◎Never in this life shall you obtain what you seek… those you love laid in the grave, those you hate granted long life…◎
The man’s face was ghastly as he forced words through his teeth. “The Kuayu Sword… is the guardian sword of Hundred Swords Mountain. Proud and haughty since birth, scorning all the world—how could it ever acknowledge a Spirit-Veinless ant like you as its master?”
Mingzhu’s lashes lowered as he regarded the radiance-spilling blade in his hand with indifference, letting out a soft sigh. “It seems I really did wrong my Little Junior Brother before. Anyone called ‘Spirit-Veinless waste’ over and over to their face would feel a bit sour about it, I suppose. Ah well. I’ll apologize to him again when we get back.”
The man’s voice cracked like a whip. “Answer me!”
Mingzhu’s lips curved into a smile of pure roguishness. “No.”
He took one slow step forward, sword in hand. The Undead prostrated on the ground shuddered in his wake, nearly burrowing their heads into the earth.
He paid them no mind, strolling unhurriedly to within five paces of the black-mist-shrouded man, his waist-length hair stirring without wind. He said mildly, “I have always lived by one rule: if others don’t provoke me, I don’t provoke them. I spoke to you in good faith just now, Senior, yet you never learned that one should always leave a thread of mercy—insisting instead on hunting us juniors to the death.”
He lifted the sword lightly. A sliver of light fell from the side, dividing brightness and shadow into stark halves, framing his devastatingly beautiful smile like that of a soul-reaping ghost. “He who kills others shall be killed in turn. Now then, Senior—you’ve lived longer than I have. You understand this principle, don’t you? If I kill you, that hardly counts as adding to my karmic sins, does it?”
With that, his blade-tip flicked thrice through the empty air, light as a dragonfly skimming water. Spiritual Power from the Kuayu Sword’s blade poured forth serenely and, in an instant, split into three phantom blades rising into the void.
The Long Halberd was still trembling violently. The man, shaken by the sheer pressure rolling off Mingzhu, felt a flash of fury cross his face. Summoning all his strength, he clamped down on the halberd that wanted nothing more than to curl into a quivering ball and lifted it, tapping it lightly against the ground—though the tap looked ever so slight, a sound like clashing metal rippled outward across the earth, and the black qi scattering all around was drawn behind him, condensing into an enormous skull that roared with fury at Mingzhu standing mere steps away.
Mingzhu’s long hair whipped wildly in the howling wind as he regarded the demon-like skull with lazy indifference, chuckling. “Dwelling in the Abandoned Sword Tomb, and an Artifact Spirit that can command sword-aura at that—this trip really has been educational.”
The man said coldly, “Do not compare me to that lowly Sword Spirit.”
Mingzhu’s slender fingers tapped idly, and the three sword-aura Wind Blades before him wheeled obediently around his fingers. “Then what exactly are you? One of the Undead? An Undead that can command the weapons of the Abandoned Sword Tomb—that’s a first for me.”
Every weapon in the Abandoned Sword Tomb was a discarded blade whose Sword Spirit had scattered when its master died, each one sealing within it every soul its master had harvested in life. Never had anyone heard of an Undead that could command the weapons themselves.
The man leveled the shuddering halberd, its point aimed straight at Mingzhu, clearly done wasting words on him. Though the halberd’s broken Sword Spirit was cowed by the Kuayu, the man in life must have been a Mighty Figure of boundless power—even in a broken Undead’s body, the aura pouring off him was enough to chill the blood.
He thrust out a sword-aura wreathed in black mist, which tore through the void with a shriek and drove unerringly toward Mingzhu’s pulse-point.
Mingzhu sneered. “A firefly dares rival the sun?”
No sooner had the words left his mouth than his expression twisted—apparently he found the line embarrassing—so, face flushing faintly, he swept his well-defined hand toward the incoming sword-aura. Spiritual Power burst forth like a breached dam, crashing into the black-misted strike.
Red and black collided violently in midair. The Kuayu Sword’s aura held the higher ground, but its wielder was only a half-baked mediocrity; after holding for a few moments, it was overpowered by the man’s sword-aura. With a CRACK, the crimson sword-light was swallowed whole, and the black strike came howling on at undiminished speed, straight for Mingzhu’s face.
Unruffled, Mingzhu flung out another crimson sword-light, shattering the spent black aura mere inches from his face. Spiritual Power drifted down like scattering willow fluff.
The man raised the Long Halberd again, just beginning to condense another sword-aura, when a flash of red met his eyes. Behind him, the great skull bellowed, its bone-white frame crossing before him to meet the Kuayu Sword as it arced down—and took the killing blow in his stead.
A resonant hum rippled through the entire Abandoned Sword Tomb as discarded weapons showered from the walls.
Mingzhu’s blade rang against the obstructive skull, and he clicked his tongue in irritation. With a small crook of his little finger on the hilt, the final sword-aura answered his call, slicing through the air past his cheek and driving unerringly into the Long Halberd in the man’s hands.
A single crisp crack rang out. Mingzhu stepped back smoothly and tossed the Kuayu Sword aside, letting it hover and drift freely in the air.
The Long Halberd in the man’s grip snapped clean in half, black Spiritual Power gushing from the break—then falling still, utterly silent.
The man cried out in shock and fury, “You—!”
