socalfunplaces Chapter 26 Acting, Fishing, Sunrise and Moonset
Chapter 26 Acting, Fishing, Sunrise and Moonset
Black smoke billowed into the sky.
Li Xian exerted force with his feet, his figure swept across the wilderness, and three breaths later he landed outside the low wall of the stone village.
The village gate was wide open.
The door panel broke in two and lay askew on the ground.
The air was filled with the smell of blood and burnt wood.
Several stone houses were demolished, and rubble was scattered all over the ground.
Two corpses lay across the alleyway; they were young men from the village, their chests pierced by a single blow, their deaths gruesome.
In the open space in the center of the village, a dozen or so bandits were driving the villagers together.
Women, children, the elderly, and the weak knelt in a row, while men were trampled on the ground, their heads pressed into the dust.
The bandit leader was a burly man with a face full of scars, a token of the Other Shore Realm hanging from his waist, and a bloodstained curved knife clutched in his hand. Behind him stood an old man in a gray robe, hands behind his back, exuding a profound aura—the first level of the Dao Palace.
The old man was wearing the standard Taoist robe of the Qingxia Sect, with cloud and mist patterns embroidered on the cuffs.
Li Xian's gaze passed over the crowd and landed on the east side of the open space.
Lei Ying was pinned to the ground by two bandits.
Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, her left eye was swollen shut, and half of her hemp clothing was torn, revealing a large bruise on her shoulder. Her right little finger was bent at an unnatural angle, clearly broken off.
A bandit grabbed her by the hair, pulled her up, and slapped her across the head.
"I'm asking you! Where is the man who killed our brothers?"
Lei Ying spat out a mouthful of blood, her voice muffled yet clear:
"have no idea."
Another slap.
"You won't talk, huh?" The bandit pulled out a dagger and held it to her neck. "If you don't talk, I'll sell you to the mines."
Lei Ying raised her right eye, which she could only open, without crying or begging for mercy.
"I wouldn't even know if you killed me."
The dagger cut through the skin, and blood flowed down the neck.
The gray-robed old man frowned and said in a calm voice:
"Don't cause any deaths; a living person is more valuable than a dead one."
He glanced at the source stones he had plundered from the stronghold—
The quantity was unusually large, exceeding two hundred kilograms.
"Are they working for the village...?" the old man murmured, glancing at the burly man. "Did the news really originate from here?"
"Absolutely true!" The burly man patted his chest. "Several strongholds in the surrounding area were wiped out by one man, and the surviving brothers all say that the murderer came from the direction of this village."
The old man nodded slightly.
His gaze swept over Zhang Wuye, who was kneeling.
"Hand them over, and the Qingxia Sect will not make things difficult for you."
Master Zhang was covered in blood, his cane was broken and lying beside him, and his cloudy eyes stared intently at the old man in the gray robe.
"This old man doesn't know any murderer."
The old man sighed, raised his hand, and a palm print formed of divine power slammed down on Master Zhang. Killing someone to establish authority was simple yet effective.
The palm print did not land.
A muffled thud was heard.
The old man in the gray robe's pupils suddenly contracted—
A burst of sword intent shattered the palm print.
The man holding the knife stood on the edge of the sky, his face cold and indifferent, dressed in coarse linen clothes, his long black hair blowing in the wind.
Li Xian.
The villagers all looked up at the same time.
His eyes shone with the light of relief after surviving a disaster.
The old man in the gray robe took three steps back, his hands went numb, and his face turned pale.
"The First Heaven of the Dao Palace".
Li Xian looked at him, her tone indifferent.
It's not a question, it's an assessment of the other person's level of understanding.
The old man's face darkened:
"You're the one—"
Before he could finish speaking, Li Xian moved.
There are no supernatural powers, no magic, and no outward projection of divine power.
A single, clean cut.
The horizontal slash of the ceremonial sword created a gust of air that overturned the surrounding rubble.
The speed wasn't fast, and the force wasn't fierce—at least in the eyes of the old man at the Dao Palace Realm, this strike was full of flaws.
The old man sneered, then thrust out both palms, channeling the divine power of the Dao Palace into his ten fingers, and grabbed at the blade.
