“Hmph, little girl, aren’t you afraid of biting your tongue when you boast? With your cultivation, you can probably only take three strikes from that old man Lin Que, so you shouldn’t be able to take even one sword from me!”
A dignified late-stage Hundred Refinements Grandmaster was being provoked by a little girl who had only recently condensed her Qi Sea.
Lü Tianzhi was angry, but he was also extremely cautious, relying on senses far beyond those of ordinary people to figure out the structure of the cabin.
The first deck of the cabin was a straight walkway, with cabins piled full of all kinds of goods on both sides.
At the end of the corridor were the slide and stairs leading down to the second deck.
The corpses of mortals, three Jiejian Gate disciples, and Luo and Zhao lay strewn across the walkway.
But the light here was dim, and there were no torches.
With only a sliver of moonlight shining down through the deck skylight, it was not easy to see the situation before him.
However, Saintess Bai Yao seemed to have no intention of continuing a battle of words with Lü Tianzhi.
She directly took advantage of her opponent not yet fully adapting to the darkness and headed through the passage to the lower deck.
“You want to leave?! Not so easy!”
How could Lü Tianzhi let Saintess Bai Yao escape his Sword Intent lock so easily?
He immediately raised his sword and, relying on his powerful cultivation, charged forward to kill.
But just at that moment, from the half-severed corpse of Twin Swords Senior Luo in front of him, a small ball suddenly popped out.
Then the ball split open, and an earth-yellow Golden Talisman abruptly appeared.
“Damn!”
In that instant, Lü Tianzhi immediately realized he had fallen into a trap.
The Golden Talisman activated, and a powerful shock rushed straight into his mind, causing Lü Tianzhi to briefly lose his ability to judge his surroundings.
This was a good item Saintess Bai Yao had found in the pocket of one of the Xuan Kingdom Royal Family scions she killed at Black Stone Cliff in the Cangjie Grotto-Heaven.
Its name was the Shock Talisman.
Then, as Saintess Bai Yao took the chance to slip down to the second deck of the cabin, the sound of mechanical repeating crossbows on the first deck firing rapidly and densely came, shooting wildly at Lü Tianzhi.
“Damn it, all treacherous tricks!”
Lü Tianzhi rarely cursed in his life.
This was probably the first dirty word he had cursed after breaking through to the Grandmaster Realm.
However, though he cursed aloud, he unhesitatingly poured true qi into the Spirit Tool Sword in his hand, which was wrapped in moonlight patterns, and swung it at the floor with all his strength.
The incomparably terrifying Sword Qi instantly split open the thick cabin deck again.
Half of the first-deck walkway collapsed, and the scattered Sword Qi completely blocked all the incoming crossbow bolts.
And Lü Tianzhi descended directly to the second deck of the cabin along the collapsed debris.
“Bai Ling, still trying to struggle? What a stupid and clumsy farce.”
“You must have guessed from the beginning that you were the discarded piece in this chess game!”
“So use whatever tricks you have…”
As soon as Lü Tianzhi landed and said these words, he immediately caught sight of one Refined Iron Short Sword shooting at him from each of the front upper and lower directions, with another coming from behind.
The trajectories of these flying swords were erratic, and Sword Qi Condensed into Threads lingered within them, making their killing power extraordinary.
“Hands-Free Sword? Hmph, it’s just an imitation flying sword technique that has neither Sword Intent nor sword form!”
Lü Tianzhi’s Sword Intent rose instantly.
Without moving his body, he caused the moonlight patterns on his sword to emit three sword-light afterimages, simultaneously defeating the three short swords.
Against a Hundred Refinements Grandmaster like Lü Tianzhi who possessed Heaven and Earth Momentum, the Hands-Free Sword was nearly useless.
Saintess Bai Yao had clearly anticipated this.
Just as the three short swords were knocked away, a Crossbow had already been aimed at the second-deck corridor from the stairs leading to the third deck.
Saintess Bai Yao instantly activated it with Spirit Silk.
Lü Tianzhi’s eyes focused, clearly realizing that his move to descend to the second deck had long been accounted for by Saintess Bai Yao.
And using the Crossbow to kill him—that was the true killing move Saintess Bai Yao had designed within this second-deck cabin!
However, although Saintess Bai Yao was skilled at scheming, she had still underestimated just how monstrous Lü Tianzhi was.
He was a Sword Dao genius the Lü Family might not produce even once in a thousand years.
Lü Tianzhi did not retreat a single step, with no intention of dodging at all.
The [Bright Moon Sword]‘s Sword Intent surged, swallowing a thousand miles like a tiger, and the sword struck like moonlight pouring down.
The terrifying moonlight Sword Qi wantonly shattered the wooden structures of the surrounding cabin doors.
