Chapter 4959 — Just Die in Peace
The Blossom Guardian · Page 2 of 2
For an instant, everything between heaven and earth froze. Wei Zhao's eyes nearly split with rage, and he roared in grief and fury, "Aunt Liu!"
"Hmph. Strong or not, she was only a woman. Nothing more." Chang Minghui laughed in triumph. But before the laugh could leave his throat, Liu Ziqi's corpse, once it hit the ground, crumbled into a heap of yellow sand—she had been a yellow-sand clone all along!
This turn left Chang Minghui dumbstruck, and even Wei Zhao failed to react for a moment. He had not been far from Liu Ziqi's position, yet even he had not caught the slightest hint of when she had swapped in a yellow-sand clone. The technique itself was nothing world-shaking, but to wield it with such flawless precision made Liu Ziqi the finest he had ever seen.
Pfft! Liu Ziqi appeared of a sudden behind Chang Minghui, her sword running him through the chest. Chang Minghui's face turned all the more aghast; he stared blankly at the bloodied blade jutting from his chest, his expression one of utter incredulity.
Wei Zhao found it just as incredible. Liu Ziqi had given the impression of broad, open, head-on force, but from the moment she silently conjured the yellow-sand clone to the moment she silently appeared behind Chang Minghui, her entire fighting style had changed completely. Gone was the earlier ruthlessness and dominance; now she was more like an assassin who lived by the oblique and the unexpected.
"You spoke too soon, sir, with all that 'nothing more' foolishness." Liu Ziqi's breath came a little ragged.
That whole sequence had flowed like cloud and water. It lacked the godlike instantaneity of the enemy's wind blades, but to bring it off without a single flaw—and above all to fool a man of Chang Minghui's caliber—had cost an astronomical drain of stamina and true qi. And that was to say nothing of the first wind blade, which had left a very real wound deep enough to show bone.
To run Chang Minghui through the chest like this was already the fullest result Liu Ziqi could wring from all her strength. Before, even with the Nine Palaces Sand Formation to aid her, she had been pressed and pummeled; only now, in this desperate all-or-nothing strike, did her true strength show.
"Is that so?" Chang Minghui did not fall after taking the sword. Instead, in an instant, the aura of his whole body grew more savage and more powerful, and visible gusts of force streamed off him without cease, swiftly coiling around Liu Ziqi behind him.
These gusts were like iron chains without form or trace, binding Liu Ziqi tight from head to toe and suspending her in midair. Her face flushed crimson at once. Not only could she not move—one of the gusts had cinched around her throat, and she was suffocating.
The tables turned in the blink of an eye. Liu Ziqi's softsword was still buried in Chang Minghui, but with the heaven-defying vitality of a late-Kaishan titan, a single sword thrust at most wounded him; killing him outright was simply impossible.
Liu Ziqi, by contrast, now hung in mortal peril. Not only was she being strangled into suffocation, the worse danger was what came next: any one of Chang Minghui's wind blades could take her life. She had no strength left to resist.
"I said 'nothing more,' and nothing more is what I meant. Go in peace and die." Chang Minghui sneered, ready to finish Liu Ziqi off. As for what consequences killing her might bring, he feared none of them. A mere Morning Pride Academy was beneath his notice.