Chapter 429 - The Undead versus the Undying (1/2)
Ta… Ta… Ta…
The footsteps reverberated like drums, growing louder and louder as the mysterious person drew closer to the entrance. Everyone tensed like a nocked arrow, keeping their eyes intently on the entrance, trying hard not to blink while waiting for the person to emerge.
A gust of cold wind issued from inside the cave, gushing out like a burst of wraiths and apparition that made goose pimples oozed on everyone’s skin. Even the sky seemed to darken with flat, dark nimbuses massing overhead.
Ta… Ta… Ta…
Xiao Chen stifled a shiver as he readied himself to see who it was coming. His heart was shaking with every nerve and muscle in him taut beyond imagination. He could hardly even move. He kept his eyes peeled on the entrance like everyone else and he glimpsed a silhouette surfacing out of the darkness.
Everyone’s breaths held like forever when the person finally stopped at the entrance of the cave. What remained of the defenders, nearly a dozen of them, fell to their knees and bowed reverently. The Divine Corpse had awakened! But the lion’s share of the disciples and acolytes who had given their lives in defense of the Sect would never be able to witness with their own eyes her majesty and terror.
Xiao Chen’s finger throbbed. It was not Muxue nor was she Weiyang, but a completely different person. A woman whose face he did not know. With her lips dyed red and her hair made wonderfully, adorned with a deep-scarlet hairpin, and clothed in a long robe of red which tails fluttered with her every step, she looked more like a bride on her wedding day than a terrible harbinger of death. But her cold glare and placidly deadpan expression only suggested otherwise.
Cold winds howled like wolves, lifting the woman’s sleeves but a little, revealing her milk-pale arms. No amount of perfume on her could remove the stench of decaying flesh from her nor hide the fact that she had been dead for more than three millennia.
This was none other than Red Sleeve, the actual leader of the Corpse Refinery Sect.
An agonizing silence filled the compound as no one dared to move a muscle. No one knew how powerful was Red Sleeve and she was doing a great job in concealing her aura. Yet everyone felt as if they were stepping on a bed of needles.
Red Sleeve stepped out into the open, her passive and disinterested eyes scanning the mob of mages surrounding the mouth of the cave before finally resting on Xiao Chen.
Xiao Chen flexed his finger, managing only to utter a hateful “You!” Then she disappeared; appearing right before him with a speed quicker than the wind.
Xiao Chen felt his breath drained from. His mind was quick to register what was happening, but he could barely move as if the flow of Time has been suspended. Then he felt another stab of pain in his chest and his strength was leaving him just as screams and gasps of fright began chorusing around him.
Blood dripped onto the ground into a pool and he saw Red Sleeve’s arm speared through his chest.Read the next chapter on our novelhall.com
“MY LORD!” Qingluan and Ziyun’er gasped, their faces horror-struck. Shadows danced around Xiao Chen and Red Sleeve menacingly as all twelve of the Hidden Fragrance Wafting Under the Moon sprang into action and swooped down from all directions on Red Sleeve.
Yet none of their blades had so much as grazed Red Sleeve. Instead, all twelve of them fell backward, spewing froth and blood from their mouths as they crashed into the ground. No one saw what happened. Everything happened just too quickly.
Blood poured out of Xiao Chen’s mouth as he struggled to stand. At last, his eyes closed and he began to fall back, ultimately crashing to the ground in a heap with a huge poof of dust and gravel. No one breathed, their dread and disbelief completely painted on their faces. How is this even possible… That redoubtable Xiao Chen defeated with just one blow…
“JUNIOR BROTHER!” Luo Shangyan screamed, her eyes wide and her face aghast with terror and panic. Her body trembled uncontrollably and beads of tears rolled down her face like pearls falling from a necklace to the ground.
Red Sleeve, with her impassive and cold stare, regarded Xiao Chen who was lying dead on the ground for several seconds before she finally spoke with ice, “Put him together with the girl of the Mystic Yin Body. Have them buried together in the evenfall. May this be the least that I could do for them.”
“Understood, My Lady!” Two of her female stewards declared and came forward. They moved to either side of Xiao Chen and was about to lift him up when one of them cried suddenly, “My Lady!”
“What is the matter!” Red Sleeve hissed, radiating a palpable annoyance in her angry but cold voice, while maintaining a frigid glare on the mob of mages of the Orthodox Path surrounding her.
“H-he’s… he seems alive!”
The handmaiden barely finished gasping with shock when Xiao Chen’s eyes blinked opened suddenly. A glow of red flashed momentarily in his eyes and two quick bangs followed; he had delivered two quick blows into the two handmaidens and they crashed several yards away.
“Where is Muxue!!” Xiao Chen rose up, his eyes flaring with fury as he bellowed like a lion roaring with its teeth bared at Red Sleeve but the Queen of the Corpse Refinery Sect merely whirled around to watch him with her ever-so placid and contemplative stare. Out of the blue, like a bolt of lightning from the sky, a huge boom erupted and Xiao Chen flew headlong down to the ground tens of yards away, crashing into a couple of huge boulders with such great force that they crumbled.
But just when everyone else was reeling with shock, Perfected Immortal Fenglan tarried not; he quickly weaved a quick spell, summoning into form more than a dozen of magic bolts in the form of golden swords to attack Red Sleeve. But before he could let fly his attack, Red Sleeve appeared right in front of him and landed her foot into the elderly man’s abdomen, sending him careening into a nearby coppice and smashing a handful of trees.
“Teacher!” Zuoqiu Yang yelled. As if on a cue, Perfected Immortal Qing Chen and the rest of the mages sprang into action, brandishing their what magical relics and weapons at their disposal. The sky was splashed with myriads of colors from the barrages of magical bolts that rained on Red Sleeve. But even before the attacks met their mark, the mages fell one by one. The Queen of the Dead leaped, ducked, kicked, and punched with blinding quickness that no one could even see her before they collapsed.
At the other side of the compound, the remaining survivors of the Sect beheld their Queen’s otherworldly power and speed with agape expressions. The forces of the Orthodox Path were so vast with no lack of mages wielding powers of the Nirvana and the Apotheosis Realms. Yet not a single one of them could withstand Red Sleeve’s demonic might and were soundly defeated with ease…
Unlike the dazzling magical spells and hexes that the mages so desperately hurled at her, Red Sleeve used only simple kicks and punches. Yet there was no one in the entire army of mages who could counter her terrifying speed and strength. Be they mages of the Nirvana Realm or the Apotheosis Realm, no one remained standing before her as the Queen of the Corpse Refinery Sect dispatched her foes with the ease of swatting flies.
Everyone watched in awe of the deadliness of Red Sleeve’s simple attacks; Xiaoyue, Su Zimu, Yu Yifeng, and even Zuoqiu Yang… All of those who were still on their feet cowered with fear, slowly inching backward with fear, their morale completely shattered to bits. Here before them stood the very physical personification of unconquerable power!
“BEGONE!” Red Sleeve spat venomously with ice. She flailed the billowing sleeves of her robe with triumph and disdain as she wheeled around, casually strolling back in the direction of the cave entrance.