The Cursive Sword Formula, first stance—Spring Shoot Breaks the Soil.
A point of cold light bloomed at the tip of Jiang Qingyi's sword, like a tender shoot in early spring pushing up through frozen earth.
The long sword in the girl's hand held boundless vitality and a keen, piercing force.
"Break!"
At the girl's soft cry,
Jiang Qingyi gathered her sword qi to a single point. It was so fast that phantom images of tender green grass swirled about the blade's tip.
The formation the Blood Butterfly Pavilion disciple had laid before her was torn open outright.
A streak of cold light flashed before his eyes.
By the time he registered it, all he felt was the world spinning—and his own head dropping straight to the ground.
"Phew..."
Jiang Qingyi drew a deep breath and wiped the hot sweat from her forehead.
In the past ten days alone, this was already the third Blood Butterfly Pavilion cultivator Jiang Qingyi had run into.
And each encounter came sooner than the last.
Which made it plain enough that the Blood Butterfly Pavilion had a rough fix on her position.
They were drawing the net in now, shrinking the circle.
Jiang Qingyi sheathed her long sword and hurried into a nearby cave.
Inside, Xiao Mo slowly opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was his disciple running toward him.
"Master, are you all right?"
Jiang Qingyi asked anxiously.
"Nothing serious." Xiao Mo shook his head. "Sorry. This body of mine seems to be less and less use to you."
When the Blood Butterfly Pavilion's killer had struck, Xiao Mo had been regulating his spirit meridians at a critical juncture and could not raise a hand, so Jiang Qingyi had had no choice but to lure the man off and fight him alone.
"Master, don't say things like that." Jiang Qingyi shook her head. "If you hadn't blocked that Nascent Soul realm assassin three days ago, your disciple would already be dead."
Xiao Mo smiled. "A master protecting his disciple—isn't that the natural order of things?"
Jiang Qingyi's eyes curved into crescents. "Then isn't a disciple protecting her master in a crisis just as natural?"
"You..." Xiao Mo let out a soft sigh. "As long as you don't come to resent me for being a burden, that's all I ask."
Jiang Qingyi's brows drew together and she puffed out her little mouth. "Master, if you say one more thing like that, your disciple really will get angry!"
"Fine, fine, this master will stop." Xiao Mo got to his feet. "Let's keep moving. More Blood Butterfly Pavilion people will be on us soon."
"Yes, Master."
Jiang Qingyi helped her master up and together they walked out of the cave.
Outside stood a wild lushu horse, its veins carrying lushu blood.
Jiang Qingyi had come across the animal ten days earlier, beaten it into submission, and tamed it—just in time to serve as her master's mount.
In truth, a lushu horse could not fly as fast as a Golden Core realm cultivator.
And rough terrain slowed the beast still further.
But there was no helping it.
Her master's injuries were worsening by the day, and he could no longer fly for long stretches.
"Hya!"
After helping her master onto the lushu horse, Jiang Qingyi swung herself up behind him.
Jiang Qingyi held the reins, her arms around her frail master.
At first, sharing a horse with him had made her happy and a little embarrassed at once, and her thoughts had wandered all over the place.
But after a while—especially once the assassins came thick and fast and the danger to the two of them grew—she had no room left for such thoughts.
All she wanted was to carry her master clear of the hunters.
As things stood, the Ten Thousand Laws World was plainly no longer safe.
So Jiang Qingyi meant to flee with her master to the Myriad Demon Kingdom!
Once they reached the Myriad Demon Kingdom, not even the Blood Butterfly Pavilion could follow them.
And once her cultivation rose a little higher, she would come back and wipe the Blood Butterfly Pavilion out, root and branch, every last one of them!
As for whether they could actually reach the Myriad Demon Kingdom, Jiang Qingyi was full of confidence.
Xiao Mo did not share it.
The Blood Butterfly Pavilion isn't stupid—they surely know I'm bound for the Myriad Demon Kingdom.
And after those several hard fights—above all the kill-or-be-killed clash with a Nascent Soul realm cultivator—his body was worse than ever.
Every strike he made, every wound he took, was another hammer blow on a body already in ruins.
Forget thirty years. At this rate, Xiao Mo did not think he would last one more.
How many more times can I even raise my sword? Xiao Mo thought. Looks like that plan has to move up.
Another two months passed...
The assassins coming for Xiao Mo and Jiang Qingyi grew more and more numerous.
The Blood Butterfly Pavilion had their movements completely tracked now.
It was not only Xiao Mo whose body was failing; Jiang Qingyi had taken grave wounds of her own.
The two of them were at most thirty days' travel from the border between the Ten Thousand Laws World and the Myriad Demon Kingdom.
Hope shone in Jiang Qingyi's eyes.
But Xiao Mo knew his own body far too well.
