Volume One: Turmoil in the Northern Frontier Chapter Ninety: Only the Strong Grass Survives the Gale, Part Two

The Wind God Guard had not expected that Zi Sang Bushou, though only a disciple by adoption, would feel such deep reverence for Wei Sanmu.

Yet the matter itself had no clean resolution. There were many reasons behind Wei Sanmu’s death; it was not only the Divine Dynasty of Dugu. Even Li Jinxing had wanted him dead at the time.

If Li Jinxing threatened the survival of half the human race, then Wei Sanmu at that moment threatened the existence of all humanity.

Or perhaps it was not only humanity. After all, the Demon Lord and the Dragon Lord had also made their moves that night, indirectly confirming certain truths.

But truth, in the end, was only what Li Jinxing and Dou Xiaotong had inferred. No matter how many possibilities it contained, it remained mere deduction. That was also the fundamental reason Wei Sanmu had rejected Li Jinxing’s efforts to persuade him.

After that, Li and Wei became enemies. Wei Sanmu chased Li Jinxing with a blade for a full month, then went into seclusion. And then, without anyone noticing, the place of his retreat was surrounded by almost every Dao-Unity expert alive at the time. Forced to ascend before he was ready, he perished soon after.

In the aftermath, the Divine Dynasty slaughtered Wei Sanmu’s entire line. His eldest disciple, Sun Chen, was slain at Yellow Mountain. His second disciple, Zi Sang Bumu, traveled far to the East Sea and founded the Flower-Transplanting Sect. Ke Chenyi survived only because the former Medicine Sage intervened and saved him.

At this moment, when Zi Sang Bushou used the word shameless to describe those old events, it could only mean one thing.

A struggle to the death.

The Wind God Guard sighed, and his entire aura instantly turned solemn.

Heaven and earth changed color. Gale winds rose once more, and the wind sounded like the cries of gods and the shrieks of ghosts.

The immense pressure further battered the already shattered terrain, forcing the entire land down by another three feet.

The Wind God Guard and Zi Sang Bushou vanished at the same time.

In the sky, hundreds of shockwaves suddenly exploded. Torrents of air spread in every direction like a tsunami, and the heavens裂 with countless spiderweb cracks in space and time, like a mirror shattering.

Their figures kept vanishing and reappearing. The oppressive force in the sky grew heavier and heavier, the area affected broader and broader. At this rate, they might very well sink the entire region of Yannan and the northern Bohai Sea.

Yang Fan sighed and waved for the Bohai army to pull back.

They had already retreated hundreds of miles. If they withdrew any farther, they would be nearly back to Kaifeng, and returning to Kaifeng would mean complete failure.

That was obviously unacceptable to the King of Bohai. Of course, they might survive the present crisis, or they might be executed for violating military orders. But whichever outcome came, it would do nothing for their future.

Even if the King of Bohai could ascend the throne, they would still never be entrusted with important duties. The best they could hope for would be some nominal patronage, living out the rest of their days in obscurity.

If the King of Bohai failed to ascend, then they would only fare worse.

Thinking of this, Su Yuzhe’s expression darkened further, but he did not oppose Yang Fan’s decision.

When great Dao-Unity powers truly fought with intent to kill, even the Bohai army’s formation might not be able to fully withstand the shockwaves. If an opening were torn in it, the whole army could be wiped out.

Retreating now would still preserve Bohai’s living strength. If these soldiers were allowed to die for nothing, then their lives would truly be finished.

Even if the King of Bohai did not wish to kill them, the weight of public condemnation would force him to.

Su Yuzhe looked into the distance, his eyes full of unwillingness.

After this battle, he feared he would become merely the stepping-stone for that little brat of the Feng family, and the renown accumulated through dozens of past campaigns would instead become proof of Feng Yang’s greater brilliance.

He sighed and dropped the carriage curtain.

The battle still raged on. Both the Wind God Guard and Zi Sang Bushou had sustained serious injuries.

After dozens more exchanges, the two of them stopped almost in unison.

“To Dao Abyss?” Zi Sang Bushou asked.

The Wind God Guard looked toward the direction of Bohai’s withdrawal, frowned in thought for a moment, then calmly shook his head.

“Do you really intend to smash this place to pieces?” Zi Sang Bushou asked with a frown.

He did not mind overturning heaven and earth, but before departing, his senior brother had specifically told him to put the greater picture first in all things.

If Bohai’s route into Yannan were cut off here... that would surely be a situation no side wished to see. After all, when the demon race rose in rebellion, Yannan would still be the first line of battle, and Bohai would still be the primary supply source for that first line.

So he did not understand the Wind God Guard’s meaning. In his view, the reason the Wind God Guard did not go to Dao Abyss was to prevent the Bohai army from taking the chance to advance north. Now that Bohai had already retreated, what was there still to worry about?

“Let us settle it here,” said the Wind God Guard.

His mind shifted, and the Three Lives, Fate-Severing Stone appeared above his head. Its endless radiance burst forth, directly sealing heaven and earth in place.

Zi Sang Bushou froze slightly and said, “With such a stone, perhaps you could preserve Sun Heaven.”

The Wind God Guard glanced at him. “A city is meaningless. The importance of Sun Heaven lies in the fact that its defensive array is the lock of all Yannan. So long as that lock remains, strategic strongholds like Windward Pass and Cloudplain will never be destroyed. Even if the city falls, its foundation will not perish. Now that the defensive array has destroyed itself, what use is it to me to preserve a city?”

Zi Sang Bushou thought, Then why do you still want me to preserve it? But a question like that would obviously yield no answer, so instead he said, “That sounds rather similar to the Blood-Weeping Record.”

The Wind God Guard thought to himself that both must have come from the same hand, so what was strange about that?

