Chapter 66
Chapter 66: Striking While She’s Weak
“Which direction is Jiang Yun Jiang?”
Shao Heng didn’t waste time.
Lu Tian Xiang held the bowl in his left hand and wiped the water’s surface with his right. The image vanished. The purple hue stretched into a thin wisp of smoke that drifted toward the southwest.
“Southwest.”
Shao Heng nodded. In the blink of an eye, she vanished from where she stood.
Lu Tian Xiang recognized the escape technique she’d used before. He reached toward the southwest, then let his hand fall with a sigh.
“Ah. I want to go watch too.”
Jiang Yun Jiang had swindled him out of his Shattered Moon. Though she was only mid First Realm, her divine ability was unpredictable, and her high-grade aptitude, “White Tiger True Embryo,” gave her terrifying killing power. With his unstable foundation, he couldn’t do a thing to her. He’d been forced to retreat, resentment choking his chest.
Lu Tian Xiang stood where he was, lips curling as he spoke to the empty air.
“Even if I can’t see it with my own eyes, as long as those two bitches fight, I’m happy. Best if they both die together and save me the trouble.”
“Hmph.”
Shao Heng used her escape technique in successive bursts, leaving brief gaps between jumps to read the terrain and confirm it matched what she’d seen on the bowl’s water surface.
As she moved, she swallowed an Origin-Restoring Pill and a Rejuvenation Pill. Her escape technique drew mostly on the abundant lunar radiance within this small world, so the actual drain on spiritual power wasn’t too severe. With the pills offsetting it, the spiritual power she’d spent fighting Lu Tian Xiang recovered steadily.
When she landed near a mountain range shaped like a crouching tiger, she lifted her eyes and froze.
Wintersweet blossoms covered the slopes—yet they weren’t the usual warm yellow. They were a cold, stark white, standing proud in the howling wind. The sight made the heart tighten for no reason at all.
“This is the place,” she murmured.
White wintersweet—exactly as in the bowl’s image.
“The yin qi is heavy here,” Ao Chuan warned, voice tight in her mind.
He was a pure-blood Dragon Clan hatchling, born with fierce, vigorous blood energy. This kind of cold yin qi naturally made him uncomfortable.
“That makes it even more likely,” Shao Heng said. “Wasn’t Jiang Yun Jiang killing yin ghosts in the image?”
Then she lowered her voice, careful even though no one was near. “Little White Dragon, I’m certain Jiang Yun Jiang carries something filthy—something like a lingering soul. Before, when she broke through the white mist my father set up, it was probably that thing’s doing.”
“If you hide on my arm and we get close, will you be noticed?”
Ao Chuan struggled. His dragon instincts tugged him in two directions.
If news leaked, perhaps the True Dragon Clan might hear and come rescue him—or even find a way to break the Yin Liu Blood Pact.
But if the news spread and the clan arrived too late, Shao Heng wouldn’t be able to protect him. He could end up skinned, tendons pulled, blood drained, bones carved out—every ugly end his bloodline had warned him about.
In the end, he drooped and answered honestly, “Probably not. But I’m not sure how strong the lingering soul is. It might still notice.”
Shao Heng thought it through and made the call. “Then wait for me at the foot of the mountain. Your spiritual power is right on the border between mid and late First Realm, and with the Dragon Clan’s heavenly demon techniques, ordinary people can’t hurt you.”
“We have the Blood Pact. We can sense each other. If something happens you can’t deal with, tell me through the pact immediately.”
The dragon tattoo on her right arm flashed, then peeled away into a slender white dragon. Ao Chuan flicked his tail and chuckled, trying to sound carefree. “Don’t worry!”
“Fine.” Shao Heng’s gaze sharpened. “Go look for your own chance. If you find a spirit item or Shattered Moon, refine it yourself.”
That lit him up. Ao Chuan darted away, and in the blink of an eye he was gone.
Shao Heng looked up the mountain. Cold light flashed in her eyes.
