Chapter 717: The Origin of the Matter Is Still Killing
(Regarding the mistake in yesterday's writing about Su Li, first, I apologize, and thank you to the friend "Flying Saucer Loves Trouble" for the reminder. As for bugs, there will definitely be many in recent articles. After my mother fell ill, my entire family now spends most of their time every day in the hospital. I truly don't have enough time and energy to devote to work. There will be frequent interruptions in updates, and the quality will certainly be unstable. Please bear with me, and don't hesitate to point out errors. I will revise them properly later. Finally, a word of complaint: today, before going to the hospital, my wife said to bring some nuts for my mother to eat. I proudly bent down under the coffee table, and then... disaster struck. My lumbar disc herniation flared up again. After a year, I think back to meeting my readers in Guangzhou last year—it felt so familiar. The same taste, the same difficulty moving, the same pain. The kind of pain that makes you curse.)
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"So, this is useless against me." Xiao De looked at Chen Changsheng and said very seriously.
No matter how much hot water you add to a wooden tub, you can't make it boil. Piling dirt into a mountain taller than the Mausoleum of Books won't make it harder than stone. Even if Chen Changsheng could truly transform one body into ten thousand, he couldn't rely on the accumulation of quantity to break through to a higher level.
This principle wasn't hard to understand.
Cultivation was the coldest thing in the world. It never believed that diligence could compensate for lack of talent, and quantitative change could never trigger qualitative change.
Right now, he could face many cultivators at the initial or even middle stage of Star Gathering at the same time, but it was very difficult to kill them all. More importantly, when he faced peak Star Gathering powerhouses like Xiao De or Xiao Zhang, the gap in their realms would sharply reduce his numerical advantage.
Back then in the Garden of Zhou, he could confront the Golden-Winged Roc controlled by Nan Ke head-on, not because he was that powerful, but because the ten thousand famous swords awakened from the Sword Pool had transformed centuries of accumulated longing into battle intent, allowing him to unleash that earth-shattering ultimate strike.
Now the Garden of Zhou was quiet, the famous swords had returned to their mountains. The swords still by his side, tempered anew in the ocean of hidden blades, could no longer condense that kind of battle intent. In other words, the miraculous scene of ten thousand swords forming a dragon could never reappear in this world.
"Of course, you're still terrifying." Xiao De said with a mix of present emotion and future fear, "If you survive and cultivate to the peak of Star Gathering in the future, what kind of situation will you and your swords create?"
If it were as Xiao De said, the future Chen Changsheng, one man could rival ten thousand cavalry, could besiege cities and destroy nations.
"By then, people like us would have no ability to resist before you. You'd beat us like dogs."
Xiao De paused for a moment, looking at Chen Changsheng and continuing, "And that's unfair to us."
The courtyard was deathly silent. The shattered crabapple tree had long since died. Even the wind was still among those suspended swords, not daring to stir.
The imperial experts heard Xiao De's words and remained silent, their expressions complex.
Chen Changsheng didn't speak. His slightly thin lips were pressed together tightly, like a line.
Like the line formed by the hundreds of swords in the snowy sky.
No cultivator wanted to see such a future, to become a dog beneath the sword of a peerless genius. And they were already enemies.
To prevent such a terrifying future from appearing, the only thing they could do, and had to do, was to kill Chen Changsheng now.
Xiao De still looked quietly at Chen Changsheng. Suddenly, a yellow-brown light surged in his pupils, and a terrifying aura was born.
This aura was filled with a primitive and savage flavor. Even in the smallest fragments, it seemed to drip with the freshest beast blood.
His clothes were stretched extremely tight, revealing a mountain-like inner strength, then pierced by countless fine, steel-needle-like beast hairs.
There was originally a deep wound on his chest, inflicted by Chen Changsheng's Burning Sword during their first clash, which had been slowly bleeding. Now the blood suddenly stopped. The wound healed at a visible rate, then could no longer be seen.
Chen Changsheng's hand gripping the sword tightened slightly, knowing the other side was about to use his strongest means.
