Chapter 11: The Decisive Battle in the State of Wei - Section 22: Unrivaled Might (Part 4)

Section 22: Supreme Might (Part 4)

When Yue Fei arrived, she found that the rows of encampments stretching before Mount Di Pass were brightly lit everywhere. The military generals were in high spirits, drinking wine and eating meat, and the atmosphere was lively and enthusiastic.

That day, Zheng Rinran had made a pact with the Northern Monarch for ten consecutive days of battle, two hours each day. However, this martial pact had ended prematurely.

Inside Mount Di Pass, a pall of sorrow hung heavy. Corpses littered the ground everywhere, blood soaked the earth for a radius of ten li, and broken weapons were visible at every turn. Large groups of Wei soldiers, still gripped by the fear born of the post-battle aftermath, were collecting the dead.

The martial experts of Wei wore downcast expressions; some were injured and in pain, while others had numb, vacant looks on their faces.

Two thousand five hundred martial cultivators of the Sword Peak Sect had died, three thousand two hundred Wei wandering knights had perished, and forty-eight thousand Wei soldiers and generals had lost their lives. More than half of the city walls of Mount Di Pass had collapsed and crumbled. The ground stretching from the fortress towards the military camp area was crawling with fissures half a zhang wide, as though it had just endured a terrifying earthquake.

Morale among the ranks of the Wei army was at rock bottom. Some wounded soldiers leaned against the walls, their bodies still trembling uncontrollably, their gazes unfocused as if they had yet to pull their minds back from the nightmarish combat.

Wu Fei accompanied several junior martial brothers and sisters of the Hengshan branch sect through the military camp and into a tent belonging to the Sword Peak Sect. Seventeen or eighteen disciples of the Hengshan branch sect had already gathered inside, all surrounding a man in his fifties. That man was an elder of the Hengshan branch sect and also the leader who had led the young disciples of the Hengshan branch sect in this battle to protect the country and defend their homes.

His injuries were not severe, but at this moment his expression was somewhat peculiar. His gaze was slightly unfocused, and the hands holding his pipe trembled a little.

When the people inside the tent saw Wu Fei arrive, they crowded around and saluted her, saying, "Senior Sister Wu Fei, the Elder is still like this."

As Wu Fei probed with her inner Qi, she heard the elder muttering incoherently in a low voice, "... Zheng Feixian... the lingering soul of Zheng Feixian has possessed her... She is Zheng Feixian... Zheng Feixian is going to go around killing people again..."

Under the eager anticipation of the gathered Sword Peak Sect disciples, and aided by Wu Fei's inner Qi, the elder's consciousness gradually cleared. He slowly closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep. The group joyfully supported and helped him lie down on a couch, and then all turned to Wu Fei and asked, "Senior Sister, what has happened to the Elder?"

Wu Fei had once heard that back in the years past, this elder had five sworn brothers, all of whom had died at the hands of Zheng Feixian. She surmised that during the fierce battle, he had been terrified by the overwhelming might of the Martial Venerable July, which had stirred up memories of Zheng Feixian and temporarily muddled his wits. Yet, she felt she could not reveal the truth, lest it ruin the elder's image in everyone's hearts.

"The Elder was injured, resulting in disordered meridians and a clouded mind. He will be fine after a little rest."

The Sword Peak Sect disciples inside the tent breathed sighs of relief one after another. At that moment, other disciples of the Hengshan branch sect hurried over to ask Wu Fei to treat their fellow sect members. Not daring to detain her, the others hurriedly escorted her out of the tent.

In another tent, a dozen or so Sword Peak Sect disciples lay scattered across the ground, both male and female.

After examining them one by one, Wu Fei could not help but turn solemn.

"Senior Sister Wu Fei, how is the situation?"

"Blood poison."

The few Sword Peak Sect disciples tasked with caring for the wounded asked urgently upon hearing this, "Blood poison?"

Wu Fei sighed, her expression sorrowful as she said, "It is cultivated through an extremely rare technique. I have only ever heard of it and am encountering it for the first time. This cultivation method can gather all the foul qi of heaven and earth into the body, dissolving that foul qi into the blood to transform it into a peculiar power. They came into contact with the blood of such a cultivator, and thus they contracted the blood poison."

"Since Senior Sister knows of it, there must be a way to cure it, right?"

