Chapter 660: Sparrows in the Cage
Chen Ping'an went south alone, carving through the formation step by step. Wherever he passed, techniques and spiritual artifacts poured down like a torrential rainstorm.
Then Chen Ping'an finally ran into a tough opponent—a short, stocky man clad in bright red scale armor, wearing a purple-gold crown askew, with two extremely long pheasant tail feathers sticking out of it. His outfit was as flashy as those seen on street performers in the bustling market towns of the Haoran World.
To strut around so ostentatiously on the battlefield of the Sword Qi Great Wall, one had to be either unafraid of death or possess the qualifications to be unafraid of death. This demonic cultivator moved with incredible speed, almost as if using a ground-shrinking talisman, closing the distance of several li in an instant. He appeared beside Chen Ping'an, punched directly through the thick fist intent protecting Chen Ping'an's body, and struck him on the temple. The blow sent Chen Ping'an flying sideways for dozens of zhang.
Chen Ping'an slapped the ground, spun gracefully, and landed on his feet. The demon cultivator followed like a shadow, exchanging a punch with Chen Ping'an.
Both of them slid backward at almost the same time, plowing trenches in the earth that came up to their knees. The demon cultivator shook his right wrist, then used two fingers of his left hand to pluck one of the pheasant feathers. Speaking in the local dialect of the Sword Qi Great Wall, he said, "So you're the new Hidden Officer? A martial artist at the Far Roaming Realm? Your punches are not light, no wonder you could lose to Cao Ci three times and then defeat Yu Juanfu three times."
He raised his right hand, signaling the surrounding demon army to back off, leaving the battlefield to him and the young Hidden Officer of the Sword Qi Great Wall.
Chen Ping'an extended his thumb, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and then rubbed his temple with his palm. The force was indeed considerable. His opponent was probably at the Mountain Summit Realm. For demonic martial artists, their natural physical toughness meant they were not so easy to break. But a ninth-tier martial artist, bearing martial fortune, shouldn't be so reckless. Whether it was his attire or his punches, the opponent was far too "indifferent."
Chen Ping'an quickly understood and, for a rare moment, spoke to his enemy on the battlefield: "Are you the strongest eighth-tier martial artist in the Wildlands? Looking for an opportunity to break through and gain martial fortune?"
The short man released the feather, which snapped back into place with a bang. He nodded with a smile. "How about it? Want to exchange punches with me? If I said no one would interfere, you probably wouldn't believe me, and I suspect I can't control all those sneaky sword cultivator suicide fighters. It doesn't matter. If you agree to this martial artist bout, anyone who gets in the way of my punches, including you, will be my enemy, and I'll kill them all."
Chen Ping'an extended a hand, pointing toward the Sword Qi Great Wall. He smiled. "Inside the city, there's a ninth-tier senior who taught me fist techniques. You can go there for a bout."
The short man's gaze turned dark. He had shown great sincerity, but this young Hidden Officer, now so famous, was not playing along.
Chen Ping'an continued, "I'll say a few more words to you. As a martial artist, losing to anyone, even Cao Ci, is nothing to be proud of. A loss is a loss. This shows that the strongest Far Roaming Realm martial artist in the Wildlands—setting aside whether his fists are strong—lacks the spirit and breadth of mind befitting a martial artist. If you obtained the title of 'strongest' and broke into the ninth tier, it would be a huge joke."
Their conversation held little real meaning.
Both sides were calculating heavily. The short man pretended to be bold, wanting to fight Chen Ping'an alone, just using the young Hidden Officer as a stepping stone for his martial path. Once he broke through, he would gain not only the martial fortune of the Wildlands but also siphon some of the martial fortune from the Sword Qi Great Wall.
As for Chen Ping'an, he was secretly searching for the number one among the Wildlands' Hundred Sword Immortals. Earlier, when the Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist sages had created the two golden rivers, Chen Ping'an had gone out of the city to fight twice, crossing blows with that opponent. The exchanges seemed restrained, neither going all out, but the details were tightly interwoven. Whoever made a mistake first would die, and the death would hardly be heroic—just confusing to lower-level sword cultivator spectators.
The short man seemed to lose interest in scheming. He gently scraped the ground gravel with his boot. "We've talked enough standing. I'll give you a chance to talk lying down later. By the way, my name is Hou Kuimen."
Chen Ping'an put one hand behind his back, turned his head slightly, and pointed a finger at his own temple. "If you've got the guts, try hitting me here again."
A sudden idea came to him. He could give it a try.
But the prerequisite for trying was to let the opponent try first.
Hou Kuimen was not one to be polite.
After Hou Kuimen threw a punch, he hesitated slightly and did not press the attack. He just stood there, watching the young man he had sent flying.
