"Oh, really? You'll have no issue with me trying, then." Li Caiwei dragged Tianming along as she evaded. Right then, Jian Wufeng's sword was slashing toward Li Caiwei's throat. Her pink eyes flashed for a moment and Jian Wufeng hurriedly closed his eyes, but his sword didn't slow down at all.
"Come, kill your precious imperial son for me, won't you?" She pulled Tianming in front of her just as the ferocious sword ki was about to touch her. Before the blade even cut into Tianming, the ki alone caused many bloody streaks to appear on his face, forcing Jian Wufeng to stop his strike.
"Li Caiwei is trying to abduct the imperial son!"
When news of that spread, more and more people gathered. Li Caiwei must've been really desperate to do something so risky, but no doubt part of her decision was backed by her own confidence. However, Xuanyuan Yu and Jian Wufeng alone had kept her busy for quite some time. She quickly dashed backward after using Tianming as a shield, with Xuanyuan Yu and her dragons tailing them, unleashing multiple abilities at once. However, Li Caiwei kept waving Tianming around, forcing them to stop the attacks.
"Don't even bother escaping! Our Nine Dragon Formation is activated. You won't be able to leave! It's pointless!" Xuanyuan Yu cried.
However, Li Caiwei didn't seem the least bit bothered. She zipped across the snowy landscape like an illusory shadow, dragging Tianming behind her. A dragon breath swooshed past her, chilling her for a split second before she broke out of the blizzard. By now, more and more people were giving chase and some had even circled around in front of her to intercept her.
"How exciting." She smirked as fragrant mist began emanating from her body. Tianming knew how terrifying she truly was, as he was right by her side. Li Caiwei was a prodigal daughter with countless astounding feats to her name, and the fact that she dared to openly abduct him in the sect was a testament to her courage.
The fragrance was a hallucinogenic toxin that caused anyone that smelled it to have countless visions. Even with Tianming's Soul Tower, the world he saw still shifted and morphed. The ones with weaker resistance to the technique were rendered completely immobile, allowing her to easily slip past them and reach the very border of the Nine Dragon Formation at the edge of Taiji Peak Lake. Once she broke out, the rest would have a hard time catching up to her.
After forcing a few elites of the sect away, Li Caiwei charged into the first layer of the formation, the Truefiend Dragonbind Formation. Within it, a black mist began forming dragon-like spirit hazards that attacked her in unison.
The fact that she snuck in by adopting Palace Lord Yi's identity means that she was able to trick the Nine Dragon Formation. However, she won't have that easy a time with brute force, Tianming thought calmly. He wasn't too bothered yet, as Li Caiwei's aim was obviously to force him to open the Kilostar Formation, so he should be fine until then at least. I hope someone comes to stop her soon!
Tianming had a feeling that she was a master of formations. She moved seductively as she evaded fatal blows without exerting the slightest bit of unnecessary effort. Tianming, suspended behind her, felt her hair brushing against his face like blades. It hurt so much that he cursed all eighteen generations of her ancestors.
"Huh, you still appear to be rather calm," she said with a smile.
"The fact that the famous lunar master came to abduct a little junior like me is something to take pride in. Not to mention, there’s so many people chasing us down, so why should I be anxious?"
"You have a way with words, I'll give you that, brat." As she spoke, she crossed into the next layer of the formation completely unscathed. While the formation was good at stopping a large number of people from passing through, it didn't seem to have much of an effect on her. She seemed to know the formation far too well and always narrowly avoided the obstacles thrown her way, as if she'd rehearsed for it all. She definitely hadn't come unprepared.
"Oh, guess you're not going to be able to escape after all," Tianming said when he saw the flash of a sword coming their way, behind which were four large phoenixes. Each of them had nine hundred stars. Standing right in front of them was a man in green robes that was covered entirely in flames. The flash of the sword was none other than Jian Wuyi, and the one behind him was Fang Taiqing.
"Li Caiwei, let the imperial son go!" Fang Taiqing cried from behind them.
"The three great slave houses! Forget it!" She smirked as the sword flash sealed off her escape route. She tied Tianming to her back and angled him in whichever direction the attacks were coming from. "Well? Are you even trying to hit me?"