"Although a cure exists, it is as good as none. This blood poison gathers all the foul qi between heaven and earth, and its toxicity is exceptionally complex. The cure requires the use of over thirteen hundred types of medicinal ingredients, and how the dosages of these medicines are matched can only be determined through detailed tests on the cultivator's blood. Mixing the dosages indiscriminately will only cost the poisoned victims their lives." Having said this, Wu Fei looked at the tent full of wounded fellow disciples and said with a face full of guilt, "Contracting blood poison is not immediately fatal, but one's internal cultivation will be eroded by the poison. With the blood poison lingering in the body and refusing to disperse, it causes one to age rapidly and the physical constitution to weaken at an accelerated rate. Even individuals with extremely profound cultivation cannot resist it..."

The disciples all felt grieved upon hearing this. After a long moment, one of them suddenly said, "Senior Sister Wu Fei, I remember they collapsed when swarming the Northern Monarch. Could it be that the Northern Monarch cultivates this sinister technique?"

A thought stirred in Wu Fei's heart. Hesitating for a moment, she hurriedly asked, "How many have contracted the blood poison?"

"Within our own sect alone, there are over three hundred people. There are more than four thousand people in other branches of our sect, and there are even more in the military camp—likely no less than forty thousand."

After hesitating for a moment, Wu Fei finally resolved to make this trip. "I must trouble Junior Brother to come to my tent later to collect the list, and ask the Great General to dispatch someone to hurry back to the Wei capital to request the medicine. I will find a way to try and compound the antidote for the blood poison."

Having given her instructions, Wu Fei hurried back to her tent and swiftly wrote down one by one the more than thousand medicinal herbs needed for the blood poison that she recalled in her memory. When she finished, she handed the list to the arriving fellow disciple, took up her floral umbrella alone, and left Mount Di Pass.

She did not know whether she would be able to see the Northern Monarch outside Mount Di Pass as she wished, nor did she have any certainty of obtaining his blood. It was simply that so many lives were tied to this, and she could not help but make this attempt.

Many of the wounded inside Mount Di Pass were in a hazy, dazed state, still trapped in the thick of fierce combat as though in a dream.

"Fire... Fire... Such a huge fire! Do not burn me..."

On that day, July, having been trapped in heavy encirclement, received the aid of Bu Jingxian to shatter the sword array formed by the Sword Peak Sect experts—a formation that posed a severe threat to her. Afterward, she continued to battle the Wei wandering knights and Sword Peak Sect experts for another hour. The poisoned arrow array organized by the Wei army was blocked by Bu Jingxian single-handedly, and the fissures in the earth made it utterly impossible for the poorly skilled Wei soldiers to cross.

The various cracked earthlines caused sections of the military camp and the areas leading toward Mount Di Pass to collapse in multiple places, leaving deep craters that rendered people helpless. The majestic might of cracking the earth in a single step also chilled and terrified the entire Wei army. After blocking the Wei army's poisoned arrow array, Bu Jingxian immediately withdrew to seek out and engage the martial cultivators of Wei in combat.

Ordinary experts could do nothing to him. After a fierce battle, the Sword Peak Sect organized a group of internal cultivation experts from the Quanzhen branch sect to closely pursue and encircle Bu Jingxian. The Quanzhen branch sect possessed certain formidable internal cultivation ultimate techniques, capable of driving treasured swords with inner Qi to cross long distances at high-speed flight to attack targets. The higher one's cultivation, the farther the flying swords could travel. Rumors claimed that there had once been formidable experts capable of killing people with flying swords from a hundred zhang away.

Yet in recent years, the Quanzhen branch sect had somewhat declined, failing to produce any formidable figures capable of shaking the world.

If the flying swords of hundreds of Quanzhen branch sect internal experts were faced by July and Ling Luo, the vast disparity in inner Qi would have made the lethality of the flying swords as good as non-existent. However, Bu Jingxian's inner Qi was extremely weak. Although he relied on his art of deflecting force to fear no the inner Qi damage of most internal cultivation experts, he was precisely and bitterly battered by these inner-Qi-driven flying swords.

Usually, the attacks of ordinary weapons carried external martial force, which Bu Jingxian's physical stamina did not fear in the least. But these flying swords were all driven by inner Qi; although the internal cultivation mastery of the Quanzhen branch sect experts wielding the flying swords was insufficient to break through his artificially inflated physical stamina and cause him severe injuries, the sharp blades of those flying swords were all capable of piercing his skin and flesh.

For a time, more than a hundred flying swords, intermingled with various colored glows of inner Qi, flashed horizontally and vertically. Even with Bu Jingxian dancing his sword and waving his spear, he could not block them all, and sixteen or seventeen of them pierced or grazed his body, all drawing fresh blood from his wounds.