground, and said simply, “Your turn.”
His intention was clear enough. He had attacked, Li Yuan had defended; now the roles reversed.
Li Yuan nodded. Fire surged from his heart, hauling him straight into fourth rank. The moment his cultivation soared, his chaotic ancestral seal thundered in his mind, and blade qi began condensing around him. Seconds later a total of 81 crescents silently orbited around him like an iron cavalry.
He pressed two fingers together, nine by nine returning to one, and fused the crescents into a single colossal blade. Then he slashed out with simple grace.
Qin Hancheng narrowed his eyes. The slash felt utterly tranquil; no roaring aura, no savage pressure.
Was the blade real? An illusion? Another Yin-Yang seed turned tangible like his own garden?
His robe of ink-black plum blossom silk snapped open. Scorching scarlet shadow blood seeped from every pore, thousands of blood swords forming like crimson tadpoles in flight, meeting the descending blade.
Those swords were strong enough to pry at the gates of ancient ghost street. They were pure Yang, lethal beyond measure.
One heartbeat later, a single blade met a thousand swords.
No fireworks, no flourish. The thousand swords shattered at once, blooming into a red mist.
The blade kept falling.
Qing Hancheng blinked, twisted aside, and swept the loose blood mist back into fresh swords, hurling them to block.
Li Yuan watched him gather strength and simply held the blade aloft.
Normally the Nine by Nine Formless Blade collapsed after the swing, too much power to sustain. But facing this foe a strange calm settled over him. The blade stayed solid and unwavering.
A small breakthrough! Li Yuan’s heart surged with joy.
He held the blade, which was several hundred meters long and towered like a cliff. Within the blade, terrible vibrations spelled annihilation, yet the destruction was folded neatly inside its own domain, leaving the surface placid and still.