Volume 2, Chapter 40 – Contamination

For an instant, the air went utterly still.

Then Bai Xiang immediately sensed it—the aura of the man in sunglasses flared into a frenzy, as if she had jabbed at his deepest secret. His presence spun out of control.

“Roar!”

Scattered Demonic Power gathered around him, forming a half-solid outline of a blood-colored tiger. Its head reared close to her, roaring in her face as it raised its forepaws and slammed them down at Bai Xiang!

This wasn’t just an outer Aspect divine ability—it also included the tiger’s roar itself as a sonic impact. The force of it was so fierce, so explosive, that the ground behind Bai Xiang was raked with countless fine blade-marks. Even Yu He, off to the side, stared wide-eyed.

Where is this guy from, and how does he have an outer Aspect like a “Spirit Tiger”?

He wanted to help Bai Xiang, but a streak of cold light suddenly cut across his vision. The seedy man darted at him, cackling, “Come on, old beggar, come play with grandpa!”

Grandpa, my ass!

Heat shot straight to Yu He’s head. He yelled back, “Grandpa your damn mother!” and, for the first time, drew his cane-sword for real, clashing with the seedy man in a flurry of blows.

Yu He’s blade was on the slender side, but its edge was always sheathed in a layer of purple Demon Qi, as if it had substance. Around the sword, that Qi formed the shape of a door-sized super greatsword almost three meters long. Every move was wide-open and domineering, one chop enough to completely obliterate the little flowerbed they’d built outside the stairwell.

“Demon Pool ‘Sword Gate’?”

Seeing Yu He’s massive sword, the seedy man finally placed him. “You’re ‘Heaven-Breaking Sword’ Yu He?”

“I’m your grandpa!” Yu He glared back. With that, he stopped wasting breath and just chased the man down, hacking like mad.

But this one was a tough nut…

For all his mouth, his heart wasn’t as arrogant as his face.

The seedy man’s weapon was a scepter-sword, with blades at both ends. Each end could spring out a sharp edge—one side only a few inches long, the other extending over three meters. Worse, the two ends could retract, swap, and cycle at will. Paired with his slippery (nimble) footwork, Yu He had been hacking away all this time without even nicking a corner of his robe.

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“Rattle rattle rattle—”

In the midst of their clash, the seedy man flicked the “long blade,” making a sound like a metal tape measure snapping out. In Yu He’s eyes, the sword suddenly came alive, wrapped in a layer of purplish-red Demon Qi. It split into five long, thin “snakes,” flicking toward him from five directions.

“Puff!”

Yu He had no intention of dodging. He flipped his sword around and drove it point-first into the dirt, shouting, “Rise!” A purple sword-shadow surged up out of nowhere, swelling sharply into a sword-shield two meters wide and three meters tall in front of him. The snakes slammed into it with a metallic ding and bounced off.

“Ha!”

With another roar, Yu He twisted his wrist, using the sword like a shovel. He dug up a massive clod of yellow earth and flung it forward in a thick, dirty wave.

You jerk!

The seedy man hadn’t expected him to fight dirty. With his blade just knocked aside and no strength to pull it back to guard, he did manage to clamp his eyes shut and raise his left arm to shield his face, but some of the dust still got into his eyes.

A spike of danger exploded across his forehead. Eyes shut tight, he didn’t think at all and dove forward. As he rolled, he heard an explosive impact in the spot behind him.

Purple Demon Qi spread and billowed—but it was Yu He squatting where he’d just been, the greatsword outer Aspect driven into the yellow earth like a plow, fracturing the ground in an instant.

While those two fought savagely on one side, Bai Xiang’s battle with the burly man was just as intense.

The man’s “blood tiger Aspect” was vicious and feral—clearly not a normal Demon Pool. It didn’t just have the most basic “body-as-blow” outer Aspect divine ability; it also had several extended divine abilities like “shaking roar” and “killing wind.”

So-called “shaking roar” was the tiger’s bellow from before.

It couldn’t be compared to Shenming, but it was indeed a wave of sound produced by Demonic Power vibrating the air—a rare divine ability that also had some restraining power over Demon Pools.

“Killing wind” was even nastier. It was the wind blades born from the outer Aspect’s swiping claws, wrapped in a screaming gale and slashing in from all angles. Ordinary techniques had no way to block it.

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“Zheng—!”

Standing her ground, Bai Xiang unleashed Shenming again, using sword-miasma to shatter the shaking roar. Then she drove forward at the man, sword in hand, doing a midair flip along the way to slip past the killing wind.

It was like hearing the air itself crack beside her ear. She didn’t bother to look at how deep those cuts were gouging into the yellow dirt. She only glared at the man with golden eyes, chasing him down to close the distance.

