Chapter 662: Going and Returning
The man spread his hands, palms facing up, and gently shook them twice.
Long time no see. He was signaling to his own people on the Sword Qi Great Wall—especially to those good girls who had been thinking of him—to give him a little recognition.
The entire Sword Qi Great Wall, which had fallen into silence, suddenly erupted with whistles and jeers from atop the wall.
The female great sword immortal Lu Zhi cast her eyes down, too lazy to look at that man. She really couldn't bear to look.
The man, with his back to the wall, nodded, satisfied that he was still so popular.
Beyond the battlefield, on the Sword Qi Great Wall, he was just a street urchin. Whenever he met drunkards, gamblers, or bachelors, they would all shout, "That bastard A Liang."
On the battlefield, that man was A Liang, just A Liang.
A Liang's gaze wandered, glancing at the scattered military tents here and there, and declared loudly, "Don't hesitate! Send a few who can actually fight!"
A big-bearded man turned around, fixed his eyes on that fellow, and said in a deep voice, "I'll go."
A Liang didn't turn his body, only his head, looking toward Liu Cha, who stood alone on the side of the golden river. In previous years, they had gotten along very well, both friends and enemies. A Liang slowly turned around, rubbed his hands together, and grinned, "Good brother, how about a little negotiation? First, send a few who aren't that good at fighting, to help me warm up? Someone at your level—I can't handle too many of you."
Liu Cha, carrying a sword on his back and a blade at his waist, replied expressionlessly, "I've been waiting for you for a long time. Why haven't you found a suitable sword yet?"
A Liang pressed his palms together, gently twisting his wrists. Since he was heading straight into a tough battle from the start, he'd have to warm up on his own.
Liu Cha's thumb lightly pressed against the sword hilt and gave a gentle push. In an instant, he had crossed the golden river and arrived before A Liang, slashing down with his blade.
On the battlefield, after that, the two figures vanished entirely from sight. Only rings of astonishing ripples, like mountains crashing into a great lake, spread outward in every direction. Each ripple was like a volley of Mo family sword boats releasing a dense, countless swarm of flying swords.
After A Liang descended from the heavens, all the demon army within a hundred miles—those that hadn't died—were urgently withdrawing. The supervising officers of the various tents offered no obstruction.
On the ground, accompanied by successive thunderclaps, enormous craters appeared at vast intervals.
Whenever a crater suddenly collapsed, all life around it was extinguished. The bodies and souls of demon cultivators turned to powder upon hitting the ground; weapons and mountain treasures, along with the yellow sand and dust, were all enveloped by the lingering sword qi, which coalesced like naturally formed sword arrays. The sword intent was chilling, grinding everything to nothing.
All of this was merely the residual sword qi from the moment those two sword immortals clashed.
These two sword cultivators, each standing at the pinnacle of swordsmanship in their respective world, had forcibly created a celestial phenomenon.
A tent relatively close to the battlefield was instantly split in two by a thin line. Several cultivators who failed to dodge in time died without even knowing how.
Liu Cha stood atop the bisected tent. The tent beneath his feet did not collapse, but the cultivators inside had already scattered like birds and beasts.
Several miles away, A Liang halted his movement, reached out, and grabbed a flying sword belonging to a cultivator in the Upper Five Realms. He clenched it first, then pressed his two fingers against the sword's tip and hilt, applying force to bend it into an exaggerated arc.
This flying sword was as fine as a cow's hair, extremely subtle, and could travel covertly along the River of Time. It seemed to belong to a sword immortal highly skilled in assassination.
In a flash of lightning, the flying sword was bent by A Liang's two fingers almost into a full moon. A sword is not a bow, and just as it was about to snap, a barely perceptible grunt sounded from afar. Paying a heavy price, the owner used some secret technique to forcibly retrieve the life-bound flying sword that had been trapped by A Liang's fingers. Then his aura instantly fled far away. But on his escape route, a man appeared behind him, reached out, and grabbed his head. Sword intent, like water, poured into the skull. A Liang pulled back, causing the body to tilt backward. He looked down at the face of the dead sword immortal's corpse. "I told you it wouldn't be that little bastard Shou Chen. As long as I'm on the battlefield, he'll never have the guts to draw his sword in his life."
A Liang gently pushed the corpse away, and it fell heavily dozens of yards away.
In another direction, a pillar of white light suddenly soared up from the earth. The soul of a demon sword immortal, having abandoned its physical body, along with its golden core and nascent soul tightly wrapped within the soul, was pierced clean through by that pillar of light imbued with infinite true meaning of swordsmanship, leaving no trace behind.
