Volcanic Age

Rumble!

A soft tremor led to a layer of dust landing on Zhou Xuchuan’s head.

However, the falling dust soon morphed into a landslide.

The far-too-narrow tunnel was crumbling down. It couldn’t endure all the traps and mechanisms coming to life at the same time.

At this point, the nature of these mechanisms no longer mattered.

The real problem was the ceiling caving in at a frightening speed!

Zhou Xuchuan ran at full tilt along the lengthy tunnel's twists and turns.

He moved so fast that Luo Xiaoyue and Little Ghost could barely keep up with him.

Their breathing grew rapid and shallow; they felt like their lungs were on fire, and their hearts pounded away madly against their chest, but they couldn't care less. Their qi was rapidly being depleted as well, but now wasn’t the time to care about that, either.

They ran as quickly as possible to escape. They also didn’t forget to heed Zhuge Shengji’s heads-up. After an unknown amount of time spent on running, the lengthy tunnel of unknown li[1] finally came to an end.

"Aaaah!!" Zhou Xuchuan yelled, kicking off of the ground hard to leap as far as he could before landing safely some distance away. Others would roll ungainly on the ground upon landing, but as a powerful cultivator, his landing was picture perfect.

"Junior Sister! Little Ghost!" Zhou Xuchuan whipped around to confirm the safety of Luo Xiaoyue and Little Ghost.

"Huff, huff, haaah…"

Luo Xiaoyue was on her knees, wheezing and huffing away. She was soaked in her own sweat. However, her mental fatigue was far greater than her physical exhaustion.

Despite relying on her lightness art to its fullest, she still had to work extremely hard to dodge the traps and mechanisms raining down on her.

The crumbling ceiling was also a terrifying sight to behold, but she couldn't spare even a moment to scream. It was like she was running on instinct for the sake of her own survival.

"Are you okay?" Zhou Xuchuan asked, genuinely worried about Luo Xiaoyue.

"Yes, I'm fine. But there could have been a big accident just now," Luo Xiaoyue replied in jest with a light grin.

"Wheeew…"

Zhou Xuchuan let out a lengthy sigh of relief. After putting Zhuge Shengji down, he checked up on Little Ghost.

"Little Ghost, you're… fine." As expected of the Mind-Killing process! Little Ghost’s expression hadn’t changed at all despite having just survived a life-or-death ordeal.

Even her breathing was slow enough to make others think that she was dead. Thanks to the Divine Phantom Art, she was in normal condition.

Just in case, Zhou Xuchuan asked, "Are you hurt anywhere?"

"No, sir. However, I’ve exhausted about half of my qi reserves," Little Ghost said blandly. As always, she had a poker face as she reported her physical condition. "

"Aaah?!" Zhuge Shengji screamed just then.

Zhou Xuchuan spun around at that scream and saw Zhuge Shengji, still plopped on his butt, urgently crawling backward while pointing at something up ahead.

"O-Over there!"

Their new location wasn’t as brightly lit as, say, the middle of the day, but there were slivers of light in the area. However, the slivers of light piercing the pitch-black darkness contained people with faces as pale as corpses—no, they merely looked like people!

"Jiangshis[2]!"

These corpses had fulu[3]attached to their foreheads.

All of their exposed skin was as pale as corpses, and there were eighteen, nineteen—no, twenty of them. There were exactly twenty jiangshis up ahead!

"Is this one of the Blood Cult’s sorceries…?" Zhou Xuchuan muttered. Jiangshi sorceries had existed for a while now, but those who relied on them were usually followers of the Demon Cult. More specifically, members of the Blood Cult.

Nanman was renowned for sorcery, but even then, the art of reanimating corpses was taboo. Anyone caught doing so was subjected to harsh punishment. Even in the Demon Cult, jiangshis were niche.

The number of necromancers was negligible, and interest in the art of jiangshis was low.

"What a despicable organization," Luo Xiaoyue remarked. She had regulated her breathing back to normal and had already unsheathed her sword. The art of jiangshis was taboo in the Central Plains.

There was a reason the demonic path was called "demonic."

Its practitioners often did things a human being ought to avoid doing.

The art of jiangshis was made to bring the corpses of people who perished far away from home back to their hometown for the sake of receiving a proper burial.

At some point, however, the reanimated corpses were suddenly transformed into weapons of slaughter. In the end, the practice was banned and was made taboo.

The art itself had become nothing more than an insult to the deceased, as it reanimated those who were supposed to rest in peace—it had become an affront to the heavenly laws!

Zhou Xuchuan calmly ordered, "Little Ghost, stay back and guard Zhuge Shengji. Make sure to protect yourself, too."

The Valley of the Phantoms' martial arts were terrible against jiangshis. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it was the absolute worst match-up.

