Chapter 84: A Brutal Struggle

I looked around and drew Lvzhi Ruo into a hidden cleft in the rocky ravine. “Stay here. Don’t run off.”

She immediately gripped my hand in panic, her voice trembling. “Where are you going?”

“I’m going to help. You’re just an ordinary person. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“No, no, don’t leave me behind.” Tears welled in her eyes.

“I won’t leave you. Just wait here for a little while.” I pried her hand loose, set a concealment formation, and hurried toward the source of the power fluctuations.

Ten miles away, hundreds of underworld beings were locked in battle with a group of exorcists.

I peered out from behind a jet-black boulder, my pupils contracting sharply.

I saw Nangong Haoran, his hair half black and half white, along with the members of the Ninth Bureau who had been with him last time.

Nangong Haoran howled ceaselessly, the black-and-white hand seals in his grip erupting with a terrifying dark radiance. Wherever he passed, severed limbs and broken bodies littered the ground.

But then I saw one of the Ninth Bureau men stabbed through the chest by an underworld being, and in the next instant another underworld being twisted off his head.

My mind went blank in an instant, and all I could see was that smear of red.

Several exorcists from the Ninth Bureau cried out in agony, their magical light flaring even brighter.

One underworld creature after another fell, but I also saw one exorcist after another die on the spot.

“Stand and fight to the death!” Nangong Haoran wailed.

“Stand and fight to the death!” The rest of the Ninth Bureau members answered in turn, shedding blood upon the crimson slaughterfield and repaying life with life.

My throat was dry, my heart pounding violently and contracting.

I forced myself to suppress the murderous intent surging through me and studied these underworld beings carefully.

The weakest among them seemed to have green skin; the stronger they were, the more blue their skin became, and the more human they looked.

For example, the underworld man currently fighting Nangong Haoran could already be called a true underworld human. Aside from his bluish skin, he was almost indistinguishable from a human.

Then I looked past them to a huge spider-bodied, human-faced beast at the rear of the underworld horde. It was radiating thick underworld energy, continuously replenishing the power of those underworld beings.

Originally, the combat strength of the Ninth Bureau should have been roughly equal to these underworld creatures. They would not have been this badly overmatched.

But because of that spider-bodied, human-faced beast, the balance of power kept shifting, and the underworld beings gradually seized overwhelming advantage. More and more members were dying.

At this rate, every last member of the Ninth Bureau would be wiped out.

I clenched my teeth. That spider-bodied, human-faced beast had to be taken down.

I pasted a concealment talisman onto myself and approached quietly.

At that moment, the beast seemed to sense something and turned back to look.

Fortunately, I withdrew quickly and hid behind a rock.

So the beast turned away again and continued to channel underworld energy.

I crawled forward once more and reached its rear.

Just then, the beast sensed me again and turned around.

I had been waiting for this very moment. Blade and body alike, I shot forward like a long rainbow and drove straight into the beast’s head.

This strike had pushed my potential to its absolute limit.

With a wet tearing sound, the blade plunged into the spider head bearing a human face, and power exploded forth, rending madly within.

In an instant, that head was reduced to a mass of shredded flesh.

I let out a breath of relief and drew my sword, preparing to join the fight.

“Watch out!”

A woman not far from me suddenly screamed and threw herself toward me.

I froze for a split second. She shoved me aside, and then I saw two colossal spider legs, cold as blades, pierce through her chest.

She spat out a mouthful of blood, both hands clutching the two spider legs that had gone through her body. With her last shred of strength, she lifted them upward and cried out sharply, “Its weak point is in the lower abdomen.”

In that instant my eyes turned blood-red, and it felt as though my soul itself had been torn apart.

At that very moment, without me even noticing, the ring of tattoo on my right wrist suddenly burned hot, and my hand was instantly covered by a layer of black light.

“Aaaah!”

I roared and slashed.

Within the blood-colored blade wave, the shape of a claw abruptly appeared.

The spider-bodied, human-faced beast’s lower abdomen was instantly split open as though it were tofu, blue liquid spilling everywhere, and its life force vanished in a heartbeat.

As the beast fell, I sprang forward and caught the woman in my arms.

But she had already stopped breathing forever.

“Xiaochen!” Nangong Haoran roared. Even after taking a hit from the underworld man, he smashed the man’s head apart with his black-and-white hands.

With the beast gone and its energy no longer replenishing them, and with the leader dead, the rest of the underworld creatures immediately began to collapse.

Not long after, the remaining hundred or so underworld beings retreated.

I sat there in a daze, holding the woman in my arms. Only then did I recognize her: she was the young woman who had stood beside me smiling and explaining the black-and-white bone seals of Nangong Haoran’s hands when he clashed with Qu Yuanshan.

She had died saving me, simply because I had no idea that the beast’s weak point was actually in its lower abdomen, and had assumed it was on the head like most creatures.

