Chapter 393

Chapter 393: Ambushed on the Road
Abbot Jie Tan asked: “Did you leave the item?”

Yu Zhao replied: “I left it.”

He asked again: “Did he say anything?”

She shook her head: “I went quietly. I put it down and left right away.”

Abbot Jie Tan nodded in satisfaction.

This disciple was teachable.

He said: “Let’s go. We’re heading to the Heavenly Sword Sect.”

Yu Zhao answered with a nod, and the two of them shot across the sky like falling stars.

In the main hall of the Greenwood Sect, Sect Master Wu Sang walked in from outside, looking gloomy.

He had just sent those two debt collectors away, and his heart still hurt badly.

He let out a sigh and was about to sit down when his gaze swept across the hall by accident. The corner of his mouth twitched hard.

He shouted: “That damned Yu Zhao! Who told you to put that broken wooden basin on the offering table!”

Outside the hall, Mu Ye happened to be passing by. Her eyes flashed with guilt, and she hurried into a run.

She would absolutely never tell Sect Master that she was the one who led Yu Zhao there.

With a Divine Transformation cultivator traveling with her, Yu Zhao did not even need to use her own Spirit Power. She only had to relax her body and feel the changes in space around her.

On the second day after leaving the Greenwood Sect, Yu Zhao suddenly felt that their traveling speed had sharply increased. The feeling of space pressing on her body grew stronger and stronger.

A bad feeling surged up in her heart.

She turned sideways to glance at Abbot Jie Tan. Sure enough, his face was unusually serious. The Wooden Alms Bowl he had been holding all the time was gone, replaced by a small Vajra Scepter in his hand.

Yu Zhao quietly circulated her Spirit Power and secretly placed the Mirror of Fleeting Lives in her palm.

After about half a stick of incense, Abbot Jie Tan suddenly stopped in midair. His voice boomed like a lion’s roar: “Whoever is there, show your true body!”

Yu Zhao looked around warily.

She did not find anything unusual.

The surroundings were silent and still.

Her eyes grew darker.

After her closed-door cultivation in Chaozong Gorge, her strength had risen again. Even if a Nascent Soul Great Perfection expert were hiding nearby, it would be impossible for her not to notice.

So there was only one possibility.

Their enemy was a Divine Transformation old fiend.

And not just one of them.

After Abbot Jie Tan’s shout faded, there was still no answer.

His face was solemn. His lips moved soundlessly.

One after another, Buddha chants turned into solid golden characters, floating out from his mouth. They lined up very close to each other and quickly formed a ring.

In the next moment, his broad palm burst out with dazzling golden light that he pushed outward with force.

The golden ring of script absorbed the light and instantly grew larger at a speed visible to the naked eye, expanding outward again and again.

The whole sky was lit up with brilliant gold.

Yu Zhao’s entire body was bathed in the golden light, wrapped in a warm, gentle heat.

But for the people hiding in the shadows, this light was like a deadly row of bayonets.

A humming sound suddenly rang out.

Three figures appeared one after another from the void. Their bodies wavered a little before they barely managed to steady themselves.

Yu Zhao looked at the three people standing at three different positions around them and could not help but frown.

The three of them were about the same height. They wore the same style of long black robes, and each had a silver mask on their face that hid their features so completely that not even their eyes or noses could be seen.

From their shapes alone, there was no way to tell them apart.

The only thing Yu Zhao could feel was the evil yet incredibly powerful aura coming from them.

There were actually three Divine Transformation cultivators.

Even though Yu Zhao had already prepared herself, she was still secretly shocked by their lineup.

The Heavenly Ladder had broken, Spiritual Energy was thinner and thinner, and the number of Divine Transformation cultivators in the cultivation world had dropped sharply.

As the leading sect of the cultivation world, all the Divine Transformation cultivators of the Five Elements Dao Sect added together still did not reach two digits. That alone showed how precious such cultivators were.

Yet now, three unknown Divine Transformation cultivators had appeared out of nowhere to block their path. It was truly a rare and strange sight.

