The Decaying World-Chapter 99 - 94: Response (Part 2)

The headquarters of the Flying Stone Sect was located in Shiyu Town, two towns away from Fu’an Town.

Shiyu Town was somewhat different from other towns. It was vast in area and had a thriving commercial trade. Caravans and even entire clans from other city districts often came here for temporary transactions.

In particular, many who weren’t qualified to enter the Inner City, or who couldn’t pass its screening process but had valuable goods to sell, would come here to do business.

As a Circulation Martial Artist, Li Chi required an immense amount of cultivation resources. Occupying an ordinary town wouldn’t be nearly enough for his cultivation, so choosing Shiyu Town was an almost inevitable choice for him to establish a foothold in the Outer City.

The Flying Stone Sect was established on the edge of Shiyu Town. The surrounding terrain was treacherous and densely wooded. From a distance, its white-tiled roofs looked like scattered white tiles on a green and white hillside.

Snow was now falling thick and fast, covering the roofs of the Flying Stone Sect’s dozens of buildings in a thick layer of white.

Atop one of the three-story wooden buildings.

Li Chi sat cross-legged on a meditation cushion, facing away from the railing. He gazed at a transparent curtain fluttering in the wind, his expression serene.

He was already ninety-two years old, with a full head of white hair, a long beard, and long eyebrows. Dressed in a white robe with a black jade pendant at his waist, he gave off the air of a transcendent, virtuous master at first glance.

The Martial Arts cultivated in the Inner Power Realm all had side effects. Upon reaching the Circulation Realm, these side effects became even more extreme, undergoing a qualitative change.

This was the drawback of Extreme Martial Arts.

But this drawback was the price for incomparably immense power.

"Any word back from Bai Feihan in Fu’an Town?"

After sitting for a long time, he asked, his voice cool and clear.

"No, Ancestral Master," a girl with pigtails replied respectfully from behind him.

"It seems something has gone wrong. The New Martial Alliance’s Golden Crow Sect must have made a move..." Li Chi sighed. "It seems I have no choice but to be their blade..."

The Carefree Pavilion had invited him here for no other reason than to probe the Golden Crow Sect’s true strength.

After the Martial Alliance’s disastrous defeat, the Golden Crow Sect had turned the tide, but how much strength did they truly have left? In particular, the condition of the Circulation Martial Artists in their Inner Sect—these were things that could only be determined through actual combat.

But probing could get people killed.

And Li Chi, a newcomer from Xingdiao, had become the weapon for their probe.

Since it was a probe, he had to secure enough benefits for himself. This was the fundamental reason for his frantic expansion in all directions.

To this end, the New Martial Alliance had turned a blind eye, tacitly indulging him.

And without the New Martial Alliance to restrain him, the original local resistance forces were simply no match for him.

As these thoughts flashed through Li Chi’s mind and he was feeling a touch of helplessness, he suddenly seemed to sense something. He slowly raised his chin, peering past the railing and the curtain toward the base of the mountain in the distance.

At the entrance archway of the Flying Stone Sect down the mountain.

A man in white, holding a sword, had appeared at some point.

The man’s face was obscured by the wind and snow, making it somewhat blurry, but judging by the straight and steady way he held his sword, he was very confident.

"Is this the Golden Crow Sect’s answer?" Li Chi said softly.

"Report!" Suddenly, the shout of a sect disciple came from behind him.

"In Fu’an Town, Bai Feihan, Li Zheng, Zen Master Yanmu, and Yao Huan have been killed in battle! The rest were routed! Qingfeng Temple’s counterattack has reached Shiyu Town!"

"He’s already here. What’s the point of you reporting it?" Li Chi said softly.

’Killed in battle? Is the Golden Crow Sect really planning to turn this into an all-out war?’

"A pity... Bai Feihan was a useful man..."

He slowly rose to his feet, his gaze traveling through the air to land on the sword-wielding man.

Lin Hui stood at the entrance archway, looking up through the wind and snow at the old man on the balcony of the white wooden building halfway up the mountain.

"Flying Stone Sect."