He was alive only because one last thing remained undone—and he was hanging on by a single breath until it was.
Now that the Myriad Demon Kingdom was so close, it was about time he ended this life of his.
At the foot of Blackwind Mountain.
Jiang Qingyi raced along the shortcut to the Myriad Demon Kingdom's border, her master behind her.
Jiang Qingyi's and Xiao Mo's minds suddenly went taut—and they sprang into the air as one.
The next instant, a long spear plunged down like a falling star.
The lushu horse was pinned to the ground, dead in an instant.
A Nascent Soul realm man in a tiger mask stood with his hands clasped behind his back atop the spear's shaft, the breeze stirring his robes—robes embroidered with a blood-red butterfly.
Right behind him burst seven Blood Butterfly Pavilion cultivators: three at the Dragon Gate realm and four at the Golden Core realm.
"Eldest Young Master, it's been a while."
A man in a blue-green robe stepped out, a folding fan in his hand; he looked like a scholar, very refined and elegant.
But to Xiao Mo's eyes he was a dog strutting about in a man's clothes—a beast dressed up as a gentleman.
The man in blue-green was named Sun Jin, one of Prince Xiao of Liang's advisers. Vicious in his scheming and craven to the bone, he had not a scrap of a scholar's integrity.
Xiao Mo could not stand him.
"Did you come all this way to get yourself killed?" Xiao Mo asked.
"Heh heh heh..." Sun Jin chuckled. "Not at all. I came to carry the young master's head back—and hers with it."
With that, Sun Jin glanced at Jiang Qingyi. "I never thought that little girl from back then would grow into such a beauty—and reach such a realm besides. Truly rare. And all of it is to the young master's credit."
"Cough—cough—enough of your drivel. If you mean to kill, come and do it." Xiao Mo coughed a few times, and the long sword in his hand hummed and trembled.
"Kill them!"
The masked man waved his hand.
In an instant the Blood Butterfly Pavilion assassins vanished from where they stood.
When they reappeared, cold light was already flashing before Jiang Qingyi's face.
Xiao Mo took a step forward, meaning to go to his disciple's aid.
But the masked man leveled his spear and thrust straight at Xiao Mo.
Xiao Mo's Cursive Sword Formula split into nine strands of sword qi—nine formless long swords stabbing for the man's vital points.
But every time, the masked man scattered them.
Xiao Mo shot up into the air; the masked man followed close behind.
Cursive Sword Formula—Rain Beats the Banana Leaves.
Sword qi gathered ceaselessly around Xiao Mo; the white clouds overhead were churned to pieces and became long sword after long sword.
"Fall!"
A hundred-odd swords of white cloud plunged at the masked man.
Xiao Mo closed in himself, sword in hand, his strikes fast and dense as a sudden rain hammering banana leaves, ringing out in a ceaseless, crisp clatter.
"Fine swordsmanship—keen sword qi, deep sword intent. You might have stepped into the Immortal realm. What a pity. How did your foundation come to be damaged to such a state?" The masked man sighed in regret.
The next instant, the silver spear drove straight at Xiao Mo's heart.
Xiao Mo focused his mind and set his sword crosswise to block.
The tremendous force slammed into the flat of the blade and drove it back against his chest.
"Boom!"
Like a cannonball, Xiao Mo was blasted into a mountain peak.
The peak shattered to pieces, boulders tumbling down one after another.
"Master!"
Beset on all sides, Jiang Qingyi was frantic to go to her master's aid, but the other Blood Butterfly Pavilion disciples barred her way.
"Out of my way!"
Jiang Qingyi gripped her long sword, eyes blazing with fury.
"Out of your way?" Sun Jin smiled. "Miss Jiang, today you die here. And truly, that's for the best—dying without knowing anything is the Prince's last mercy to you and the young master."
"What kind of bullshit is that!"
She took one step forward, and the nature of the Xuanshuang sword melded with the girl's sword qi.
Within a li of her, everything froze over in frost.
The girl thrust out a single stroke, and the frost-cold sword intent, sharpened by the Cursive Sword Formula, ran clean through the heart of a Dragon Gate realm Blood Butterfly Pavilion disciple!
On the other side of the battlefield, the masked man knew Xiao Mo was not dead.
Holding his spear, he plunged down in a thrust.
Xiao Mo climbed to his feet and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth.
His sword moved like wind sweeping a grassland—unbroken, seemingly gentle yet full of resilient force. He shed the incoming power, dissolved it, turned it back on the attacker, until the light of his blade became a swaying phantom of rippling grass.
Struck flying by a single stroke, the masked man jammed his spear into the ground.
The spear carved a hundred-meter furrow through the dirt, and only when his back slammed into a tree did he stop.
The mask on his face had shattered.
The masked man simply flung it aside and spat out a mouthful of blood.
