Jaya, Xiaohu, HPC, Ysabel, Lao Qianbei, Anh, you are welcome. Sky, in term of beauty, I agree with you. But in term of martial art skill, the two supposedly on par. Kink, welcome back (44x ... extra for the next one ) Xu Xiong, I agree; to me, wuxia is still interesting.

Book 15 Chapter 3 - Major Enemy Waiting For The Opportunity

Lightning flashed, sword qi filled the air.

s.h.i.+ Feixuan's Color Empty Sword filled the air with light and shadow, which completely enveloped Xu Ziling.

She was like a fairy dancing lightly and gracefully. Her shadow was barely discernible amidst the flashes of her sword, like the bright moon hidden behind hazy cloud. The densely cold sword qi spread far and wide that Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong, who were standing three zhang away, could also feel it. The momentum swaying back and forth was like swirling flakes of snow in the middle of a storm.

Xu Ziling had already stored up his momentum as he was waiting quietly, and was in full alert. But he still could not antic.i.p.ate that this seemingly gentle, tender and graceful, touching, engaging and charming beauty's delicate hand, which was whiter than frost and softer than snow, would be able to unleash such a terrifying sword moves, which were swifter than a rainstorm.

He knew that this was a critical moment. As soon as he failed to block, her sword qi would invade his meridians, it might immediately spur reaction, and then she would know that the Jade Annulus of He Clan's special power has entered his system.

Xu Ziling's body turned into shadow, which swiftly advanced and retreated in the midst of sword shadow. With the fingers closed together his left hand formed a saber, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with his true power, moving so fast that ordinary people would not be able to see it, as it chopped to the left and parried to the right, each palm strike accurately hitting the body of s.h.i.+ Feixuan's Color Empty Sword's blade.

Still, everybody knew that s.h.i.+ Feixuan held the initiatives in her hand, while the opponent was stuck in pa.s.sive position and could only react to her move.

Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong stared tongue-tied, and felt so helpless.

Xu Ziling has always been able to utilize his acute sense of touch to grasp key moment, but this time, this advantage was completely lost on s.h.i.+ Feixuan.

With mystical and abstruse style, and graceful-like-an-immortal shenfa, every single sword strike of s.h.i.+ Feixuan seemed to be able to grab the key moment and thus completely nullify Xu Ziling's counter-offensive.

No more than twenty moves later, Xu Ziling was completely under the sword's control; without the freedom to act independently he was falling under the opponent's like-a-heavenly-steed-soaring-across-the-sky sword's sphere of influence. His range of motion diminished. The moment he was unable to evade would be the moment he suffered utter defeat.

Even in this precarious situation, Xu Ziling's heart was still free of distraction, his mind was as still as the moon in the well.

Although he was in the worst predicament possible, this situation has actually stirred up his overbearing, unyielding determination. With heart and soul he met s.h.i.+ Feixuan's floating-freely, fantastically-changing, ever-increasing-in-power, sword technique.

Using the heart to control the sword.

s.h.i.+ Feixuan's sword technique did not follow any established rules, but each strike of the sword was designed to hit the opponent's weak point. Every sword strike carried the power of a thousand hammers, a hundred (scale) weights, which seized away the heaven and the earth's good luck.

The most formidable thing was the sword qi shooting out of the blade of her sword, which flowed swiftly into every gap, no-hole-left-uninvaded, which was very difficult to guard against.

Xu Ziling suddenly closed his eyes; pulling back his left hand, he sent out a right punch.

‘Peng!'

The body of the Color Empty Sword was. .h.i.t by Xu Ziling's fist.

Powerful qi swept across horizontally, kicking up the dust in the street.

Ever since the start of the battle, this was the first time Xu Ziling was able to attack the blade of s.h.i.+ Feixuan's Color Empty Sword.

Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan could not refrain from shouting out, "Good!”

Sword shadow dissipated.

Xu Ziling breathed a sigh of relief. He was about to seize this opportunity to attack, when suddenly a bright light flashed in front of his eyes; like a lightning that suddenly struck from the outer sky and broke through the dark cloud of the night, the Color Empty Sword suddenly appeared in front of his chest.

It was the very first time that the idea that the enemy was not someone he could defeat appeared in his mind; his heart was shaken even more. He knew that under the opponent's powerful offensive, he had lost his confidence. If he let this condition continued, his defeat was decided. Then in his pursue of martial art cultivation later on, this blow would become a setback that he could not remedy. It might also prevent him from reaching the peak of perfection all his life.

It was a distracting thought. But just before s.h.i.+ Feixuan's penetrating-the-universe sword momentum, who could resist such dejected feeling?

Such a simple sword, yet it contained incomparably profound xinfa and sword logic. It looked slow, but it also looked fast. Just in term of speed alone, it was already difficult to comprehend; plus the blade was vibrating, like a viper's tongue, which gave up the impression that it could change direction at any time.