The old man's cold smile froze when his fingers touched the knife.
The force was far greater than he had anticipated.
It's ridiculously heavy.
He was forced to retreat, his feet crushing the stone slabs. He took seven steps back before regaining his balance, his tiger's mouth split open and blood trickling down between his fingers.
"The Other Shore Realm?" The old man's voice tightened. "How could your mere Other Shore Realm power be..."
Li Xian didn't give him time to analyze, and followed up with the second strike.
This cut was slower than the first one.
It was so slow that the old man could see every notch on the blade.
But it was this slowness that sent a chill down the old man's spine—because he realized he couldn't dodge it at all.
It's not that it's fast, it's that it's angled tricky.
Each swing of the sword precisely blocked his rhythm of dodging and weaving, forcing him to take the blows head-on.
The old man gritted his teeth, and the illusory divine image of the Dao Palace within his body emerged, merging with him. His boundless divine power enveloped his palms, and he slammed them against the blade.
Palm strikes and daggers meet.
The old man's body was numb from the shock, and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Li Xian also took two steps back, her arm trembling slightly.
"The performance is almost over."
He remained calm and composed.
A Dao Palace at the first level is considered a major figure within the lower-level cultivator system.
However, after Li Xian completed two transformations, his physical divine power far surpassed that of cultivators on the other shore—he firmly established himself at the threshold of the two forbidden realms.
He was controlling the intensity.
If you hit too lightly, the other party will become suspicious.
They were hit too hard, killed with a single blow, and no one went back to report.
The message that needs to be sent out is:
This person is incredibly strong, but his methods are limited; he lacks supernatural abilities and wins solely through brute force.
The bait needs to be real.
After twenty moves.
Finding an opening, Li Xian slashed the old man's shoulder with his sword, the blade penetrating deep into the bone.
The old man screamed in agony as his divine power dissipated, and he collapsed to the ground.
Li Xian stepped forward, holding the knife to his neck.
"State your name."
"Qingxia Sect... Supreme Elder... Chen Yuan..." The old man's face was ashen. "You...you killed me, Qingxia Sect will not let you get away with this—"
The words stuck in my throat.
The knife flashed, and blood splattered three feet deep.
The remaining bandits in the stronghold were terrified and turned to flee.
Li Xian let three of them go.
The rest.
Not a single one was left.
……
The battlefield was cleaned up.
Li Xian squatted down in front of Lei Ying.
The girl leaned against the broken wall, her consciousness blurred. Her broken little finger was swollen and purple, and the knife wound on her neck was still bleeding.
"Immortal Master..." She grimaced, trying to laugh, but the movement aggravated her wound, causing her to gasp in pain. "Ying'er didn't say..."
"I know."
Li Xian took a small drop of divine spring water from the Sea of Bitterness and placed it on her forehead.
Warm life force flowed into his body, and the wounds healed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
The severed finger was reattached, the bruising subsided, and the incision closed.
Lei Ying's eyes widened.
"Immortal Master... what kind of treasure is this?"
"Don't waste it." Li Xian stood up. "Have you already crossed the sea of suffering?"
Lei Ying paused for a moment, then whispered:
"When I was hit... it felt like something inside my body shattered, and the Sea of Bitterness opened up on its own."
Li Xian nodded.
The physique of the Primordial Silver-Blooded Royal Family.
It's reasonable to force a breakthrough at a critical moment of life and death.
That night, Li Xian carved a modified introductory exercise manual on the stone wall and left it for the stone village.
It wasn't some profound scripture, but rather a cultivation method he compiled based on the Wheel Sea chapter of the Lingxu Scripture and his insights into these Heavenly Origin Techniques. It was suitable for mortals to begin with—the efficiency was average, but its advantage lay in its reliability and it didn't discriminate based on aptitude.
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." Li Xian said to Zhang Wuye, "I have mastered all the Origin Techniques. Whether you can protect this land depends on yourselves."
Master Zhang knelt down and kowtowed three times, tears streaming down his face.
Li Xian didn't help him up; she turned and went back into the house to continue her transformation on the other side.
……
Half a month later.
