txolops Chapter 177 Great Yan Fengling, Blood Sword Descends
Chapter 177 Great Yan Fengling, Blood Sword Descends
With a tap of the fingertip, one is instantly transported to Chapter 177, the magnificent world of the Great Yan Fengling, where the Blood Sword descends.
The wind from Fengling City lashed my face like barbed ice blades.
The once smooth bluestone streets are now riddled with potholes, and dark red blood mud has frozen into hard lumps between the stones.
Beside the mass grave in the south of the city, shallow pits were dug into the loess soil.
Hua Moyang knelt in the mud, all ten of her fingers covered in blood, her nails curled off, revealing the tender, bright red flesh beneath.
She was dressed in a tattered coarse linen dress. If it weren't for the royal token in her arms, no one would have guessed that this girl, who dug in the dirt like a wild dog, had the blood of the Great Yan royal family flowing through her veins.
More than ten years ago, the Emperor of Great Yan, after getting drunk, had sex with a lowly palace maid who was responsible for holding lamps, and she survived as an illegitimate child.
She had no official status, no respectable dignity, and didn't even know what her high and mighty father, the emperor, looked like.
Her mother died in the infighting within the palace, and when she was ten years old, she was banished to the remote border city of Fengling in the Great Yan by a cold imperial decree, like being swept up in the trash.
"Grandma Li, the soil is a bit hard. Wait a little longer, I'll be done digging soon."
Hua Moyang's chapped lips twitched slightly, her voice hoarse like two whetstones rubbing together.
Beside her lay a shriveled corpse.
It was an old woman, her gray hair stuck to her scalp with blood, her once kind face was extremely distorted, her eyeballs bulging out, and there was a fist-sized blood hole in her chest.
The vital energy within was cruelly drained, leaving not a single drop of blood.
Hua Moyang looked at the horrible blood hole, tears welling up in her eyes, but she couldn't bring herself to cry.
The mutilated body belonged to Granny Li, who lived next door and sold steamed buns.
Hua Moyang still remembers the winter when she was first exiled to Fengling City.
Heavy snow sealed off the city, and the old eunuch in charge of taking care of her ran away with a small amount of silver from the royal family.
She was hungry and cold, huddled in the drafty, dilapidated courtyard, thinking she would freeze to death.
It was Granny Li who pushed open the broken wooden door.
In the wind and snow, the old man's rough hands held a bowl of steaming cabbage and pork buns.
There wasn't much meat, but the aroma of lard and fermented wheat flour was the warmest smell Hua Moyang had ever experienced in her life.
"Poor child, the royal family doesn't recognize you, but this old woman does. As long as I have some dough to eat, you won't starve."
That was the first thing Granny Li said to her.
From then on, Hua Moyang became a regular customer at Granny Li's steamed bun shop.
Every morning, while Fengling City was still shrouded in the morning mist, she would run to help start the fire and in return receive two hot steamed buns.
But now, those hands that once kneaded countless plump, white buns lie stiffly in the mud, like two pieces of dead wood.
Hua Moyang gritted her teeth and covered Granny Li's body with handfuls of yellow soil, concealing her tragic death.
After burying Granny Li, she dragged her numb legs to the next pit.
There lay a burly, headless male corpse.
Even without a head, Hua Moyang recognized him.
That was Wang the blacksmith from the blacksmith shop in the west of the city.
Wang the blacksmith was mute and had a bad temper; the local thugs and ruffians were all afraid of him.
But Hua Moyang is not afraid.
When she was fifteen, a few thugs in the city, lusting after her looks, broke into her yard.
It was blacksmith Wang who rushed in with a red-hot iron hammer, smashing the legs of two thugs and scaring the gang of villains away.
Later, Wang the blacksmith built a thatched shed in her yard and worked as a blacksmith in the shed every night.
With the clanging sound of blacksmithing around, Hua Moyang felt exceptionally at ease sleeping at night.
Just half a month ago was Hua Moyang's sixteenth birthday.
The mute blacksmith used a piece of fine, cold iron to clumsily hammer away all night, grinding it into an iron hairpin carved with forsythia flowers for her.
He used sign language to tell Hua Moyang that if anyone bullied her again, she should use this hairpin to stab them.
The iron hairpin is now stuck in Hua Moyang's messy hair bun.
The tall, imposing blacksmith Wang, who had protected her for three years, had his head hung on the city gate tower of Fengling City, his chest hollowed out, and his burly body withered like a tattered, leaky cowhide.
"Uncle Wang, Mo Yang doesn't have the strength to dig a big pit, so please be a little cramped up."
Hua Moyang covered Wang the blacksmith with yellow earth, wiped her blood-stained cheek with the back of her hand, and looked up at the desolate city.
The doors of every house along the entire bluestone street were wide open.
Everywhere you look, there are mummified corpses with large holes ripped out of their chests.
