CHAPTER 239: ONLY ONE REMAINS [2]

The instant the dagger crossed her, Li Shen’s eyes flashed.

The dagger exploded, releasing a burst of black mist that expanded outward like a living thing. It wrapped around her, tendrils of Death Qi coiling and constricting her form.

Piao Ling groaned, pain lancing through her spirit. She quickly dispersed the mist with a surge of soul energy and reappeared, ready to counterattack.

But her movements stopped halfway.

Behind her, the black mist twisted and the dagger reformed, its tip gleaming with a faint, deathly light.

Before she could react, it shot forward, piercing her back. She gasped, immediately switching again to her soul form. The blade passed through harmlessly, but when she turned back, Li Shen was already in front of her.

"Death of the Soul," he whispered.

His hand closed around her throat. His other hand guided the dagger through her chest, sinking directly into her heart.

The Death Qi’s nature changed instantly. Its vibration deepened, its nature shifting from corporeal destruction to spiritual decay.

Piao Ling’s body flickered, her form becoming half-ethereal as cracks of black light began to spread across her translucent frame.

Then came her scream — high, piercing, and filled with agony.

"AAHHHHHH—!"

Instinctively, she forced soul energy outward, weaving a barrier of shimmering blue light around herself.

The air trembled — boom! — a sharp blast flung her backward, tearing through the mountain wall behind her.

Li Shen staggered a step or two, his expression still blank. But he did not pursue. He didn’t need to. The infection had already begun.

Dark streaks of Death Qi crawled beneath Piao Ling’s skin, threading through her veins, tainting every fragment of her soul.

The pain was unimaginable, each breath felt like drowning in her own essence.

Yet she did not yield.

A ruthless glint flashed in her silver eyes. She gathered all her remaining strength, forcing the rampaging Death Qi into a single part of her soul before severing it.

The world dimmed for her, her soul shrieked in protest but the invasive energy was isolated.

’Almost,’ she thought, blood misting from her lips.

But Li Shen was already there.

"Death Stampede."

His leg swept upward, slamming into her ribs, then her chest, again and again — each strike carrying the weight of a collapsing mountain.

Piao Ling’s body smashed through stone, carving a jagged crater into the mountainside.

Her vision blurred. The world tilted. When focus returned, she saw only Li Shen standing over her, dagger poised once more.

She gathered every scrap of energy into her throat and released a piercing screech — a sonic soul wave that shredded the air.

Li Shen staggered, the sound slicing into his consciousness like blades. Yet his eyes remained flat and distant, devoid of pain or hesitation.

He reached down, seizing her head. His Death Qi surged violently, flooding into her body like a river of ink.

All living beings instinctively rejected Death Qi — it was antithetical to life itself.

Yet Li Shen wielded it as though it were an extension of his will.

"Death of the Body."

Piao Ling’s form convulsed. Her essence began to dissolve, the azure light of her soul being consumed by an ever-spreading black.

Her nature was that of a spiritual lifeform — pure, radiant, and incorporeal. To her, Death Qi was the perfect counter.

She tried to resist, to expel it, but it was futile.

The faint traces of the earlier infection still lingered within her. As his Death Qi corroded her from within, those hidden fragments ignited like seeds finding fertile soil.

Invisible tendrils unfurled from her soul, rooting deep, binding her essence until her resistance ceased entirely.

Her final breath was soundless. But she did not panic, as a spiritual lifeform she knew the truth of the trial, but she still didn’t like dying.

But her end was not death.

When the last wisp of her spiritual energy faded, a new figure rose where she had fallen — a dark-blue specter, faintly translucent, her once-radiant eyes now dull and lifeless.

She looked exactly like Piao Ling — only colder, emptier, and utterly obedient.

The reanimated Piao Ling bowed low, taking her place behind Li Shen.

A faint smile touched his lips.

"Good," he murmured. "My odds just improved."

Then he looked at the battle taking place in the distance.

It was Wu Tianjian and Jun Zha.

***

Wu Tianjian drew back, his sword raised defensively, golden Qi flickering around him.

His sharp gaze remained fixed on the plain-looking man before him — Jun Zha, the "ordinary" disciple whose every move defied that very description.

’Again,’ Wu Tianjian thought, his brows twitching.

’Every time I move, he reads me like an open scroll. This is infuriating.’

It wasn’t that Jun Zha was overwhelmingly strong — it was that he understood him too well.

Each swing of Wu Tianjian’s sword was effortlessly avoided, every feint anticipated before it was even made.

"Fellow Daoist," Jun Zha said with an easy smile, stepping back a pace, the faint clink of his gourd echoing at his waist.

"Why don’t you try another opponent? I’m but a peaceful man seeking harmony."

’Peaceful man, my sword!’ Wu Tianjian’s lips tightened.

The way Jun Zha moved — calm, effortless, unhurried — screamed pure experience.

He was now done testing waters.

Wu Tianjian’s aura flared, his robes billowing in the windless air. Sword Qi surged upward like an eruption, bathing the battlefield in blinding light.

Jun Zha’s relaxed expression didn’t change.

"Ah," he said mildly, lifting the gourd in one hand.

"So you’re finally taking me seriously."

"Don’t flatter yourself," Wu Tianjian replied coldly. His sword rose high, the blade humming as layers of luminous Qi condensed along its edge.

"Bright Light Immortal Sword — Second Form: Immortal Sun Wheel!"

He swung his blade in a perfect arc, and a brilliant golden disk — a wheel of concentrated sword Qi and intent — spun forth, tearing through the air with a shriek like divine thunder.

The heat distorted the very space around it, burning away even the spiritual mist that lingered in the arena.

Jun Zha’s eyes gleamed faintly.

"That’s rather bright," he said and then, with an almost lazy gesture, he uncorked his gourd.

A sudden pull of suction erupted from it. The radiant golden disk, with all its might and destructive energy, was drawn into the gourd’s mouth — and vanished without a trace.

"!!!" Wu Tianjian’s pupils shrank.

’A devouring treasure...’ he thought, alarm flashing through him.

He had no time to waste energy on distance attacks now.

The longer he stayed away, the more his power would simply feed that cursed gourd. He tightened his grip on his sword.

Jun Zha smiled apologetically.

"Haha, fellow Daoist, I’m just a simple man. Why exert yourself so much over me?"

Wu Tianjian scoffed.

"A simple man? You clearly from the Celestial Heaven Peak, with that kind of toy, call yourself simple? Then I must be a god among men."

Jun Zha only chuckled softly, his tone unreadable.

"Light Speed Steps!"

Golden light flared beneath Wu Tianjian’s feet as his entire body dissolved into a streak of radiance. In an instant, he reappeared behind Jun Zha, his sword already slashing downward.

But instead of blood, there was a flash — a translucent barrier sprang up around Jun Zha, taking the blow directly.

Sparks flew, and Wu Tianjian’s expression turned grim.

"Impossible!" he shouted, leaping back.