Chapter 538: Chapter 537: Re-Evaluating Worth (Extra for ’Raised the Little Dragon Maiden’, 4/9, ask for votes!)
The number of high-ranking Lords at the scene was not large, with each major faction only having one or two who were already engaged in combat.
The high-ranking Lord of the Oblivion Assembly, an old man with grey hair, laughed and said, "Nine Cliffs Lord, you seem to be worried. But Young Hero Shi actually looks quite upstanding and pure, not like a villain. I’m sure he would never cultivate the martial arts of the Devil Path."
His opponent, an old woman from the Blood Emperor’s cave, merely snorted and remained silent.
The high-ranking Lord of the Tang Family Fortress wished he could kill Shi Xiaole, but his opponent, a middle-aged woman from the Heavenly Snow Mountain, was terrifyingly strong. He didn’t dare to be distracted.
"You all..."
Nine Cliffs Lord couldn’t believe it.
"Fool."
The Divine Wind Lord snickered privately.
Regardless of how dominant the opposing faction might be in Xuanwu State, they ultimately couldn’t comprehend the pride and confidence of the top-tier factions. Could they really believe that these dignified organizations would demean themselves for mere mid-tier martial arts?
If Shi Xiaole truly were associated with the Devil Path, it would be a different matter. But his martial arts clearly contained Buddhist principles, and the accusation that he would cause chaos in the Martial World was simply absurd.
To put it crudely, even if they genuinely coveted Shi Xiaole’s martial arts, they would have to act covertly - they had a reputation to uphold after all!
With this in mind, the Divine Wind Lord glanced significantly at the young man in the blue robe. If he could withstand Nine Cliffs Lord’s attack, he might indeed help the Ai Family overcome their current predicament.
But was that possible?
The idea didn’t just occur to the Divine Wind Lord; the other major factions’ top-ranking experts were also watching intently.
Realizing that he had been played for a fool, Nine Cliffs Lord’s face turned dark. He clenched his fists tightly until they cracked audibly. Filled with hatred for Shi Xiaole, he raised his right hand and pressed it forward without another word.
Nine irregular beams of light went forth, each one pushing forward those in front. By the eighth time, the strength of the palm attack caused the void to tremble continuously, rushing towards Shi Xiaole in an instant.
"Despicable!"
The Grand Elder of the Ai Family, filled with fury, tried to move forward despite his injuries. Unfortunately, as soon as he moved, a large part of his body cracked open, and blood gushed from his nose and mouth.
The stern old man had been holding on stubbornly to protect Shi Xiaole and the Ai family, and he had already reached his breaking point.
The situation of the Wave Sword Lord was not much better. It was impressive enough that a mid-level Lord had managed to hold on for so long.
"Like an egg striking a rock."
In terms of power, Shi Xiaole was naturally no match for a high-ranking Lord. Thus, he decided to use an underdog strategy from the Undying Seven Illusions.
One could see his body making a series of straight lines in the air, forming many parallelograms, which allowed him to avoid the oncoming palm strike in an incredibly strange way. His body transformed into a shuttle and zipped straight towards Nine Cliffs Lord.
"Illusion and movement skills combined as one?"
The middle-aged woman from the Heavenly Snow Mountain was secretly surprised.
With her keen gaze, she could almost determine that Shi Xiaole’s movement skills were at the mid-tier level. It was known that the level of a set of martial arts indicated the overall power, not the individual power.
For instance, the Life and Death Four Transformations was of mid-tier level, but it didn’t mean that each of the four transformations were at the mid-tier level.
And the martial art that Shi Xiaole was using, both its attack methods and movement skills, were of mid-tier level, which was incredibly rare!
Shi Xiaole was strong, but Nine Cliffs Lord was not to be trifled with.
Seeing that the distance between them was only about ten meters, he suddenly smirked sinisterly. His hand, which had just completed a move, grabbed at the empty air, and the palm strike which had missed its mark spun around and rushed towards Shi Xiaole’s back at even greater speed, as swift as thunder.
"Using my body to prove the way."
Without changing his expression, Shi Xiaole slightly shifted, but his body still unavoidably got hit by the palm energy. He blinked and landed on the eave.
"Young Master Shi, are you injured?"
Almost simultaneously, an icy palm strike landed on the spot where Nine Cliffs Lord had been standing, and he roared at the woman in white, "Bai Xueying, do you know what you’re doing?"
Bai Xueying just looked up at Shi Xiaole. In her view, a faint layer of light enveloped the young man in the blue robe. When the light receded, not only was he unscathed, but he seemed to be more energetic.
"What’s going on?"
Everyone was puzzled.
Nine Cliffs Lord’s eyes widened slightly, and he shouted, "I’ll see what mystery you’re hiding!" He once again madly rushed towards Shi Xiaole, and while still in mid-air, he unleashed a series of palm strikes.
"Little girl, don’t interfere."
In front of Bai Xueying appeared a kind old man, the high-ranking Lord of the Oblivion Assembly. He was also curious about what had just happened and wanted to see how Shi Xiaole would respond next.
"Move."
With a cold expression, Bai Xueying exerted her full strength from the start. She sent out successive waves of icy power, but they were always shattered by the old man from the Oblivion Assembly with one wave of his hand.
A fierce battle broke out on the eave.
"Nine Cliffs Collapse, Heaven and Earth Crumble."
Nine Cliffs Lord supported himself with his hands in a strange posture. Suddenly, nine black mountains rose around him and Shi Xiaole. As the black mountains collapsed, countless rocks rolled and fell, burying Shi Xiaole who was at the center.
