Chapter 1869: The Situation’s Getting Dangerous
“Watch out, Your Highness!”
Eunuch Que shouted his warning as he lunged up to stand in front of Dizu Prince. Raising one of the four arms, a bright glow burst out as five ancient symbols appeared.
He had refined five weapons, which merged with the five symbols and giving out five different colors of purple, blue, white, yellow, and green.
“Five-Ordinance of Heaven and Earth!”
He performed a palm technique with the loud rumbling sound of a thunderstorm, hitting the broadsword of Blood Wasp Ashuran King.
Five-Ordinance of Heaven and Earth was a Tongxuan-class intermediate saint technique.
The five weapons possessed the power of Supreme Saints. It made a superb combination when the sacred weapons and saint techniques came together.
Eunuch Que had lived up to his reputation as the top fighter of Dizu Prince. He had thwarted Blood Wasp Ashuran King’s attack. Although it was just for a moment, he had bought enough time for Dizu Prince to pull away at a safe distance.
“Heavenfall Seal!”
Thousands of precepts flew out of Yue Gongming’s brow, forming a seal that shone brighter than the sun to strike at Blood Wasp Ashuran King’s abdomen from below.
Meanwhile, the Fairy of Tianchu and the Four Great Elders of Tianchu Civilization were directing the Crimson River Portrait, crushing down at Blood Wasp Ashuran King from above.
The 14th Prince, Bai Shang, and Nie Qingli cast out their saint Qi into the white-jade sacred ship. The inscriptions on the ancient ship gathered at the sails, forming a few dozen lightning dragons to charge at Blood Wasp Ashuran King.
With so many top fighters joining hands, they had finally held back the opponent.
But Blood Wasp Ashuran King had not lost yet; he swung the sword in his hand and performed a chop. It formed a spherical Sword Force and blocked off the attack from the cultivators.
“This is sick! How did he do that? He is fighting a dozen Nine-Step Saint Kings single-handedly! Half of those Nine-Step Saint Kings are as good as the Precept Domain-realm cultivators!” said Awesome, the Little Taoist.
“Kill Blood Wasp Ashuran King now or never, everyone!”
“We will make a name for ourselves if we kill the Blood Wasp Saint King.”
“His head is worth tons of merits. We will split the merits and exchange them for items of merit. It will be enough for us to ascend into the next level of cultivation.”
…
Those cultivators were in excitement when they thought of the enormous benefits that they would reap after killing Blood Wasp Ashuran King.
The mysterious sound of a flute came from the blood fog in the distance.
It followed by a creepy noise resounding throughout heaven and earth as a large group of maleficents lunged out of the blood fog.
Some maleficents had a material body. They had gone through the Ghost Tribulation and become Ghost Kings. Some were riding corpse-king battle beasts, some with wings on their backs, and some holding some strange ghostly weapons.
The faces of the cultivators at the scene collapsed.
The situation took a sudden turn when they saw a large group of Ghosts coming from behind while they were busy fighting Blood Wasp Ashuran King in the front. They would have to fight on two fronts.
Zhang Ruochen knew how nasty those ghost kings were, as he had witnessed firsthand how they killed Yun Gongming in a matter of a few breaths.
Since things had come to such a pass, he could no longer sit idle.
“Let’s stop those ghost kings!”
Two groups of Divine Purification Flame appeared on his arms. He performed two palm strikes, aiming at the two ghost-king riders in the front.
Those two ghost-king riders sensed the imminent danger and drew their dagger-axes.
Bone-chilling ghost mist gushed out of the dagger-axes and clashed with Divine Purification Flame head-on.
The two forces dissipated after neutralizing each other.
No wonder a dozen ghost kings could kill Yun Gongming in an instant. These ghost kings are nasty! Zhang Ruochen was shocked.
A dozen ghost kings, led by another four, left the group and charged at Zhang Ruochen.
A few dozen corpse kings lunged out from the bottom of the divine blood lake at the sound of the flute.
One of the corpse kings possessed an immortal body. It was a Supreme King when it was still alive. The body was perfectly preserved with no signs of decay, except for the golden soft scales that had turned black from corrosion on the body.
The aura of this Supreme-Saint corpse king was even more powerful that the one Zhang Ruochen had killed earlier.
Its aura was a combination of that of the corpse and Supreme Saint. It could form an ear-shattering rumble and cause the air to vibrate violently with just a breath.
The spot from where the Supreme-Saint corpse king emerged was less than 100 feet from where Elder Lu was.
Elder Lu was directing his Eight Stratum Array to subdue the blood wasps. His face changed when he saw this.
Shiqing Shenzi and others standing beside Elder Lu reacted at once, performing their respective attack techniques to strike at the Supreme-Saint corpse king.
But their weapons and saint techniques could not even get close to the Supreme-Saint corpse king. This thing had the Supreme Saint Qi protecting it.
It steadily strode toward Elder Lu.
Crone Qushan looked at Black Phoenix and White Zhuque. “The situation is worse than I have imagined. I shouldn’t have brought you two here. Don’t go anywhere else but follow the cripple.”
After saying so, Crone Qushan spread her wings and flew toward the flute sound in the blood fog.
