Chapter 174 — The Man in Black
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 4 of 6
Just as the Qingyun disciples stood at a loss, a strange figure came shooting out from the darkness ahead, flying toward the spot where Ming Li had fallen—and toward the Qingyun disciples as well. By the faint glimmer of light, they could see that the figure was wrapped entirely in black shadow, with only a pair of eyes left exposed, glittering with a keen, sharp gleam.
The Qingyun disciples shouted and cursed, drew their swords, and rushed at him; but this man's cultivation was, unexpectedly, exceedingly high. He did not so much as reach for a magic treasure—once he was in close, he merely thrust out his bare hand and seized the nearest Qingyun disciple.
The disciple, though startled, did not lose his head; he brought his immortal sword down in a single cut. The man in black said not a word, as though he had not even noticed, and without changing his grip, there before everyone's eyes caught the immortal sword bare-handed. The crowd was stunned; before anyone could react, the man gave a sudden, forceful shake, and the Qingyun disciple he had grappled with went flying—and that immortal sword had, incredibly, been wrested away by this man.
This man's cultivation was so high as to be formidable in the extreme. In the darkness ahead, Zeng Shuchang shouted again and again in fury, yet he seemed to be tangled up with someone and could not break free to come to the rescue. On this uncanny night, incredibly, many mysterious masters lay in ambush here.
Though the foe's cultivation was exceedingly high, these Qingyun disciples were all of renowned lineage, no ordinary sect's followers. Shocked as they were, not one of them fled; instead they all summoned their magic treasures and charged forward.
The man in black seemed somewhat anxious and impatient. He put more force into his hand, and the immortal sword he had seized at once blazed with light, far surpassing the glare it had shown in the young disciple's hand a moment before. Now the radiance flickered, the wind howled, and the blade came crashing down in midair; a vast ring of light swept straight down upon the crowd. The Qingyun disciples shouted out in a chorus of cries and all fell back to meet the foe. But the man, for all his bluster, had been merely feigning; one move forced the crowd back a few paces, and he did not press the fight. He simply scooped up Ming Li—who hung limp upon the ground, whether unconscious or not none could tell—and flew swift as the wind toward the darkness behind.
The Qingyun party was both shocked and enraged—shocked that this mysterious man who had sprung from nowhere should possess such cultivation, enraged that Ming Li, who had been within their grasp, had been snatched away again. Ming Li was the Canglan Sect's bitterest thorn, and because of his long-standing ties with the sect, everyone in the Canglan Sect had long harbored the wish to be rid of him. To have him stolen from under their noses on the road—how could they swallow such a humiliation? At once they all gave chase.
They had chased barely halfway when suddenly a whistling cry rang out and a brilliant gleam came shooting from the darkness. To the eyes of the crowd it seemed as though the blade-light were flying at each of them; they hastily checked themselves to meet the foe. Only Zeng Shuyan rushed forward and leaped up, parrying with a single stroke—but he felt a violent shock in his palm and could not keep himself from taking a step back. Even so, he had struck the incoming sword off its course, sending it straight up into the sky; a moment later it came tumbling back down and, with a soft plop, drove point-first into the mud. It was none other than the immortal sword that had been seized, still humming faintly.