Word Count: 2,696 Words
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After all, Yun Yun's charm was no small thing. Over the past two years, who knew how many experts had come knocking with marriage proposals, including no few scions of the Dou God Clans, only to be turned away one after another.
Xiao Yan had just closed his eyes to savor that tenderness when a clear, ringing bird cry carried in from the direction of the Beast Region.
Wind and thunder rolled across the sky at once. In the blink of an eye, an enormous crane swept overhead, its whole body wrapped in shifting colored light, every feather beautiful beyond description.
The crane gave a piercing cry as it crossed the sky, dragging a tail of colored radiance that stretched nearly a mile behind it. Everyone saw the slender, striking figure standing atop its head.
The crowd had been arguing heatedly a moment before, but the instant the crane appeared, every voice died. Thousands of eyes fixed on the seven-colored bird without blinking.
The first thing they saw was that figure at the crane's head, her long skirt streaming in the wind. She wore black, a black dark as spilled ink, and against the crane's brilliance the contrast was almost jarring.
Even from a great distance, an unmistakable nobility hung about her. Her cheeks were slightly thin, tapering into a perfect oval face, and above them sat a pair of purple-brown eyes that gleamed like cut gemstones. Feng Qing Er looked for all the world like the princess of some great empire, beautiful and untouchable, and utterly out of place above this heaving sea of onlookers.
What stunned the crowd even more was that she had come alone. Not a single member of the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe had followed her!
Roar! Roar! Roar!!!
Beast cries erupted from the mountains ringing the Myriad Bone Battlefield the moment she arrived. Hisses, bellows, and howls rolled over one another without pause, deafening enough to shake the peaks.
Rumor and public argument had done their work. What had begun as a wager over territory had become something else entirely, a duel between human cultivators and magical beasts.
"Feng Qing Er really came by herself?"
"The Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe didn't send a Dou Saint elder? Weren't there supposed to be three Dou Saints among the Three Heaven Demon Phoenixes, on top of Tribe Leader Huang Tian?"
"You don't understand. A Dou Saint commands the power to fold space, and they can craft something called a spatial jade slip. Crush the slip, and even ten thousand miles away, a Dou Saint can fold the distance and cross it in a single step."
Feng Qing Er took one step and vanished from the crane's head. She reappeared atop a distant peak, facing Nalan Yanran across the open air.
For a moment, more than ten years collapsed into yesterday, and something strange stirred in both women. The Four Pavilion Grand Meeting no longer existed. The Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion was an ordinary sect now, and the Falling Star Pavilion had withdrawn from the world and all but stopped taking disciples.
The Yellow Springs Pavilion and the Wind Lightning Pavilion had fared far worse. The Wind Lightning Pavilion had been wiped out until not even scraps remained. The Yellow Springs Pavilion came off better. Wang Chen and Venerable Huang Quan had both been killed, but the faction itself had merely dissolved. The Yellow Springs Precious Treasure Pavilion had even survived intact, thanks to the goodwill it earned back at the Great Meeting of Factions, and had since become a branch of the Miteer Auction House.
This battle had drawn out more than the Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion. Even the long-secluded Falling Star Pavilion had sent people.
"I never expected the two of them would still end up facing each other after all these years." Mu Qing Luan watched the pair and sighed to herself.
She was a 1-star Dou Venerate now, Tribe Leader of the Green Mythical Bird Tribe and Pavilion Master of the Falling Star Pavilion both. After what happened with Venerable Yao, Venerable Feng had retired from the world completely. Once the Pill Gathering ended, he left a single letter for Mu Qing Luan and vanished without a trace. Whether he still lived, no one knew.
Nalan Yanran looked at Feng Qing Er standing alone in her black dress, and something complicated turned over in her chest. This battle had not been her idea. Xiao Yan had arranged it and handed it to her.
She did not know what he intended by it, but she had never once considered refusing.
Her impression of Feng Qing Er was still fixed at the Four Pavilion Grand Meeting. Feng Qing Er had stepped forward to challenge Xiao Yan there, had even called in Venerable Lei of the Wind Lightning Pavilion to seize him, and had ended up clashing with the Yan Alliance outright.
As far as Nalan Yanran was concerned, this Feng Qing Er was no good bird.
Her eyes narrowed as Feng Qing Er settled onto the peak, and her gaze turned into a blade meant for killing. A freezing wind pressed outward with it. The full aura of a Nine-Change Dou Venerate unfurled, and the temperature across the plains plunged in an instant. That cutting sword intent seemed to drive straight into the heart of every cultivator watching.
More than a few who had crowded too close cried out in pain. Thin cuts had opened across their skin!
"Get back!"
"What terrifying wind attribute Dou Qi. The sword is the wind, and the wind is the sword!"
