Chapter 299 - Reflected Blades and a Hidden Hand

Chapter 299: Chapter 299 - Reflected Blades and a Hidden Hand

"We use the second method."

Those words immediately changed the atmosphere around the suppression field.

Li Xuanzong’s gaze sharpened, while the other righteous experts stopped treating the eight wounded cultivators as opponents who were merely waiting to be finished off. ℯℯ𝘭.

The Formation-Eating Nail had already proven that these people had come prepared with methods none of them recognized. If there was a second contingency, nobody intended to give them enough time to activate it freely.

One of the demonic cultivators reached inside his robes.

Jian Wushuang moved first.

The moment he saw the man’s hand disappear beneath his robe, sword intent gathered around him.

A narrow sword light tore across the distance.

The expert from the Myriad Swords Sect reacted almost simultaneously. His sword left its sheath as he stepped forward, while the cultivator from Scorching Sun Valley released a concentrated stream of blazing Yang fire from the opposite side.

Three attacks converged on the trapped demonic cultivator.

The Zhuge Clan expert’s expression suddenly changed.

"Don’t. Stay back!"

His warning came too late.

Jian Wushuang’s sword light had already entered the suppression field.

The Myriad Swords Sect expert’s blade followed immediately behind it, while the golden-red flames from Scorching Sun Valley closed the last remaining direction.

The demonic cultivator should have been cornered.

Instead of fear, however, a strange smile appeared on his face.

Something emerged from his robe.

A cracked bronze mirror.

The cracks across its surface looked old enough that the artifact seemed ready to collapse in his hand. The demonic cultivator suddenly coughed out a mouthful of blood essence and sprayed it across the mirror.

The blood vanished into the cracks almost instantly.

Murky light spread through the bronze surface as the three attacks approached.

Jian Wushuang noticed the change first.

"Move!"

The mirror brightened.

The incoming sword light vanished into its surface.

A heartbeat later, the Myriad Swords Sect expert’s attack disappeared as well. Even the concentrated Yang fire was swallowed until nothing remained in front of the demonic cultivator except the cracked bronze mirror.

For an instant, the battlefield became strangely quiet.

The mirror shook. Its cracks widened, and a terrifying pressure erupted from within.

Jian Wushuang’s expression changed.

The three attacks burst from the mirror at once.

They were no longer moving with the strength they possessed when they entered.

The sword light had become sharper and faster, the Myriad Swords Sect expert’s attack carried noticeably greater momentum, and the scorching Yang fire roared outward with almost twice its original violence.

Their own techniques were coming back at them.

Before the three could retreat, another demonic cultivator moved.

Three talismans appeared between his fingers.

He threw them without hesitation.

One flew toward Jian Wushuang, another toward the Myriad Swords Sect expert, while the final talisman intercepted the cultivator from Scorching Sun Valley.

All three reacted on instinct.

Jian Wushuang cut his apart with sword aura.

The Myriad Swords Sect expert struck his with the edge of his sword.

Scorching Sun Valley burned the final talisman before it could reach him.

The talismans shattered.

Only afterward did they realize that destroying them had been the mistake.

Invisible ripples expanded from the broken paper.

The space surrounding the three cultivators hardened.

Jian Wushuang tried to move and immediately felt the surrounding space press against him from every direction.

The other two experienced the same thing.

Their bodies had not been sealed completely, but for the briefest moment, the space around them had been locked tightly enough to prevent an immediate retreat.

The reflected attacks were already upon them.

Jian Wushuang’s eyes narrowed.

The demonic cultivators had not panicked when they mentioned their second method.

They had been baiting them.

The conversation, the deliberate movement toward the storage artifact, even the slight hesitation before revealing the bronze mirror had all existed to provoke a concentrated attack.

Everything happened within only a few breaths.

It was then that Li Xuanzong disappeared.

The space beside Jian Wushuang compressed, and Li Xuanzong appeared directly in front of him.

His palm struck forward.

The reflected sword light collided with a warped layer of space and exploded violently enough to tear apart the clouds above them.