Although people who were a good distance away from the battlefield, the sound of the rolling rocks was like waves of intense energy, slow and long, causing some mid-level and lower-level Lords to feel unstable and unable to compose themselves.
"He even used a killer move that drains his vital essence?"
The Grand Elder of the Ai Family was terrified.
As the longstanding opponent of the Nine Cliffs Lord, he deeply understood the strength of this move, but the price of launching this move would cause the Nine Cliffs Lord’s vital energy to lose nearly half, reducing his lifespan by at least several decades.
This was an absolute killing move - sacrificing eight hundred for the death of a thousand enemies!
Whoosh!
Rather than taking the blow head on, Shi Xiaole shot into the sky, escaping through the gaps in the attack. Despite being a gap, it still contained terrifying shock power. This shook his meridians, aiming to destroy his vitality.
The Mind Method of the Undying Seven Illusions started to work. To the naked eye, it was visible that the destructive Vigorous Air in Shi Xiaole’s meridians suddenly transformed, with a large part of it becoming his own Vigorous Air. His power, which originally only had seventy percent left due to the fight, was immediately restored to one hundred percent.
The remaining destructive Vigorous Air only caused minor injuries to Shi Xiaole, which were negligible.
"Turn weakness into strength!"
Vigorous Air kept flowing continuously, all gathering in his palm. Shi Xiaole promptly shot out a palm strike. The circular Vigorous Air hit the Nine Cliffs Lord’s body, causing ripples and pushing the latter back by dozens of meters.
"What sorcery is this?"
This time, even the Lords of each major power’s branches were shocked. A few revealed different expressions, which subtly revealed a hint of intense interest.
Why didn’t Shi Xiaole get injured when the Nine Cliffs Lord clearly hit him, instead he gained an extraordinary power?
"As expected, the Undying Seven Illusions are miraculous."
Shi Xiaole took a deep breath.
Others can only see his ingenious illusions and movements, but they do not know that the core of the Undying Seven Illusions lies in the conversion between the life and death qi.
It turns the death qi from an enemy’s attack into life qi that replenishes oneself. In theory, as long as Shi Xiaole does not die, he will never run out of strength, and he can even wear out an enemy who is stronger than him.
In the Martial World of the Tang Dynasty, Shi Zhixuan may not be the strongest, but in terms of survival abilities, he is definitely second to none and can be regarded as a undefeatable cockroach.
Whether it was the Four Great Monks or Ning Daoqi, one of the Three Great Masters, all who had participated in the Chaos, hunted down him relentlessly when Shi Zhixuan was in a bad state, but all of them ended in failure.
Suddenly Shi Xiaole had a thought.
If he expanded the route of the Undying Seven Illusions, using the external power as death qi, and absorbing and transforming it into life qi to maintain life, could he achieve immortality?
Once this idea arose, it was like the tide in the Qiantang River, which couldn’t be suppressed no matter how much effort was put in.
"Damn!"
The face of the Nine Cliffs Lord was ashen, really ugly.
He had already launched his strongest killing move, yet he could not hurt Shi Xiaole at all, but was instead repelled. What kind of joke was this?
Like a stubborn child, the Nine Cliffs Lord charged towards Shi Xiaole, and the two tangled up in a fight again.
Ten moves.
Twenty moves.
They soon reached over a hundred moves.
The Nine Cliffs Lord had the upper hand all along, but every time, at least half of his attacks were evaded by Shi Xiaole. Somehow he could never seriously injure Shi Xiaole.
What was more frightening was that after such a long battle, the power of Nine Cliffs Lord’s moves was getting weaker and weaker, while Shi Xiaole was always at his peak performance. By the time they had reached more than two hundred moves, the situation was gradually starting to even out.
"We have underestimated this martial arts."
The Divine Wind Lord muttered to himself.
The illusion is deep and unpredictable, the movements are exquisite and unparalleled, and now there is a certain mysterious transformative effect. From where did this young boy in blue get such a top-tier first grade martial art?
Perhaps even the martial arts from the Oblivion Assembly’s division could not compare to it.
"Boy, you’re good."
After a long battle without gaining the upper hand, the Nine Cliffs Lord finally became afraid. He feared that if they continued to fight, he would lose to Shi Xiaole, so he chose to retreat, his robe flapping as a mushroom cloud of fire shot into the sky, blocking everyone’s sight.
Once the mushroom cloud of fire dissipated, the figure of the Nine Cliffs Lord was long gone.
"This time, you won."
Upon seeing this, the high-ranking Lords of the Tianyan Sect and Tianyuan Association also chose to flee. Otherwise, when Shi Xiaole joined forces with other senior Lords, they would find it difficult to escape.
With the departure of the high-ranking Lords, the surviving intermediate Lords of several sects immediately went into chaos, were attacked from all sides, and one by one their lives were lost.
After the battle, almost all the enemies were wiped out.
The remaining Lords from the Ai Family, Yu Family, etc. looked at each other, and even though they had participated in the fight, they still found it somewhat unbelievable.
The significance of this battle was not only the victory at hand, but more so in the fact that from this point forward, the balance of power between the two major groups was going to tilt.
The group led by the Ai Family and the Yu Family can now oppress the Xiahou Clan and the group where the Tianyuan Association is located, changing the structure of the Martial World in Xuanwu State that has been in place for hundreds of years!
The sound of fighting had ceased.
All those present, without exception, cast their gaze towards the young man in the blue robe, who single-handedly reversed everything. His eyes revealed a myriad of changing emotions.
Before this, the senior leaders of the divisions of various top factions didn’t think much of the first genius of Shuntian Capital, Shi Xiaole, but after this incident, they knew that they had to reassess his value.