In this instant where victory and defeat would be decided, Xu Ziling took a deep breath and pushed away all distracting thoughts out of his mind. His eyes flashed with lightning, both palms closed together like a lotus, and then like a blooming flower all ten fingers opened up in front of the blade like countless finger shadows.

‘Pow!'

Xu Ziling's left thumb knocked horizontally against the body of the blade, but his entire body was jolted back as if he was struck by lightning.

Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong were shocked.

s.h.i.+ Feixuan's sword strike was undoubtedly unparalleled in the world, but Xu Ziling's weird move was exquisite and brilliant beyond compare; it has practically sealed off all attack routes she could possibly take, while also met this one strike head-on.

The problem was that all along, Xu Ziling's true qi was still a level below s.h.i.+ Feixuan's the incomparably refined and pure enigmatic sect and orthodox school's sword qi, which she cultivated since childhood. In addition, the opponent has always been occupying the superior position of offensive initiative. Therefore, not suffering any setback would be a marvel indeed.

‘Wah!'

While his body was spiraling in the air as he was thrown back, Xu Ziling spewed a mouthful of blood.

s.h.i.+ Feixuan's sword momentum congealed; unexpectedly she did not follow up her victory and press home the attack.

Xu Ziling's martial art cultivation was far beyond her expectation. Not only his tenacity was outstanding, he was able to produce strange moves one after another, so that although she maintained the offensive for a long time, she failed to defeat him. The last sword strike just now looked like it would hit his acupoint and thus render him incapable to continue the fight, but unexpectedly it was neutralized by his top-notch amazing technique. She was able to injure him until he vomited blood, but it was not her heart's desire.

‘Qiang! Qiang!'

Finally Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong were unable to hold on anymore. Saber and sword left their scabbards.

‘Dang!'

Again Liao Kong rang the copper bell as a warning.

Right this moment, a shadow shot down like an arrow from the building to their left, straight toward s.h.i.+ Feixuan.

The air around them seemed to implode, so that they all felt extremely uncomfortable.

Such a dreadful martial art, except for the Tian Mo Gong, there was no other.

The plain-clothed, barefooted Wanwan suddenly appeared like a specter coming out of the deepest black hole of the dream; before the person arrived, a thin stream of ribbon already flew out of her right hand sleeve, like a snake it rolled toward s.h.i.+ Feixuan, whose mind was still distracted by Xu Ziling's profoundness. Its momentum was swift and fierce to the extreme.

It was absolutely comparable to s.h.i.+ Feixuan's sword a moment ago.

Only it did not generate any noise or even the whistling sound of qi power splitting the air.

When her body was still high in the air, her other hand lightly waved her gauzed sleeve in such an amazingly graceful manner, shooting three streams of white light, attacking Xu Ziling, who was still staggering, and Kou Zhong and Ba Fenghan, who were in ready-to-pounce stance. n.o.body knew how she did it, but it was very fast and accurate.

Following the sound of yelling and angry scream, four different shadows shot down from the top of two opposite buildings nearest this side of the bridge. Surprisingly they were Bu Chen, Bu Ju, Bu Tan, and Bu Chi, the Four Great Protector Vajra of Jing Nian Chanyuan.

Under the moonlight, especially because the light was behind them, their Buddhist staffs appeared even darker; carrying thunderous whistling, their might was awe-inspiring.

Apparently they were stationed around the battle ground to guard against other people rus.h.i.+ng to intervene; but obviously they could not stop Wanwan, this special grade martial art master.

Reverend Liao Kong invoked the many names of Buddha, and like a meteor catching up with the moon he flew over at top speed.

In spite all these, s.h.i.+ Feixuan, who was the target of the sneak attack, remained calm as usual. The Color Empty Sword rose up, while her body floated diagonally up to meet Wanwan.

However, everybody knew that Wanwan chose this exact moment to make her move, because she knew that after fighting a hard battle with a formidable opponent, and moreover because she accidentally injured Xu Ziling, her mind was distracted and her acute spirit was discharged. Hence for Wanwan, who had been ama.s.sing her momentum for a long time in waiting, this moment was precisely the one-in-a-thousand golden opportunity to strike the enemy.

At this point, the one closest to Wanwan was Xu Ziling.

But he simply had no time. Plus he had to deal with the secret projectile shot by Wanwan; hence even if he wanted to help, he was simply powerless.

Ba Fenghan and Kou Zhong were, first of all, comparatively farther away, and secondly, they were also busy blocking the secret projectile, hence no matter what, they were a hair slower. Other people need not be mentioned; they were like ‘water from afar quenches no fire'.

In the blink of an eye, these two ill.u.s.trious successors representing orthodox and heretic, two separate ways, were engaged in a confrontation against each other.

The tip of the sword hit the end of the ribbon.

Before I upset some people out there , this is the middle of the chapter.