“You use your life-bound artifact to guard heaven and earth. Then what will you use to oppose me?” Zi Sang Bushou asked again.

He lifted a hand slightly, and black light surged above his palm, soon condensing into a dragon-headed staff.

Compared with the Fate-Sealing Stone, the fluctuations from the staff were still somewhat inferior, but it had clearly reached the rank of a pure-yuan treasure as well.

“How could an Extreme Dao sacred artifact be so simple?” the Wind God Guard said with a shake of his head. “It’s been a long time since I last fought with all my strength. Let us see now whether my wind is faster, or your wood is tougher.”

The words had scarcely fallen when the Fate-Sealing Stone poured multicolored, mist-like radiance into his body, and once more the wind sword that had broken through the Severed Boundary Domain appeared.

The sword was made of wind, yet it looked no different from an ordinary blade.

Looking more closely, one would discover that all the wind had converged upon the edge itself. The space around the blade was sliced apart by its force, revealing gleaming black cracks in space and time.

Zi Sang Bushou felt an aura from that sword that surpassed the one from before.

At this rate, even a one-handed sword might be able to break through the Severed Boundary Domain. He thought silently, while planting the dragon-headed staff in midair.

It was clearly only a section of withered wood, yet it suddenly began to grow. In an instant, a towering tree appeared in the sky, larger even than Sun Heaven City itself.

Zi Sang Bushou stood upon the crown of the tree, pressed his palms together once more, and closed his eyes.

The Wind God Guard remained expressionless and slashed out through the air with a sword.

A sword aura a hundred zhang long howled across the firmament.

The towering tree was cut cleanly in two at the waist.

Zi Sang Bushou coughed up a mouthful of blood and barked, “Suppression!”

The fallen trunk actually returned to the tree, as though nothing had just happened at all.

The Wind God Guard raised a brow and instantly unleashed eight thousand sword strikes.

Swift Wind, Eight Thousand Streams!

The sword itself was wind, and the sword aura was also wind. Stacked together, they became sixteen thousand swords.

Sixteen thousand strands of sword aura converged into a sea of sword qi, swallowing the entire tree in the blink of an eye.

Zi Sang Bushou’s low roar came from within the sea.

The Wind God Guard’s gaze sharpened slightly, and then he discovered that after half of the sword qi had inexplicably vanished into thin air, the remainder had actually turned its spearhead toward him. Even the sea of sword qi itself had changed course in midair and was charging straight at him!

Many things had happened, but in truth it was only the instant of a single change.

From an outsider’s perspective, it was roughly when the sea of sword qi swallowed the towering tree that it turned around and swallowed the Wind God Guard as well.

What a marvelous grafting of flowers onto wood! To think it could be used like this.

The Wind God Guard used the Fate-Sealing Stone to lock down his own Severed Boundary Domain, then struck again with his sword.

All things have their limits, just like the Severed Boundary Domain. No matter how heaven-defying the grafting of flowers onto wood may be, there is still a boundary to it. Once that boundary is reached, even it cannot be fully redirected. From the earlier probing, he was certain that Zi Sang Bushou’s Severed Boundary Domain could not surpass his own.

Time trickled by.

No one knew which strand of sword qi, or which falling leaf, had finally run its course.

The sea of sword qi no longer turned back, and the Wind God Guard was finally freed.

Even with the Fate-Sealing Stone, his Severed Boundary Domain had already been broken. By now he was drenched in blood, looking extremely miserable, and even the Fate-Sealing Stone itself was battered and ragged, no longer releasing its mist-like radiance.

But however miserable he looked, he had still won.

Zi Sang Bushou’s fleshly body had already dispersed. Only a broken Severed Boundary Domain preserved a sliver of his true spirit from vanishing.

He looked at the Wind God Guard, his expression complicated.

“I still don’t understand the Dao deeply enough. My defense exceeds my offense. Otherwise, perhaps I could have gambled on mutual destruction.”

The Wind God Guard said bluntly, “It has nothing to do with offense or defense. Your defeat lies in the fact that you changed course halfway through. Moreover, killing me does not depend on whether your attack is strong enough, but on whether your burst power is strong enough.”

There was one more point: at his speed, if he truly intended to flee, then no one in the world could kill him.

Zi Sang Bushou gave a soft acknowledgment, taking the Wind God Guard’s point about changing course midway as accepted.

In his youth, he had poured his heart and soul into forging a blade, intending to use it as his vessel for entering the Dao. After he was taken into Wei Sanmu’s line, the original life-bound weapon carried too much power from a branch of auxiliary arts. At Zi Sang Bumu’s suggestion, he changed to cultivating the dragon-headed staff, which was related to wood.

His incomplete form was the result of backlash from the Dao, but what was most serious was that even after entering Dao realm, he still retained a flaw in offense.

That was the fundamental reason for his defeat and death this time.

“I should have died long ago,” Zi Sang Bushou said.

The Wind God Guard did not reply, though he knew exactly what Zi Sang Bushou meant.

“You will die too,” Zi Sang Bushou continued.

The Wind God Guard suddenly remembered what the second young master of the Feng family had once said, and found it most fitting. So he spoke: “Since ancient times, who has never died?”

Zi Sang Bushou smiled. “When I was young, I wanted success and fame, so I cultivated desperately. Once I stepped onto the right path, I looked more lightly upon rank and fortune, and then I began to yearn for Dao-Unity. But after truly reaching it, I realized it was not as wonderful as I had imagined.”

After a pause, he said, “I’ll go on ahead. Come find me in the Yellow Springs.”

As soon as the words fell, the remaining trace of Zi Sang Bushou’s true spirit dispersed as well.

Standing where he was, the Wind God Guard let out a faint sigh.

“Human desire is, after all, never something that can be satisfied.”

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