It all happened three days ago.
That evening, a dark red cloud drifted in from the horizon.
A group of evil cultivators dressed in blood-red robes descended from the clouds and sealed the four gates of Fengling City.
They claimed to be acting on the orders of the envoy from the Central Plains to collect blood offerings in the mortal realm.
Those evil cultivators carried a strange bead and killed anyone they saw.
The defenders of Fengling City attempted to resist, but were instantly sliced into pieces by the flying crimson chains.
Screams, cries, and pleas for mercy echoed through the night sky of Fengling City that night.
To cover Hua Moyang's escape from the city, Wang the blacksmith swung his large iron hammer at a wicked cultivator, only to have his head sliced off by the cultivator's casual, bloody blade.
Granny Li was drained of her blood by an evil cultivator while trying to protect several children hiding in the cellar of a steamed bun shop.
These neighbors who once showed endless kindness to Hua Moyang, these ordinary people who were barely surviving in this chaotic world, were not even as good as ants in the eyes of those high and mighty cultivators. They were just weeds used to extract blood coagulation beads.
Hua Moyang was lucky; she was pushed into a hidden dry well by Wang the blacksmith and escaped death.
When she crawled out again, Fengling City had become a living hell.
Nine out of ten houses are empty, and the scene is full of devastation.
"Why... we just wanted to live, what did we do wrong?"
Hua Moyang knelt amidst the corpses scattered on the ground, letting out a desperate, beast-like roar.
The heavens did not respond to her; instead, the sound that followed was a series of hurried footsteps.
"Oh, there's still one fish that slipped through the net and wasn't completely squeezed dry."
A flippant and cruel voice came from the mist of the mass grave.
Hua Moyang suddenly turned around.
Three evil cultivators dressed in blood-red robes walked over, chatting and laughing, stepping over the corpses on the ground.
They each tossed several thumb-sized, red-glowing blood clots in their hands.
The leader, a malevolent cultivator with triangular eyes, looked Hua Moyang up and down before suddenly sticking out his tongue and licking his lips.
"Although she's a bit dirty, her bone structure is exceptionally good. Hmm? This girl seems to carry a trace of dragon energy in her blood and qi..."
The triangular-eyed evil cultivator's eyes lit up, as if he had seen some rare treasure.
"The bloodline of the mortal royal family! The envoy said that if we could obtain blood containing royal dragon energy and refine it into a condensed pearl, its effects would be equivalent to those of tens of thousands of ordinary mortals! Today, it's our brothers' turn to have good fortune!"
Upon hearing this, the other two evil cultivators also revealed greedy, sinister smiles and approached Hua Moyang step by step.
Hua Moyang didn't run away. She knew she couldn't escape. As a mortal, she didn't even have the right to commit suicide in front of these cultivators who could fly through the clouds.
She slowly stood up, pulled the cold iron hairpin that the blacksmith Wang had given her from her hair bun, held the hairpin in both hands, pointed the tip at her heart, and her eyes revealed a chilling calm.
The triangular-eyed evil cultivator stopped in his tracks, watching her as if she were a spectator, and let out a piercing, maniacal laugh.
"Hahaha! You want to die in front of our Blood Fiend Sect? Do you think that just because your heart meridian is severed, we can't draw blood from you? Little girl, mortals are nothing but weeds in front of cultivators."
He raised his right hand, and a stench of blood condensed in his palm.
"Hand over your heart's blood obediently, and I'll grant you a quick death. Otherwise, I'll extract your soul and roast it over blood-fire for forty-nine days!"
Having said that, the triangular-eyed evil cultivator made a grabbing motion in the air, and a large, blood-red handprint roared toward Hua Moyang.
Hua Moyang closed her eyes, and with a sudden burst of strength, she was about to pierce the hairpin into her heart.
At this critical moment.
"boom!"
A loud bang suddenly echoed in the sky.
That was not the sound of thunder, but the sound of some terrifying force, seemingly exceeding the limits of what this world could contain, forcibly squeezing into this space.
The crimson handprint unleashed by the triangular-eyed evil cultivator seemed to have struck an invisible wall a foot away from Hua Moyang, instantly disintegrating into a sky full of blood mist.
"What's going on?!"
The three evil cultivators' expressions changed drastically, and they abruptly looked up at the sky.
Hua Moyang also felt an unprecedented sense of oppression. She opened her eyes and stared blankly at the sky.
The leaden-gray clouds above Fengling City were instantly dyed a chilling scarlet red.
It wasn't the red of the setting sun, but the bright red that had just gushed from a major artery, carrying warmth and a fishy smell!
An extremely heavy, bloody smell crashed down like a mountain range.
The entire mass grave, the entire Fengling City.
All the blood and mud on the ground, all the filthy blood remaining on the corpses, at this moment, all lost the restraint of gravity.
Droplets of blood floated against gravity from the ground into the air.