Dou Kings and Dou Emperors whose cultivation was too weak threw open their Dou Qi wings and fled the battlefield, faces white. The bone-deep sword intent riding Nalan Yanran's wind attribute Dou Qi made their scalps crawl and left real fear behind it.
"You chose to come. Now make your move." Nalan Yanran wasted no words, and her expression stayed cold. She had always been the Yan Alliance's drawn sword, cutting wherever she was pointed. She had been so since the alliance's founding days. Take the mission, complete the mission. She never stopped to ask why.
"Swordmaster Nalan. That sword of hers is strong." Even the older-generation experts beyond the battlefield felt their skin prickle, and more than one heart clenched.
Feng Qing Er did not answer at once. She raised her head slowly instead, and her beautiful eyes narrowed as she tried to see through the pavilion hidden in the clouds.
She had no luck. At her strength, Xiao Yan was out of the question, and she could not even pierce the shielding of Yun Yun's Saint Might. She had no idea he was sitting inside, watching.
Still less did she know that this duel, which had thrown the entire Dou Qi Continent into an uproar, was nothing more than a casual decision on Xiao Yan's part, a Hongmen Banquet laid out to test her!
Something hot rose in Feng Qing Er's chest as she looked at Nalan Yanran. Her voice came low. "Draw your sword."
A clear ring answered before the words had finished. Nalan Yanran's sword had already left its sheath.
There were stakes on the table. The Yellow Springs Mountain Range had belonged to the Yan Alliance's Snake-People Tribe to begin with. The moment Nalan Yanran committed and the Cloud Slaying Black Sword came free, she became a different person. Killing light poured off her, and the wind spirals turning around her body filled with sword glow enough to raise the hair on any spine.
Those spirals moved like solid blades, circling her in a steady orbit. Every vortex was a sword of hers, merciless and without pity, ready to cut down anything at all. Looking at her gave the impression of wind and blade and streaming blood all at once!
The drawn black sword alone was enough to make people shiver. The Cloud Slaying Black Sword itself was nothing extraordinary, merely a Rank 8 Monster Core Weapon. Held in Nalan Yanran's hand, however, it became a terrifying thing.
Xiao Yan had told her to go all out, so she held nothing back. Her figure blurred into a streak of black light saturated with killing intent and death. She moved faster than the eye could follow, and the sword drove straight at Feng Qing Er.
Nalan Yanran seemed to disappear entirely. The next instant she stood directly in front of her opponent.
Her speed was absurd, but Feng Qing Er possessed the Wind-Lightning Physique and was hardly slow herself. The sword struck home with a wet sound, yet the sensation of piercing a body never came.
"Three Thousand Lightning Illusionary Body?"
The illusionary body burst apart in a crackling spray, and the terrible wind and lightning packed inside twisted at once into a tornado that tore toward Nalan Yanran.
Since the Wind Lightning Pavilion's destruction, no one on the entire Dou Qi Continent had cultivated the Three Thousand Lightning Illusionary Body more perfectly than Feng Qing Er, save Xiao Yan alone.
Nalan Yanran might as well not have seen the wind and lightning coming. A thought moved through her, and the air hummed as her hands locked into a seal. Light welled out of her body and surged outward until black and white radiance swallowed her whole.
That black and white Dou Qi coiled around her like a pair of enormous dragons, circling in guard, and the twin true dragons whipped up a howling cyclone that met the wind-and-thunder tornado head-on.
More than a few Half-Saints in the crowd started at the sight of those spinning dragons.
"That black and white guard... is that sword qi?"
"What refined Dou Qi..."
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!
The two tornadoes slammed together. Even a fragment of the backlash from a clash between Nine-Change Dou Venerates was enough to tear the air open, shatter peaks, and sever whole ranges.
Nalan Yanran's Spiritual Strength swept the space around her. She whipped toward one particular patch of empty air, Dou Qi surging through her, and the black sword spun up a flurry of sword flowers in her grip as she called out inwardly.
'Mountain and River Azure Wind Slash.'
The energy of the world boiled. Every scrap of natural energy within a hundred miles gathered onto her blade in that single moment. The cloud layer overhead split apart, and wind rose in churning walls.
"A Tian Class Dou Technique!!"
"What's so surprising about that? With the Yan Alliance's resources and Sect Leader Nalan already a Nine-Change Dou Venerate, isn't a Tian Class Dou Technique perfectly ordinary?"
The black sword spun once in her hand and cut toward that patch of empty space. An invisible sword qi over ten thousand feet long flew free, vast and rolling, sweeping the ragged clouds before it.
