Chapter 432: One Finger, One Breath. |
The night wind whimpered.
The firelight flickered.
The wide-open East Straight Gate looked like a dividing line between two worlds. Inside the gate was a dying, struggling prison. Outside the gate was an unfathomable abyss.
And the figure in the green robe was the guardian of that abyss.
Leading them, Shadow One’s pupils beneath the bronze mask suddenly contracted into the most dangerous, needle-like glints!
He could not see anything clearly, he could not sense anything.
There was no culti vator aura on the other party, as if he were just an ordinary mortal.
Yet it was precisely this “ordinary” that was most extraordinary!
From that seemingly frail green-robed youth, Shadow One felt a shudder. It was a higher-level suppression!
The Yongchang Marquis was also stunned by this sudden turn of events.
He could not make out the face under the bamboo hat, only a vague, aloof outline. He forced down the inexplicable panic rising in his chest, and, bluffing with bluster, cried, “Who are you? Why are you blocking my way? If you step aside at once, I can grant you a lifetime of riches! In the future, you shall be richly rewarded!”
Silence answered him.
The green-robed figure did not even lift his head, as if the bloodthirsty fiends who had just torn up the capital meant no more to him than roadside dust.
This utter indifference humiliated and enraged more than any insult or threat ever could!
“Seeking death!”
Shadow One gritted his teeth. He knew he had met a hard nut today, but now there was no retreat. Only a fight to the death remained!
He gave an extremely subtle hand sign to the three shadow guards behind him.
The next moment, four black figures moved!
Shadow One took the center, attacking head-on! He pushed his late-stage Qi Refining spiritual energy to the limit, blood aura swirling around his palms, forming two fierce ghostly claws that lunged straight at Su Ming’s chest!
The other three shadow guards struck like arrows loosed from a bow, attacking simultaneously from left, right, and above!
On the left, one produced a short blade coated with deadly poison, hissing like a snake to stab at Su Ming’s ribs!
On the right, one pressed his fingers together like a sword, fingertips condensing sharp Metal-line spiritual energy aimed at Su Ming’s temple!
From above, one flipped through the air, his legs like scissors falling from the sky to clamp at Su Ming’s neck!
Four silhouettes, four utterly different lethal attacks, sealed off every escape path around Su Ming in an instant! They moved in perfect coordination, ruthless and merciless!
This combined strike, even against a genuine Foundation Establishment novice cultivator, would, if caught unprepared, send them to their death on the spot!
Hope flared again in the Yongchang Marquis’s eyes! He could not believe anyone could withstand a coordinated strike from his four strongest shadow guards!
Yet confronted with this thunderous, death-dealing blow,
Su Ming only slowly raised his right hand.
Then he extended a single finger.
The index finger.
It was long, clean, with distinct knuckles. In the flickering firelight one could even see the rounded, neatly trimmed nail at the tip.
With that seemingly harmless finger, he lightly pointed toward Shadow One, who charged in the most imposing manner.
There was no earth-shattering momentum, no dazzling display of light.
Only a droplet.
A crystal-clear, ghostly blue bead of water drifted silently from his fingertip.
That drop looked like a blue meteor streaking across a tranquil night sky, breathtaking in beauty, yet so fast no one could react. It passed soundlessly through Shadow One’s body-protecting blood aura that could split stone, and through the fierce gale raised by his ghostly claws.
Finally, in Shadow One’s eyes that had widened in utter shock, it gently, softly, landed on the space between his brows.
Pfft.
A minute sound, like a bubble bursting.
Shadow One’s forward momentum froze abruptly.
A hairline crack appeared on the bronze mask, right at the spot above the brows.
One breath later.
The mask shattered with a crash.
Shadow One’s body went limp like clay with all its bones pulled away, and he toppled backward.
With a thud he hit the ground, sending up a cloud of dust.
Life cut off.
One finger, one breath, a top late-stage Qi Refining death-man—dead.
The three remaining shadow guards stared, their attacks already within inches, but the incomprehensible horror, beyond their understanding, had terrified them to the core!
Yet the bow had been loosed, there was no turning back.
“Kill!!!”
Reason abandoned them to frenzy. They roared like beasts, pouring their lifetime of cultivation into this final, desperate strike!
Facing all of this, Su Ming did not bother to move a second finger.
He merely waved his hand lightly,
as if brushing away a few bothersome flies.
In that instant, seventeen ghostly blue droplets, no different from the first, burst from his sleeve like a torrential downpour!
Seventeen meteors cleaved the night.
Seventeen slight, bubble-like muffled sounds.
Seventeen figures that had just been lunging forward froze simultaneously.
Then, like wheat cut at the root, they each collapsed to the ground in unison.
Each person had a tiny, bottomless blood hole appear between their brows.
From the moment Shadow One struck to all seventeen shadow guards falling, the entire process took no more than three breaths.
Outside the East Straight Gate, the deathly silence returned.
Only the flickering firelight and the corpses remained.
Su Ming slowly withdrew his hand.
From beginning to end, he had not uttered a single word.
From beginning to end, he did not even glance at the Yongchang Marquis, who sat stunned as if turned to wood.
It was as if he had come tonight only to crush these bothersome insects.
Having done all this, he did not bother to look back at the Imperial Guard inside the gate, who had already been frightened senseless. Instead he turned and walked step by step into the boundless darkness.
His figure soon blended with the night and disappeared completely.
As if he had never appeared at all.
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