Chapter 508 Chu Xun Strikes Back
So, the sons of the Assembly of Immortals were gone and no one could find them.
Huaxia warriors scoured high and low but no one knew where the intruders had fled off to since they vanished from Baiyu City.
After spending months at Baiyu City, the Queen of Elves, along with Jing Hong and Hua Qingwu, finally decided to leave.
The past few months had been miserable for the governor of the city. He was forced to wait on the ladies’ hand and foot for months, hardly able to provide any resistance at all. It was only after their departure did he finally heave a breath of relief, celebrating his long-awaited freedom with a binge of wine and liquor.
What followed was a brief period of peace. The alien races no longer fielded any more emerging lords for now and no one heard anything else about the five sons of the Assembly of Immortals as if they had vanished off the face of the Earth.
Even so, the world knew without any doubt that the Assembly of Immortals and the alien races had not yet given up. The present stillness could only be a momentary silence before a storm; Immortals or mutants, these invaders must be hatching some sinister plan.
Five years lapsed by in a blur.
Twenty years had passed since Chu Xun was last seen.
Until one day, the ground shook with thunderstorms ravaging up overhead. A huge vortex appeared in the sky and a hand as large as a mountain reached out from within its spiraling depths, bringing with it a group of ten.
It was exactly the same as what had happened five years ago when Jing Lei and his comrades arrived. Only this time, ten intruders arrived.
The gigantic hand retreated with the force of the Firmamental Laws punishing it so mercilessly that it was nearly destroyed.
But unlike Jing Lei and his comrades, this new crop did not embark on a killing spree to massacre city after city. Instead, they split up.
In a month’s time, the name of Kuang Zhan, one of the elites of the Assembly of Immortals, had managed to make a name for himself on Earth.
In that duration, he had traveled far and wide to challenge ten of the greatest warriors of Huaxia. These warriors were all heads and chieftains to the various sects and orders they belonged to, yet none of them survived their duels against Kuang Zhan.
Three more months passed and more elites of the Assembly of Immortals grew notoriously famous as well.
Another elite offspring of the Assembly of Immortals, a man named Shang Wu, issued the Flaming Qilin an open challenge.
The Flaming Qilin arrived at their appointed spot at Mount Yandang three days later and he emerged victoriously.
A few days later, the Flaming Qilin dueled another elite, Gu Yifeng, at the same place. The latter proved to be an able match and both parties retreated at the end of the tie with both warriors equally wounded.
More talents of Earth too had emerged. Yan Wushuang, the heir to the powerful Yan family of Yanxue City, ended his twenty-year-long meditative training, and in his first duel against an elite, Tang Zhong of the Assembly of Immortals, Yan Wushuang nearly killed his opponent.
Armed with her golden halberd, Jiu You of the Chu Mansion forces challenged another two sons of the Assembly of Immortals and she too defeated them soundly.
After twenty years of meditative training as well, Yue Jingchou, fourth son of Yue Fandie, the Lord of the Sanctuary of Tetrarchy, returned into action and managed to remain undefeated in his battles against the sons of the Assembly of Immortals who dared to oppose him.
Yet despite all the prowess of the talents of Earth, there were too few of them.
Time passed by swiftly and another five years was gone.
Jing Lei and his cohorts decided that it was time.
They had been training at the stronghold of the Mustelid race until now.
They massacred a total of five cities to announce to the whole world their return.
This emboldened the alien races as they fielded more elites, sending them to launch simultaneous assaults on other human settlements with the force and intensity of a tsunami.
Trouble and strife returned to torment Earth once more.
The fate of humanity hung in a balance at the massive incursion launched by the joint forces of the Assembly of Immortal and the alien races.
Earth might be defended by elites such as the Flaming Qilin and others, but they were outnumbered by the joint forces of the invaders.
The elite sons of the Assembly of Immortals never stopped challenging human warriors to open combat and many leaders, chiefs, and heads of different sects and orders all perished.
The purpose of the invaders was simple: to cripple the human’s capacity to fight back. The joint invasion of the Assembly of Immortals and the alien races wished to fully declaw Earth before any of its talents could fight back, allowing them to rule over mankind.
No word came from Chu the Devil during the thirty years.
A name that all enemies of mankind now regarded only with ridicule and scorn.
At Qianlong Mountain, Chen Hanlong, Sun Ying, Zheng Guangyi, Chu Xun’s parents, Tang Wenyan, and his wife, as well as the others, had all reached more than a hundred years old.
Too late was their time when they began cultivating, that their lives were entering their final chapters even as they only just managed to reach the preliminary and middle phases of the Qi Refinement Stage.
The fact that their lives could be further extended momentarily was because of Qianlong Mountain’s proximity to a Spirit Vein and the enchantment that Chu Xun had left behind prior to his departure, notwithstanding Jing Hong’s and Hua Qingwu’s help to keep everyone safe and alive.