Abbot Jie Tan’s gaze swept over the three figures, and he felt the same shock in his heart.

He did not claim to know every Divine Transformation cultivator in the cultivation world, but he knew at least most of them. Even if he had not met some of them in person, he had at least heard of them and knew their traits.

But these three were people he had never seen before, and they did not match any impression he had at all. It was as if they had suddenly sprung out of thin air.

Clarity Sound Temple had always promoted peace in the cultivation world and never picked fights with outsiders. Why would these three ambush him now?

Abbot Jie Tan knew a fierce battle was unavoidable, but he still held on to a tiny bit of hope and tried to find out their purpose. He asked: “What do you three intend to do?”

The three acted as if they had not heard his question.

They glanced at each other, then raised their hands and began to form hand seals.

A huge black pillar of light shot up into the sky from each of them.

Then, the three black beams spread out into flat planes that pushed outward. In an instant, they connected into a giant black triangle that trapped Abbot Jie Tan and Yu Zhao inside.

Yu Zhao reacted very quickly. Before the triangle had closed completely, she had already activated the Heart-Guard Mirror.

Just as she was urging the Heart-Guard Mirror, a large surge of gloomy, cold air rushed into the seven orifices of her head.

In the blink of an eye, she found herself standing atop a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. Before her eyes was a bloody, murky scene.

Yu Zhao’s gaze turned hazy for a moment, then she realized something was wrong.

She focused her mind, guarded her center, and cast away all stray thoughts. Coupled with the effect of the Heart-Guard Mirror, her eyes soon recovered their clarity.

Abbot Jie Tan was completely unaffected by the dark aura.

He had been ready to help pull Yu Zhao out, but when he saw her break free on her own, a trace of praise flashed through his eyes.

When he shifted his sight away from her, however, his look turned suddenly sharp.

In the short moment his attention had moved, a shocking change had taken place inside the triangle.

Cold winds howled, and ghostly wails and wolf-like cries echoed all around.

Thick black smoke poured out and turned into countless ghost shadows. Their faces were twisted with cruelty, and blood flowed from all seven of their orifices as they rushed at Abbot Jie Tan and Yu Zhao.

Abbot Jie Tan shouted: “Calming Heart!” and tossed the Vajra Scepter upward.

In an instant, golden light surged everywhere.

Each ghost that touched the golden light let out a miserable scream and turned to dust.

But more ghosts kept appearing, like moths flinging themselves into a fire, rushing forward one after another.

Soon, all the light around them was blocked by the dense crowd of ghosts. The space around Abbot Jie Tan and Yu Zhao fell into darkness.

Yu Zhao looked at the countless ghost shadows pressing against the golden light outside their circle. There was no relief at all on her face.

This was only the beginning.

Sure enough, after a short while, the situation on the field changed again.

The ghosts seemed to realize they could not do anything to Abbot Jie Tan, so they suddenly stopped.

A shrill ghostly scream echoed through the inside of the triangle.

Right after that, as if guided by some will, the countless ghosts leaped up and rushed madly toward the ghost in the very center.

The mass of ghosts screamed as they merged into one, forming a giant ghost several zhang tall. Thick black qi swirled around it like smoke. It looked like a demon god had descended into the world.

Next, the remaining ghosts followed the same process and created several more giant ghosts of the same size.

The first giant ghost raised its huge foot and stomped down hard toward them.

The crushing pressure felt like a huge boulder pressing against Yu Zhao’s chest. She could not help but suck in a cold breath.

With a loud boom, the ghost’s huge foot landed on the golden light. It was not dissolved, but instead was bounced back several zhang away.

It looked like the attack had not caused it much harm at all.

Yu Zhao quickly did some calculations in her heart. The fused giant ghosts were very hard to deal with. At most she could hold off one of them.

As for the others, they could only be left to Abbot Jie Tan to handle.

But she had not forgotten that the three Divine Transformation cultivators in the distance were still watching them like hungry tigers.

As soon as Abbot Jie Tan showed any sign of exhaustion, they would rush forward like these ghosts and tear them apart.

[This trip was in grave danger.]