Chapter 57: Broken Stele, Corroded Dao Marks
A cold wind, carrying sand and grit, swept across the broken stele in the Ancient Battlefield. Lu Qingyang squatted on the cracked basalt, licking his notched dagger. In the distance, Taiyi Pavilion's cloud boat hovered in the bone-chilling mist, its soul 引魂 lamp at the prow making his Dantian swell—the half demonic infant inner core he had swallowed three days ago was currently gnawing at the dragon blood grass roots in the qingmu spirit pearl space.
"Daoist Lu is quite generous," a purple-robed female Cultivator said, floating gracefully on a green jade abacus, the divination copper coins dangling from her skirt jingling. Her fingertips held a half-broken Formation Flag, its charred lightning pattern perfectly matching the broken blade in Lu Qingyang's sleeve.
The young man wiped his dagger on his pant leg, then grinned, revealing his blood-flecked fangs: "If Fairy Shen is willing to trade three barrier-breaking talismans from Tianji Pavilion, Mr. Lu would even hand over the Elder of the Joyous Union Sect's corpse he dug up last night." As he spoke, he deliberately kicked the bulging shroud at his feet; a faint scent of rouge mixed with the stench of decay.
Seven copper coins flew from Shen Xingmou's sleeve, arranging themselves into the Big Dipper in mid-air. When the fifth copper coin glowed with a bloody light, the qingmu spirit pearl in Lu Qingyang's embrace suddenly trembled, and the hourglass illusion within the pearl actually overlapped with the trajectory of the copper coins. He took half a step back, stepping on a loose demon-suppressing brick, and a muffled clang of chains breaking came from underground.
"Be careful!" The moment Shen Xingmou's abacus threads entangled Lu Qingyang's ankle, the entire basalt ground collapsed. Three-hundred-year-old Sword Marks suddenly seemed to come alive, swirling and pulling the two into a Sword Qi vortex. In the inverted world, Lu Qingyang glimpsed half a broken stele, the characters "Tai Xu" on it being stained an eerie purplish-gold by his blood.
The demonic infant in the qingmu spirit pearl space suddenly shrieked, and Lu Qingyang's Divine Sense felt as if struck by lightning. In a daze, he saw Shen Xingmou's copper coin formation being shredded by Sword Qi. He yanked off the abacus threads, throwing the female Cultivator towards the nearest formation eye stone pillar. He, however, used the recoil to lunge towards the broken stele. From the blood mist spraying from the Sword Qi-slashed wound on his lower back, tiny golden specks were mixed in.
"The essence blood of a Foundation Establishment Cultivator?" Shen Xingmou coughed up bruises as she hit the stone pillar, her beautiful eyes wide. She clearly remembered that when she first met this cunning boy in the black market half a month ago, he had only just broken through to the seventh level of Qi Condensation.
Lu Qingyang's palm pressed firmly against the broken stele, and the qingmu spirit pearl transformed into a towering divine tree in his Sea of Consciousness. The inscriptions on the stele burrowed into his Meridians like tadpoles, illuminating seventy-two hidden acupoints along the way. When the last Dao Mark was branded into his Dantian, the resentment Qi of the entire Ancient Battlefield suddenly condensed into a black Dragon, causing the Taiyi Pavilion's cloud boat's protective formation to flicker erratically.
"So, Fairy Shen was after the Legacy of the Tai Xu Sword Sect." Lu Qingyang wiped a trickle of blood from his nose; the broken blade that had slipped from his sleeve was now covered in moss. He kicked away a skull engraved with the Hehuan Sect's emblem, the bone fragment accurately embedding itself into the formation eye groove behind Shen Xingmou: "It's a pity that the 'Tai Xu Heart-Questioning Art' requires Devilish Qi as an lead, and your Tianji Pavilion's Righteous Path Cultivation Technique might be..."