During this brief pause, A Liang looked around. White mist was everywhere. He had clearly been trapped within a certain great demon's small world.
"Little trick. Trying to scare me? How do you know I'm easily scared? Oh right, I'm the type who blushes at the sight of a girl," A Liang said, pretending to warm his hands. Taking him as the center, the white mist receded on its own.
On the battlefield, now only black and white, the true form of a colossal great demon appeared, dominating one side, sitting in power over heaven and earth, looking down at the tiny sword cultivator who was like a black dot.
A Liang looked up, startled. It was huge.
He asked a very sincere question, "I don't even know you. How dare you come?"
The reasoning was simple: other than those who possessed ancient well thrones in the Hall of Heroes, if a demon hadn't met or clashed with him, A Liang, then in the Barbaric Wild World, it didn't qualify as a great demon. Since it wasn't a great demon, in A Liang's eyes, was it even "worth looking at"?
That massive demon, whom A Liang had labeled "unknown," was just about to use its powers over heaven and earth to try and crush A Liang, who was so famous in the Barbaric Wild World.
But then, from the top of the demon's true form downward, a straight white line appeared, as if someone had cleaved it in two with a longsword.
After all, within this immortal realm demon cultivator's own small world, though it was instantly injured to the core, shifting the battlefield wasn't difficult. However, just as its true form stopped its momentum and barely managed to withstand the surging sword intent from that line of light, it moved to the edge of its small world, trying to keep the maximum distance from A Liang. Yet it never imagined that throughout this world, not only on the boundaries of the small world but also outside it, thousands of lines of light appeared, piercing heaven and earth. It was as if the entire small world had become that man's small world.
A forest of swords plunged into the ground.
The great demon, its true form ultimately pinned down by dozens of sword lights, could not move its body, nor even slightly shift its thoughts without feeling excruciating pain. It was horrified to discover that within its own small world, it was utterly trapped with no escape.
A Liang paid no attention to this immortal realm demon.
The other's small world was as fragile as porcelain. It seemed that with just a tap of a sword tip, it would shatter into pieces.
When the world returned to clarity, starting from where A Liang stood, countless sword lights emerged one after another, like an ever-expanding huge circle. Within dozens of miles, everything was swept clean in an instant.
Liu Cha, who had been standing atop the tent earlier, found it easy to block those sword lights. Now he hovered in midair, once again the only one on the battlefield facing off against A Liang.
He said calmly, "I advise you: don't let anyone else interfere."
Even if they were willing to die, they should at least inflict some injury on that A Liang.
Liu Cha sheathed his blade, reached behind him, and drew his sword, gripping it in his hand.
In the Barbaric Wild World, traveling about, there was almost no chance to draw his sword in battle. That's why Liu Cha had looked forward to reuniting with A Liang. He had thought it would be in the Haoran World, but never expected that this man would break through the prohibitions of two great worlds and return directly to the Sword Qi Great Wall.
A Liang reached out, and from the battlefield north of the golden river, he controlled a standard-issue sword from the sword workshop to fly back. After catching it, he weighed it in his hand. It was a bit light. He sighed. Even the sword workshop was forced to cut corners. This war really had been brutal.
Earlier, when they first met, Liu Cha struck at A Liang's face with his blade—completely against the rules of the martial world.
So A Liang returned a sword strike to that big-bearded man.
After the exchange of one blow each.
A Liang was sent flying backward into the clouds. The entire sea of clouds above the Sword Qi Great Wall was churned to pieces, flying apart like torn cotton.
A Liang stepped back with one foot, stomping heavily in midair to stop his momentum.
Liu Cha's back slammed into the earth, shattering the ground as he plunged deep into the underground, leaving no trace. A series of muffled thunderclaps sounded from below.
Both of them delivered their second sword strikes even faster. A Liang descended diagonally from the cloud sea, while Liu Cha emerged from the ground.
Both were straight lines driving forward, each delivering a single blow.
This time, both were sent reeling even farther.
A Liang was actually knocked all the way back to the highest point of the Sword Qi Great Wall's cloud sea. He flicked his wrist in a flourish, casually dissipating the residual sword intent that Liu Cha had left on the blade. He grinned at the old Daoist sitting in the heavens: "Old friend, twenty years gone. The little snot-nosed girls from the early days on the Sword Qi Great Wall must have grown into beautiful young women by now, right? Do they still remember that Uncle A Liang who went far away?"
