Ouyang Qing’s figure appeared quietly at the garden’s arched entrance amidst the sound of a bell, her face covered by white gauze, her figure slim, with a longsword with a white tassel hanging upside down behind her.
"Greetings to Brother Zhou," Ouyang Qing revealed a tender smile and nodded slightly with her head lowered.
"Ouyang Qing... even with two at the Third Layer, if this old man wants to escape, who among you can stop me?" Zhou Jing narrowed his eyes slightly.
"Just the two of us, naturally we can’t stop Brother Zhou," Kong Yuhui, however, was confident.
Lin Xin, who was in the crowd, tensed up. He had thought he wouldn’t need to take action, but now he realized that Zhou Jing was still formidable despite being poisoned.
Gently gripping the hilt, he slowly stood up.
Cheng Ruofei and Jiang Yue’er were hiding in front of him, intently watching the changes in the scene, completely unaware of his movements.
Hiss...
The Solar Yang Talisman Sword was slowly drawn from its sheath. Lin Xin gripped the sword with his right hand, discarded the scabbard, and slowly walked towards Zhou Jing’s back.
"How about plus me?" he said, his expression darkening, the tip of his sword pointing diagonally towards the ground.
"Lin Xin?" Cheng Ruofei seemed to recognize his voice, turned her head to look, and her eyes suddenly widened.
"You?!"
"Brother Zhou, it seems today you must die..." Lin Xin slowly walked out from his hiding place, holding the longsword horizontally in front of him, a faint wave of heat slowly swirling around the blade.
Zhou Jing squinted his eyes and turned his head slightly to look at Lin Xin behind him.
"Flameless Swordsmanship?"
His expression began to turn grave.
Flameless Swordsmanship was reputed to be one of the strongest sword techniques among the inner martial arts. It almost gave up all other enhancements—speed, strength, sharpness, all lacking. What it possessed was an extremely fierce wave of heat. In exchange, it had an overwhelmingly strong killing power.
Lin Xin, holding the sword, slowly walked behind Zhou Jing and along with Ouyang Qing and Kong Yuhui, formed a perfect triangle, surrounding him.
"Lin... Lin Xin... you?!" Cheng Ruofei couldn’t believe that Lin Xin, who had always shown only the First Layer of Inner Qi, was actually a hidden master of the Third Layer Flameless Swordsmanship.
Jiang Yue’er also covered her mouth with her hands, her eyes widening, turning slowly to follow Lin Xin as he passed by.
The Third Layer! That was a high level that could easily crush them, far surpassing them in terms of Inner Qi, explosive power, speed, and so on.
She couldn’t believe she had looked down on him before, thinking him ridiculous.
Zhou Jing’s expression had become extremely grim. He looked around, his three escape routes tightly blocked.
A gentle breeze blew, and fallen leaves fluttered.
"Hahahaha!"
He suddenly burst into loud laughter.
The laughter spread far, causing Cheng Ruofei and Jiang Yue’er, who were hiding, to feel pain in their eardrums. Both were shocked at how formidable the Fourth Layer’s Golden Jade Decree could be.
But seeing Lin Xin, Kong Yuhui, and the three of them motionless, with only the sound of wind chimes growing louder, and the heat flow around Lin Xin gradually increasing.
Boom!
The ground beneath Zhou Jing suddenly exploded, the stone slabs shattering as his body shot upwards.
At the same time, Kong Yuhui, Ouyang Qing, and Lin Xin simultaneously made their move, rushing at him.
Three longswords stabbed towards Zhou Jing’s head, chest, and shoulder from different angles, the gleaming silver tips forcing his rising figure back down.
Zhou Jing laughed, his left hand longsword vibrating, drawing a semicircle arc, blocking the swords of Ouyang Qing and Kong Yuhui in front of him.
Simultaneously, his right hand flashed with golden light.
"Seamless!" a low shout echoed.
Lin Xin was shocked to see a slender golden needle hidden in Zhou Jing’s right hand, precisely touching the side of his blade.
Dang!
Immediately, a force traveled along the blade.
Instantly, waves of heat erupted, with Lin Xin and Zhou Jing both stepping back a step. Lin Xin was forced back by the blow, while Zhou Jing moved back voluntarily to avoid the heat wave.
"So it’s the Seamless Sword Technique from Golden Jade Sect!" Ouyang Qing sneered. A plume of grey mist erupted from her body, within which one finger pointed straight towards Zhou Jing’s elbow.
"Green Poison Finger?" Zhou Jing’s expression changed as his blade fiercely vibrated, the immense trembling instantly shaking off the swords of Ouyang Qing and Kong Yuhui.
As he was about to dodge, he didn’t realize when a silver sword screen appeared behind him.
Kong Yuhui wore a cold smile, one hand executing the Peacock Swordsmanship, transforming it into a sword screen pressing toward Zhou Jing’s back.
"Got you!"
With a puff, suddenly three flashes of golden light struck fiercely on the three points of Kong Yuhui’s Peacock Swordsmanship.
The sword screen abruptly halted, completely collapsing.
But by that time, the poison mist from Green Poison Finger had already enveloped Zhou Jing.
A faint dizziness attacked his senses. He became anxious, and with a flick of his right hand, he scattered something.
Chi chi chi!
A swath of golden light scattered in all directions. It turned out to be dozens of slender golden needles.
Lin Xin couldn’t dodge in time, his speed far slower than his opponent’s, and he only managed to twist his body slightly when his shoulder was pierced by a golden needle with a chi sound, the needle penetrating straight through and drilling a snow-like hole on his shoulder.
Ouyang Qing also grunted, being the prime target, with seven or eight golden needles shooting towards her, and it was clear she was hit. Beneath the shroud of smoke, the extent of her injuries was unclear.