She flicked her right hand, summoning the Thousand-Strike Bow into her palm, then surged upward without hesitation.
…
Blood speckled the cold-white wintersweet petals.
Jiang Yun Jiang cut down the last yin ghost with a single sword strike, then swayed. Several bloody gashes marked her body. She drove her sword into the earth and leaned on it, forcing herself not to collapse.
She swallowed two red pills, then stayed braced over her blade, eyes closing as she waited for the medicine to take hold.
An Azure Carp Demon swam around her in tight circles, tail snapping with agitation as it guarded her.
Her body was exhausted, but her heart was steady.
These past few days of constant battle had tempered her three hundred-plus furnaces of spiritual power again and again. At last, there was no trace of floating qi left.
Cultivation gained by swallowing pills was fast, but it was brittle. She’d always preferred spiritual power tempered step by step like this.
Then Dan Hua’s voice sounded beside her ear, urgent.
“Someone is approaching fast within ten miles. Be careful.”
Dan Hua’s lingering-soul power hadn’t recovered much, but using divine sense to probe the surroundings and protect Jiang Yun Jiang was still within her ability.
“Wait—the one coming is—”
A silver-white arrow tore through the air with a shriek of friction, like an eagle’s long cry.
And it was only the prelude.
In the blink of an eye, ten arrows, a hundred arrows—an entire rain of arrows fell from above.
The Azure Carp Demon flared bright green. Its scales flashed as it threw up a spherical shield around its master.
The first arrow hit and detonated. Then the next. Crackling filled the air, explosions overlapping until sound became a wall. Jiang Yun Jiang couldn’t make out the rest of what Dan Hua said.
She didn’t need to.
Jiang Yun Jiang lifted her head, purple eyes cold as ice.
She’d already seen the attacker.
A young woman in green swept through the air, bow in hand, drawing the string. Her gaze was sharper than the crescent moon hanging overhead.
“Shao Heng!”
Jiang Yun Jiang’s voice rang out, fury edged with disbelief. “I thought someone as proud as you would want a fair fight—not strike when I’ve just finished an intense battle!”
Shao Heng’s expression didn’t change.
The colorful bracelet on her wrist split apart, forming an arrow along the string.
If she were still the old Lu Shao Heng—the spoiled marquis’s daughter who’d never tasted hardship—perhaps she would have listened to words like that.
But Shao Heng didn’t even answer.
Her eyes stayed locked on Jiang Yun Jiang, watchful for the lingering soul, as she loosed the colored arrow.
“If you hate me, you’ll call it striking while you’re weak,” Shao Heng said, calm as stone. “If you like me, you’ll call it seizing the moment.”
“Why should I care what you think? Why should I listen to you?”
“I just want to win.”
The colored arrow pierced the green barrier in an instant.
The Azure Carp Demon threw itself in front of its master and took the hit, its body skewered clean through.
Even so, the arrow’s radiance blazed. Jiang Yun Jiang shuddered. For a breath, a cultivator’s instincts wiped her mind clean until only two words remained:
Run.
She bit down hard on her tongue. Pain snapped her back. She yanked a bone mirror and a length of purple gauze from her storage bracelet, wrapped them around herself, and forced them to activate.
She’d spent too much spiritual power in the earlier fight. Even now, she hadn’t recovered to thirty percent. Her meridians felt hollow. The spiritual power she’d squeezed from her Yellow Bud was about to burn out.
A weary sigh sounded, ancient and sharp.
“Let this old woman protect you.”
White mist rose from the Lotus Jade Hairpin in Jiang Yun Jiang’s hair, twisting into the shape of an old matron. It reached out toward the arrow—
And Shao Heng’s heart slammed once, hard.
This was the moment she’d been waiting for.
She lifted the Soul-Seizing Bell.
A black-green bell hovered at her side, inscriptions lighting all at once. A crisp ring cut through the air.
“Ah!”
The old matron of white mist instantly turned thinner, its form wavering.