Chapter 65: This Young Master Slugs It Out

I help in the beginning, and I help in the end. Chen Haoran couldn’t help but have these thoughts as he hurtled down to the boat below. Patriarch Lan, a rather kindly-looking old grandfather, made his jump look like an elegant walk compared to Chen Haoran’s own undignified fall. The rising angel fell and locked eyes for a single second before their trajectories took them away from each other. Phelps squealed in glee at the rush of wind before letting go of his back and free-floating in the air. He didn’t pay much more attention to Phelps. He knew how to take care of himself. Instead, Chen Haoran cycled qi to his limbs and braced for impact.

He had easily jumped down from a height of a hundred feet. For Qi realms, this was still a wall that would seriously injure, if not kill them, if they took it the wrong way. For Chen Haoran, he didn’t have too many wrong ways anymore.

He hit the boat like a cannonball and smashed through the top deck into the hold below. Lan Fen had said there were only four people, all Ninth-Layer Qi realms, with Lan Yao being the most dangerous.

No pressure.

He gripped both of his Swiftwind Scimitars, and with a flex of his qi, he burst out the hole he had made. The power within his blades activated but rather than cross them, he spun around, whirling his swords at anything near. Immediately he was rewarded with a cry of pain and a blood spray, and then was it with the pressure of four different cultivators crashing on his shoulders. He rallied his own qi and turned to stare at Lan Yao, whose own eyes were practically glowing with murder.

“Long time no see,” he said, waving at her.

“You,” she growled. She clutched her spear in a white-knuckle grip. With a vicious shriek, she leapt at him, swinging the spear with all her might. He caught the haft of the spear on his swords. Lan Yao planted her feet with a roar and pushed the swing through, sending Chen Haoran careening towards the ship's railing and cracking it in half when his back slammed against it. The other Ninth-Layer’s rushed at him, weapons screeching with qi, and chopped the rest of the railing to pieces as he rolled out of the way and slashed his scimitars at their feet. They hastily avoided it by leaping into the air. Phelps dropped on the head of an older Ninth-Layer, and the man and sloth screamed and tumbled into the water together.

Lan Yao thrust her spear to run him through. His eyes widened with a warning from his qi sense, and he dodged rather than block the blow. He could practically feel the wind rushing past him from the spear’s force. Lan Yao came equipped with a Profound-rank weapon.

Chen Haoran skipped backward to give himself breathing room. His sword glowed blue. The other Ninth-Layers didn’t give him time, and he was forced to duck, an axe to his head. These two Lan’s seemed to be twins; one used an axe, and the other wielded a mace. Their teamwork was impeccable as they alternated attacking high and low. His back pressed against the cabin of the boat while the twins closed on his left and right, allowing Lan Yao to prowl down the center.

“You,” she said.

“We’ve established that already, I think.”

“This is all your fault.”

Chen Haoran blinked. “Pardon?”

Lan Yao ground her teeth. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened. I had everything planned perfectly, and because of you, the Lan family has been pushed to this point!”

“Hey, now that’s taking away a lot of agency and responsibility from Lan Fen,” he said. Still, despite his protests, Lan Yao wasn’t that wrong. Without him in the picture, things would probably be significantly different, although… “Aren’t you overestimating the Lan family too much?”

Lan Yao and the twins attacked all at once, and he narrowly avoided Lan Yao’s insane spear thrust by leaping to the roof of the cabin. Lan Yao was quick to follow, and another thrust came down like a ballista bolt, just barely missing his shoulder and burying into the cabin roof. Chen Haoran quickly dropped his sword and held the spear handle firmly. Lan Yao cycled her own qi to desperately rip the spear away but was forced to let go when he swung the other scimitar around. She backed away and glowered at Chen Haoran; her palms glowed emerald green.

“I remember the last time you slapped me with your palm,” he said.

“I should have killed you in that restaurant. This time I’ll carve it into your body!”

Lan Yao took a step forward when Chen Haoran was suddenly in front of her. Her footwork faltered, and he pushed his palm against her face. With the burst of qi, Lan Yao was sent flying off the ship, clipping a railing and skipping out into the water.