Techniques for hidden weapons, such as the Hidden Nether Flying Dagger Art, were made to target the victim’s fatal pressure points, heart, or throat to inflict fatal injuries, but jiangshis were impervious to such techniques, as they had no beating hearts.

Good. I was wondering when I’d get the chance to use my new technique… Jiangshis should serve as wonderful opponents to test things out! Zhou Xuchuan changed his grip on the sword and took on a different stance from the Plum Blossom Sword.

Hop!

The jiangshi at the helm of the group hopped forward. It hopped not on just one leg but both legs at the same time!

Hop, hop, hop!

The jiangshi’s movement was stiff and unnatural; it was like a block of wood moving around. However, its speed was nothing to scoff at. It looked tardy in Zhou Xuchuan’s eyes, but the undead still was as quick as an ordinary cultivator.

Whoosh!

The jiangshi raised its arm and straightened its fingers. Then, it used the flat of its hand like a sword. The next moment, it thrust its hand forward, carving a cold gleam in the air.

Zhou Xuchuan used the minimum necessary movements to evade the jiangshi’s hand with consummate ease before slashing his sword upward.

Swoosh!

His sword wasn’t that fast, and it didn’t even produce the usual crisp swishing noise. It sounded more like a heavy gust of wind. Even so, it severed the jiangshi’s right arm.

That was a bit ungainly.

If there were a third party here, they'd think that Zhou Xuchuan had no issues severing the creature’s right arm. In reality, though, he did struggle a bit. The feedback didn’t feel quite right, and he could have severed the arm a bit faster and more precisely.

Fine! In that case…! Reflections and analyses took only a blink of an eye. While gripping the sword’s hilt tightly with both hands, Zhou Xuchuan chopped down with all his might.

Boom!

The movement generated a noise reminiscent of a blunt weapon rather than a sharp sword. Instead of a scythe slicing through the air, Zhou Xuchuan's sword crushed and forcibly scattered it.

The noise would make anyone's mood improve upon hearing it.

The sword pretending to be a blunt weapon made a beeline for the jiangshi’s head, but…

Bang!

"Mmhm."Zhou Xuchuan nodded. He had been expecting this result.His sword struck true, but the jiangshi had raised its remaining arm to defend its head. The arm caved in. No blood poured out, but a pitch-black smoke carrying a rotting stench seeped out of the wound.

"So it’s this strong? Ah, Junior Sister Luo, watch out! These things have corpse venom in them!" Zhou Xuchuan shouted. Then, he imbued more qi into his sword to increase its weight. The blade lodged in the jiangshi’s arm grew heavier and heavier until it eventually severed the rotting limb.

Having lost its last remaining means of protection, the jiangshi could no longer protect its head, and it exploded upon making contact with Zhou Xuchuan's sword.

Plop!

The headless jiangshi abruptly collapsed to the ground as if it were a puppet that had lost its strings.

Good. It’s more or less usable. Zhou Xuchuan smiled in satisfaction while shaking off the black blood on his clothes.Zhou Xuchuan had just executed the Ten-Thousand Jin Sword. Meng Gang sure left behind something nice.

Meng Gang’s cache contained two secret manuals—the Ten-Thousand Jin Sword and Iron Shirt.

Zhou Xuchuan liked what he had seen in those manuals, so he proceeded to train in them. Having learned the Ten Thousand Convergence Art, he encountered no mental issues on his way to learning them.

He studied them during his free time, and the result was better than expected.

It quite literally creates a ten-thousand-jin heavy sword.

The Ten-Thousand Jin Sword was based on the Thousand Catty Ballast Art.

The wielder’s sword could become twice as heavy as their weight. However, the weight increase was not fixed. The unique aspect of the technique was that the weight could be adjusted freely depending on the wielder's mastery over the technique.

Zhou Xuchuan wondered why Meng Gang hadn't used something so useful, but he quickly discovered the reason.The Ten-Thousand Jin Sword was both a sword art and a physical art.

Sitting down cross-legged to accumulate qi via cultivation was usually called meditation arts, while accumulating internal energy through a breathing technique during physical training was called form arts.

Obviously, there was a difference in difficulty between a form art and a meditation art.

However, the difficulty was secondary in this case, as it being a type of meditation art meant that mastering it was impossible without the Ten Thousand Convergence Art.

During the first stage of the technique, the cultivator would learn to infuse weight into their sword. From the second stage onward, they’d learn to do more things with it.

A jiangshi was a perfect opponent to test the Ten-Thousand Jin Sword.

Zhou Xuchuan only had to increase the weight of his sword to crush or break apart the undead’s skull.

"That’s less like the plum blossom and more like the crimson blossom, isn’t it?" Luo Xiaoyue remarked.She looked a bit dismayed, but she kept her eyes glued to a jiangshi approaching her position.

