Chapter 66: The Real Battle Begins

The wind shrieked through the mouth of the canyon as I plummeted from the thousand-foot precipice.

Below me, an apocalyptic sea of six hundred and fifty imperial soldiers roared like a wounded dragon. Boulders the size of houses smashed into their center, and poisoned trenches swallowed their cavalry, but the screaming conscripts and dying foot soldiers were of no concern to my eyes.

My gaze, cold and focused with the razor edge of my Asura Dao Heart, locked entirely onto the three figures riding armored Tier 1 Scaled Horn-Beasts in the center of the formation.

Two men and one woman.

The air around them rippled with the visible, turbulent glow of ambient qi. All three radiated spiritual pressure far surpassing mine, they were seasoned cultivators at the Middle Stages of the Qi Condensation Realm, hovering around the Fourth and Fifth Layers. I, by contrast, had crossed into the Second Layer only hours ago atop the moonlit crag.

Yet, as my perception swept across them in mid-air, a cold, mocking clarity settled into my soul.

There was an insurmountable, fundamental chasm between their cultivation and mine.

Their dantians were saturated with impurities, their energetic auras jagged and turbulent like muddy floodwater. It was the unmistakable mark of martial scavengers, mediocre talents whose families and court patrons had forcibly stuffed them with third-rate elixirs, cheap marrow pills, and flawed, truncated manuals simply to forge expendable guard dogs for the mortal court.

They were already middle-aged, their meridians brittle and ossified. Reaching the Fourth or Fifth Layer of Qi Condensation was the absolute ceiling of their lives, without a celestial miracle, they would rot in this realm until their graves.

I, however, stood on the boundless ocean of the Cloud Flowing Origin Scripture.

My Five Elemental Roots were boundless, my marrow was cleansed by legendary elixirs, and my sea of consciousness was anchored by Asura Dao Heart. More than that, the sword humming in my grip was the Autumn Water Frost Sword, a peerless spirit blade bestowed by my Master’s own hands.

BOOM!

I channeled my liquid qi into the soles of my boots, hitting the rocky gravel with a concussive shockwave that blasted five mortal spearmen twenty paces away.

The sudden arrival of a veiled swordswoman dropping from the clouds instantly halted the vanguard.

The lead male commander, a scarred brute with a twin-headed battleaxe, reeled his horned mount back, his small eyes widening before bursting into a harsh, contemptuous bark of laughter.

"Oho! So the rumors weren’t lies!" the axe-wielder bellowed, pointing his weapon toward me. "A fledgling cultivator hiding among the dirt-eating rebels! No wonder my two hundred vanguard boys were butchered in the dark! But you little rat, you barely condensed your first drop of spiritual liquid! A mere Second Layer whelp dares stand before the Governor’s personal retainers?!"

The woman beside him, clad in tight crimson armor, brandishing a pair of serrated crescent moon-hooks, spurred her scaled beast forward, sneering with open disdain.

"Brother Hu, why waste your breath on a dead girl?" she scoffed, her voice shrill with venomous arrogance. "A little stray bird who found a low-grade spirit manual thinks she can soar above the heavens. You two hold the line and butcher the rebel dogs climbing the cliffs. I will peel the skin from her pretty face myself!"

The two male commanders chuckled in agreement, casually reining their beasts aside.

In their eyes, sending a Fourth Layer cultivator to crush a Second Layer girl was already an act of excessive cruelty.

I didn’t utter a single syllable in response.

To trade words with beasts in human skin, creatures who rounded up shivering children and dragged them in iron chains to slave pits, was a disgrace to my tongue.

The surrounding imperial soldiers scrambled backward in terror, dropping their spears to clear a wide circle, well aware that the energetic shockwaves of a battle between true cultivators would turn mortal flesh into bloody paste.

The woman didn’t hesitate.

"Die, little wench!"

WHOOSH!

She launched herself from her saddle, her crimson armor leaving an oily red trail of spiritual qi as she crossed thirty paces in a single breath. Her twin moon-hooks whistled through the dust, coated in jagged, corrosive fire-attribute qi, aimed ruthlessly at my neck and waist.

I raised the Autumn Water Frost Sword.

CLANG!

A blinding explosion of sparks lit the smoky gorge.

The concussive shockwave gouged a three-foot crater into the limestone beneath our boots. The woman’s eyes flashed with shock as her downward strike was halted dead in mid-air by a single-handed parry.

For the first few exchanges, the battle appeared locked in a dead heat.

Clang! Clang! Shing!

Sparks danced like crazed fireflies as her moon-hooks struck with frenzied fury. In truth, during those opening thirty seconds, I was deliberately holding my ground. It was my very first time circulating genuine spiritual qi through my meridians in a life-and-death clash, and my body was still adapting to the breathtaking sensation of liquid elemental energy augmenting my physical muscle.

Her fiery qi was hot and suffocating, but the moment I found my rhythm, the battle tilted irrevocably.

I have it.

The foundational battle techniques Master had drilled into my flesh every single morning, forms that had felt heavy and restrictive when I was merely a mortal in the Body Strengthening Realm, unlocked their true, terrifying elegance the moment spiritual qi flooded the pathways.

