Chapter 203 — The Mysterious Figure
The Sword Questions the Heavens · Page 2 of 6
Xiao Wan's cry was one she had let out instinctively in her fright—naturally, a young girl would always have some aversion to such things—but to those beside her it sounded rather differently. Zhou Yixuan and the Wild Wolf Daoist were both startled; Zhou Yixuan hurriedly turned to look, while the Wild Wolf Daoist, seizing courage from who knew where, gave a tiger's roar—hm, more like a dog's bark—and leaped out to stand before Xiao Wan and Zhou Yixuan, a ring of light flashing in his hand as he summoned forth his beast-fang magic treasure.
In the dark of night, that pale yellow halo, though faint, somehow seemed to carry a touch of warmth.
Seeing the Wild Wolf Daoist do this, Xiao Wan was startled in turn, at a loss as to why—when in that very instant, the figure whose face had all along been shrouded in shadow suddenly moved.
The man's hand reached straight out before him, and a strange aura rose with it—nothing at all like the open, upright arts of the present-day Canglan Sect. The Wild Wolf Daoist knew in his heart that this man was unfathomably deep, but behind him stood a woman, and he could not retreat for anything. So with an angry shout, his beast-fang treasure blazed with light, and he struck at the man.
In the mortuary courtyard, the darkness seemed in that instant to be driven back by the Wild Wolf Daoist. On his face, for a brief moment, seeing that the figure seemed not even to be blocking, there was some astonishment, tinged with a measure of delight.
The next moment, the Wild Wolf Daoist's beast-fang treasure struck squarely against the figure's chest—and that figure, who seemed so mysterious and so formidable, did not dodge the Wild Wolf Daoist's heavy blow.
The Wild Wolf Daoist himself could scarcely believe it, and Zhou Yixuan and Xiao Wan beside him were also taken aback. Before them the beast-fang treasure blazed with yellow light, bearing all the air of a victor—but a moment later, the three of them sensed something was wrong.
The man who had taken the Wild Wolf Daoist's full-force strike squarely to the chest seemed not even to sway. Though the Wild Wolf Daoist's cultivation was far from comparable to figures like Ming Li, he was, after all, a demon-sect figure who had trained for many years, and the force of that blow was no small thing; an ordinary man would likely have had his qi and blood thrown into turmoil, and even if he did not die, he would have lost half his life.
Yet this eerie figure seemed utterly unaffected. Then, a moment later, the man seemed to give a low grunt, and the Wild Wolf Daoist suddenly cried out in alarm. Without any visible movement, that outstretched hand was in an instant back before him, and the Wild Wolf Daoist's beast-fang treasure was gripped in his hand.
To have one's own magic treasure seized by another is a perilous thing for any cultivator. How could the Wild Wolf Daoist not be both frantic and furious? With a shout, he poured all his strength into his mana, trying to summon the treasure back—but the beast-fang lay in the man's hand, and though the man seemed to exert no force at all, it gave no response whatsoever to its master's mana.
The man lowered his head, looked at the object in his hand, and then spoke for the first time. His voice was hoarse, almost impossible to make out, yet it carried an unmistakable note of contempt as he said coldly: "Petty demonic tricks—and you dare to run wild here?"
The Wild Wolf Daoist, caught between shock and fury, was about to channel his treasure again when he suddenly heard Zhou Yixuan behind him cry urgently: "Back away—back away, quickly!"