The Life Gu was linked to the cultivator himself. With one of the two snake heads severed, Liang Qi was also grievously wounded.
“This girl absolutely cannot be allowed to live!”
This thought became even more resolute in his mind. The fury on his face gradually faded, replaced by an expression of extreme gravity. He silently formed a hand seal.
The great snake collapsed to the ground as if it had been hollowed out from within. Its smooth skin gradually shriveled into layers of wrinkles. Finally, a small, emerald green snake with brown eyes actually crawled out from the severed neck.
Its head was triangular, its tongue pitch-black. Upon closer inspection, it was a miniature version of the two-headed giant snake from before! Moreover, this snake’s body was slender and its surface exceedingly smooth.
Zhao Chun didn't even need to test it to know that its speed was bound to be astonishing!
“If you hadn’t severed my snake Gu and had fled instead, perhaps you wouldn’t have met with disaster today…”
Liang Qi’s eyes held killing intent, yet his face bore a smile, making his already gaunt features appear even more sinister. Zhao Chun stood atop a giant rock, unmoved by his taunts, her mind perfectly clear.
“Could I have escaped? Or rather, would you have let a disciple from an enemy sect escape from right under your nose?”
“Tsk, you are rather perceptive.”
Liang Qi had no desire to engage in any more verbal sparring with her. He clapped his hands together, and from between them, a blood-colored dagger appeared. With a sharp glint in his eyes, he and the emerald snake Gu instantly attacked her from two different directions!
She absolutely could not get entangled by the two of them! Zhao Chun swiftly retreated, weaving through the stone forest at high speed. However, the emerald snake Gu was simply too fast.
On several occasions, its stinking maw came close to biting her body! It took almost no thought to know that this snake Gu was venomous, and a potent poison that meant certain death upon contact at that! She had to evade the snake’s mouth while also guarding against Liang Qi’s blood blade.
It was truly taxing her to her limits! The two of them could still get faster. She could only continuously use the terrain of the stone forest to hide her body.
However, such an exhausting endeavor could not be sustained for long. The most urgent task was to find a way to switch from defense to offense. The emerald snake Gu was incomparably more agile than the previous two-headed snake Gu.
Its body coiled and undulated, then suddenly straightened and shot forward. A perfect blend of hard and soft, it allowed the snake to achieve a speed akin to flying within the stone forest! It slithered, leveraging its strength.
Unlike her, who leveraged the stone forest, the snake Gu leveraged its own body. A sudden inspiration struck Zhao Chun. Snake-Form Step, Snake-Form Step, if one does not learn from the snake, how can one perceive the intent from the form?
She immediately bent her body like a snake, her legs leveraging against each other, supplemented by True Qi. A feeling of swimming between heaven and earth arose within her. The Snake-Form Step, at this very moment, she had grasped its true meaning and achieved perfection!
Liang Qi saw that her movement technique was different from before, her speed instantly more than doubling. He was shocked that she could have a breakthrough and gain enlightenment in such a critical moment. His killing intent intensified as he drove the snake Gu to bite forward fiercely.
The snake Gu received the command and became frenzied, opening its jaws wide as it charged at Zhao Chun. However, Zhao Chun was no longer the same as before.
After grasping the true meaning of the Snake-Form Step, she immediately fused it with the essence of the Swift-Walk Sword Technique, continuously leaving the snake Gu behind her while she secretly planned a counterattack! Slaying the snake head had used up one sword strike; the Return-Kill Sword could only aid her with two more strikes.
To kill Liang Qi, she absolutely could not give him the chance to swallow his Life Gu and perform the Internal Growth Technique after she slew the emerald snake Gu! He was already a late-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator, approaching perfection. If he was enhanced by the Internal Growth Technique, he would likely be comparable to a Core Formation cultivator!
If Zhao Chun could not instantly kill both the man and the snake, she would surely die. Two sword strikes in a single breath, and neither could have the slightest flaw. Zhao Chun held her breath and focused her spirit.
She suddenly turned and leaped backward. The snake Gu was on her left, Liang Qi on her right. The former was closer, the latter slightly farther.
