Volume 2, Chapter 41 – Soul-Suppressing

Yu He stared in shock at the twisted “demon-man.” He was just about to warn Bai Xiang that “this brute is dangerous” when he turned his head and saw her, in her little sandals, already walking toward the monster.

Little brat, you really don’t want to live, do you!

Yu He was truly horrified now. A “Don’t—” stuck in his throat, and in the next second he saw Bai Xiang’s figure blur. The newborn abomination, still stumbling, was smashed flying by a tremendous impact.

“Roar!”

The monster hit the ground, then suddenly rolled and clawed its way back up, loosing a bestial roar on instinct.

On the front of its upper torso, that protruding area grew even more pronounced. With the roar, a thick mane of black, yellow, and white hair burst forth from it—and a massive tiger head thrust straight out from its chest and belly!

Bai Xiang’s earlier lunge and slash had actually been blocked by the creature’s swinging war sword. It was strong, but grotesquely unbalanced—top-heavy and bottom-light, its proportions worked against its ability to stand firm. That was why the force of the clash had blown it away.

Shing—

The first sword-draw hadn’t even drawn blood. Using the rebound gap to catch her breath, Bai Xiang’s body blurred in place again.

Bang!

Yellow earth exploded from underfoot as she launched, her body nearly parallel to the ground. Using a short burst of force for high-speed acceleration, she swung her arm in a full arc and lifted her sword in an upward slash.

The tiger demon immediately raised its sword as a shield, dropping its center of gravity, bracing its “frail” legs and left hand against the ground.

“Clang!”

Blade met blade—first came the expected shriek of metal on metal, then a booming detonation. From the point where their swords crossed, two blood-colored storms erupted in opposite directions.

It was just like the Condensing-the-Aspect duel on the arena before. The twin storms looked like two red membranes of air, both torn wild by the force blasting out from the contact point. The ferocity of it was like a gale slamming into their faces. Under that force, the tiger demon’s huge, misshapen face twisted violently, its very outline stretched into a “V” shape.

As for Bai Xiang—her features did distort under the tearing pressure of the air membrane, but not by much. Only her white hair streamed straight back, completely baring her forehead and face, especially those eerie golden eyes.

The tiger demon was a monster born from a human body polluted after Sword Dao fell into disorder. By rights, such beings were judged the same as Demon Pools: without reaching the extreme of wisdom, they would not possess true intellect.

Yet for some reason, staring across that raging gale into those golden eyes at such close range, it actually shuddered. The roar of counterattack jammed in its throat, turning into a low whimper.

“Scrrk!”

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“Roar!”

At that moment, a purple edge broader than a door slab chopped in from the side, cutting into the tiger demon’s weakest defense at the left shoulder and gutting it open again.

“Roar! Hiss—roar!!!”

The tiger demon screamed hysterically, but the pressure on Bai Xiang’s sword didn’t ease. She even brought her other hand up to brace the blade, turning the edge from a narrow line into a horizontal bar, grinding the tiger demon back across the yellow dirt. Not even Yu He, with his ambush and retaliation, could manage that.

“This thing’s filthy!” Yu He jumped back as soon as he finished his slash, not wanting the gale to blow blood into his face. Seeing Bai Xiang still locked against the tiger, he called out another warning: “Watch out for assimilation!”

Actively induced pollution was usually less dangerous than the passive kind.

Because passive meant “complete derangement”—meant that some terrifying concept you could no longer suppress with all your strength was about to break loose.

Active inducement was much better by comparison; it wouldn’t reach “complete derangement.” But beginners still had to watch out for having their souls swept up and assimilated by the surging madness.

Right—if you really wanted to say how troublesome this trick was, maybe it wasn’t that bad. Otherwise, every cultivator could use this to threaten others. If in the end all your hard cultivation was less intimidating than the fear of pollution, that would be a cosmic joke.

Veteran hands didn’t fear this. But when rookies locked in close with this kind of thing, facing that frenzy of Demonic Power head-on, it was very possible for them to slip for an instant and fall into a sympathetic resonance.

In other words… they might subconsciously begin trying to unseal the Demon Pool themselves—not using a sword as the vessel, but their own flesh as its new container.

But she seemed completely unaffected.

Yu He looked at Bai Xiang and felt that the outer-Aspect force she was releasing was as steady and normal as before.

He let out a breath and stopped splitting his focus. His body circled behind the tiger demon again, sword tip cocked as he lunged for its rear, planning to give it some “true damage.”

Just then, the remaining fabric over the tiger demon’s spine suddenly burst apart.

