Chapter 110 — Assassination
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 6
Ming Li stood before the door a while, but did not push it open at once; instead he turned and looked back the way he had come.
All over the Mystic Fire Altar, save for the scorching air, there was dead silence.
"Creak!"
The next moment, he pushed the door open.
At the entrance of the Burning Cloud Valley, blood now ran in rivers. More than a hundred tall, powerful barbarians with fish heads and human bodies were shrieking furiously, brandishing all manner of outlandish weapons—spears and sabers, swords and halberds—as they fought without cease against the surrounding Burning Cloud Valley disciples. Blood streamed across the ground, severed limbs lay everywhere, and among the dead and wounded were no few Burning Cloud Valley disciples, but more by far were fish-men.
As for those severed limbs, they must surely have been hewn off by the savage fish-men.
Terrible as the scene was, and ferocious as the fish-men were, the tide of battle was gradually turning the Burning Cloud Valley's way, and it was plain they had held something in reserve: several dozen disciples of higher cultivation had formed a semicircle and were pressing inward together.
Yet these fish-men of an alien race were truly fierce, and their bodies were utterly unlike human flesh. Even a cultivator struck by a sword-light loosed by a Burning Cloud Valley disciple would surely be wounded, yet these fish-men, for some reason, had bodies of extraordinary toughness; and the Burning Cloud Valley people seemed to have received some order to hold back. Apart from the sword-aura and treasures of a few masters, when the other disciples' artifacts struck them the fish-men were at most knocked flying, and blood was rarely drawn.
Still, for one thing, the Burning Cloud Valley people here had all cultivated for many years and were of no shallow attainment; one against one, with the power of their artifacts, they still had the better of these barbarian fish-men. For another, the fish-men had nothing but brute strength and thick hides; the Burning Cloud Valley disciples advanced and withdrew in good order, now and then riding their swords up into the air to strike down from above, which the fish-men found maddeningly hard to counter—and so the advantage remained firmly theirs.
Among the Burning Cloud Valley disciples an old man directed the fight from the center—none other than Lü Shun, whom Ming Li had seen that day at the desolate mountain temple. His brows were tightly knit now, his face black as thunder; plainly he was in a towering rage.
In the heat of the fighting a scream rang out: a Burning Cloud Valley disciple, careless for a moment, had left an opening, and a fish-man hooked his leg with a weapon like a sickle and dragged him bodily down from midair, dashing him to the ground. In an instant several fish-men swarmed over him, blades whirling, and he was killed on the spot, his body not even left whole.
In a flash an uproar ran through the Burning Cloud Valley disciples; many could restrain themselves no longer and put their strength into their hands, and the artifacts and flying swords whirling through the air shrieked aloud as they all attacked at once. Within moments screams rang out again and again—several fish-men had been hewn dead by the artifacts.
Yet these fish-men were savage by nature; far from showing fear at the sight of blood flying everywhere, they flung themselves into the fight all the more wildly, as though they did not know what it was to fear death.
Lü Shun rode his sword into the air and shouted again and again for them to stop, but below, fish-men and Burning Cloud Valley disciples alike had killed until their eyes were red, and not one heeded his words. A still greater slaughter seemed about to unfold before his eyes.
Just then the night sky, where the lone moon had hung high, suddenly darkened. Lü Shun frowned and glanced upward, and saw a mass of grey cloud sweeping in. His expression changed and he could not suppress a snort.