Before he could finish speaking, chains surging from underground had already wrapped around his ankles. The demonic infant inner core exploded into black mist in the qingmu spirit pearl space, and the feedback of Divine Sense power actually allowed Lu Qingyang to discern the inscriptions on the chains—they were precisely the secret Restriction patterns of Taiyi Pavilion that the Old Drunkard had drunkenly drawn on the table three years ago.
Shen Xingmou's copper coin formation suddenly enveloped both of them. She bit her tongue and spat blood onto the broken Formation Flag: "If Fellow Daoist Lu is willing to hand over three drops of his heart blood, I have a way to break these demon-binding chains." As she spoke, the soul-capturing needle hidden in her sleeve was already pressed against Lu Qingyang's back, the soul-separating powder coating the needle tip emitting green smoke as it touched his sweat-dampened clothes.
Lu Qingyang suddenly scoffed, his blood-stained index finger poking towards the female Cultivator's glabella: "Fairy, do you know what my qingmu spirit pearl likes to devour most?" The moment the qingmu spirit pearl's illusion appeared above their heads, the twin lotus hairpin in Shen Xingmou's hair suddenly withered, and the tracking Gu hidden in the flower pistil turned to ash.
A muffled roar came from underground, and the seventy-two demon-suppressing pillars exploded one after another. Lu Qingyang seized the opportunity to snap the demon-binding chains, then pushed Shen Xingmou towards the black Dragon of resentment Qi that was rushing at them. The jade pendant at the female Cultivator's waist shattered into powder, and within the bursting clear light, the illusion of a Tianji Pavilion Elder actually appeared.
"You junior are courting death!" The illusion waved its sleeve, stirring up a strong wind, but Lu Qingyang used the momentum to fly backward towards the broken stele. The stele's purplish-gold light flared, swallowing him into a distorted spatial rift. His last glimpse was of Shen Xingmou's protective Magic Treasure being torn apart by the black Dragon, and the young man's blood-stained lips curved into a mocking arc: "Fairy, next time you plot against someone, remember that the Hehuan Sect's rouge will attract corpse puppets."
A dripping sound echoed in the darkness.
Lu Qingyang counted three hundred heartbeats in the chaotic flow of space-time before the hourglass in the qingmu spirit pearl space finally ran out. When he stumbled and fell into an Immortal Cave, the fragments of the broken stele in his arms resonated with the Sword Marks on the wall. The bronze lamp on the stone table suddenly ignited, illuminating the white bones sitting opposite—a broken blade, the other half of the one in his sleeve, was stuck in the heart of the Daoist robe.
"That old geezer's ghost lingers..." Lu Qingyang spat out a mouthful of blood, the Divine Sense he condensed at his fingertips as fine as hair. When he detected the residual Sword Intent in the white bones' Dantian, the qingmu spirit pearl suddenly broke free from his control, greedily devouring the Tai Xu Sword Qi that had accumulated in the bones for three hundred years. The withered dragon blood grass in the pearl grew wildly, instantly bearing seven vermilion fruits with golden patterns.
The crisp sound of a Formation breaking came from outside the Immortal Cave. Lu Qingyang shoved a handful of Qi-replenishing pills into his mouth and rolled into a hidden compartment within the stone coffin. When the Sword Light of the Taiyi Pavilion Cultivators illuminated the room, he crushed one of the vermilion fruits. The moment the sweet, pungent juice seeped into the stone coffin, the erotic paintings on the inner wall of the coffin lid transformed into a complete map of the Tai Xu Sword Sect's ley lines.
"Senior Brother Ye, there's a spatial fluctuation here!"
"Dig three feet deep; we must find that kid..."
The conversations faded as the search moved away, but Lu Qingyang's pupils contracted as he stared at the poem in the corner of the erotic painting. The handwriting was clearly the same as the last words the Old Drunkard had written on a blood-stained handkerchief before his death. A soft click of a mechanism turning suddenly came from the bottom of the coffin, and the faint glow of Pill Furnace embers was vaguely visible at the end of a secret passage.