The only one who wasn’t hit turned out to be Kong Yuhui. But his face flushed, and he was forced to retreat several steps.
The mere power of those three golden needles was terrifyingly huge.
"Dragon Whisker Needle?!" Kong Yuhui’s voice was ice-cold. "I never expected you’d have this trick up your sleeve!"
When Zhou Jing unleashed so many golden needles in one breath, his face also flashed with a trace of white, evidently bearing a heavy burden on his inner strength.
"What a pity...."
Nobody knew what he regretted, whether it was failing to inflict serious damage on the three, or failing to avoid the poison fog of the Green Poison Finger.
Now the three of them once again split up, encircling Zhou Jing in the center anew.
"I really didn’t want to use this move....it’s you who forced me..."
"Go!" Before Zhou Jing could finish speaking, he was interrupted by Kong Yuhui, who was the first to rush towards him with his sword, the sword issuing a continuous jingle like wind chimes.
Lin Xin and Ouyang Qing also charged forward simultaneously.
On one side, the Solar Yang Talisman Sword burst forth with scorching heat, slashing fiercely towards Zhou Jing.
On the other side, the longsword vibrated, driven by inner strength, turning into three points of white light thrusting forth, the Pine Forest Swordsmanship’s ultimate move, the Pine Yang Needle.
What was bizarre was that Zhou Jing, facing the dual swords of the two opponents, wasn’t guarding at all. Instead, he held a sword in one hand for defense while the other hand, holding a golden needle, thrust towards Kong Yuhui.
Even from behind, Lin Xin could see a faint white gleam flickering at the tip of the golden needle.
"A good opportunity!" Although he didn’t know why the opponent was giving up his guard on this side, perhaps wanting to tough out a couple of hits to take out Kong Yuhui first, he couldn’t miss such a chance for anything!
Thinking this, Lin Xin’s right arm, holding the sword, was once again empowered with a burst of inner strength, pouring into the blade as he slashed fiercely towards Zhou Jing.
Meanwhile, Ouyang Qing’s expression shifted slightly, intentionally lagging a half-step behind. With her Green Poison Finger, she subtly changed direction, aiming for the back of Lin Xin’s left side.
The finger technique, light and silent, was extremely fast.
Her index finger drew ever closer and quicker. Lin Xin was completely unaware, focusing all his attention on slashing at Zhou Jing.
"Explode!!"
Suddenly, there was a fierce shout.
Boom! A ring of fire exploded right at the position where Lin Xin, Ouyang Qing, and Zhou Jing were standing.
The reddish-yellow glow of the flames spread out like a ring in an instant. Where the fire ring expanded, with a boom, Ouyang Qing was thrown out, spitting blood in mid-air, her body heavily crashing on the edge of a nearby flower bed, no longer able to get up.
Zhou Jing also felt the impact on his back, his face paled as he spat out a mouthful of blood, and the golden needle originally aimed at Kong Yuhui lost its mark, pinging off and shooting into the ground’s stone pavement.
Kong Yuhui was fully suppressed by Zhou Jing’s sword in his left hand, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, nearly facing instant death. It was only now that he finally caught his breath, hastily retreating.
"Ouyang Qing!!!" He roared furiously, his eyes coldly fixating on Ouyang Qing on the ground. He couldn’t fathom why this woman would double-cross them at such a moment.
Lin Xin breathed slightly heavily; just now was the first time he had poured his full inner strength into the Solar Yang Talisman Sword.
The power certainly did not disappoint him.
Ouyang Qing, a Third Layer master, was critically injured in an instant by the exploding fire ring.
He held the sword inverted behind him to conceal the myriad fiery red runes on the blade.
"Did you really think I wouldn’t guard against you?" Lin Xin said, looking down at the badly injured Ouyang Qing on the ground.
She coughed fiercely, spitting out another mouthful of blood.
Her entire upper body was hit by the fire ring, now charred black; her clothes completely scorched and stuck to her protruding chest, with a blackened area also visible on her neck, the delicate skin burnt to a black scar by the high temperature. Large blisters were rapidly forming on her neck. In the center of her throat was a large bloody hole, blood slowly oozing from the scorched wound, gradually soaking and staining her chest’s garment red.
This one injury was a devastating blow to Ouyang Qing’s body, which further illustrates the terrifying power of the Solar Yang Talisman Sword at full blast.
"How could Flameless Swordsmanship be so strong...!?" Ouyang Qing’s voice trembled and altered.
"As early as the second night, I was wary of you. You mysteriously told me about Yin Blood even though I was just a mere First Layer nobody, and you, a Third Layer master, took the initiative to tell me about it. Isn’t that strange?"
Lin Xin was calm, for the adversary’s plot to calculate against him had backfired, leaving her grievously injured, but at this very moment, he showed no pleasure of victory, only tranquil tranquility.
"The second night? I clearly went to the nearby hot spring to soak, I wasn’t in the room at all." Ouyang Qing laughed shrilly, "Victory or defeat is unpredictable, winning is winning, why search for excuses to hide behind? Don’t make me look down on you!"
"Not in the room?!" Lin Xin’s heart sunk, "You still want to lie to me at this point?"
"Why should I... cough... have any reason to lie to you, to tell you about the Yin Blood?" Ouyang Qing’s pupils were gradually dilating, evidently she wouldn’t last much longer.
Indeed, there was no reason for Ouyang Qing to voluntarily tell him about Yin Blood.
Lin Xin pondered for a long time as well, wondering why she would suddenly tell him this. It clearly seemed like a reminder, yet afterwards, Ouyang Qing appeared even more intent on taking his life!
Lin Xin’s thoughts were tumultuous, and if the person who spoke to him those two nights was not the real Ouyang Qing, then who were those two individuals?
A subtle chill slowly rose from his spine.