The young man, who had not dodged or even counterattacked, stomped the ground heavily to stop himself. He smiled at Hou Kuimen, a hint of mockery in his expression.
Hou Kuimen had been worried about a trap, so he had held back some of his strength.
A young Hidden Officer, renowned for his cunning in sixty military tents, would hardly be stupid enough to let himself be beaten to death.
So after landing the blow, Hou Kuimen felt a twinge of regret. If that punch had not been a test but a full-force strike, would the young man still be standing?
But why had the opponent taken that punch head-on?
Chen Ping'an pointed to his heart. "Another punch here."
Hou Kuimen raised both arms, using two fingers to flick the pheasant feathers. His outfit—the bright red scale armor, the purple-gold crown, and the brilliant feathers—was no ordinary mountain artifact. It was a complete set of ancient military treasures, altered in appearance after being refined. Semi-immortal grade, balanced in offense and defense, it was called "Sword Cage." It could temporarily imprison a sword immortal's flying sword. Once a sword immortal lost his lifebound flying sword and was caught at close range, he would have no choice but to fight Hou Kuimen on physical constitution.
Hou Kuimen released the two feathers, his form flickering as he appeared before the peer martial artist who seemed bent on dying. He threw a punch, and the young Hidden Officer crashed far away.
Chen Ping'an stood up, spat out a mouthful of blood, glanced at Hou Kuimen, and cursed in the dialect of his hometown.
He had originally intended for this eighth-tier peak martial artist to help him break through the seventh-tier bottleneck. But Hou Kuimen had hesitated both times he punched, which, compared to the force of Li Er's fists on Lion Peak in Northern Julu Continent, felt like being slapped by a woman.
These days, a fair saying was circulating on the Sword Qi Great Wall: watching the young Hidden Officer beat others, or watching him get beaten, was always a pleasant sight.
Hou Kuimen's expression was complex.
Chen Ping'an asked in the Wildlands' Great Elegant Speech, "Do you want to kill the Hidden Officer to earn merit, or do you want to fight a martial artist to break through?!"
Hou Kuimen took a deep breath and lightly knocked his fists together once. In a deep voice, he said, "One last punch. If you don't die, I'll consider it my loss. Chen Ping'an, I know you're also after something. It doesn't matter. We'll see whose fist technique is better! For this punch, feel free to fight back."
Chen Ping'an frowned.
Vaguely, Hou Kuimen's vast fist intent began to condense around him, forming a blurry image, like a sage sitting in a small domain.
In the past, when traveling with Zhang Ye from Qingxia Island at Shujian Lake, Chen Ping'an had discovered that he could faintly discern such signs.
Chen Ping'an flicked his sleeves, rolling them up and spreading them out.
In an instant.
On the battlefield where the young Hidden Officer and Hou Kuimen stood, dust flew up, blotting out the sun and sky.
The wind and sand carried dense fist intent shooting in all directions, chaotic as countless tiny flying swords streaking out.
A moment later, the ground trembled, and the wind and sand scattered. Hou Kuimen was seen clutching his neck with one hand, blood seeping through his fingers, and his other hand clenched in a fist, looking around.
Finally, Hou Kuimen saw behind one of the demon cultivators the young Hidden Officer, who had stabbed a short knife into the back of a sword cultivator suicide fighter, then lightly slashed the other short knife across his throat.
Hou Kuimen could no longer speak clearly. Mumbling, he said, "Chen Ping'an, as the Hidden Officer, I've experienced your skills firsthand. But as a pure martial artist, you are disappointing. So disappointing."
It turned out that during the previous exchange of punches, the young Hidden Officer had taken Hou Kuimen's blow but drew a knife from his sleeve, thrusting upward into Hou Kuimen's neck. Not only that, but he had slapped the knife handle with his left hand. If Hou Kuimen had not stomped hard, leaped upward, and retreated several steps, the blade would have shredded his tongue and pierced through his skull.
If this had been a pure martial artist from the Haoran World, without naturally tough constitution, such a severe injury would have made it impossible to speak even a single word.
Chen Ping'an gently pushed aside the corpse of the sword cultivator before him, then sent a voice thread to Hou Kuimen, saying with a smile, "You threw three punches, but which one was worthy of a pure martial artist? If your first punch had been pure enough, I wouldn't have minded exchanging three blows with you. Maybe we could have each broken through. Then it would truly be a matter of life and death, decided only by the level of our fists."
When Chen Ping'an appeared, the battlefield once again cleared a large space around him.
The young Hidden Officer held short knives in reverse, loosening and then tightening his grip.
It was a small habit he had learned from Yu Lu.
As for the knife-holding posture, it came from a stance he had seen at Jianshui Manor in Shushui Kingdom. In the underworld of the mortal world, assassins and knife-wielders also used such postures, but in Chen Ping'an's eyes, they lacked the true essence—just dead frames.