Black Phoenix and White Zhuque knew that they were in an extremely dangerous situation right now. Even Precept Domain-realm fighters could die, let alone them.
Since Crone Qushan instructed them to follow the cripple, it meant that their survival rate would be higher.
The older you get, the wiser you are. Crone Qushan must have seen something extraordinary that they did not notice on the cripple.
Black Phoenix and White Zhuque immediately hurried toward Zhang Ruochen.
Because of worrying of Mr. Godcliff hiding nearby and blowing his cover, Zhang Ruochen did not use his Azuresky Pagoda. Instead, he and Awesome, the Little Taoist, used the Supreme Power of the Purple-Gold Bagua Mirror to hold back those ghost kings attacking him.
The bagua mirror might be defective, but it was still powerful enough.
Each strike of the Supreme Power could shatter the ghostly body of a ghost king.
The ordinary ghost kings would vanish once their bodies shattered. But not the four ghost-king riders. Their bodies reformed as soon as they shattered as if they were unkillable.
“They have Ghostly Cores in their bodies. They will not die unless the Ghostly Cores shatter,” said Awesome, the Little Taoist.
One of the ghost-king riders, over six-foot-tall, wearing red, sneered. “I’m surprised that you even know about Ghostly Cores. It seems you are really well-informed.”
The ghost-king rider in red struck its dagger-ax down at an angle in a streak of black light, aiming at Awesome, the Little Taoist.
Zhang Ruochen summoned his precepts to perform a punch at seven times of his strength, sending the ghost-king rider in red together with its dagger-ax flying out backward. The body of the ghost-king rider cracked.
Looking through the cracks, Zhang Ruochen could see a dark-green glow in the ghost-king rider’s chest.
If it had any Ghostly Core, that dark-green glow must be it.
“What the heck is Ghostly Core, really?” asked Zhang Ruochen.
“Something refined from the sainthood source of a cultivator of the Path. It is a secret method that few ghost cultivators knew about,” said Awesome, the Little Taoist.
“Refining the Ghostly Core with the sainthood source of a cultivator of the Path? Those ghost cultivators with a Ghostly Core could resist the supreme artifact? How could it be possible?”
“I am not so sure about that. As far as I know, the refining method of the Ghostly Cores has something to do with the Path of Darkness, which is one of the nine Paths of the Ancients,” said Awesome, the Little Taoist.
Asking no further, Zhang Ruochen abruptly lunged at the ghost king in red, whose ghostly body had not fully recovered.
Seeing Zhang Ruochen approaching, it quickly cast out a talisman.
Dark-green ghost patterns appeared on the talisman and formed a thick layer of light barrier.
“What? Ghost can make talismans, too?”
Zhang Ruochen summoned the original power of the Fire God’s Gauntlet, striking through the light barrier. Without affecting the momentum of the palm, he hit the ghost king in red on its chest.
A crackling sound came.
Zhang Ruochen’s hand thrust into the body of the ghost king and pulled out its walnut-sized bead from its chest.
“My Ghostly Core!”
The ghost king let out a bitter shrill as it swung its dagger-ax, chopping at Zhang Ruochen’s head.
With the flick of his body, Zhang Ruochen came beside the ghost king, performing a Flaming Palm to burn the ghost king into ghost mist.
“What a waste! You should have let me eat it!” The Yi Huang Bone Scepter spoke into Zhang Ruochen’s ear.
“Don’t get out now. I have a feeling that another cultivator is still hiding in the dark. It could be Mr. Godcliff. If he knows that I am here, he will surely come after me,” said Zhang Ruochen.
By then, Black Phoenix and White Zhuque had come over, and they were helping Awesome, the Little Taoist, to power the Purple-Gold Bagua Mirror.
The bagua mirror got an enormous boost of power and crushed the other three ghost-king riders. Zhang Ruochen moved like a phantom to harvest their Ghostly Cores, then suppressed them inside the Azuresky Pagoda.
Before Zhang Ruochen and others could celebrate their victory, a horrible scream suddenly came from the divine blood lakeside.
A Supreme-Saint corpse king had defeated the Eight Stratum Array and smashed Elder Lu, turning him into a cloud of blood mist.
The 49 array discs plunged to the ground as the Eight Stratum Array crumbled.
Freed from the Eight Stratum Array’s suppression, the blood wasps started to attack those cultivators of the Path at the lakeside. At the same time, several dozen corpse kings and an army of ghost kings were surrounding Shiqing Shenzi, Dizu Prince, the Fairy of Tianchu, and the others.
Facing attacks from the front and the rear, they had to defend themselves, no time pursuing Blood Wasp Ashuran King.
“We have to get out of here!”
“Run, or we will all die here!”
Blood Wasp Ashuran King faded into a beam of sword Qi, breaking through the suppression of The Crimson River Portrait, and flew several hundred feet up in the air.
His hair fluttered in the wind as he struck down with his sword with high battle spirit.
An elder of the Tianchu Civilization standing beside the Fairy of Tianchu did not see it coming; the sword slashed him in half. The power Sword Force had even cut a long slit in the solid earth.
Saint blood splattered from the elder, dyeing the Fairy of Tianchu’s white dress red.