"Don't get too cocky just yet!" Fang Taiqing said when he finally caught up after Jian Wuyi intercepted her. He was much stronger than Li Caiwei, but she didn't have any intention of engaging him at all and focused solely on escape.
Now, Tianming was tied fast to her back and even his face was pressed against the back of her head. He couldn't see anything; all he could smell was the fragrance she emitted from before and it felt rather nauseating. Not to mention, her quick movements were a little too fast for him. All he heard was the wind swooshing around him and the explosions of abilities as Li Caiwei made it through one layer after another, with Fang Taiqing, Jian Wuyi, and hundreds of other tribulation elders chasing behind her.
The countless explosions of a fight between the strongest elites on the continent caused quite a huge spectacle and reminded Tianming of how puny he still was in the grand scheme of things. Not to mention, the youngest among them was Li Caiwei, who was only about a century old, but the pursuers were all geniuses in their own right, too.
Tianming was being flung around so hard that he was about to go insane. From time to time, the attacks from Fang Taiqing and the rest would strike him, but would mostly be mitigated by the Fatedream Shawl. Otherwise, he would've long been torn apart. The whole chase lasted fifteen minutes.
All of a sudden, Tianming smelled blood and heard Li Caiwei cry out in pain. Blood even dripped onto his face.
"Fuck this shit!" she cursed with a shaky voice, obviously injured in some capacity. It turned out that her abdomen had been pierced by Jian Wuyi's sword flash, which had left a bloody hole behind, and a green flame burned on her left arm. That was the Sterling House of Fang's strongest flame: the Sterling Godflame. It completely charred her left arm before melting it into a bloody mush. That was a huge price for her to pay as a result of the risky move she had pulled, and it was all thanks to Tianming not going to the Kilostar Domain.
"Let me go or you'll definitely die!" he growled.
"Shut up, you!" She grit her teeth and continued to escape. She was in the territory of the Archaion Sect and couldn’t afford to be held back. Even Feng Qingyu would die here without a doubt if he was overwhelmed, let alone her, but she was doing it all for the starmap.
"Li Caiwei, let the imperial son go and we'll spare you! Otherwise, you'll know no mercy!" Fang Taiqing roared. Now, a few third-origin tribulation elders were catching up and attacked at the same time, among them Xuanyuan Yu and Jian Wufeng.
"Then kill him first!" She didn't intend to stop in the slightest, but used Tianming as a shield instead. While she had many pursuers, they couldn't do much so long as Tianming was held hostage. The pursuit continued with her suffering some minor injuries, but not enough to make her give up.
Eventually, she reached the last layer of the formation, much to Fang Taiqing and the others' frustration. They had only just found out that she had been impersonating Yi Xingyin the whole time—something they could never have imagined beforehand. And with Tianming held hostage, they had no other option.
"Sect Master, if this goes on, she'll escape the formation! What do we do?"
"She's already injured, so she'll eventually wear herself out! Don't panic!"
As long as they had an opportunity to heavily wound her, all would be well. All of a sudden, the sky brightened and Tianming knew that she had managed to leave the Nine Dragon Formation.
"Keep on chasing! I'll be waiting to see your troops all wiped out! Fang Taiqing, you’d better not run like a coward! I want to watch you die!" she cried as she soared away from Taiji Peak Lake.
Kilostar Domain was high up in the skies, and that was where she was heading. Meanwhile, the elites of the sect kept giving chase, with Jian Wuyi's swordbeast-infused longsword homing in on them. His strike was too fast.
"Haha!" Li Caiwei struck with her palm and stopped the sword, but Fang Taiqing came from the other direction. The phoenix feather in his hand pierced through space and embedded itself in her arm, causing her to let out a somewhat erotic moan of pain, but she didn't stop gaining altitude.
There were too many pursuers and she couldn't defeat them all, so summoning any lifebound beast would be pointless and might even slow her down. Borrowing the force from deflecting Jian Wuyi's sword, she continued rising and widened the distance between her and her hundreds of pursuers.
It was a truly shocking feat, one that had almost cost her life. Her face was pale from the injuries she had suffered, but Tianming felt that she stood a good chance in succeeding in bringing him to the Kilostar Domain.