The metal arrowhead of the Crossbow bolt was struck head-on by the terrifying sword radiance and was instantly split in two along with the entire bolt!
That was a Crossbow capable of easily shooting dead large demon beasts.
Even a great demon at the half-step Core Formation stage would either die or be gravely wounded if hit by a bolt.
Yet now, it was easily split in two by Lü Tianzhi!
But just when Lü Tianzhi’s sword force had not yet fully spent itself, another Refined Iron Short Sword hidden in the shadow of the crossbow bolt’s trajectory suddenly thrust out.
Lü Tianzhi found it difficult to withdraw his sword, and the blade aimed straight for his throat.
This was Saintess Bai Yao’s true killing move—[Cang Jian Tian Di].
“Light of the Bright Moon, shine upon all things!”
Lü Tianzhi had no intention of withdrawing his sword to block.
He merely chanted softly without hurry, and his [Bright Moon Sword], wrapped in moonlight patterns, instantly transformed into a phantom bright moon that enveloped his entire body.
With a “clang,” Saintess Bai Yao’s full-power killing move [Cang Jian Tian Di] was actually knocked away just like that by the terrifying moon-wheel Sword Qi.
“As expected of a high-grade Spirit Tool… This guy’s cultivation is powerful, and his weapon is domineering too. Fighting him is really damn exhausting!”
Saintess Bai Yao kept cursing endlessly in her heart, but her hands never stopped working for a moment.
What [Cang Jian Tian Di] concealed was not just a single sword.
Two red Golden Talismans wrapped around Copper Coins had been hidden beneath the blade of the Refined Iron Short Sword all along through [Cang Jian Tian Di].
At the instant the short sword was knocked away by the moon-wheel Sword Qi, these two Golden Talismans immediately unfolded into two complete crimson Golden Talismans.
Their energy fluctuations were already overflowing, and they suddenly appeared in Lü Tianzhi’s sight.
“Explode!”
Saintess Bai Yao shouted decisively.
Before Lü Tianzhi even had time to be shocked, a huge energy explosion immediately burst out from the second-deck cabin.
The explosion shot straight into the sky through the lower cabin’s deck skylight.
It even frightened the Jiejian Gate disciples who had just been about to move the Huntian Copper Dragon so badly that they fell to the ground on the spot.
However, as the smoke and dust gradually dispersed, Lü Tianzhi’s figure stood motionless in place.
The Bright Moon radiance on his body had dimmed by three parts, but it had successfully withstood this round of explosion that was enough to injure him.
Then Lü Tianzhi immediately swung a burst of Sword Qi at Saintess Bai Yao’s figure at the entrance to the third deck.
Unfortunately, it did not hit.
It merely cut that Crossbow into two sections, allowing the prepared Saintess Bai Yao to successfully escape down to the third deck.
“Lü Tianzhi, you’re too much of a cheater.”
“Your cultivation suppresses mine by two stages, and your weapon is a high-grade Spirit Tool that even the entire Xu Kingdom has only a few of.”
“I’m just a tiny ant at the early stage of the Hundred Refinements Realm—does that really make things so troublesome for you, a late-stage Hundred Refinements Grandmaster?”
Saintess Bai Yao’s words still carried the roguish, little-devil tone, but what she said was also the truth.
And the truth was often like a sharp blade, hurting most when it pierced the heart.
With the cultivation of a late-stage Hundred Refinements Grandmaster, plus a high-grade Spirit Tool, he still could not do anything to that damned little devil even now.
Lü Tianzhi’s face as a genius of the Lü Family had more or less been completely lost.
“Bai Ling, go ahead and run.”
“Soon you will have nowhere left to run.”
“Once you reach the third deck of the cabin, even if I give you a high-grade Spirit Tool, you will still undoubtedly die.”
However, after a long silence, Lü Tianzhi finally let out a helpless breath.
What extraordinary humiliation, what being repeatedly schemed against—none of it really mattered.
As long as he killed that little bitch named Bai Ling, no one would know just how miserable Lü Tianzhi had been tonight.
Saintess Bai Yao stood alone at the bottom of the third-deck cabin.
Through the almost impenetrable pitch-black darkness, she looked at Lü Tianzhi, who was still on the second-deck walkway, his whole body shining with moonlight.
After hearing what Lü Tianzhi said, she unconsciously touched the Storage Pouch at her waist, feeling the Black Short Sword lying quietly inside.
“Give me a high-grade Spirit Tool and I’ll still undoubtedly die? Hehehe, that’s hard to say.”
Saintess Bai Yao just stood there in the darkness, sneering inwardly.
She waited for Lü Tianzhi to come down to the third deck and then give him a huge surprise.