Li Xuanzong’s sleeve snapped beneath the impact, but he did not move from his position.

On the other side, the Zhuge Clan expert had already reached the Myriad Swords Sect cultivator.

He had been able to recognize the trap soon enough to avoid attacking.

Both of his hands moved, and the direction of the returning sword technique shifted just enough that the Myriad Swords Sect expert could force his body out of its path once the spatial lock weakened.

The woman from the Glass-Lotus Holy See appeared beside the Scorching Sun Valley cultivator.

Lotus radiance unfolded around them.

The reflected Yang flame crashed into layers of pale light.

Several lotus petals burned away almost instantly, but each layer consumed part of the attack’s momentum until the remaining fire finally scattered around them rather than striking the trapped cultivator directly.

The three spatial locks collapsed soon afterward.

Jian Wushuang retreated immediately.

The others followed.

Nobody attempted another reckless advance.

The bronze mirror in the demonic cultivator’s hand dimmed after releasing the absorbed attacks. Several of its existing cracks had grown deeper, suggesting that the artifact could not perform such a feat without paying a price.

That did little to improve anyone’s mood.

Li Xuanzong returned outside of the suppression region.

His normally calm expression had become noticeably colder.

Jian Wushuang landed beside him.

"Sect Master, that was my mistake."

Li Xuanzong shook his head.

"You weren’t the only one who moved."

His gaze remained on the eight demonic cultivators.

Even he had not expected the trap to unfold in that particular way.

Everyone knew demonic cultivators were dangerous precisely because they had fewer restrictions on the methods they were willing to use. Poison, blood sacrifice, curses, hostages, self-destruction, and artifacts that righteous factions would hesitate even to research were all possibilities.

Knowing that in theory was different from predicting every tool they might bring to a battlefield.

The Zhuge Clan expert looked toward the shattered remains of the spatial-lock talismans.

"That mirror was only the first layer of the trap."

Li Xuanzong nodded.

"The talismans were meant to punish anyone who reacted to it."

Jian Wushuang looked back at the bronze mirror.

"If we had attacked with more power..."

"The mirror would have returned more power," the Zhuge expert finished.

Nobody found that possibility pleasant.

Inside the suppression field, one of the demonic cultivators clicked his tongue.

"So close."

Another laughed despite the blood covering his robes.

"These old fools really thought we would come to a righteous sect’s territory without preparing anything?"

A third wiped blood from his mouth.

"Suppress our cultivation if you like. Killing us is another matter."

No one on the righteous side answered.

Their attention had already shifted from the insults to the objects in the demons’ hands.

Li Xuanzong thought of the communication relay stations.

Artifacts capable of intercepting communication talismans had appeared among demonic groups scattered across enormous distances. Their designs had varied, yet the principles behind them had been disturbingly similar.

Now they had encountered a Formation-Eating Nail that ordinary attacks could not touch, a cracked mirror capable of absorbing and strengthening techniques before returning them, and talismans designed to turn the destruction of the talisman itself into a spatial restraint.

None of those things were crude.

Li Xuanzong had lived long enough to know how difficult it was to produce even one unusual artifact reliably.

The Divine Artificer Citadel possessed some of the greatest artificers in the cultivation world, yet even they would require considerable study before reproducing unfamiliar principles like these.

He found it difficult to believe that several unrelated demonic factions had suddenly advanced beyond them in secret.

His gaze hardened.

Someone could be supplying them.

The earlier words returned to him.

’It is still too early to show others what we were given.’

The phrasing was suspicious.

Still, Li Xuanzong refused to accept it as proof.

These cultivators had just demonstrated how willingly they manipulated reactions.

Even their conversation could have been staged to plant exactly that suspicion.

He would investigate the possibility after they survived the current battle.

The eight demonic cultivators had clearly reached the same conclusion about prolonging the conversation.

Their amusement faded.

All eight reached for something at nearly the same time.

This time, nobody attacked immediately.

Li Xuanzong’s eyes narrowed.

The next objects they revealed were identical.

Small bells rested in their palms.

And the moment their blood touched their surfaces, all eight bells began to ring.