Shuffle!

Luo Xiaoyue gripped her sword in her right hand and gathered a bit of qi between her bent left thumb and middle finger.

Bang!

Luo Xiaoyue flicked her finger according to the teachings of Plum Blossom Five Graces Finger, which was one of the few finger arts taught in Mount Hua.

The focused lump of qi rolled into a small ball and flew in a straight line toward the jiangshi’s forehead.However, the force of the attack only made the jiangshi's head tilt backward slightly. The undead creature was still hopping closer to her as if nothing had happened to it.

A regular corpse would have rotted away long ago, but that logic didn’t apply to a jiangshi. Its skin was as tough as steel armor, after all.Even if this jiangshi wasn’t of the reinforced variant, it could still withstand most attacks like the average jiangshi.

The outcome would be different if Luo Xiaoyue were an expert in finger art.

Unfortunately, she was an expert in the way of the sword.

"Fine! In that case…!"Luo Xiaoyue dashed forward using her movement art.

Swiiiiish!

Her sword danced beautifully in the air before piercing her target at breakneck speed. Her sword moved so quickly that it briefly looked like there were multiple swords moving together.

The future Plum Blossom Sword Phoenix unleashed the Twenty-four Sword Forms of the Plum Blossom. There weren't any illusory sword images, as she focused her attacks on a single point.

Pah-ba-bat!

It was indeed the Twenty-four Sword Forms, but her interpretation was different from Zhou Xuchuan’s.

Zhou Xuchuan fired several sword qi in many different directions, leaving the target with nowhere else to run in the face of a meteor shower of sword qi.

However, Luo Xiaoyue's approach was the opposite of Zhou Xuchuan's. By focusing on only one target rather than covering a wide area, the destructiveness of her attack would increase drastically. Of course, doing so was easier said than done.

Firing a strand of sword qi was already taxing, but she remained in control of all the strands of sword qi as she carefully manipulated them to target one specific point.This feat was as miraculously difficult as firing an arrow to hit the bottom of another arrow sticking out of the bull’s eye.

First of all, each sword qi strand differed in size and the amount of qi it carried. These strands would clash with each other and disperse if one were to haphazardly gather them in one place.

However, Luo Xiaoyue managed to do that. This could only mean one thing—her control over all sword qi strands was perfect. Her control was so perfect and beautiful that it was actually absurd and bizarre, even!

"You certainly deserve the label of genius, Junior Sister," said Zhou Xuchuan. Although he sounded a bit scared at the sight of a headless jiangshi before Luo Xiaoyue's feet.

Luo Xiaoyue’s martial arts comprehension was sky-high; her movements were exquisite, and her control over her qi was second to none.

"Senior Brother, I don’t think you’re qualified to say that," Luo Xiaoyue retorted, sounding a little dismayed.In her eyes, Zhou Xuchuan was a monster who had become one of the One Hundred Experts Under Heaven at the young age of nineteen!

"Seriously?! I don’t mind you two fellow disciples complementing each other, but how about worrying about someone next to you?!"Zhuge Shengji cried out while shivering pitifully with his bamboo tube in hand.

He had brought it with him, just in case, but it proved ineffective against a jiangshi.

Its bolts simply bounced off the creature’s skin, unable to pierce a jiangshi's tough skin.

It wasn’t as if Zhuge Shengji couldn’t do any martial arts, but he dared not approach one, as a careless attack against a jiangshi was too risky. He could get poisoned by the corpse venom, and he wasn't even sure if he could injure one.

Meanwhile, Little Ghost boasted a decent resistance against most toxins, which was to be expected as an assassin. However, fatally wounding a jiangshi was still too much of a task for her.

In other words, Zhou Xuchuan and Luo Xiaoyue had no choice but to take care of everything.

Thankfully, though, they possessed sufficient strength for the job. They actually wanted Zhuge Shengji and Little Ghost to hide somewhere to avoid becoming a distraction for them.

Zhou Xuchuan relied on the Ten-Thousand Jin Sword to cleave through a jiangshi’s torso. Luo Xiaoyue cleanly beheaded the reanimated corpses with her precise sharp strikes.

Luo Xiaoyue didn't have a seemingly endless supply of qi like Zhou Xuchuan, so she was becoming more and more exhausted as the battle went on, but even then, she had no difficulties dealing with the jiangshis.

1. A "li" is equivalent to half a kilometer, i.e. 500 meters. ☜

2. A jiangshi, also known as a Chinese hopping vampire, is a type of undead creature/reanimated corpse found in Chinese legends and folklore. ☜

3. Fulu are Taoist magic symbols and incantations, written or painted on paper talismans. Its literal meaning is ‘talismanic script’. ☜

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