Chapter 67 — Crimson Flame
劍問蒼天 · Page 4 of 7
Daoist Cangyan shook his head slowly, a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. "A hundred years ago, when we orthodox cultivators crushed the demon cult in one blow, I and Brother Tian, Brother Zeng of Fenghui Peak, Brother Shang of Chaoyang Peak, and Wan of the elder generation..."
Su Wan suddenly called in a low voice, "Brother Cangsong."
Daoist Cangyan started, as if recalling something, and nodded. "…The several of us pursued a few of the demon cult's devils deep into the wild lands. It was then that Brother Tian had already broken through to the Shangqing realm. Brother Wan… that man said to us, 'Brother Tian may look dull, but within he is clever, and above all his will is firm and unshakable—a rare thing. In the cultivation of the Dao hereafter, his prospects must be boundless.'"
Here he smiled. "Junior Sister Su, you knew that man as well. Surely you would not doubt his words, or his insight?"
Su Wan smiled faintly and said nothing, only turned her head and gazed up at the sky.
The Vampire Fiend hung in midair, shrieking again and again, his manner savage in the extreme—but within, he grew more and more alarmed. A hundred years ago he had crossed blades with Tian Buhui. The man's cultivation had been high even then, yet with the Vampire ** he had still been confident of victory.
He had never expected that after a hundred years, in this second encounter, the man's cultivation should have advanced so astonishingly. The fire dragon conjured from the Crimson Flame immortal sword clashed head-on each time with the "Baleful Blood Radiance" he sent forth through the Blood Skull by means of the Vampire **—and not only did it fail to fall behind, it was gradually gaining the upper hand.
And the most galling thing was not even that. When he had fought Zhang Qingyue earlier, seeing the boy was but a young disciple of Qingyun, he had been careless for a moment—and his "Five Ghosts Commanding the Spirits" formation had, for some unfathomable reason, had one of its life-ghosts destroyed by the boy.
In truth, no one could blame the Vampire Fiend for failing to understand. His Blood Skull was a thing of the netherworld's fierce essences; against certain peerless divine weapons of orthodox legend—Lu Xueling's "Tianya Divine Sword," say—there would naturally be some mutual overcoming, and with his cultivation and experience he would of course be doubly cautious.
But Zhang Qingyue's treasure, the Dark Iron Staff, was simply too strange. From top to bottom it had not the least breath of a divine weapon about it. If anything, because its baleful aura was so heavy, it rather resembled the Vampire Fiend's own heretical treasures, and after one look the Vampire Fiend had paid it no mind.
What he had not expected was this: the "Blood-Devouring Pearl" on Zhang Qingyue's Dark Iron Staff could drain the essence and blood of living things, yet it was helpless against the Vampire Fiend's ghostly creatures. But the other half of the staff—"Soul-Reaver"—was, by legend, a peerless evil thing forged through thousands of years of refining the spirits of the underworld and the fierce shades of the dead; it was the very ancestor of all ghostly, baleful things in this world. In the fight just past, driven by Zhang Qingyue's own essence and blood, it had been thrust into the body of the life-ghost and instantly dissolved it utterly—more cleanly than any orthodox divine weapon could have done.
At any other time, the Vampire Fiend would at most have been startled, for Zhang Qingyue's cultivation was after all far below his own; once the Vampire Fiend brought out his true skills, the boy could not stand against him. But when he faced Tian Buhui, whose cultivation was not only no lower than his own but seemed faintly to surpass it, this small hidden peril came to light.