Thousands of blood droplets gathered in the sky, transforming into an inverted sea of blood.
"Snap!"
Crimson lightning tore through the sky amidst the sea of blood, illuminating every indomitable wreckage in Fengling City.
"This...this is? Golden Core? No! Nascent Soul?! How could such a powerful being have descended here?!"
The greed on the triangular-eyed evil cultivator's face instantly turned into extreme fear.
He found himself stiff all over, and the Blood Fiend Technique within him was not only out of his control, but was also beginning to frantically attack his meridians.
The other two evil cultivators were so frightened that their knees buckled and they knelt directly in the mud, blood uncontrollably gushing from their seven orifices.
In their terrified gazes, the churning sea of blood in the sky was pushed aside to the left and right by an invisible hand.
A figure emerged from the depths of the sea of blood.
The newcomer wore a wide, dark red robe and stood barefoot in the void.
With each step, a blood-red lotus ripple spreads across the space beneath their feet.
His long hair, like blood-soaked red silk, was casually draped over his shoulders.
His face was pale and eerie, and the blood-red vertical line between his eyebrows resembled an eye leading to the deepest hell.
A longsword without a guard, its entire body a dark red, silently circled around his side.
This is Gu Yan's Blood Swordsman clone, a fearsome killing god in the Eastern Continent's demonic path. Today, he descends upon Fengling City with a heart full of bloodlust!
The Blood Swordsman lowered his crimson eyes, looking down at the three evil cultivators of the Blood Fiend Sect below.
It was an absolutely indifferent gaze, like a dragon looking at three maggots writhing at its feet.
"So it was you who used such despicable methods to collect Blood Coagulation Beads?"
The Blood Swordsman's voice echoed in every corner of Fengling City, causing dust to fall from the surrounding dilapidated city walls.
The triangular-eyed evil cultivator, enduring the excruciating pain of his ruptured meridians, shouted with all his might, "Senior... we are acting on the orders of the envoy from Zhongzhou! Please, senior, consider the fate of Zhongzhou..."
"Noisy."
The Blood Swordsman had no patience to listen to the nonsense of ants. He raised his eyelids and glanced lightly at the three evil cultivators.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The three Blood Fiend Sect evil cultivators, all at the early Foundation Establishment stage, didn't even have time to scream before their bodies exploded from the inside.
Their flesh, bones, and even souls were instantly crushed into the purest blood mist by a domineering, homologous demonic power.
Three wisps of blood mist converged in mid-air into a thumb-sized, crystal-clear, top-grade blood crystal, which then obediently flew into the Blood Swordsman's palm.
A gentle breeze blew by, and the mass grave returned to its deathly silence, as if those three evil cultivators had never existed in this world.
Hua Moyang stood there, holding the hairpin, dumbfounded.
She stared blankly at the red-robed man in mid-air, who seemed like a god or a demon.
She didn't understand what a cultivator was, nor did she understand what the suppression of realms meant.
All she knew was that this newly arrived man could kill those three arrogant villains as easily as stepping on three ants.
The Blood Swordsman landed slowly, his toes touching the muddy mass grave, yet not a speck of dust remained on his feet.
He walked up to Hua Moyang, his scarlet eyes sweeping over her blood-soaked hands and the newly piled graves on the ground.
Although Gu Yan's main body was in the Liuyun Sect, his clone's perception was completely synchronized with his.
Seeing the devastation in the city and witnessing this mortal desperately trying to uphold his dignity, Gu Yan's human heart unexpectedly stirred with a hint of murderous intent towards the Central Plains Demonic Sect.
The Blood Swordsman raised his pale, slender hand, and gently touched Hua Moyang's brow with his long index finger.
A surge of pure and gentle spiritual energy flowed into her body, instantly repairing her curled nails and all her external injuries.
"Mortal, put down your hairpin."
The Blood Swordsman's hoarse voice rang in Hua Moyang's ears.
"Tell me, where is that so-called envoy from Zhongzhou?"
Looking at those eyes that had no whites, only endless crimson, Hua Moyang should have felt fear, but instead, a surge of vengeful fervor welled up within her.
She turned around and pointed to the city lord's mansion in the very center of Fengling City, which was shrouded in a blood-red array.
"He's there! They dragged everyone in the city into there!"
The Blood Swordsman looked in the direction she was pointing.
Above the city lord's mansion, a blood-red beam of light, as thick as a water vat, shot straight into the sky.
That was a blood pool array formed by the refining of countless mortals.
"very good."
A cruel smile curled at the corner of the Blood Swordsman's lips, and the Blood Sword without a hilt beside him emitted a high-pitched sword cry.
His dark red robe billowed in the wind as the Blood Swordsman transformed into a streak of blood-red light that pierced the heavens, carrying boundless pressure and killing intent as he hurtled straight toward the Fengling City Lord's Mansion!