Hou Kuimen only knew about the young Hidden Officer; he was too unfamiliar with Chen Ping'an's fighting habits.
When Chen Ping'an started dragging things out, it was always because he was pursuing some backup plan.
Otherwise, he would only speak after life and death had been decided.
Hou Kuimen did not retreat. Instead, his fist intent increased rather than diminished. Good.
Chen Ping'an tucked the pair of knives—acquired from an assassin on Gulu Mountain in Northern Julu Continent—back into his sleeves and stood still.
Hou Kuimen, having used some secret technique, stopped the bleeding near his neck. His arms hung down, and he too stood motionless.
This was the true mindset for a proper martial artist bout.
After that, wherever the two figures passed, they inevitably caught countless others in the crossfire.
The two pure martial artists, each at a martial bottleneck, were like two sword immortals' flying swords, slashing freely across the battlefield, leaving a trail of limbs and broken corpses.
Hou Kuimen's punches became lighter and lighter, yet his fist intent grew heavier and heavier.
Each punch carried a nascent image of a ninth-tier martial artist. This was a great opportunity to break through.
For some reason, the young Hidden Officer, acknowledged as a sword cultivator, never released his flying sword. He didn't even use any of the swords in the sword case on his back.
Far off on the battlefield, a "middle-aged man" who was a kindred spirit to the young Hidden Officer was being swept along by the demon army toward the Sword Qi Great Wall. He had been watching Chen Ping'an and Hou Kuimen's fight closely, seeing through most of it, and was hesitating whether to disrupt Chen Ping'an's plans.
But after scanning a few positions not too far away and weighing the odds, he gave up on interfering. It wasn't worth competing with the genius-stuffed Jia Shen Tent for battle merits.
Hou Kuimen was covered in blood and flesh. An eighth-tier peak martial artist, wearing precious treasures, should not have been reduced to such a state by a junior a whole realm below. It was baffling.
Hou Kuimen, his face smeared with blood, abruptly stopped. He lowered his head and laughed lightly, deeply satisfied. Then he looked up, glaring at the young man who had also suddenly withdrawn his fists.
Hou Kuimen seemed to say: Wait until I reach the ninth tier, with martial fortune on my side, then I'll come back and fight you, this unreasonable Golden Body Realm bottleneck. Then it will be my turn to be unreasonable. With all your messy schemes, will you still succeed? Will you leave this battlefield alive? If you have the ability, why don't you break through too?!
In this bout, though Hou Kuimen was at a higher realm, he was at a disadvantage. The problem was not his constitution or his weak punches. The key was that Chen Ping'an seemed to predict his fist paths.
Now, seeing Chen Ping'an looking as if facing a formidable enemy, which seemed genuine, Hou Kuimen felt a surge of satisfaction. In his life of practicing fists, breaking through realm after realm, he had never felt such exhilaration. Chen Ping'an, today you help me break through; I'll leave your corpse intact later—provided that after I reach the ninth tier, your physique can withstand my punches without being torn apart!
A stream of martial fortune from the Wildlands tore through the air, descended upon the battlefield, and surged wildly into Hou Kuimen.
Chen Ping'an smiled knowingly. Finally.
Hou Kuimen's fists had been too light to break his bottleneck, at most helping him temper a few key bones and muscles—mere icing on the cake.
Because he was worried about affecting the subsequent battle, many of the ninth-tier force punches were aimed at vital qi mansions. If they landed on him, Chen Ping'an was not afraid of injury, but he feared the fist intent causing havoc in his personal small world. So Chen Ping'an could not take them all; he had to deflect most of the force. Hou Kuimen was enjoying his punches, but Chen Ping'an, exchanging blows with him, was far from comfortable.
No matter. Chen Ping'an had experience repelling martial fortune, even more than once at Old Dragon City.
Besides, Chen Ping'an had even endured heavenly tribulation twice—once at Suijia City in Northern Julu Continent and once here on the Sword Qi Great Wall against Li Zhen.
Chen Ping'an tapped the ground with his toes, shot straight up into the sky, and ascended without throwing any punches. He simply kept climbing higher, as if heading for the highest reaches of the heavens. Though he did not punch, he used a fist intent like clouds gathering over a great marsh to meet the white rainbow-like martial fortunes from the Wildlands.
The "middle-aged man" stopped walking, looked up, and muttered to himself, "Can martial fortune be stolen? Is that how business is done?"
Because the young Hidden Officer, using some strange method, was directly dragging all the white rainbow martial fortunes upward with him, making him look like a white rainbow ascending.
Martial fortune in the world was always an extremely ethereal existence. Even the Confucian Temple in the Central Earth of the Haoran World could not stop or intercept it, only let it flow freely among the talented martial artists of the Nine Provinces.