Her entire body’s True Qi erupted from the Spiritual Foundation in her Dantian, dyeing the Return-Kill Sword crimson-gold. The longsword slashed down, and the emerald snake Gu was instantly cut in two, falling to the ground and convulsing unceasingly! However, Zhao Chun had no time to spare a glance to see if the snake Gu was truly dead.
Before her, Liang Qi was no ordinary Yang Water Cultivator. After his Life Gu was slain, his face merely twisted for an instant before he raised his hands to form a hand seal! He was fast, but Zhao Chun had to be faster!
As she closed the distance, she was like a phantom. This sword strike contained ten-tenths of her True Qi and her perfected Sword Radiance. The Spiritual Foundation in her Dantian was instantly drained dry!
Liang Qi only felt the sharp edge approaching, the pain unbearable. He knew that if he took this blow, he would undoubtedly die. With his eyes wide open, he roared.
He would rather disregard his own life and self-destruct to make Zhao Chun die with him. Back when she fought Liu Song, she had witnessed a cultivator’s self-destruction. Under the sweep of spiritual power, even a cultivator of the same rank would find it hard to block.
If Liang Qi succeeded, she would absolutely have to pay with her life. With this thought, the edge of the Return-Kill Sword turned sharply, attacking Liang Qi’s Dantian! Liang Qi’s Spiritual Foundation had already formed a vortex, but the Return-Kill Sword was Master Duanyi's personal weapon, indestructible.
It brutally pierced through the vortex of True Qi and pulverized half of his body! For a moment, blood splattered, but Zhao Chun, standing before the gruesome scene, only felt the fortune of having escaped death with her life. Without the Return-Kill Sword's help, today's outcome would have been her death and Liang Qi's survival.
She lowered her eyes to the sword. Its body was already dim, its former divine might gone. Zhao Chun sighed lightly, put it away, and sat down on the spot to recover the True Qi in her body.
This was a time of war, and she didn't know when she might encounter an enemy. It was best to be prepared. The surrounding spiritual qi rushed into the Spiritual Foundation in Zhao Chun's Dantian like a torrential river.
She immediately opened her eyes and thought to herself, "The spiritual qi here seems a bit too abundant..." An hour later, her True Qi was restored. Zhao Chun leaped up from the ground, a sudden doubt sprouting in her mind.
Even in the Inner Sect's Suhong Hall and Upper Strict Hall, where the elders and Sect Master resided, she had never seen such abundant spiritual qi. And when she had entered this Threefold Stone Forest before, she had never experienced such an anomaly. Was it because the formation was broken?
Zhao Chun shook her head. Phenomena like the Shadow Monkeys and the bewildering maze of the stone forest all required a large amount of spiritual qi. Therefore, the formation's purpose was to gather qi.
It was impossible for the spiritual qi to become more concentrated after the formation was broken. Then it must be coming from somewhere else... Zhao Chun focused her senses and perceived something faint.
Her feet moved lightly, and when she opened her eyes, she found herself standing at the entrance of a rock cave. Sword in hand, she entered and felt the spiritual qi become even richer. She walked until she stood on a formation platform.
The formation patterns depicted wild beasts, but they were mottled with cracks. It seemed that after the formation eye was broken by the Return-Kill Sword's pull, the formation disk had shattered along with it. At the formation's eye, there was something Zhao Chun was familiar with—a White Jade Talisman.
Years ago at the Tu Family, one had been used for their formation. It was just that the Tu Family’s was far from being as translucent and lustrous as the one before her.
She moved closer for a better look and discovered that the bottom half of the White Jade Talisman, where it connected to the formation disk, was already covered in dense cracks. Zhao Chun frowned. Reaching out a hand to touch it, the White Jade Talisman instantly turned to dust.
At the same time, the formation disk completely shattered, and the platform beneath her feet began to vibrate. Zhao Chun leaped off the platform and was astonished to find that the trigram-shaped platform had opened up like a lotus flower, revealing a pitch-black and deep hidden path.
An even more vigorous wave of spiritual qi rushed to her face, accompanied by the nauseating stench of blood and a chill that seeped deep into her bones.
(End of Chapter)