That Tian Class Dou Technique was the Sword Saint inheritance Xiao Yan had once won at the Spatial Auction Fair by extravagantly throwing down two Venerate Ascension Spirit Pills. Nalan Yanran had not wasted his goodwill. She had genuinely mastered the technique, and it had genuinely proven its worth.
Most of those watching knew quality when they saw it. The moment that ten-thousand-foot sword qi went out, expressions shifted all across the plains. They understood at once that this strike had reached the major level, and its power was formidable.
A soft report came from the space she had locked onto, and wind and lightning began to churn out of it without end. An enormous seven-colored demon phoenix leapt free. Arcs of wind and thunder rained down the instant it emerged, and its power spread like a boundless ocean with the phoenix at its heart.
"That's the Heaven Demon Phoenix Tribe's Heaven Phoenix Three Arts!"
The sight moved many watchers, and it stirred no small envy. "A legendary ancient secret art, passed down from the Ancient Heaven Phoenix bloodline," an older cultivator murmured. "What a pity. Whether the Heaven Phoenix or the Heaven Serpent, those bloodlines have all long since gone extinct."
Feng Qing Er's gaze turned grave. Not everyone was Xiao Yan. Cultivating even one Low Tian Class Dou Technique to completion was cause enough for pride.
"Heavenly Lightning Overturning the Sea!" Her shout rang out. The vast seven-colored phoenix folded itself around her, and behind her, points of lightning spread like a magnificent sea, wave crashing over wave. An endless ocean of thunder rose slowly at her back, and as it swallowed the sky, all the natural energy around it poured in and merged with the storm.
She did not dare underestimate that sword of Nalan Yanran's for even a moment. This woman's strength was in no way inferior to her own!
One had to know that Feng Qing Er was now countless times stronger than Jiu Feng had been. If Jiu Feng were still alive today, she could defeat him with ease.
The seven-colored phoenix beat its wings once, and the ocean of lightning surged forward, blotting out the sky as it came. Under thousands of watching eyes, the two Tian Class attacks met with a shattering roar, and wind spirals and lightning sprayed in every direction.
The mountains nearby split open wherever those razor spirals passed. Lightning hammered the ground without pause, and the ancient battlefield, ruined long before either woman was born, was left more broken still.
Steel rang. Nalan Yanran moved again, wind spirals sheathing her whole body. She showed no fear at all of that sea of thunder. She became a single sharp blade and drove straight into it.
"She's mad! She's charging into the lightning sea!!"
In that instant there was no Nalan Yanran and no black sword. There was only one flash of sword light crossing the world.
Wind's Peak!
Wind's Peak had long since stopped being a simple Dou Technique. The sword was the wind, and the peak of the wind was the peak of the sword!
That single sword light made every heart in the plains lurch. It punched clean through the ocean of lightning.
Feng Qing Er had never imagined Nalan Yanran would dare charge into the thunder sea to reach her. Anger flashed in her eyes, and she called out inwardly.
'Demon Phoenix Bell!'
Clang!!
The sword came in, and to Feng Qing Er's shock it struck the exact point where the Demon Phoenix Bell's defense ran thinnest. In a flash of sparks, Nalan Yanran had found the bell's imperceptible flaw with impossible speed.
A single comprehension beneath the Bodhisattva Tree, a peerless fortune that came once in a thousand years!
Feng Qing Er's heart jolted. The Demon Phoenix Bell was a defensive Dou Technique on par with the Tian Class, and it had failed to stop that one thrust!
Of course, the Demon Phoenix Bell was never purely defensive. It was a sonic technique as well, and unfortunately what it feared most was precisely this kind of piercing strike, the sort that broke a whole surface open through a single point.
Everything happened too fast. Even the Half-Saints watching went pale with shock. The sword had been quick enough to startle a Half-Saint!
The distance between a Half-Saint and a Nine-Change Dou Venerate was a single step, and that step was nearly impossible to cross. The gulf between them was absurd.
Wind's Peak. One sword to shock a Saint!
"Grug!"
The sword tore through the Demon Phoenix Bell, and a spray of blood laced with faint seven-colored light scattered into the air. Feng Qing Er was thrown backward. Her shoulder had been run through.
Nalan Yanran's brows drew together. Even at that hair's breadth of a moment, Feng Qing Er had managed to twist aside, and the blade had caught only her shoulder.
"Yanran's sword path has already surpassed every ancestor of the Misty Cloud Sect." Yun Yun had watched it all, and seeing her disciple grown so formidable filled her with quiet gladness.
Xiao Yan opened his eyes and looked at Yun Yun, so close he could feel her warmth, and smiled. "Her cultivation and her other Dou Techniques still fall short of yours. But she is stubbornly devoted to the sword. Where the sword is concerned, she's your master now."