In barely an instant, the huge tiger head that had been facing Bai Xiang on its front caved back into its chest and bulged out from its spine instead, glaring at Yu He with savage, murderous eyes.

“Crack crack…”

Not only that, every joint in its body twisted backward at once, limbs contorting into reverse-jointed beast limbs. It was about to borrow Bai Xiang’s force to launch itself straight at Yu He!

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Fuck!

Yu He swore in his heart. He was just about to raise his sword to block when he heard the tiger demon roar again in front.

“Roar—!!!”

This time, it was different from before.

The roar seemed to carry some special power. The moment the sound wave hit him, Yu He’s entire body locked up, as if someone had hit him with a binding spell. Even his soul and thoughts froze solid!

“Chiii——!!!”

At the critical moment, he heard a crisp cicada cry ring faintly in from afar.

Jolted by the cicada’s call, Yu He snapped awake. The next instant, he saw the tiger demon pounce onto him, its heavy war sword shoving his own blade up toward his throat.

A sword was double-edged.

If he took that push head-on, he’d be splitting his own windpipe with his own sword.

The hell with you!

Yu He simply dropped flat to the ground, legs shooting straight to kick at the tiger’s fangs as he slipped out beneath it like a loach. The tiger’s jaws snapped shut on empty air.

In the next moment, Bai Xiang finally caught up.

She hadn’t anticipated that backflip counter, so her pursuit had been stalled for a heartbeat. Once she closed in again, her face cold, she rammed her sword into the tiger demon’s back, making it shriek. She swept the blade in an L-shaped cut inside its body, aiming to devastate as much of its internal organs as possible.

Scalding demon blood sprayed at close range. Remembering Yu He’s warning, Bai Xiang pushed her Qi miasma in front of her body, sweeping the blown-back blood aside to either side.

Suddenly!

The tiger demon’s upper body tore free from its waist, springing up like a compressed spring released. It shot several meters into the air, turning its face toward Bai Xiang.

Time froze.

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Bai Xiang rolled her eyes up to glare at the snarling tiger head, the corner of her gaze flicking toward the fallen remains of its body.

She didn’t chase. Instead, she slipped one step sideways and back.

Squelch squelch squelch!

A massive storm of wind blades took on hazy forms within Demonic Aura, crescent slashes biting into the yellow soil. Wherever they passed, it was like mortar shells exploding, covering a seven- or eight-meter radius that included Bai Xiang.

Before the dust could clear, the spine that had launched the tiger head skyward lost its force and toppled, dragging the head down with it in a crash.

Buzz—!

A streak of sword Qi suddenly split the smoke apart.

Bai Xiang stepped down in front of the tiger head in a single stride. Before it could open its mouth, her sword thrust into the center of its forehead, wrist and ‘Feixiang Heaven’ both blurring.

“Splurt!”

The tiger demon’s front didn’t move, but its back skull burst like half a watermelon, spraying gore in a fan behind it.

Bai Xiang still didn’t let it go. She twisted her wrist, slicing horizontally and vertically, dicing the head into eight pieces in a blink.

The last rays of sunset washed over the abandoned construction site. Around them, the soil soaked with demon blood was steaming, giving off coils of purplish-red smoke.

Yu He, still shaken, edged closer.

Only now did Bai Xiang have the leisure to ask, “What is this?”

“Pollution. Also called derangement.” Yu He sighed. “His Demon Pool wasn’t simple… but his own cultivation was too weak, far from enough to support the Demon Pool truly taking form through flesh and blood.”

“A pity—or rather, just as well! If he’d managed to raise a complete Benling Tiger, that would be something you could call a true ‘demon-age’ monster!”

So that’s why only one of them pushed its way out?

Bai Xiang frowned.

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“You’re sure it was a Benling Tiger?” She looked down at the remains again.

“Did you see the way it locked me down just now?” Yu He still felt a twinge of fear as he spoke. “Sound, wind, suppression, cutting—four great divine abilities. That was ‘sound art’ and ‘suppression art’ acting together. It even pinned my soul!”

And that last-ditch “storm-cutting” struggle.

Bai Xiang nodded.

Wind and cutting, then.

Looked at that way, it did fit.

But if it really was a Benling Tiger…

She knit her brows.

Then his goal hadn’t been to fight, but to use this form to kill himself, dragging things out.

On the one hand, to give his companion a chance to escape. On the other, to avoid being captured alive by their side.

That kind of resolve was downright suicidal-fanatic level.

Which meant—

“He’s not from Benling.”

Yu He seemed to know what she was thinking and shook his head beside her.

“It’s very similar, yes.”

“But the sword art he used wasn’t Benling Sword Dao.”