Chen Haoran wrung out his hand and let out the breath he had been holding. He had been wondering what to do with the last of his lightning-refined qi, and this was a surprisingly cathartic use of it.

The twins shouted battle cries and leaped up to the roof. The Mace-wielding jackass kicked his scimitar into the river.

“You jackass, I was just getting the hang of these fucking things, too!” Chen Haoran cursed. He rushed for the Axe twin and caught the axe along the flat of his blade. Using his superior cultivation, he forced the axe back with strength. Without his other blade, the mace twin took advantage of his exposed right. Chen Haoran gritted his teeth and cycled qi to his right arm, and blocked the mace. Rather than snapping in half, his arm held firm, and Chen Haoran grabbed the mace head with his palm and wrenched the man’s guard open. The Axe twin shouted, but Chen Haoran slashed his scimitar with the Mace twin’s neck, decapitating him.

The Axe twin roared with rage and swung wildly. Chen Haoran grasped the mace by the handle and cycled qi into it before swinging it fully onto the axe and shattering it to pieces. The Axe twin pressed on, but he sank his scimitar into the man’s chest and pushed him to the ground. The Axe twin tried grasping the blade, but Chen Haoran twisted the sword until the light died in his eyes.

Chen Haoran yanked the scimitar out of the corpse and flexed his right arm. There was a throbbing pain that was sure to leave a nasty bruise, but he’d take it over a broken bone.

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” he murmured. He hadn’t noticed any differences after his limbs had healed, but who knew if the Stygian Lotus’s enhancement would become stronger after the ordeal? He wasn’t insane enough to test that quite yet, though. He scanned the river for any sign of Lan Yao or Phelps and the other Ninth-Layer. He stretched out his sense in search of Phelps qi before sensing him on the side of the boat. He rushed over and leaned over the edge only to curse when he found the glassy-eyed stare of the last Ninth-Layer staring at him. The man’s hands were buried in the hull of the ship as if he were trying to escape the water. Phelps sat on the man’s back, his claws piercing into his spine. He tiredly squealed in victory.

Chen Haoran shuddered but smiled. “Good job, buddy. Just never do that to me.” He was about to go down to help Phelps up when the water below stirred, and Lan Yao shot out of the river with emerald green palms. Chen Haoran stumbled back, but Lan Yao was unerring and hammered his chest.

He had been hit with the Scattering-Petal Palm quite a few times before. So he had grown somewhat adjusted to hit.

Those were like kiddie slaps compared to Lan Yao’s.

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Where other Scattering-Petal Palms relied on subterfuge and sleight of hand to create a dizzying and hard-to-predict palm art, Lan Yao’s was far more direct. Every single green palm was real and hit with crushing force. Chen Haoran quickly covered his head and kicked out to push Lan Yao away. She let the kick fall uselessly on her leg and slammed two final green plans into his chest, and sent him tumbling across the deck, where he landed heavily on the opposite railing and snapped it in two.

Chen Haoran cycled qi to his chest and winced. Massive bruising, bleeding, and more broken ribs than he’d ever want to see. He swung a hand over the snapped railing and tried and failed to stand. Every breath was painful, and he hacked a bloody cough.

Lan Yao looked like a drowned ghost. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her left cheek was swollen, and her nose was broken at an awkward angle and pouring blood. “I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you.” She kept repeating it as if it were a mantra.

Chen Haoran was freezing cold and couldn’t tell if it was from fear or blood loss until he saw the steam blowing. Then he smiled. “Got your nose.”

Lan Yao screamed and rushed him, fingers arcing like knives directly for his throat. He grabbed her wrists and fell back onto the railing, which fully gave way under both their weight and sent them falling into the river.

