"Zheng Centipede! You dare ambush Mu family cultivators right in front of Feiyue Lake!"
Looking at the dark-skinned burly man of the ninth Qi Refining layer, the Mu family head's voice was ice-cold, his fury barely contained.
The whole way he had kept his guard up. He had not expected to be jumped right at his own doorstep.
"Kill! Make it quick!"
Zheng Centipede bared his teeth in a grin and worked his hand seals. The flame saber beneath his feet swelled to the size of a door plank, and deep in the dancing fire along its blade glimmered a thread of eerie black light.
Blade light and flame tore through the air, chopping straight at the Mu family head.
At the same time, the six cultivators behind Zheng Centipede struck out one after another, the weakest of them at mid Qi Refining.
One of them, a beautiful woman of the seventh Qi Refining layer, cast a vine art; green tendrils burrowed up out of the earth and lashed toward the Mu family head.
"You dare throw your weight around at the Mu family's own gate? Today every last one of you stays here!"
The Mu family head's face was grim. He brought out a green banner, planted it in the ground, and a green whirlwind the size of an outhouse rose up on the spot.
Then he crushed a talisman, and a golden shield of light wrapped around him.
Pfft! Pfft!
But one against two, the Mu family head was quickly forced onto the back foot; the green banner before him dimmed, and the golden shield was cleaved apart by a blade of flame.
The four Mu family cultivators met the five Zheng cultivators of mid Qi Refining.
Outnumbered here as well, and the situation did not look good.
The heart-stopping battle left the surviving youths frozen, at a loss what to do.
Many of them were pale as paper, knees knocking together.
New to the cultivation world, when had they ever seen a scene like this?
"The cultivation world's too dangerous! I want to go home and farm..." Li Ergou's face crumpled, his voice trembling.
"All of you, get to the family estate!"
A Mu family youth of the fifth Qi Refining layer transmitted his voice to the boys.
Lu Changan remembered this one.
His name was Mu Yunfei; he was the one who had handed out spirit stones to the ten youths earlier.
"Right, run!"
"If we stay here we're just dead weight."
The youths reacted fast and ran toward Feiyue Lake.
"I'm afraid it won't be that simple."
Lu Changan's brows drew together slightly; he did not rush to flee.
The Zheng cultivators clearly had the advantage in numbers, yet they only tied down the Mu family head and the rest, paying no attention to the youths at all.
That struck Lu Changan as wrong.
Sure enough, the youths had gotten only a few dozen meters—
Chhh!
A wind blade several chi long swept past the youth running in the lead.
He did not even have time to scream.
The youth's head parted from his body, blood spraying.
Sss!
The fleeing youths jerked to a halt, every hair on their bodies standing on end.
"There's an ambush too!"
The Mu family head and his four cultivators went grim.
Three cultivators drifted down from a big tree beside the road.
Two men and a woman.
Their leader was an ugly woman of the fourth Qi Refining layer, who instructed the two young cultivators behind her:
"This is your first real fight in the cultivation world! Follow me and kill the eight immortal seedlings that are left—don't get careless..."
"Don't you worry, Sister Feng!"
"With magic treasures in our hands, killing these fresh immortal seedlings will be like killing chickens!"
The two youngsters were around twenty, third Qi Refining layer; the excitement on their faces outweighed the nerves.
Lu Changan's senses were sharp, and he caught their conversation.
Plainly, the ugly woman meant to use the immortal seedlings as whetstones for the clan's young.
As things stood, these seedlings were weak, had no magic treasures, and were unskilled in spells; against the ugly woman and her two, they truly had no power to resist at all.
The two third-layer youngsters alone, magic treasures in hand, could have slaughtered them.
"We're short on time—kill them quick!"
The ugly woman struck first, disdaining even to bring out a magic treasure; with a casual wind blade she cut another seedling girl in half at the waist.
Only seven seedlings remained.
Of those, only three or four knew even one or two spells.
"Zheng Yan, let's see who kills more!"
The two youngsters laughed wildly, like tigers into a flock of sheep, and drove their magic treasures in to kill.
"Hmph!"
Lu Changan knew he could not sit and wait for death. He rubbed a pebble-sized fire bullet from his fingertips and launched it at one of the young cultivators without warning.
The Fire Bullet Art, one of the weaker fire-element spells.
It was the only offensive spell Lu Changan had known before his awakening, picked up from a rogue Daoist.
In Lu Changan's hands, that fire bullet's power and speed were more than half again what they had been.
"So fast!"
The young cultivator was startled and hastily pulled his iron-sword magic treasure back to block.
Whump!
The flames burst apart; most of the force was stopped by the magic treasure, but a few stray tongues of fire left the young cultivator scorched and flustered.
"You little bastard!"
The young cultivator was furious. A single fire bullet was no great threat, but it had cost him badly in face.
After all, his opponent was nothing but a first-layer Qi Refining seedling.
He commanded his iron-sword magic treasure and made ready to unleash a blow in his rage.
"Yan'er, watch out!"
A shrill gust of force stabbed in, and the ugly woman in the distance cried out a warning.
But it was too late.
Lu Changan's body trailed an afterimage; in the blink of an eye he was in close.
One flick of a finger—a three-chi lance of qi.