But this was only a temporary solution.
To Chen Hanlong and the others, meeting Chu Xun was enough for them.
They were once a bunch of common people with an estimated lifespan of roughly seventy to eighty years. But now, they had managed to reach almost double their original number and this was enough for them.
Chu Xun’s parents had become frail and old as they clung to their final hopes of being able to see their son before their last breaths.
Jing Hong and Hua Qingwu had never been any more anxious. For thirty years, Chu Xun had vanished and for a warrior of his stage and might, retreating into meditative training that would take even a century was hardly a surprise to them.
But while years felt like seconds to him, there were people outside still waiting for him and time was running out for them.
Another ten years whizzed by.
A new world order had dawned on Earth with the alien races and the sons of the Assembly of Immortals each claiming territories of their own.
Many occupied jungles, forests, mountainous regions and built their strongholds there.
Zheng Guangyi was gone. When he was discovered dead, he was found to have passed while clutching the Jade Card that Chu Xun had given to him, his face wearing a serene smile as Death came as a friend.
A new grave appeared in the cemetery of Qianlong Mountain.
Three years later, in the wee hours, Chen Hanlong left. The man who was the first to pledge his unwavering loyalty to Chu Xun had finally breathed his last.
Another new grave appeared in the cemetery.
In the second year after Chen Hanlong’s demise, Sun Ying and Tai Tan both were found dead in front of his grave.
As thick as thieves when they were still alive, Sun Ying and Tai Tan had both left the world together in search of their friend.
More new graves were added day by day.
After fifty long years, Chu Tianhe and his wife had become so old that their hair was the color of frost.
The only reason that they still managed to stay alive was due to Jing Hong’s ceaseless supply of her own magical energies into them.
Even Elder Gui teetered on the edge of his eternal slumber too. The old and loyal servant who had watched Hua Qingwu grow up her entire life now tottered between insanity and senility and the exacerbating decrepitude now gnawing at his mind only made Hua Qingwu cry and choke with tears.
Earth was undergoing a huge transformation, but the magical herb that Jing Hong hoped to appear in time to save Chu Xun’s parents had still not yet appeared.
It was the first time Jing Hong felt herself being assailed by such despair that she was at a loss of what to do.
And just when she thought that was the full extent of her troubles, the Assembly of Immortals was not about to give her any respite. The enemy–Jing Lei and his comrades–was now at the horizon.
Proudly, Jing Lei and his four comrades announced their intent to liberate Wu Keyin, whom Chu Xun had imprisoned at Gujiang City.
...
With the Queen of Elves now back at its helm, the Elves produced enough talents to regain its former glory.
Until one day, a terrible earthquake shook the entire length and breadth of the Elvish jungle.
The Elvish dwellings would have already collapsed if not for the Divine Tree’s protection.
A shadow leaped out from the darkened depths of the abyss, riding atop a large purple sword and soaring up into the sky.
“I’m back! Chu Xun has finally returned!” his hearty guffaws sent enough tremors to elicit more earthquakes that saw huge boulders rolling precipitously off their slopes.
Disheveled and unkempt, his hair flailed in the winds with every strand glowing a faint purple glow that indicated his brimming powers threatening to burst out of him.
“Swoosh!”
Riding atop the oversized sword, Chu Xun streaked around with incredible speed as he stopped to a hover atop the Elvish settlement.
“SHOW YOURSELF, QUEEN OF ELVES!”
The sonorous voice thundered over the entire Elvish settlement.
The Queen appeared almost at once, with Su Lianyi and the Sacred Maiden Su Wei’er in tow.
The Elves looked up to see Chu Xun, now in all his demonic splendor as he remained afloat in mid-air–a feat that not even the Queen was capable of.
Chu Xun’s very self radiated his strong and thick aura, churning up winds enough to create a terrible storm that caused his hair and clothes to beat and snap in the wind like whips. The frightful and imposing appearance of Chu Xun instantly reminded everyone who laid eyes on him about his moniker: Chu the Devil.
After fifty long years, he had finally achieved the preliminary phase of the Nascent Soul Stage. With one foot already past the threshold of the Mid-Nascent Soul Stage, he knew he owed it all to the Flaming Qilin’s True Blood.
Inside the spiritual domain within himself, he now had two doubles that shared every bit the same resemblance as he was, one white and the other purple. Sitting with their eyes closed, the two little him each performed hand seals.
“I bet you never thought I would still be drawing breath and I’ll come back,” Chu Xun observed with not an ounce of warmth in his gaze.
“Indeed,” muttered the Queen, reeling with disbelief. It had taken her more than several thousand years until she managed to trick Chu Xun to take her place.
“Not that it matters anyway. The most important thing now is retribution.”
Chu Xun raised a hand. As power gathered in his hand, the air warped and quivered as if in fear.