Mingzhu said, “It’s better off silent for good anyway. I’ll take it back for my Junior Brother to play with.”
The skull behind the man suddenly released a furious roar, its power surging as man and mist merged into one, his form blurring into a ghostlike afterimage before hurtling straight at Mingzhu.
Mingzhu, having snapped the halberd, had already written the man off as no further threat and was peaceably mulling over which other spirit-infused relics to scavenge for Lu Qingkong. He never imagined the man had a final card to play. The afterimage was too fast for his eyes to track—only a streak of black shot past, and killing intent was upon him.
The man’s face was twisted like a vengeful ghost’s. He pounced in front of Mingzhu, roaring through gritted teeth, “ANT! YOUR LIFE! NOW!”
The pressure of the strike made Mingzhu’s whole body flinch. His frame dodged the killing blow on pure reflex—and then, as if no longer his own master, his hand seized the Kuayu Sword by instinct and slashed a fierce blow at the figure in black without a moment’s thought, barely parrying the fatal strike.
His face dark as still water, the Kuayu Sword in his grip seemed to carry a vast, scorching flame—and when it met that horrifying black-misted sword-aura, it surged back with even greater force.
Several sharp metallic clangs rang out, and Mingzhu’s Kuayu Sword shot straight for the spiritual vein at the center of the man’s chest. The flame spread with a ROAR, slowly burning the Undead into a pile of ash.
Mingzhu stood frozen, sword in hand, staring at the scene before him. Cutting down his enemy with such ease should have been satisfying—but something had short-circuited in his brain, and horror and dread crept slowly up his face, the hand gripping the sword trembling faintly.
Half the man’s body had been burned black by that blazing fire. Knowing his end had come, he no longer resisted. A grotesque grin slowly spread across his twisted face as he rasped, “Red Lotus Flame… hahaha. You even use the Heart-Illuminating Mantra—the sword art Mingzhao never taught a soul—and you still claim Mingzhao is your enemy?”
Mingzhu’s whole body jolted. He staggered back two steps, wrenching the Kuayu Sword from the man’s flesh with shaking hands, staring at him coldly. “Shut up.”
The man gave a self-mocking smile. “Mingzhao used the Sword Spirit to make me die by my own blade. I’ve been trapped in this Abandoned Sword Tomb for over a decade, denied release. And now I’ve been defeated by his son. Hahaha. How utterly laughable.”
Mingzhu’s hand shook around the Kuayu Sword. He lowered the blade-tip, long lashes trembling. “Shut up. He is not my father.”
The man couldn’t be bothered to expose the lie. His sinister eyes bored into Mingzhu as he said viciously, “Boy. Do you believe in fate?”
Mingzhu looked down without answering, apparently so disgusted at himself for instinctively using the Heart-Illuminating Mantra that he could happily have chopped off his own sword arm to be rid of it.
“You don’t?” Half the man’s body had already crumbled to ash; only a single bone was holding him upright.
In life, he had been a Demonic Cultivator shunned by all the world, who had hidden and scrounged for half a lifetime only to die beneath his own blade. In death, neither alive nor dead, he had dragged his rotting flesh through year after year of miserable existence. In life and in death both, he had lived as nothing but a punchline.
Yet now, on the verge of his soul’s final dissolution, he seemed to summon every scrap of fortitude from his entire life, his withered skeleton still standing tall between heaven and earth.
Watching his collapsing bones, Mingzhu answered only after a long silence: “I don’t.”
The man’s face, too, slowly turned to ash. His lips split into a grin, his cheeks cracking and crumbling, flakes drifting down. In those scarlet pupils, something like a final ember of fire lingered as he said, word by deliberate word, “I believe. Because I have seen.”
Ever since using the Heart-Illuminating Mantra, Mingzhu had been drained in body and spirit, wanting nothing to do with conversation. Even talk of having witnessed fate couldn’t stir the slightest interest in him.
“I saw your doom, Mingzhu.” The man was nothing but a skeleton now, yet his voice seemed to drift from a soul on the verge of extinction. “I saw you die a wretched death, crawling out from beneath ten thousand withered bones. I saw the rest of your days, spurned by all the world, living on in disgrace. I saw everyone you love leave you, one by one… only you, alone, bearing a Sea of Blood and ten thousand corpses… to the very end…”
“Mingzhu… you will be… just like your father…” The skeleton rattled apart onto the ground, swept once more by the still-burning Red Lotus Flame, “…never in this life shall you obtain what you seek… those you love laid in the grave… those you hate granted long life…”
The final vicious curse was slowly devoured by a tongue of flame, and when the fire died, it was gone like cold ashes of dead wood—nowhere left to be found.
Mingzhu stared blankly at that heap of pale ash. Whether provoked by the curse or something else entirely, the hand gripping his sword shook violently—and soon, the Kuayu Sword slipped from his fingers and struck the ground with a resounding clang.
The sound seemed to snap him out of it. He gazed blankly at the fallen sword, seeming to want to bend down and pick it up—but the moment he moved, his legs buckled beneath him and he dropped to his knees.
“My… sword…” His pale lips moved faintly. Then everything went black, and his slight frame crumpled to the ground, the blood from his back swiftly staining the floor crimson.
Those you love, laid in the grave. Those you hate, granted long life?
Mingzhu thought muzzily, Well, that would be pretty miserable.
