Chapter 161 — The Ambush
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 3 of 6
Wan Jian Gu showed no intention of moving. But after sizing Ming Li up a moment longer, he suddenly sighed. "That Junior Brother Tian could produce a disciple like you—truly remarkable."
A flicker crossed Ming Li's face, but he gave a snort at once, and an air of arrogance surfaced upon his features, as though this once-famed Wan Jian Gu were nothing before him. He simply lifted his foot and strode forward. Wan Jian Gu straightened, his hands clasped behind his back, and did not retreat either.
As the two drew nearer and nearer, Wan Jian Gu suddenly knit his brows and shot up from the ground. Almost at the same instant, the earth beneath where he had stood gave a muffled thud and split apart in an instant. The Soul-Devouring, glinting with a cold, dark blue-black mystic light, burst from the soil at his feet and hurtled after him.
Wan Jian Gu, turning in midair, suddenly gave a great shout that shook the air about him—and reached out bare-handed, from midair, to seize the oncoming Soul-Devouring. In an instant the Blood-Devouring Bead at its tip blazed crimson; thread upon thread, strand upon strand of dark red blood-lines all lit up, mingled among the black light, and without a moment's hesitation it drove straight on.
Black qi rolled and crimson light flickered darkly. In an instant all around seemed to dim—but Wan Jian Gu came charging down, and all that grim, malevolent aura seemed to have no effect on him. Ming Li's expression changed. Such cultivation in a man—he could say it was the first time he had ever witnessed it.
It looked as though Wan Jian Gu would seize this most vicious of things in the world in his hand—but in that very instant, amid the black qi and red light, upon the surface of the Blood-Devouring Bead at the tip of the Soul-Devouring, there suddenly surfaced from deep within the bead a strange figure, growing from small to large, from dark to bright, bursting forth in an instant from the black qi and mystic light, resplendent in gold—it was the Buddhist true word "卐," and a force profound and pure, yet tinged with something uncanny, flung Wan Jian Gu's palm back.
Wan Jian Gu and Ming Li both recoiled. The Soul-Devouring flew back into Ming Li's hand in midair. Wan Jian Gu hung motionless in the air, his face faintly pale, staring at Ming Li. Word by word he said: "The Great Brahma Prajna!"
Ming Li's face was blank, but his heart was shaken. This man's cultivation was truly unfathomable. In all these ten-odd years, this was the first time he had seen anyone withstand the demonic power of the Soul-Devouring with bare hands.
Shaken as he was, he did not know that Wan Jian Gu before him was no less astonished. Wan Jian Gu had himself been a man of dazzling brilliance in his day, his cultivation far above his fellow disciples; save for the Daoist Yan Zhenren, he had held no one in his eyes. Though misfortune had dogged him since, and his fate had been bitter, facing this junior today, that inborn arrogance of his remained as it ever was.
Yet this exchange with Ming Li had startled him badly. The demonic power of the Blood-Devouring Bead was uncanny and vicious; though he showed no hurt, it had already set the very essence of his blood surging. And then the Buddhist true art Ming Li had used, the Great Brahma Prajna, was fused seamlessly with the true arts of Daoism and the demon cult—so merged that even one of his cultivation could find no way through, and was forced back. His heart could not but quake.
A cold wind whistled through the clearing, and the thin mist drifted gently, already beginning to show signs of dispersing.
Wan Jiangu watched Ming Li for a long while, then nodded and said, "Truly, every generation brings forth new talent. I never thought that in my remaining years I would meet a man such as you—it seems heaven has not been unkind to me."