The old Daoist, who was holding a whisk in one hand, switched arms and draped the tattered whisk over his other arm. Smiling, he cursed in the dialect of the Qingming World.
After this round of "courteous" formalities, A Liang vanished in a flash.
The entire cloud sea, tugged by sword intent, shook violently. The Daoist sage sitting cross-legged, somewhat helpless, reached out a hand and gently pressed down on the cloud sea, calming its turmoil.
A Liang raised his arm high, like a young child who had never learned swordsmanship, simply swinging his sword downward in a chopping motion.
He struck Liu Cha, sending both man and sword disappearing once again, retreating deep into the earth.
This time, A Liang didn't retreat a single step, but the sword in his hand shattered and dissipated.
On this kind of battlefield, even if only two people were fighting.
Neither was willing to close the distance.
Unless that gray-clad old man standing outside the Jiazhi Tent gave the order for several great demons of the thrones to surround and kill that man.
But the gray-clad old man just watched coldly.
Some of the throne great demons, who had been itching to act, each shelved their initial impulse to strike first.
After all, that Liu Cha hadn't yet gone all out.
With no sword in hand, A Liang formed hand seals with both hands. On the battlefield, two torrents of sword qi surged wildly into Liu Cha's retreating direction. One contained the true meaning of the Sword River, the other that of the Barbaric Wild World's sword path—both immense and unparalleled. The two streams of sword qi were like two dragon serpents traveling down rivers, crashing into the depths below.
The earth within a hundred miles collapsed with a roar.
A Liang, who had been only a few yards above the ground, now hovered high in the sky.
Upper Five Realm demons all looked down.
Liu Cha stood on a "ground" a hundred yards below the original battlefield, one hand behind his back, the other forming a hand seal with two fingers. The big-bearded man had no sword in hand at the moment, but before him, his sword manifested as a snow-white jade disk, thin and translucent, with brilliant rays of light bursting forth like a bright moon rising over the mortal world. It blocked the two torrents of sword qi that were like a heavenly river.
The two sword qi waterfalls poured down, crashing against that pure white round moon.
Behind Liu Cha, deep underground, the roots of the mountains and the soil continued to crack and crumble.
Sword qi scattered everywhere. In the distance, many demon earth immortal cultivators of lower realms, who had been using the divine ability of "Palm Viewing Mountains and Rivers" to watch, suddenly felt their eyes sting as if ordinary mortals were staring directly at the sun. They had to withdraw their abilities, no longer daring to gaze upon that "small world" forcibly created by both sides.
Liu Cha wore a coarse linen robe. His sleeves fluttered, snapping in the wind. The big-bearded man looked up and said, "You went to the outer heavens and killed some extradimensional demons. Is that all you've got? Or is that 'Second Daoist' actually not as skilled as advertised?"
A Liang laughed. "It's because you're my friend that I'll tell you the truth. If you really think that way, you're going to die."
Liu Cha shook his head. Instead of continuing to gather power, he sheathed his sword—no, he actually put his sword away. Then he let the two sword qi torrents crash into him.
The big-bearded man stopped accumulating power and began deliberately to restrain his own sword qi.
Steady as a rock, like a pillar in the midst of a raging current. No matter how fierce the sword qi flood, Liu Cha's own swordsmanship was like a towering mountain. The two mighty sword qi rivers, after colliding with Liu Cha's physical body and spirit, diverted around him, raising sword qi waves dozens of yards high.
People had heard or seen up close the immense sword qi that Zuo You possessed—unmatched across several worlds. After Zuo You trained on the Sword Qi Great Wall, he could even solidify his pure sword intent into a tangible form.
But Liu Cha, at this moment, was using his sword path to solidify his true body.
A Liang smiled.
Then between him and the big-bearded man, the most illusory River of Time appeared. When it manifested, it shone with colors of crystal and glass.
The entire river twisted like a giant flying sword, wrapping around Liu Cha as if he were placed into someone else's scabbard, and then that person sheathed the sword again.
The River of Time, which was originally most in harmony with the Heavenly Way, had somehow been dragged out by A Liang. Now it began to be rejected by the Way of the Barbaric Wild World. All around the River of Time, countless phenomena of suppression from the true meaning of the Way appeared. Where they met, multicolored fragments of the River of Time shattered like broken ice. But even as the whole river was being compressed, it grew more solid and dense, as if a sword forged from the golden body of an Ascension Realm cultivator had suddenly appeared in the world.
The gray-clad old man praised, "Fine technique."