Nangong Haoran and the others stood before me in a deathly silence.

“Go help gather the bodies of the other brothers,” Nangong Haoran said to the others.

They nodded and dispersed, beginning to collect the remains of the fallen along with the surviving members of the Ninth Bureau.

Nangong Haoran reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder. In a low voice he said, “I don’t know why you appeared in this underworld fissure, but your presence helped all of us.”

“She died saving me,” I said painfully.

“That’s because you saved all of us. She was worth dying for to save you. In today’s battle, our Ninth Bureau had more than one hundred and eighty people across five squads. Look and see how many are left. To die here is at least to have died for a cause.” Nangong Haoran said.

I searched my body for cigarettes, only to realize that last time I had already smoked the final two with Guli Jinsha.

“I’ve got some.” Nangong Haoran tossed me a pack.

I took one out and lit it, then handed the pack back to Nangong Haoran.

“Keep it. I don’t smoke. These are Old Bai’s. You saw him last time too, the guy with the beard on his chin. He was a smoker as well; when he died in battle, there was still a half-finished cigarette in his mouth.” Nangong Haoran smiled, though his eyes were a little wet.

I took a deep drag, able to imagine the fierceness and grandeur amid that sea of blood and fire.

I looked down at the woman in my arms, reached out, and wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth. “What was her surname?”

“Mu. Mu Xiaochen, sixth-rank exorcist, captain of the First Action Team of the Seventh Squad,” Nangong Haoran said.

I nodded and carved that name deeply into my heart.

I thought of the countless tombstones on the back mountain outside the capital. Before long, many more would be added.

This was the underworld fissure, located in the Western Liang Gobi. Since it appeared three years ago, hundreds of exorcists had already fallen here.

That rocky ravine was actually the headquarters of the underworld beings within this fissure. Once they retreated there, a formation of azure talismans would seal the ravine shut.

After learning this, I felt deeply ashamed, because I had hidden Lvzhi Ruo in a crack in that ravine. If the ravine were sealed, wouldn’t she fall back into the hands of the underworld people?

At that moment, I followed Nangong Haoran and the others back to the outpost at the underworld fissure.

The outpost stood at the fissure’s exit, surrounded by high walls guarded by soldiers.

“In the underworld fissure, all firearms are completely useless. Only exorcists can kill the dead cultivators and underworld beasts. Once the exorcists can no longer hold the line, these soldiers’ lives are all that can fill the gap. When the soldiers’ lives are spent, all of Western Liang will become a living hell,” Nangong Haoran said calmly.

From Nangong Haoran, I learned that among the humanoid beings appearing in the underworld fissure, those with green skin were dead thralls, roughly equivalent to first- through third-rank novice exorcists. Those with pale blue skin were dead cultivators, and the deeper the blue, the stronger they were.

“By the way, you still haven’t told me how you entered this underworld fissure,” Nangong Haoran said.

“I discovered a yin vein. While tracing its source, I found myself at the Soul-Burial Sand River of the Moon Tribe. When I was examining it, Qu Yuanshan ambushed me and I fell into the river...” I recounted everything that had happened.

“Qu Yuanshan, that despicable bastard. I’ll take this grudge upon myself for you,” Nangong Haoran said coldly.

“No need. I’ll avenge it myself,” I said evenly.

Nangong Haoran nodded, then said thoughtfully, “According to what you said, the source of the yin vein beneath the sand river is the world of the dead, and it has its own set of rules. And that giant stone eye—very likely it is a passage leading to the true underworld.”

“If that stone eye were destroyed, would the passage be closed? Wouldn’t this underworld fissure cease to exist as well?” I said.

“That’s only speculation, unless we can descend into that world of the dead again,” Nangong Haoran said.

“I don’t even know whether I could reach it if I went down again. In fact, I might jump down and never come back alive,” I said with a bitter smile.

“I’ll report this matter. Let the people above make the decision,” Nangong Haoran said.

Then he looked at me and continued, “That strike you used to kill the spider-bodied beast was truly astonishing. If it had been me, I wouldn’t dare say I could have blocked it.”

I was startled. That blade strike did seem different now that I thought about it.

Nangong Haoran left. I stood atop the high wall, smoking and thinking about that blow.

At the time, because of Mu Xiaochen’s death, my mind had been nearly blank.

It seemed my right wrist had reacted somehow then.

I raised my hand and looked at the mark there, like a tattoo, trying to sense it, but there was still no reaction at all.

“No response from spiritual power, no response from the mind—what in the world is it? That strike for sure had something to do with this mark,” I muttered to myself.

I pondered for a long time, and then suddenly a thought struck me. Could it be murderous intent? At that time, I seemed to have only one thought: to kill that spider-bodied beast.

Thinking of this, I began to condense my murderous intent.

When it had stacked layer upon layer to the limit, the mark on my wrist finally reacted.