The water made Chen Haoran feel alive again, and he quickly sought out Lan Yao. She was of the same mind, and her palms glowed a sickly green underwater. This time, he was faster. Water attribute qi let him land a heavy punch on her broken nose. A blood cloud bloomed and blinded Lan Yao, and he landed blow after blow on her unprotected body. Lan Yao responded with a brutal rib blow that landed on one of his cracked ribs, forcing a roar of pain from him. He responded with a hammer blow to her eye, and they exchanged blow after blow until they were forced to dive deeper as the cold snap rolled in and the river surface froze. With his superior mobility, he swam around behind Lan Yao and wrapped his arms around her neck, forcing all the qi he could to snap her. Lan Yao thrashed and clawed at his arms, but Chen Haoran only squeezed tighter. Lan Yao suddenly went limp, and he made one final attempt to choke the life out of Lan Yao. As if reading his thought, Lan Yao burst into a final frenzy of motion and sank her finger deep into the skin of his thighs.

They both broke away from each other and scrambled for the surface, punching through the ice and pulling themselves up onto the frozen river. They lay there gasping for air until he looked at her, and she looked at him. Slowly, they picked themselves up. Lan’s breathing was unsteady, and the color of her neck bloomed a myriad of ugly purples. Chen Haoran, meanwhile, couldn’t lift his legs anymore. He clawed at the ice instead, water attribute qi flowing and bonding with the solid water until he pulled out a wickedly pointed icicle.

Lan Yao slowly shuffled over, her palms blooming green light. Chen Haoran focused.

The ruins behind them exploded. A skyscraper-sized tree rose out of the island and into the air. A white light flew into the sky after him.

“You mongrel, don’t tell me a storage bag is all you have, you broke bastard!”

“White Tyrant?” Chen Haoran sputtered. He looked into the sky. It was Lan Fen, except it wasn’t because she was flying, and her hair and eyes were glowing white.

“Come on, you bottom-feeder,” The White Tyrant jeered with Lan Fen’s body. “The least you can do is entertain me while I’m still here.”

He snorted in disgust. “To think I have to spend energy to fly, what a disgrace.”

“Lan Fen,” growled Patriarch Lan. “Do you think letting yourself be possessed by a demon will be enough to defeat me?!”

“Hey, Junior, pay your respects,” barked the White Tyrant. “I’ve eaten more salt than you’ve ever had rice.”

“You’re only in the Qi realm,” Patriarch Lan hysterically shouted. The leaves on his tree glowed a bright emerald green and whipped around like a giant snake. His eyes suddenly widened. “Are you breaking through to the Liquid Meridian Realm?!”

“As above, so below,” the White Tyrant said. He glanced down and noticed Chen Haoran. “Hey, moron.” Although he was hundreds of miles in the air, it felt as if the White Tyrant were speaking right next to him. “She'll die if I use my actual techniques, so I can only use this garbage. Consider yourself lucky and burn it into your memory.”

“Die!” Roared Patriarch Lan.

The White Tyrants Sword glowed blue-white. The world flashed white in Chen Haoran’s eyes, but he couldn’t look away. A white line rapidly split down the length of the tree, and it began to dissolve into white light.

“No, no,” moaned the Patriarch even as he began to glow Emerald green around the white line that split him in half.

The White Tyrant lazily balanced his sword on his shoulder, staring up at the split in the clouds that had been formed.

“Canyon Carving Sword, what trash.” He spat and looked down at Chen Haoran. “What kind of cultivator settles for a canyon? Even if you’re trash, you should at least aim to split a planet.”

The White Tyrant disappeared. Chen Haoran looked down at his icicle. He could see the white particles reflected in it like stars.

“No,” Lan Yao said as she watched Patriarch Lan become a rain of emerald liquid qi. “No. No. No.” No had become the only thing she could say in front of the horror she witnessed. Even so, she still walked toward Chen Haoran. The green light in her palms became brighter. When she stood in front of Chen Haoran, she didn’t even look down at him, even though she slapped down with her palms.

Even though Lan Yao stood in front of him, he didn’t even look up at her and focused on the icicle in his hand.

He swung once.

The green light disappeared. Blood spattered, and a long line opened up diagonally across Lan Yao’s body as she died. The icicle shattered into fragments and dissolved. The ice in front of Chen Haoran broke.

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