In a certain tent, a scholar who taught only the sages' books to his disciples and paid no attention to worldly affairs, looked up and carefully examined the distant battlefield.
A Liang looked up.
Liu Cha, his true body temporarily confined and his swordsmanship gradually worn down, was certainly not going to simply sit and wait for death.
A colossal avatar, standing between heaven and earth, with only half its body revealed above ground, raised a sword with both hands and brought it down, the tip aimed directly at A Liang, arriving above his head in an instant.
At the site of the earlier tent, another Liu Cha appeared, his two fingers pressed together, condensing sword intent into a long sword.
Earlier, A Liang had joked that he couldn't handle too many experts like Liu Cha.
But an avatar of the sword path, an out-of-body yang spirit, and a yin spirit roaming afar—Liu Cha splitting into three still wasn't equivalent to three peak Liu Chas.
A Liang never fought a battle where he could only get beaten.
Even if among his opponents were Dong San'geng from the Sword Qi Great Wall, and now this Liu Cha from the Barbaric Wild World, and that shameless "True Invincible" from the Qingming World.
The next instant.
A towering, exaggerated avatar appeared behind Liu Cha's avatar, grabbing the latter's head with one hand and smashing it into the ground.
Before leaving the Sword Qi Great Wall, A Liang had always wanted to tell Liu Cha that whether or not he had a suitable sword did matter, but as long as his opponent also didn't have a supreme immortal sword, it didn't make much difference. In earlier years, they weren't meeting on the battlefield, so A Liang was too embarrassed to say it.
Too blunt words make you lose friends.
At the same time, the "A Liang" who had grabbed Liu Cha's avatar's head held a sword in his other hand and slashed downward. Directly along that line, there happened to be eight military tents.
Three throne great demons—Bai Ying, a shoulder-pole-carrying old man, and a golden-armored deity—each acted to block that sword strike.
A Liang said cheerfully, "Time to scram, time to scram."
The River of Time, which A Liang had condensed into a sword, shattered.
At the location of Liu Cha's out-of-body spirit, a sword light inexplicably shot toward the wall of the Sword Qi Great Wall.
It even pierced through the golden river.
When the sword light dissipated, someone was lying on the wall, slowly sliding down.
The gray-clad old man arrived at Liu Cha's true body side, glanced at the big-bearded man with a trace of blood at the corner of his mouth, and said with a smile, "So next time you swing your sword, don't be so coy."
Liu Cha nodded.
The yin spirit avatar that had gone out of body and the yang spirit out-of-body clone that had returned A Liang's sword strike all merged back into one person.
As for the man who had been "sent" to the top of the wall by that sword strike, he had just been above the character "Meng" (fierce) on the wall. He slid all the way down toward the ground. Along the way, he secretly spat into his palm, turned his head left and right, and carefully smoothed his hair and sideburns. When fighting, you need ambition. Ambition for what? Naturally, for style!
He remembered that over at Daoxuan Mountain, there was a little girl who sold wine in the Yellow Millet Blessed Land. What had she said back then? Something about how seeing his face was like a fawn suddenly darting out in her heart, running wildly along the path of her heart.
Such heartfelt words could be accepted, but as for the girls' affections... forget it.
The man suddenly stopped his slide at a certain horizontal stroke of that big character. He took a step forward and cheerfully greeted an old sword cultivator who had a strange expression: "Isn't this our old brother Yin? What are you looking at? A few more glances, and will you gain a few more realms?"
He slapped Yin Chen, an old sword immortal at the Nascent Soul stage, on the shoulder, and grumbled, "Old brother Yin, I really mean it. You've been spending your days looking at the girls while I was away, haven't you? Otherwise, why haven't you reached the Upper Five Realms yet?"
Yin Chen's shoulder tilted from the pain; the fellow wasn't gentle at all. Yin Chen, known on the Sword Qi Great Wall for being hard to deal with, kept his face straight and refused to speak.
A Liang clapped both hands on the old sword immortal's cheeks, widened his eyes, and shook him vigorously, asking urgently, "Old brother Yin, old brother Yin, don't you recognize me? Are you going senile..."
Yin Chen replied helplessly, "I recognize you. I'm just... temporarily too emotional to speak."
A Liang let go, his smile fading. He said, "At least there are still a few familiar faces. My fault, for coming too late. It's always like this—I pass by, I miss out."
Yin Chen knew something bad was coming, and sure enough, the next moment A Liang locked his neck in a headlock, clamping him under his armpit. Yin Chen couldn't break free and had to bear the spittle as A Liang said, "Old brother Yin, seeing you still a bachelor, my heart aches!"