In the Wildlands, even Tuoyue Mountain could not control it.
The most awkward position was naturally Hou Kuimen, whose martial fortune had come but not touched him.
Hou Kuimen bent his knees slightly and also shot into the sky, chasing after Chen Ping'an's figure, now as small as a mustard seed, and hoping to get as close to the martial fortunes as possible.
The "middle-aged man," who styled himself a swordsman, still did not attack Chen Ping'an with his sword. It was not about rules or honor. In battle, he and Chen Ping'an were cut from the same cloth: every time he struck, every time he traded injuries with an opponent, it was like doing business down to the last penny.
This young swordsman, who surpassed all geniuses like Li Zhen, Zhu Qie, and others on the Hundred Sword Immortals list, sensed a sliver of the true meaning of the Great Way.
If he attacked now, even if he succeeded, it would be a loss for his own path. Because from then on, he would be universally suppressed by the invisible force of martial fortune.
For a pure martial artist, using that to temper his martial path would be a good thing. But unfortunately, he was ultimately a sword cultivator.
No!
Chen Ping'an's entire fist intent and motive were fake.
He suddenly extended his right hand, directly commandeering a long sword from a nearby demon cultivator's hand. With a light shake, he shattered it into over a dozen sword fragments. At the same time, with his left wrist turned, he forcibly used his own sword energy to blow open several meridians in his palm. Blood seeped out, and he smeared it across the sword fragments. After using one of his many trump cards, the young swordsman flicked his sleeve, shooting the fragments high into the sky, straight toward Hou Kuimen.
Almost simultaneously, Hou Kuimen's vision blurred. The figure a hundred odd zhang away had first used a ground-shrinking talisman, then used two refined flying swords—"Pine Needle" and "Coughing Thunder"—as guides.
Holding a short knife in each hand, Chen Ping'an stabbed one through Hou Kuimen's cheek, crossing his entire face, and the other into Hou Kuimen's heart. After landing the blows, he used another ground-shrinking talisman and disappeared instantly.
The next moment, the sword fragments came to a halt around Hou Kuimen, forming a tiny sword array that protected this demon martial artist—now uncertain whether he was still eighth-tier or already ninth-tier.
If those fragments hadn't arrived in time, Chen Ping'an would have been able to cut off half of Hou Kuimen's head.
Hou Kuimen gritted his teeth. After taking two stabs, his "ascending" form paused slightly before he continued rushing upward. Those martial fortunes were being dragged even higher by the young Hidden Officer.
The sword fragments, after confirming Hou Kuimen's life was not in immediate danger, flickered and returned to the "middle-aged man."
The two pure martial artists successively broke through two vast layers of sea of clouds.
One layer was just slightly higher than the city wall of the Sword Qi Great Wall; the higher sea of clouds was far above the city.
Suddenly hovering above the clouds, Chen Ping'an frowned deeply again. But this time, it was not about playing true and false, real and fake with Hou Kuimen.
He genuinely sensed something sinister in the atmosphere.
The martial fortunes higher up were genuine.
Hou Kuimen, though unsure why the young Hidden Officer had stopped, still relied on his Wind Riding Realm to approach the serpentine streams of martial fortune.
Chen Ping'an thought briefly, then abandoned all his previous schemes, dropped back through the clouds, and returned to the ground.
Hou Kuimen was about to generously claim the martial fortune that should have been his. Above the clouds, bathed in sunlight, he looked like a deity.
But in an instant, Hou Kuimen's eyes turned pitch black. After struggling for a moment, he began to follow Chen Ping'an down, simultaneously pulling the martial fortunes down to the earth.
The martial fortune crashed into Hou Kuimen's body. Having broken into the ninth tier, Hou Kuimen shot toward Chen Ping'an.
Chen Ping'an changed his retreat trajectory three times but still could not avoid it.
On the ground, a huge crater formed, as if a sword immortal's lifebound flying sword had exploded.
Hou Kuimen, the ninth-tier martial artist, along with all his martial fortune, was completely shattered.
Five sword immortal seedlings from the Wildlands' Jia Shen Tent no longer concealed their tracks. They appeared simultaneously at the edge of the crater, each taking a position.
Zhu Qie, Li Zhen, Yu Si, Liu Bai, Jun Tan.
The middle-aged man sighed, concealed his form, and departed.
Was it that a great demon of the throne had used its innate divine ability to possess Hou Kuimen, who was on the verge of breaking through, directly sacrificing a guaranteed ninth-tier martial artist to severely wound the young Hidden Officer Chen Ping'an?
Zhu Qie said, "Beware of traps."
A smiling voice echoed simultaneously in everyone's mind: "How could that be possible?"