piratefiction Chapter 124 The Evil Bandits' Defeated Defeat
Chapter 124 The Evil Bandits' Defeated Defeat
Taking advantage of the enemy's disarray, the morale of the human alliance soared.
"May the Martial Emperor protect us! We will drive back the evil traitors!"
Zhao Tiejun was the first to react. He pulled the heavy sword from the ground; the nick on the blade was clearly visible in the starlight, but he didn't care. He raised the sword above his head, roared, and charged towards the nearest thug.
The sound was like a spark that ignited the entire battlefield.
Leng Feng's sword flashed, its blade as cold and sharp as frost. He seized upon the momentary lapse in concentration of the early-stage Transformation Realm evil disciple before him, slashing down with his blade. The blade sliced diagonally from the disciple's shoulder blade to his ribs, the sound of bones shattering echoing clearly across the battlefield. The evil disciple screamed and fell to the ground. Leng Feng pressed his foot against his chest, the tip of his sword against his throat. He didn't kill him, but he ensured the disciple would never rise again.
Chu Fan swiftly deployed a trapping and killing formation, layering the Myriad Manifestations Dismantling Formation with the trapping and killing formation. Golden array patterns, like chains, wrapped around several fleeing Qin family members, firmly imprisoning them in place. They struggled a few times, but found that the more they struggled, the tighter the array patterns became, and their faces turned ashen as they gave up resisting.
Su Ling'er unleashed a barrage of pills. Purifying Pill, Blazing Flame Pill, and Paralyzing Pill were used in succession, flames and medicinal mist intertwining as she relentlessly reaped the remaining enemies. One evil disciple's robes were set ablaze by the righteous flames of the Purifying Pill, and he screamed and rolled on the ground; a member of the Qin family was enveloped in the medicinal mist of the Paralyzing Pill, his steps faltering, and he was slashed to the ground by a new student who caught up from behind.
After a moment of respite, Su Muyue activated the array flags again, and the Evil-Repelling Array was deployed once more. Golden array patterns spread outwards from beneath her feet, sweeping away the scattered and fleeing evil energy and trapping one by one the evil followers who tried to slip away in the chaos.
The tide of battle has turned completely.
The human alliance shifted from a defensive posture to a counter-offensive, from passive defense to proactive attacks. They launched a fierce assault on the evil cultivators, who fled in disarray, abandoning their armor and weapons. Some knelt in surrender, some abandoned their companions and fled alone, and some collapsed to the ground, their eyes vacant, as if they had lost their souls.
The star-patterned light shield slowly contracted, shrinking from several feet wide to about ten feet, then from about ten feet to several feet, finally transforming into thousands of starlight rays that fell back into Lin Chen's body through the void. Each starlight ray was a point of starlight, densely packed, like fireflies returning to their nests, like a galaxy flowing backwards, each one entering his chest, merging into his dantian, and flowing into his Star Martial Core.
The light of the illusory image of the Martial Emperor gradually dimmed.
The figure went from clear to blurry, from blurry to transparent, from transparent into a wisp of green smoke, and finally vanished completely into the air. Before disappearing, those eyes that had seen through a thousand years seemed to shift slightly, their gaze falling on Lin Chen. There were no instructions, no expectations in that gaze, only a calm, relieved expression, as if he could finally leave in peace. And then he vanished.
The moment the illusory image of the Martial Emperor disappeared, a tremendous sense of emptiness surged into Lin Chen's heart. It wasn't fatigue, nor exhaustion, but a feeling of being hollowed out—like a house where all the furniture had been removed, leaving only four empty walls and a vast emptiness.
His body swayed slightly.
It wasn't an exaggerated swaying; just a slight tilt of the shoulders and a slight bend of the knees—the movements were so small they were almost imperceptible. But behind that swaying was the empty core of the Star Martial Realm within the dantian—its rotation speed had dropped from its limit to its lowest, as slow as an old clock, each tick heavy and laborious. The Star Power in the twelve meridians had gone from abundant to sparse, like a great river reduced to a trickle, barely maintaining its most basic function.
His face was pale, his lips were also pale, and there were fine beads of sweat on his forehead. It was the kind of sweat that is cold, not hot.
Su Muyue's heart tightened. She moved almost the instant Lin Chen swayed—not by running, but by instinct. She reached out and supported his arm, feeling a chill the moment her fingers touched his skin. She channeled her inner energy into him, not to heal or replenish his strength, but simply to stabilize his blood and qi, like a hand supporting something about to collapse—nothing more, just holding him there.
"Don't push yourself." Her voice wasn't loud, but her tone was urgent, so urgent that she didn't even realize she was anxious. "Quickly regulate your breathing and recover."
Lin Chen waved his hand lightly, as if he didn't even have the strength to lift it. But he still straightened up, not leaning on her, but using her support to steady himself. His gaze went past her shoulder, towards the direction of the evil elder.
"The tide has turned." His voice wasn't loud, but in the now quiet battlefield, everyone heard him clearly. "Will you still put up a last-ditch resistance?"
The old man from the evil race looked around.
Half of his evil followers had been killed or wounded, and most of the survivors were injured, their morale shattered. A dozen or so black-robed corpses lay scattered across the battlefield, some prone, some supine, some curled up in a ball, blood still seeping from their wounds. The Qin family members scattered and fled; some crawled into secret passages, some ran into the woods, and some simply knelt on the ground, hands covering their heads, too lazy to even run. The two Qin family guards, both at the mid-stage of the Transformation Realm, were in dire straits. One had been injured in the meridians by Lin Chen's Star River Myriad Tribulations Slash, his face ashen, leaning against a tree, gasping for breath; the other had a deep, bone-revealing wound on his arm, bleeding profusely, hastily wrapped with strips of cloth, the cloth already soaked with blood, still dripping.
A thousand-year plan was about to fall apart.
Despair flashed in the eyes of the old man from the evil race. It wasn't a temporary setback, but the helplessness of being utterly defeated at the last moment after centuries of waiting, planning, and forbearance. He had calculated everything—he had foreseen Qin Cang's cooperation, the opening time of the secret realm, the upper limit of the new students' strength, and all the weaknesses of humanity. But he hadn't foreseen the Martial Emperor's phantom reappearing. That person from a thousand years ago was dead, but his will lived on, residing within the body of a sixteen-year-old boy.