Two streaks of light streaked across the northern horizon and landed outside the stone village.
The two Supreme Elders of Qingxia Sect are at the First Heaven of the Dao Palace.
This time, Li Xian "won a hard-fought victory".
He used the Golden Lotus Body Technique.
—The movement-type magic of Yao Xi's lineage from the Yao Guang Holy Land was obtained from the white-robed youth of Yao Guang, a Saint Lord level, and was thoroughly mastered by Li Xian.
Golden lotuses bloomed beneath her feet, and her figure moved like a ghost between the two elders' combined attacks.
With each step taken, the golden lotus vanishes and regenerates, blurring the lines between reality and illusion.
The two elders joined forces to chase and besiege Li Xian for half an hour, but they could not figure out Li Xian's location. In the end, they were defeated one by one.
On his deathbed, one of the elders' eyes were bloodshot with rage:
"You... are no ordinary rogue cultivator! That movement technique... that's from a sacred land—"
The dagger went down his throat.
Li Xian sheathed his sword and silently calculated in his mind.
"Two encounters have revealed enough information. First: brute force, no supernatural abilities. Second: Knows a movement technique, suspected to be from a powerful faction. These two conflicting pieces of information, transmitted back, will lead some members of the Qingxia Sect to choose to launch a full-scale attack... while others will choose to preserve their lives and remain at the sect's gates."
We've been waiting for you.
-
Seven more days passed.
Four beams of light arrived simultaneously, their momentum like a rainbow.
Qingxia Sect's Last Trump Card
Four Supreme Elders, two at the first level of the Dao Palace, and two at the second level of the Dao Palace.
The leader was a middle-aged man with a refined appearance, holding a whisk, and exuding an extraordinary air.
"Junior," he looked down at Li Xian, "you have killed three of the seven Supreme Elders of the Qingxia Sect. From today onwards, there will be no place for you to hide within a radius of ten thousand miles of Purple Mountain."
Li Xian stood in front of the village gate, his monk's knife resting on the ground.
"Are you done talking?"
The middle-aged man raised an eyebrow, swept his whisk horizontally, and unleashed divine power, causing the clouds in the sky to condense into layers of killing formations.
The four elders joined forces.
The world changed color.
Li Xian looked up, her gaze cold, and she dropped all pretense.
The monk's knife is held diagonally.
The first move of the Demon Emperor's Nine Slashes is the Annihilation Form.
As the blade struck, a silver-blue arc of light tore through the sky, instantly cleaving a Dao Palace First Heaven Elder at the forefront in two, and even a Dao Palace deity was shattered by the blade.
The remaining three people's expressions changed drastically.
With a graceful step, Li Xian vanished from his spot and reappeared behind the second elder.
The Eight Extremes Fist was unleashed, the fist piercing through the back and crushing the spine along with it.
The third elder retreated frantically, forming hand seals.
"Sunrise!" (Left hand)
"Moonset!" (Right hand)
The illusory images of the sun and moon, the size of a millstone, coalesced and rolled in.
Li Xian met the attack head-on, sheathing his dagger and unleashing a flurry of punches and palm strikes—a powerful fist against the sun's imprint, a soft palm against the moon's imprint, a counter-attack to break the momentum.
The sun and moon seal shattered.
With the third strike, the head fell to the ground.
From beginning to end, it took no more than twelve breaths.
The middle-aged man's whisk trembled violently, and his composure shattered.
"You...you've been acting all along..."
"Mm," Li Xian said.
The final blow fell.
The wilderness returned to silence.
Li Xian bent down and took out a jade slip from the middle-aged man's corpse.
As my divine sense probed in, the complete mantra of the Sun and Moon Seal appeared in my mind.
"Similar to the Mountain-Turning Seal and the Human King Seal, it has a low lower limit but a high upper limit, suitable for integrating into one's own understanding and deducing to its ultimate form. It wouldn't even be afraid of facing the secret techniques of a Great Emperor."
He put the jade slip into the Sea of Bitterness and turned his gaze to the northern horizon.
Of the seven Supreme Elders of the Qingxia Sect, all seven have died.
The mountain gate is empty.
"It's time to go collect the debt..."