The young cultivator named Zheng Yan stiffened, staring blankly at the bloody hole in his chest.
A three-chi qi lance had pierced his heart clean through.
This was the top-grade martial art Lu Changan had mastered: the Heavenly Finger Flick.
The fire bullet had been only a decoy.
"A martial Innate is not to be taken lightly."
Having killed Zheng Yan, Lu Changan was matter-of-fact about it.
He picked up the flying-sword magic treasure the other had dropped.
Amid the ugly woman's furious roars, he withdrew at speed.
"Zheng Yan..."
The other young Zheng cultivator cried out in horror, dazed for a moment, his ferocious assault slowing.
The seedlings had won themselves breathing room.
To hell with it—fight!
Encouraged by Lu Changan, the few youths who knew spells joined forces and counterattacked the other third-layer young cultivator.
"Yan'er—!"
The ugly woman of the fourth layer roared, bloodshot eyes bulging, and gave chase to Lu Changan with murderous intent.
Chhh, chhh, chhh!
Three wind blades came chopping in succession.
Spells that could kill other seedlings in an instant had no effect on Lu Changan.
His powerful divine sense gave him keen enough reactions.
With the footwork and speed of a martial grandmaster, he was not at much of a disadvantage even against a fourth Qi Refining layer.
"An Innate martial artist?"
The ugly woman ground her teeth, quickly calmed herself, and brought out a little gold-bronze bell.
Lu Changan's expression changed; without a second thought he turned his hand and fired three fire bullets.
The ugly woman smirked, neither dodging nor blocking; she poured her mana in with all her strength, and the little bell hummed and formed a bronze-colored shield of light, like an inverted bronze bowl.
Whump! Whump! Whump!
The three fire bullets struck the bronze shield and burst violently.
The little bell's luster dimmed by thirty percent.
That fire bullet's power...?
The ugly woman was shaken—the three fire bullets Lu Changan had just fired were stronger still than before, close to what a third Qi Refining cultivator could produce.
After several fire bullets in a row, most of Lu Changan's mana was spent, and his Evergreen mana was already restoring it in an unbroken flow.
"Die!" The ugly woman's eyes went cold.
The little gold-bronze bell rang out with a deafening dang, and not far away the weaker youths bled from nose and mouth.
A ring of pale-gold ripples swept toward Lu Changan at terrifying speed.
A sonic attack, one that shakes the mind and soul?
Lu Changan's mind rocked, then recovered in an instant.
The Heavenly Baleful Demonic Sound!
He circulated his Innate true qi and sucked in a fierce breath; his belly and both cheeks swelled up like balloons.
Another peerless martial art.
Roar!
Sand and gravel flew; a baleful sonic wave shaped like a tiger's roar crashed into the oncoming pale-gold ripples.
Even weakened by thirty percent, the little gold-bronze bell still crushed and swallowed the Heavenly Baleful Demonic Sound.
In the end only ten or twenty percent of the pale-gold ripples remained, and Lu Changan, shielding himself with Innate true qi, took them head-on with his formidable physique.
His body was knocked back, qi and blood churning.
The little that had seeped into his organs, the strange power of that sound, was at last dissolved by his ancient-wood Evergreen mana.
This little thief—how is that possible?!
The ugly woman was dumbstruck, hardly able to believe it.
Her little bell magic treasure excelled at sonic attacks and carried a hint of soul-shaking power, and that brat had actually neutralized it calmly with a spell and a martial sonic art.
Having dissolved that lethal blow, Lu Changan swiftly opened up the distance and made ready to activate the Blood Burning Art.
That art could force his cultivation up to the peak of the third Qi Refining layer, at no small cost.
Fortunately, the opponent's magic-treasure killer move had fairly obvious casting motions and could not be used at high frequency.
The ugly woman's killing intent had not lessened; she still wanted to hunt him down.
"Retreat!"
Just then, Zheng Centipede's alarmed shout came from the distance, threaded with urgency.
Lu Changan glanced over and saw that beside the Mu family head there was now a one-horned beast, like a horse and like an ox, casting lightning.
The one-horned beast's strength rivaled the eighth Qi Refining layer, and it had forced back the beautiful woman of the seventh layer.
Then the beast's cold gaze swept to the ugly woman, and it came darting this way.
"Quick, go!"
The ugly woman's fat face quivered, and she called for the third-layer juniors still locked in battle to leave.
The Zheng cultivators retreated in haste.
Lu Changan understood that even counting the one-horned beast, the Zheng cultivators still had the strength to keep fighting.
But near the Mu family's home ground they did not dare get bogged down; quick strike, quick finish had been their strategy from the start.
A peal of thunder!
A bolt of lightning fell and killed the slowest of the Zheng third-layer youngsters.
The Zheng family withdrew at the price of two third-layer cultivators.
The Mu family, meanwhile, had lost four immortal seedlings in the melee.
Who had come out ahead and who behind was plain at a glance.
Lu Changan recovered his mana and examined the flying-sword magic treasure in his hand.
"Bah! So damn poor..."
He had assumed it was a low-grade magic treasure; on inspection it turned out to be shoddily made, with several chips and flaws on its surface.
Lu Changan thought it over.
He walked to the corpse of the cultivator he had killed, the one named Zheng Yan.
And carefully searched the body for any other spoils.