Chapter 96: A Swift and Merciful End

He snorted inwardly. This time, he would not let himself be hurt again.

At once, he drew a talisman for strengthening spiritual power from his storage space and slapped it onto the blade in his hand. Instantly, the sword’s power doubled. Had the earlier strike not left a notch in the blade, its force would have been even greater still.

Seeing Lin Zhan appear once more beside him, brimming with killing intent, he decided he would never let him slip away again.

“He only has one breath of time.”

That was Lin Zhan’s own demand of himself, and it was also what the situation compelled. Any longer, and at least three black-clad men would close in to hem him in.

This time, Lin Zhan did not clash head-on with Black Eight. He could see that Black Eight’s movement speed was not swift enough, so he adopted a strategy of circling around him, striking from every angle in a relentless storm. In an instant, he slashed out eighteen sword strikes.

Black Eight could still break the first seventeen, but by the eighteenth, he could no longer keep up.

If he could not keep up, then he had only death to offer.

Lin Zhan’s Dark Sword came down from the back of Black Eight’s head in a sweeping cleave. A flash of silver light and golden flame from the sword aura flickered and returned, and even the blade still held before Black Eight shattered with a clang.

Black Eight died.

Lin Zhan did not dare linger. His figure swayed as he withdrew at speed.

Boom.

But Black Five’s palm wind had already enveloped him, and a heavy blow landed on his back.

Hiss.

Not only that, but Black Six’s True Martial sword technique, carrying a cold and biting sword qi, struck Lin Zhan’s arm.

Struck by these two heavy blows, Lin Zhan staggered, the force in his body running wild as he lurched forward several steps before barely managing to steady himself and bolt away.

His arm ached, yet after a glance he found it was unharmed. At the instant the sword blade made contact, the Cloud Swallowing Demon Armor had formed a specially reinforced layer of protection; the True Martial sword technique had actually failed to pierce through. Otherwise, his arm might have been severed.

The palm strike to his back, however, was far heavier. Though the armor offered some defense, it could not fully neutralize an attack of that kind, one driven by sheer spiritual force and power.

Lin Zhan wiped the blood at the corner of his mouth and began another round of guerrilla combat, while the various streams of spiritual power within him circulated to heal his injuries at high speed.

Having killed one black-clad man, Lin Zhan naturally felt far more confident.

By contrast, the enemy had suffered a death in the midst of so many attackers, and that only poured oil on the fire.

The pursuit and encirclement of Lin Zhan grew even more frenzied.

In an instant, the area around the Fuyang Inn became even more brutal.

Lin Zhan then fixed his target on the black-clad man known as Black One.

This Black One was not slow. He seemed able, every time, to appear among the three men closest to Lin Zhan. Yet Lin Zhan found his manner of attack somewhat strange.

By reason, if Black Five and Black Six could land their strikes, then if Black One joined in with the same sort of attack, Lin Zhan would surely be struck once more. And yet Black One repeatedly missed the best opportunities, which showed that his battle sense was not fully mature.

To Lin Zhan, a flaw in battle sense was a flaw, and a flaw could be exploited. If he was to kill them one by one, he had to learn to observe and seize such openings.

At last, during one of Lin Zhan’s brief pauses, Black Five and Black Six came at him again from left and right.

Lin Zhan was once more injured by a fist and a sword, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He looked as though he had already suffered a grave wound.

And the third pursuer, Black One, who was now in the middle of the three-man formation, actually came to a halt, likely assuming Lin Zhan was finished and no longer needed him to act.

To think of Lin Zhan that way was a fatal mistake.

Lin Zhan had deliberately endured severe injury for this very moment. He forcefully suppressed the faintly disordered flow of his breath, bent his body low to evade Black Five and Black Six’s renewed attack, then shot sideways like an arrow toward Black One’s position. With both hands he raised the Dark Sword high above his head. The sword’s edge was as unstoppable as a landslide, and from the tip burst a flashing arc of silver and gold, a sword aura that made the blood surge in one’s veins.

Sssst.

Black One was still dazed when he felt as though a dragon-shaped bolt of lightning, tangled in gold and silver, had flashed before his eyes. He looked down and found that the lightning had actually pierced straight through his chest. In the next instant, his consciousness faded into darkness along with the scattered fragments of his body.

Black One died, and died swiftly.

This was the second black-clad man Lin Zhan had slain, the second Yellow Rank opponent.

Black One died quickly, but in the eyes of the remaining black-clad men, it was a fury that burned all the more fiercely, mixed with a chill like that of rabbits grieving over dead foxes.

The previous deaths of Yuan Kai and the bat-like bird-man had seemed like watching others die. Though they were all of the same family and faction, they also competed with one another. If they died, then so be it; there was not the slightest sorrow to be felt.

But now Black Eight was dead, and almost immediately after, Black One as well. These were the deaths of comrades. All eight had been part of the group surrounding and killing Lin Zhan. At the outset, they had been full of confidence, certain they could effortlessly take his life.

Now, the blood of Black Eight and Black One had not yet even cooled.

Black Five and Black Six felt an urge to tear at their own hair. They had clearly just dealt Lin Zhan a grievous blow, and yet in the blink of an eye he had killed one of their own. How could they possibly accept that for the moment?

“Kill him!”

There was no room for the slightest hesitation now. Though Lin Zhan was still bleeding, Black Five and Black Six attacked together once more.

Slaying Black One had consumed nearly seventy percent of the spiritual power in Lin Zhan’s sea of consciousness, and at this moment the spiritual replenishment from the Nine Stars Diagram continued at its unhurried pace.

His injuries were severe, though thankfully they were improving. But faced with the pursuit of the remaining six black-clad Yellow Rank experts led by Black Five and Black Six, Lin Zhan was in a state where he might at any moment be reduced to oblivion in body and spirit alike.

He had no choice but to grit his teeth and leap into the Fuyang Inn. After all, there was still the White Bone Pagoda inside. At worst, he could kill everyone within it and then swing the pagoda around like a giant hammer.

The White Bone Pagoda was, after all, a magical weapon of artifact grade, several times stronger than the Dark Sword in power. Moreover, it could devour people.

When Lin Zhan entered the courtyard of the Fuyang Inn, the black-clad men did not rush in after him right away. Instead, they surrounded him tightly.

By now, the Wei Manor had suffered a tremendous setback.

This left them all momentarily disoriented. The fierce killing intent that had burned at the beginning had faded considerably, and a sense of fear had instead begun to rise unbidden.

As for anger or no anger, was life not more important?

Yes, at this moment they truly did not dare to charge in rashly.

Though the courtyard gate had been destroyed and the walls were in ruins, they really no longer had the courage.

When Wei Xiaoran saw this, he could not help but grow furious. In a flash of movement, he flew over and stood at the wide-open gate, looking inside.

Within the courtyard, a white tower rose high, solemn and austere, yet steeped in killing intent, making it impossible to fathom.