62 Billions of Raindrops Fall from Heaven (1/2)
Chapter 62: Billions of Raindrops Fall from Heaven
Translator: TransnEditor: Transn
Suddenly, the air between the Chao Mansion's front gate and the rain-soaked carriage was rent with the lightning flashes of 14 feathered arrows. They cut through the thick sheets of raindrops, shot past Chao Xiaoshu's body, and avoided the burly driver seated atop the carriage with an eerie grace. Instead, they whistled through the curtains of the carriage window, leaving behind 14 neat holes.
Inside, Xiao Kuyu furled his brow, leaving his sorrowful face looking even more haggard than usual. He stared at the empty space before him, and his psychic power began to fill the car. As he did so, the faint smell of lilacs began to spread through the cabin, adding to the uncanny scene.
The arrows shot into the cabin like a flash of lightning, but in the face of his venerable power, they froze in midair like something dead, as if time itself had been stopped.
The 14 arrows hung there in the deadened air, with not a single tip scratching his rustic garb. One of the static missiles floated not three inches from Xiao Kuyu's wrinkled forehead. Two more shafts stared directly down into his eyes, and more yet were suspended silently before his hands!
The frozen arrows pattered softly to the ground, just as the rain outside. The sound was closer still to that of tender green leaves knocked to the earth by heavy rains. The sharpest points and the hardest shafts, deprived of the power of the boxwood bow and the hardy sinew string that launched them, were totally deprived of all lethality, and clattered to the ground like garbage before Xiao Kuyu's feet.
However, tasked with the feat of stopping these 14 arrows of wooden lightning, even the revered powers of the veteran Xiao Kuyu could not help but be strained, and his psychic power over the Qi of Heaven and Earth surrounding the carriage began to show a few cracks.
For a man like Chao Xiaoshu, any flaw of the enemy in defense would be an advantage to him. He felt as if his heart had been crushed in layers of silk as the arrows flew, and now a single thread had been loosened; his abdomen and his Ocean of Qi seemingly pierced by 10,000 needles now felt a little better. His steady footsteps suddenly stopped. Giving a salient shout, and with the raindrops spattering off of his indigo robe, Chao Xiaoshu strode right past the carriage as if he were a falling leaf.
The stolid driver on the carriage seat gave a gruff murmur. The horsewhip in his hand, made of something strange and unrecognizable, suddenly snapped past. From within his rough outer clothing shone a faint, dull, yellow light, revealing what was hidden before—the man was obviously a warrior.
Beside the ancient and frail body of such a powerful world-striding Psyche Master, there must be a guardian nearby of great physical power. Even Ning Que could realize this, so Chao Xiaoshu caught on at once.
The whip cracked, and the wind and rain beat against Chao Xiaoshu's indigo robe, which had now been soaked through and fluttered loudly in the gale. His body had become a falling leaf, gently drifting through the storm. He held out the first two fingers of his left hand, thrusting like a knife in the empty air toward the body of this driver. Suddenly, through the streams of wildly windblown raindrops, shot an array of white lines.
The driver gave another grunt, and wheeled the whip back through the air to strike at Chao Xiaoshu's outstretched fingers. The driver was preparing the whip around when he doubled over in extreme pain, clutching his stomach.
He stared down to find a common podao, buried deep in his stomach!
Ning Que had been running madly through the rain, shooting arrows as he moved. He was clearly aware that the elderly master in the carriage and the coachman above it were both cultivators, but this did not slow his pace in the slightest. Instead, he rushed to reach the carriage just a step later than Chao Xiaoshu, rolled underneath the two horses, and avoiding the burly coachman's gaze, dropped his arrows to pull out the podao.
He squatted beneath the horse's belly, and gripping the hilt of his podao in his right hand, reached up behind the horses' tails and gave a jagged thrust upwards from beneath the carriage seat. His sinister blow skillfully avoided any armor his target might have been wearing, and pierced deep into his gut!
However, a simple thrust to the stomach would not be fatal in itself. Ning Que gave a dispassionate twist of the wrist, twisting the podao back and forth, and turning the coachman's intestines and organs to a soupy mush.
The coachman watched the endlessly turning podao in his stomach, and his face drained of color in fear and despair. A deep ”ho-ho” caught in his throat, and he felt that this sharp piece of metal that must have been soaking in the freezing rain for some time now was suddenly burning hot.
Ning Que was not in the mood to enjoy the grisly face of his dying opponent. With his palm on the seat of the carriage, he gracefully somersaulted through the air, past the body of the coachman, closely following the figure of Chao Xiaoshu into the mysterious cabin.
The curtains lifted desolately; cold spring rain passed through.
Chao Xiaoshu's face was pale, his eyes as bright as the moon. His frantically waving hand struck Xiao Kuyu's cane.
Xiao Kuyu's expression suddenly changed, as he concentrated all of the psyche power in his body, and was overcome with the desire to kill, exterminate, this stubborn little Jianghu thug.
Ning Que dove between Chao Xiaoshu's knees, and with a deep grunt suddenly kneeled forward, the sharp tip of his podao in his hand forcefully piercing through Xiao Kuyu's foot.
Xiao Kuyu howled like a dying wild animal. Because of the shooting pain in his foot, his meditations had been interrupted once more, but his ancient hands, like the branches of a dead tree, had opened like a fan and prepared to crash down on the attacker!
The expressionless Chao Xiaoshu crashed hard into the old man's arms, dissipating all of the psyche power that his opponent had concentrated and breaking off his attack, and with a backhanded flash pulled out a snow-bright dagger, savagely stabbing into his adversary's neck!
Pow!
One cut.
Two cuts.
Three cuts.
14 cuts.
Chao Xiaoshu kneeled before Xiao Kuyu's frail, thin body. His left hand had a death grip on Xiao Kuyu's right shoulder, his right hand tight around his razor-sharp dagger, stabbing again and again. His face was without a trace of expression as blood spattered his robe, leaving behind inexplicable flowery stains of red.