They weren’t grand, earth-shattering divine arts, but they were pristine, orthodox cultivation arts designed to channel force with zero wasted motion.

"Is that all your Fourth Layer amounts to?" I murmured, my voice colder than glacial ice.

I shifted my stance by half an inch.

Form Four: Torrential Frost Deflection.

Instead of meeting her crescent hook head-on, my sword rotated like a falling snowflake. The icy spiritual qi coating the blade latched onto her fiery aura, freezing its heat, redirecting her momentum sideways into the gravel.

The woman’s balance shattered, her chest lunging forward into open air.

Panic flared in her pupils. Desperate, she channeled all the spiritual energy in her lower dantian into a forbidden martial technique, screaming as her left hook erupted with a ball of wild, unstable crimson flames aimed point-blank at my throat.

A desperate, flawed beast.

My footwork glided like mountain mist. Bypassing her flames by a hair’s breadth, the Autumn Water Frost Sword hummed with celestial resonance.

Frost Piercing the Void.

A razor-thin beam of pure, crystalline blue sword-qi erupted from the tip of my blade.

SQUELCH.

The strike moved faster than mortal sight. The frost beam severed her weapon wrist like brittle wood, bypassed her iron breastplate, and drove straight through her throat, erupting from the back of her neck in a spray of instantly frozen crimson crystals.

The woman’s eyes bulged in paralyzed, suffocating terror. She let out a wet, strangled gasp, her twin hooks dropping into the dirt before her lifeless, frost-bitten body collapsed heavily onto the shale.

A Fourth Layer Qi Condensation imperial commander, slaughtered like a dog in less than three minutes.

The entire battlefield seemed to freeze in time.

The clash of steel along the barricades choked to a halt, and the two remaining male commanders stood completely petrified atop their scaled mounts, their jaws slightly slack as they stared at the headless corpse of their companion.

"Sister Lan?!"

The scarred brute with the twin-headed battleaxe let out an enraged, disbelieving howl, his face turning purple with fury. "You vile little monster! You butchered her?!"

Beside him, the third commander, a slender, pale man wielding an iron-spined whip wrapped in lightning, dismounted with murder burning in his eyes.

"Don’t hold back, Brother Hu!" the whip-wielder snarled, his spiritual pressure erupting to the Fifth Layer of Qi Condensation. "She holds a high-grade spirit sword and an orthodox sect scripture! Flank her together! Rip her limbs off!"

"Die!"

Both men charged simultaneously, unleashing their full, terrifying might.

Instantly, the pressure on my shoulders multiplied tenfold.

BOOM!

The brute’s battleaxe cleaved downward like a falling meteor, wrapping itself in dense earth-attribute qi that threatened to flatten my bones, while the slender commander cracked his iron whip from my left, dozens of electric arcs weaving a cage of lightning around my retreat paths.

I was forced onto the back foot.

The raw difference between the Second Layer and two middle-stage cultivators attacking in unison was a brutal reality. Every time my blade parried the heavy axe, the concussive force rattled through my forearm, sending sharp pangs of numbness into my shoulder.

The lightning whip lashed at my flanks, grazing my dark traveling tunic and scorching my ribs with arcs of blue fire.

Yet, beneath my dark veil, there was not a single shred of fear.

My Indomitable Asura Dao Heart beat with ferocious, terrifying calm.

Focus. Adapt.

Remembering Master’s words atop the ridge, I didn’t try to overpower their dual assault. I used their numbers against them.

Whenever the heavy battleaxe descended, I leaped backward, utilizing the explosive footwork of our peak to position myself directly within the ranks of the advancing imperial infantry.

CRASH!

The brute’s furious, missed strike exploded into a squad of his own armored spearmen, vaporizing four soldiers into bloody mist.

When the lightning whip swept across the dark, I spun around an iron wagon axle, deflecting the electric lash straight into the chest of an imperial shield-bearer, electrocuting the man into smoking charcoal on the spot.

"Stop dodging, you cowardly wench!" the axe-wielder roared in sheer, veins-bulging frustration.

The imperial commanders were practically spitting blood in rage. Behind them, Bai Ling’s gravitational rock-drops were crushing dozens of their men every minute, poisoned trenches had broken their cavalry vanguard, and now this veiled girl was turning their own attacks into a slaughterhouse for their own troops.

They couldn’t break through to the barricade, nor could they pin down my shadow.

Parrying another whip strike with an icy burst of qi, my eyes narrowed, dissecting their every breath, their every stance, and their every muscle twitch.

I was battered, my breathing was heavy, and the numerical disadvantage was squeezing the air from my lungs.

Yet, glancing up toward the highest cliff spire, where Master stood beneath the golden morning sky, his pristine white sleeves rustling in the wind as he watched over me, an unshakeable, intoxicating confidence flooded my soul.

He had forged my marrow. He had gifted me this blade. He had granted me the wisdom to see through the world’s deceit.

I will not fail you, Master.

My grip tightened around the hilt of the frost sword, and deep within my dantian, the five elemental currents began to roar like an awakened dragon.