A Liang suddenly released the old sword immortal, took a step over the edge of the wall, drifted toward the city wall, and finally came to stand beside the great old sword immortal.
On the wall, Wei Jin saluted with a fist-and-palm bow, smiling: "Senior A Liang."
A Liang patted Wei Jin on the shoulder and said sadly, "What's there to see? Still a bachelor."
A Liang sat cross-legged, facing south, his expression unusually solemn.
Even with his interruption, it was only a moment of peace. Next, the battle would continue, and people would keep dying.
On the battlefield, slaughter raged on.
Chen Qingdu stood beside A Liang and asked with a smile, "Doesn't the White Jade Capital in the Qingming World have any good-looking Taoist nuns in yellow crowns? Couldn't they keep you there?"
A Liang pointed to the cloud sea above, then propped his cheek on one hand, gazing at the battlefield. With the other hand pressed to his heart, he quietly regulated his breathing, but his words were not so honest: "There are, how could there not be? But the moment I showed up beneath the White Jade Capital, just the two junior sisters of that old friend of mine there looked at me like they wanted to eat me alive, not to mention the other immortals. Traveling the world, this is the most annoying thing."
Chen Qingdu chuckled.
A Liang asked, "How is that kid's injury? I only caught a glimpse from afar back then. It looked strange, couldn't see clearly."
Chen Qingdu said casually, "Anyway, Ning girl carried him back. He won't die. Being half-dead—get used to it."
A Liang said, "After all, he's just a young man, and an outsider. As an elder, the great old sword immortal should look out for him. That kid, apart from liking Ning girl, doesn't really owe the Sword Qi Great Wall anything. Relying on your seniority to act high and mighty—that's not a good habit."
Chen Qingdu laughed, "Are you teaching me how to live, or how to swordfight?"
A Liang stood up and said quietly, "I'm not one to teach others, but if the great old sword immortal insists on learning, I'll reluctantly teach you."
Wei Jin was greatly impressed.
Whether it was his swordplay earlier or his words now, it was worthy of Senior A Liang.
The old man glanced askance at A Liang.
The city wall trembled, and A Liang was no longer there. He had run off.
But wasn't Senior A Liang's escape direction wrong?
Even Wei Jin was dumbfounded and couldn't help asking, "Great old sword immortal, what's this about?"
Chen Qingdu looked at Wei Jin. "Can't you tell? He's going to fight."
Wei Jin was speechless.
Chen Qingdu glanced again at the rainbow that had started from the city wall—A Liang's momentum was too fierce. He asked with a smile, "Back when he was traveling in Bottle Gourd Continent, didn't he ever tell you that he liked being ganged up on by a group of Ascension Realm cultivators?"
Wei Jin was silent for a moment, his expression strange. "Back then, Senior A Liang told me that even on the Sword Qi Great Wall, which was full of sword immortals, he could still hold his own, definitely ranking in the top fifty. He told me not to think he was boasting—he was very... emphatic."
So Wei Jin initially thought he had met a swindler. But fortunately, Senior A Liang's insights and understandings about swordsmanship at the time, though seemingly nonsense, actually greatly benefited Wei Jin. So he refrained from testing him with a sword strike. After that, there was that so-called small bet that Senior A Liang proposed, and Wei Jin lost the Sword-Nurturing Gourd. Then he went into seclusion and successfully broke into the Upper Five Realms. After emerging from seclusion, Wei Jin naturally felt a longing for the Sword Qi Great Wall, wanting to see with his own eyes what kind of place it was that had fifty Senior A Liangs.
Chen Qingdu suddenly said, "Besides always considering himself a swordsman, A Liang is also a scholar."
That man's figure had already crossed the golden river. When he landed heavily, the surrounding demon army, after a moment of stunned confusion, immediately retreated like a tide, fleeing madly—some running, some riding the wind or flying on swords.
That bastard is back again!
The man lifted his head high, ran his hands through his hair, and asked himself, "Can I be any more handsome? No boasting, honestly, I can't!"
As he spoke, with him as the center, a land tornado appeared, growing larger and larger until it blotted out the sky. It was countless flying swords condensed from sword intent, forming a formation.
The sword formation was completely unaffected by the suppressive power of the Barbaric Wild World's Way.
Having left the Sword Qi Great Wall far behind, he had risen to the outer heavens, killed countless extradimensional demons with his fists, and even fought tooth and nail with the Second Daoist. His swordsmanship, already at the summit, had now ascended to another level—able to pierce the heavens.