The man had tested her strength. He no longer stood there stupidly to trade steel with her. He fully leveraged his height and long legs, circling the field with Bai Xiang in pursuit, constantly triggering his blood tiger Aspect’s divine abilities to interfere with her.

Thank heaven…

Dodging her attacks, he still had the leisure to feel relieved inside.

Before reaching Purple Core, Condensing the Aspect realm Demonic Power had two default minor stages: Purple Qi and Purple Blood, corresponding to dao-age thresholds of one thousand and two thousand years.

In his own case, his Demon Qi, Demonic Power, and blood tiger were all purplish-red. That meant the Demon Pool in his sword had been raised to over a thousand years of dao-age.

As for Bai Xiang—her Qi was clearly blood-red. It was a bit on the darker side, but still far too bright by comparison.

Three to four hundred years of dao-age, maybe.

She shouldn’t have much in reserve to power divine abilities.

Just as he thought this, he sprinted to the side of the sedan. In the next instant, his expression changed violently, and he dove away in a scramble.

With a soft “scrrrk,” and no visible buildup, the sedan simply split down the middle, the two halves collapsing inward under their own weight. The shift in the wheels conveniently opened a path straight through for Bai Xiang.

Was that a divine ability or a sword technique?

Horror flashed in the man’s eyes as he watched Bai Xiang walk through the cut in the car, asking him, “Spirit Tiger… what’s your relationship to Benling Sword Dao?”

When she’d teamed up with Liang Wenbo and the others before, Huang Qian had asked Chai Xuan if she was currently in the “raising the Spirit Tiger” stage.

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That “raising the Spirit Tiger” corresponded to the Visualization realm, and the thing visualized was a powerful Demon Pool called the “Benling Tiger.”

Since they’d already established cooperation with Qizhou University, it wasn’t really a secret. Anyone in Qizhou knew that the Benling Tiger possessed four major divine ability systems—sound, wind, suppression, and cutting. Each of those could be subdivided into multiple branches, varying and specializing from person to person.

Back then, Bai Xiang had really wanted to see the Benling Tiger for herself. Unfortunately, Liang Wenbo had been killed early by Chai Xuan’s schemes, and the other disciples weren’t at Condensing the Aspect. By the time the dust settled, she still hadn’t gotten her wish.

She hadn’t expected that the suspicious man she ran into here would have a blood tiger outer Aspect so similar to the legendary Benling Tiger.

“Your curiosity is a little excessive,” the man said, taking off his sunglasses to reveal blood-red eyes. “Knowing too much does you no good.”

“Answer me.” Bai Xiang merely raised her blade.

“Or die.”

“Heh…” The man bared his teeth in what looked almost like a grimace of a smile.

Something tugged at Bai Xiang’s heart. She heard him suddenly roar, “Uncle Li, go!” Then he clenched his war sword, pressed his other hand to the edge, and yanked a great mass of purplish-red Qi miasma out of it.

What’s this?

Bai Xiang had no idea what he was trying to do, but at this distance she couldn’t kill him in time. She could only throw out a probing wave of sword Qi and watch as it carved straight across his chest.

Squelch!

A bucket of blood exploded from the cut. His upper body folded along the opening and dropped, his innards and intestines spilling out in a flood, the two halves barely held together by a strip of skin.

But he didn’t die.

The purplish-red Qi miasma in his hand had vanished. His head lay trembling slightly against the ground, teeth chattering. The blood on the floor began to gather on its own, drifting up into the air. Like a miniature river of blood, it circled him slowly.

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“Little Tiger!”

Catching a glimpse of this, the seedy man’s face went pale.

“Hm?”

Yu He had just taken the upper hand. When he turned and saw the vision of “blood river coiling,” his expression changed drastically. “He’s gone mad?” he shouted.

Only then did he snap back and turn around again—just in time to see the seedy man already vaulting over the wall, abandoning his partner and running!

“Squelch!”

“Splurt splurt!”

The burly man’s body shook as his spine burst through his flesh and arched high.

That spine was clearly wrong. It grew thicker and larger, the ribs branching from it nothing like a human’s.

The change was so fast, so sudden, it barely took a second. The man’s own flesh turned to sludge across the ground, then just as quickly was flooded by the “blood river,” writhing and climbing up the new bones.

Bai Xiang carefully studied this newly born enemy.

Its upper body had an extremely unbalanced structure. The human left arm hung limp, while the right half of the torso had swelled to three times its previous size, the huge clawed right hand still gripping the war sword.

Fresh flesh grew over with purplish-black fur, like it hadn’t fully developed yet. Some parts looked rotten and decayed.

The man’s original face was stretched across one shoulder. The center of his chest was bare, and there, a bulging slit of a mouth protruded.

Two amber beast-eyes opened on his chest, slowly focusing as they met Bai Xiang’s gaze.