He turned his gaze to the three words carved into the archway.

"Who goes there?!"

From within the archway, several Martial Artists in yellow robes rushed out, each holding a weapon. There were sabers, swords, and a messy assortment of hooks and chains.

Aside from the uniform cross-shaped scars on their bodies, these men were a complete hodgepodge.

"Your eyes are full of fear. What’s the use of recruiting people like you?" Lin Hui sighed.

He raised his sword and stepped forward, then suddenly heard Wang Hongshi ask from behind.

"Observatory Master, are you really planning to just... kill your way up like this?!"

His voice was filled with a hint of incomprehension, a touch of worry, and the fear of a potentially disastrous outcome.

"Have you forgotten what I said before I left? Failing to pull out the weeds by the root will only lead to more severe consequences," Lin Hui replied.

"All those countless times we swung our swords, all those countless hours of practice—what was it all for?"

As his voice fell, he took a step forward.

In an instant, his figure blurred into a series of afterimages, flashing past the group of tense Martial Artists ahead.

Splashes of blood blossomed, scattering across the snow like red plum blossoms.

WHOOSH!

Lin Hui didn’t pause for a moment, charging straight ahead.

Every person he passed along the way was sliced in two the moment he flashed by.

An extremely fast sword and an extremely fast Body Technique resulted in extreme impact and cutting force.

For any Martial Artist below the Inner Strength level, this was an absolute death sentence.

In a single exchange, no matter what Martial Arts you cultivated, you were faced with life or death in a single instant before such extreme speed.

A magpie flying over the Flying Stone Sect could look down and clearly see a line of blood rapidly extending from the archway all the way to the sect’s headquarters in the wooden building halfway up the mountain.

At the end of that bloodline, Li Chi, who was in the wooden building, leaped lightly forward, descending from the third floor to stand on the pure white snow, waiting.

Li Chi’s expression was calm, as if those being slaughtered were not his own men, but complete strangers.

A dozen or so seconds later.

SHING.

A figure in the wind and snow came to a sudden halt, landing seven or eight meters away from him.

It was Lin Hui, who had just come all the way up the mountain.

He flicked the accumulating blood from his sword and glanced at the increasingly worn and notched blade, frowning slightly. The blood had seeped into the cracks and was difficult to flick clean.

"This sword was a gift from my master, and I was quite fond of it... A pity... at this point, it’s time for it to rest..." He raised his eyes to look at Li Chi.

"It’s the same for swords and for people. You’re already so old, why bother coming out here to fight to the death?"

"Only the Inner Power Realm?" Li Chi didn’t answer, instead looking around strangely, as if searching for someone who might be hiding.

"Sorry, it’s just me. No one else," Lin Hui said, seeing his intention.

"You have a lot of courage, coming here to die even though you know my Cultivation level," Li Chi said, puzzled. "Is it a side effect of your Cultivation Technique?"

"Not really. I’m just a little confident in myself." Lin Hui glanced around. He had killed his way up here, and by now, quite a few more Martial Artists had gathered, surrounding them from a distance with weapons in hand.

Their faces showed fear and terror, yet they didn’t dare to flee. It was clear that between their fear of Li Chi and their fear of him, they had chosen the former.

"Forget it. On account of your commendable courage, lay down your sword and join my Flying Stone Sect. I can overlook what happened before," Li Chi said calmly.

"??" Lin Hui was taken aback. "Are you joking, Sect Leader Li? I just killed so many of your men..."

"I can recruit as many of those wastes as I want," Li Chi remained extremely calm, as if devoid of much emotional fluctuation.

"And the Flying Stone Sect can still gather so many people like this? Truly..." Lin Hui couldn’t understand.

"What do you say?" Li Chi continued to wait for his answer.

"But if joining you means I could be abandoned at any moment, why would I join?" Lin Hui retorted.

"Because if you don’t join, I will kill you." Li Chi’s answer was simple and direct.

"How can you prove you can kill me? If you actually kill me, I’ll be dead, and you won’t get a new subordinate. So... if you can prove you have the strength to kill me, but don’t actually do it, then I’ll believe you," Lin Hui said with a small smile.