He had not expected that a cultivator guttering like a candle in the wind could still hold such strength. This one was truly no simple opponent.
But today, he had to die here.
An instant later, the masked man's spiritual power surged, and the spear in his hand bloomed with cold light.
This was his final move.
He thrust, and the spear's aura turned into a long dragon.
"Roooar!"
With a roar, the long dragon lunged at Xiao Mo.
Xiao Mo watched the spear calmly, drew a deep breath, and used his sword bone to drive his spirit meridians.
His sword qi climbed higher and higher; every shallow breath the masked man drew felt like countless slender swords pricking at his lungs.
He swept out one sword stroke, and the sword qi became a sword stele planted before him.
"Thud!"
The spear lodged in the stele and could not advance a single cun.
The next instant, the masked man felt a figure drift past in front of him.
When he looked down, a great hole had already been punched through his heart.
Xiao Mo stood behind him, flicked his wrist, and spattered the blood from his blade across the trees.
The masked man pitched forward and lay still, without a sound.
"Cough, cough, cough... cough, cough, cough..."
Xiao Mo coughed violently, his face draining whiter by the moment as he gasped in great gulps of air.
"Qingyi..." Xiao Mo wiped his mouth and flew toward his disciple.
At that same moment, Jiang Qingyi swept out her sword and took the last Blood Butterfly Pavilion disciple's head off.
Standing off to one side, Sun Jin's face was a mask of gloom.
In Sun Jin's reckoning, Jiang Qingyi had been certain to die.
Instead, her strength was outrageous—invincible among those of her own realm, so much so that even a Nascent Soul realm cultivator would have to work hard to kill her.
Sensing that things had gone badly, Sun Jin wanted to flee.
But how could Jiang Qingyi let him leave alive?
Jiang Qingyi recited a sword incantation, and the little ice-sculpted blades of grass on the ground shattered all at once.
They became chains of mystic ice that bound Sun Jin hand and foot.
Jiang Qingyi yanked at the empty air, and Sun Jin slammed into the ground.
Sun Jin flung out his fan.
Two ink-black tigers leapt from it.
While the painted tigers delayed her, Sun Jin turned to run.
But he had gone only a few steps when ice spikes pierced both ink tigers through and they melted into ink that ran across the ground.
Jiang Qingyi flew at him, her sword aimed at his back; Sun Jin spun and tried to catch the point on his fan.
Sun Jin skipped across the ice like a stone skipping over water, until he smashed into a tree.
When he scrambled up, Jiang Qingyi's long sword was already at his throat.
Meeting her icy gaze, Sun Jin hastened to beg for his life. "Spare me, Immortal Fairy! Please, Immortal Fairy, spare me!"
"Answer my questions! Answer well, and I'll spare you!" Jiang Qingyi said coldly.
"Ask me anything, Immortal Fairy! This one will say all he knows and leave nothing unsaid!" White with terror, Sun Jin had completely forgotten the swagger of a moment ago.
Looking at a man like this, Jiang Qingyi felt that killing him would dirty her sword.
"Who is it that wants my master dead?" Jiang Qingyi demanded coldly.
She had always wondered whom her master could possibly have offended, that they would hunt him to the ends of the earth.
It was not that she had never asked—her master had simply kept his mouth shut.
"That..." Sun Jin's face twisted with reluctance; he started to speak and then stopped.
"Talk!" Jiang Qingyi cut off one of his arms with a stroke of her sword.
"Aaagh!" Sun Jin clutched the stump and screamed. "I'll talk! I'll talk! It's Prince Xiao who wants your master dead!"
"Prince Xiao? What grudge does he have with my master?"
"Prince Xiao is Xiao Jing, Prince Jing of Liang, and your master is his son. In truth, the Prince doesn't just want Xiao Mo dead—he wants you dead even more.
Do you remember, when you were four years old, your parents were murdered and you were carried off to a room?
The Prince was behind that. Because you carry an innate sword bone, the Prince had you brought over so that the sword bone could be transplanted into Xiao Mo!
Your parents refused, so they were simply killed out of hand."
"You... what did you say..." Jiang Qingyi looked as though lightning had struck her—face ashen, pupils trembling, the long sword slipping from her hand to the ground.
Sun Jin's other hand was secretly fingering a hidden weapon behind his back as he went on. "You heard right. It was your master's own father who killed your parents."
"You could have become a sword immortal whose name rang across the world—but your master had your sword bone transplanted into him!
The only reason your master reached the Nascent Soul realm at eighteen was your sword bone.
Those two, father and son, destroyed your family and stole your whole life."
[A note on the cultivation realms, in order—
Lower three realms: Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Cave Abode.
Middle three realms: Dragon Gate, Golden Core, Nascent Soul.
Upper three realms: Jade Uncarved, Immortal, Ascension.]