“No! Chu Xun!” cried Su Wei’er, her face ashen pale.
Yet, Chu Xun ignored her call and drove a fist forward, aiming it at the Queen of Elves.
“Let’s see what you’ve learned in the past fifty years!” uttered the Queen, who was confident that her powers as an Earth Immortal would make her more powerful than Chu Xun.
The Queen of Elves mustered every iota of her powers. The air in a three-meter radius around her twisted and warped from her burgeoning aura and she fired a blast at Chu Xun.
Two energy bolts, both similarly shaped like fists, collided with each other and the eruption of deadly force caused a terrible storm that flattened the earth within a hundred meters of both Chu Xun and the Queen.
Chu Xun was amazed. The Queen really was powerful.
So was the Queen. Chu Xun’s prowess had far outstripped her expectations.
Chu Xun grinned. Just as well. He just finished his training and he could use a fight with such a powerful opponent to help amalgamate his newfound powers.
“Whoosh!”
Chu Xun swooped down like a hawk finding its prey with his fists imbued with Hong Meng Immortal Qi, and he drove his fist forward, firing a huge jet of energy that engulfed the Queen in a bright flash of purple.
The Queen snorted. Churning her powers, she retaliated by firing a blast of her own at Chu Xun again.
“Boom!”
The meeting of blows elicited more waves of steam and dust, pummeling the ground into cracks and breaking rocks while tossing dirt and gravel into the sky.
Everyone else–Su Lianyi, Su Wei’er, and the rest of the other Elves–all retreated to safer distances. The ripples of force originating from the fight had left them pale and discomposed as the flows of the magical forces within themselves were disrupted.
Chu Xun gazed at his opponent. His aura grew and churned like a raging beast eager to be released. Clenching his fists tightly, he lunged.
Both man and Elf sank into a blur of fists and kicks, the billowing forces resulting from their blows easily pounded everything nearby into dust.
“Whoosh! Whoosh!”
Fresh and verdant branches, each glowing green with vibrant magical force, stretched out of nowhere to encircle around Chu Xun and the Queen, encasing them in a dome-like structure.
It was the Elf Divine Tree. It was trying to prevent the fight from causing more damage to the Elvish forest.
“It’s time for payback, Queen of Elves, for that trick you pulled off fifty years ago!”
Stoic, Chu Xun gathered more of his powers, focusing so much into his fists that they shone like amethysts.
Hong Meng Scripture–Celestial Upheaval–The Thirty-Sixth!
The purple him inside his spiritual domain opened his eyes suddenly and bright purplish rays flared.
Chu Xun swiftly performed hand seals and so did the little purple him inside.
“Boom!”
Chu Xun waved his fist and again, the little purple him mimicked his every action, doubling its force. A huge energy bolt resembling the shape of a man’s fist tore from Chu Xun and expanded as it screamed at the Queen.
The blow hit the wall of the dome maintained by the Divine Tree’s powers and the entire structure shook, threatening to burst open.
The Queen grimly produced a two-meter-long bow, the Enchanted Bow, which was created to be used in tandem with the Enchanted Shaft.
The longbow gleamed green and bright in her grasp as it let loose a two-meter-long arrow, whistling straight at Chu Xun’s energy bolt.
The collision of the arrow and the energy bolt left the Queen stunned; Chu Xun’s energy bolt easily trampled past her arrow, knocking it aside with hardly any loss in speed and force.
The purplish energy bolt continued its flight, howling like rolling thunder as it homed in on the Queen.
The Queen took out her Enchanted Shaft. The longbow let out its shiny brilliance when the Queen nocked the Shaft as if it was greeting a friend. She pulled the string quickly and fired the Shaft into the air. The magical arrow gave off a bright emerald glow of its own as it whistled into the air.
Chu Xun scoffed. “You’re not the only one with an Enchanted Shaft,” he mused. He took out the Shaft he looted from Di Yanjing so many years back and flung it into the air like tossing a javelin.
“Boom!”
The Queen’s Enchanted Shaft easily nullified Chu Xun’s energy bolt before it wheeled around to aim at him like a modern heat-seeking missile.
“Clank!”
Both Shafts met in midair, their steel gnashing into each other and both fell in a clatter to the ground without any explosion or eruption of any sort.
“How on earth are you in possession of an Enchanted Shaft?!” gasped the Queen with disbelief.
“Swoosh!”
But Chu Xun’s only response was an energy bolt screaming right into her face as he darted towards her.
The Queen held her longbow like a club. The magical weapon shone brightly once more as she swung the longbow viciously at Chu Xun.
“Boom!”
Chu Xun’s energy bolt hit the longbow first, invoking a storm of fumes and dust as the entire dome-like structure trembled violently.
The blast sent both Chu Xun and the Queen falling backward and they crashed into the wall of the dome.
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