"...What you say is reasonable." Li Chi paused, then actually nodded.

"Very well. I will stop the moment before I kill you, but I will only give you one chance."

He raised his right hand, and a hazy white light suddenly flared up around his body.

The white light completely enveloped him, as if he were wearing a suit of full-body armor.

Not only that, but the white light also danced and burned in his palm like a flame, incredibly agile.

HUALA!

The next instant, he slightly bent a finger.

The white light in his hand suddenly transformed into a white line that shot out, flying toward Lin Hui at a terrifying speed.

PUFF! The white line missed, punching a hole of unknown depth into the snowy ground.

But it wasn’t over. A rain of white lines instantly erupted from Li Chi’s hand, blanketing the area.

Countless dense white lines, some straight, some curved, shot at high speed toward the constantly dodging Lin Hui from all directions.

They seemed able to somewhat lock onto his position, and their speed had already reached a level similar to one of Xue Meng’s bursts.

For Lin Hui, this was equivalent to the speed of an Inner Strength burst before activating Special Effect Feathering.

One line would have been fine, but such a large number placed a slight burden on him.

PUFF! PUFF! PUFF! PUFF!

At this moment, the snowy ground was densely peppered with a large number of holes.

And Li Chi just stood there, the white light in his hand madly shooting out vast numbers of white lines.

His expression was calm, as if the consumption of creating these lines was trivial to him.

"Dodging at such high speeds must be incredibly draining, no? How long can you keep it up?" he sent via voice transmission.

"For me, this is no burden either," Lin Hui’s voice, just as calm and serene, drifted out from the wind and snow.

"But if this is all a Circulation Martial Artist can do, you’re not yet qualified to have me join the Flying Stone Sect."

"..." Li Chi’s eyes showed surprise. He had seen many fast opponents, but this was the first one who was so fast that even his Thousand Stone Palm couldn’t catch him.

The scattered Palm Force threads of the Thousand Stone Palm were not considered slow, even among Circulation Martial Artists.

Yet against this person, they couldn’t even touch the corner of his clothes.

Immediately, he extended his left hand as well.

BANG!

A huge swath of the same white threads exploded from his palm.

This time, the doubled number of Inner Power Silk Threads completely covered a thirty-meter radius around them.

Countless threads shot down like rain, piercing the ground and making strange sizzling sounds.

Lin Hui could finally no longer continue dodging at close range. He could only retreat at high speed, creating distance and landing in an empty space.

He looked at the dense hemisphere formed by the white threads not far away.

’It seems I can’t get close enough to attack in my normal state.’

He pointed his sword downward, frantically pouring Inner Strength into his limbs.

’Special Effect: Feathering.’

He recited silently in his mind.

His body suddenly felt light, and the sword in his hand seemed to vanish, becoming weightless and ethereal.

He raised the blade and gave it a slight tremble.

"Wind!"

He let out a soft cry.

An invisible torrent of air began to surge rapidly around him.

The torrent grew faster and more urgent, whistling as it spread, gradually covering a radius of more than twenty meters.

The invisible airflow blew in all directions, clearing away debris and loose snow from the ground. It even blew away the falling snowflakes above, creating a huge hemispherical cavity in the air.

At this moment, Wang Hongshi and Wu Shihan, who had hurried to catch up, witnessed this astonishing scene.

In the midst of the snowstorm, one man was shrouded in white threads, the other in an invisible torrent of air.

The auras of both men were surging and accumulating rapidly.

Their eyes met.

The next instant.

Li Chi brought his hands together, and an even more violent fluctuation of Inner Strength erupted from his palms. The fluctuation shot forward like an invisible steel needle, piercing the white sphere and causing the entire torrent of white lines to pour out through the breach.

Meanwhile, Lin Hui also swung his Longsword. His figure vanished, his sword vanished, and he completely transformed into an invisible wind, unleashing a frontal sword strike with unprecedented, terrifying speed.

The piercing shriek of the sword made everyone’s eardrums ache.