The demon race had many advantages that humans couldn't compare to, such as speed, strength, and natural physical toughness. But the greatest advantage was that powerful demon cultivators could briefly manifest their true forms, borrowing faster speed, greater strength, and making their bodies tougher from the ancestral bloodline hidden in their fate wheels.
This was berserking.
A hum sounded in the courtyard. The scattered crabapple branches on the ground were stirred by the gusting wind, smashing against the walls and shattering into even finer pieces.
Xiao De vanished from before the stone gate and appeared in front of Chen Changsheng.
The hundreds of swords in the snowy sky vibrated slightly. The hum began and then fell abruptly silent.
In an instant, Xiao De crossed eight zhang of distance and was struck by six swords.
But these six swords, each executing exquisite sword techniques in succession, couldn't slow his pace for even a moment.
Six sword marks appeared on the surface of his body, blood seeping slightly.
As the strongest of the demon race's middle generation, his physical toughness was terrifying. After berserking, it reached an inconceivable level. If not for Chen Changsheng's swords all coming from the Sword Pool—famous swords from centuries past—they probably couldn't have even left marks on his body.
Amid the wind and snow, Xiao De's fist came crashing down toward Chen Changsheng.
Just like at the very beginning, during their first encounter outside the wall, he still didn't use a weapon.
After returning from the Cold Mountain, Xiao De's temperament had become much more composed, and his cultivation had also increased greatly. The biggest change was that he trusted his fists more.
He did have a weapon, but on the mountain path of Cold Mountain, before he could even draw it, Liu Qing had stabbed him with a sword.
Then, in the persimmon grove by the stream, he had encountered the Demon Lord. Whether he took out his weapon or not, it was a joke.
After that, Xiao De abandoned his weapon and only used his hands.
Compared to swords, blades, spears, and artifacts, the hand was the true weapon of a cultivator.
Throwing a punch was faster than drawing a sword.
And faster than Chen Changsheng's sword.
Chen Changsheng didn't have time to draw his sword before Xiao De's fist arrived. Fortunately, the yellow paper umbrella was still in his left hand.
The umbrella caught the wind and rose, blocking Xiao De's fist.
The umbrella surface sank deeply. A tremendous force came. With a loud crash, Chen Changsheng's left foot, which was behind him, sank deep into the ground.
The hard bluestone slabs beneath his feet shattered like a spiderweb, the center sinking as if into a whirlpool.
Several cracking sounds came from inside his body. Who knew which bones had cracked or even broken.
A sword light, so sharp it seemed almost shrill, lit up at the edge of the yellow paper umbrella.
Xiao De roared and raised his fist to strike again. In an instant, a fierce wind arose. The broken crabapple branches in the courtyard vanished completely. Countless cracks appeared on the walls, and lime chunks kept peeling off, making it look as if tens of thousands of years had passed in that brief moment.
Just as the fist fell like a mountain, the imperial experts launched a collective attack on Chen Changsheng. Sword intent crisscrossed the courtyard, and countless sword techniques emerged endlessly.
No one knew how much time had passed. The scene fell silent again.
Xiao De, using the force of the rebound, swept back like wind and sand to before the stone gate, seemingly unharmed.
Suddenly, a light scraping sound came from his face.
With this sound, a sword mark spread across his face to about half an inch wide. Blood flowed freely, and the bone was visible beneath, extremely terrifying.
Chen Changsheng stood before the stone steps and sheathed his sword.
Several stiff beast hairs fell from the air, hitting the ground like steel needles, making a crisp ringing sound.
With this sound, Chen Changsheng began to cough, coughing incessantly. His face grew paler and paler. His foot, standing in the broken stones, trembled slightly, and his body swayed as if about to fall.
Clearly, his injuries were heavier than Xiao De's.
Xiao De's expression was very grave. Not because he had been wounded by Chen Changsheng again—no matter how tough a body, it couldn't withstand the Stainless Sword from the Hundred Artifacts List. But because there wasn't a single sword wound on Chen Changsheng's body. This meant that in the previous chaotic battle, not one of the dozens of imperial experts' swords could get close to him.
Facing his full-force strike, Chen Changsheng was clearly not lightly injured. How could he simultaneously control the hundreds of swords in the courtyard's air?
Xiao De was very puzzled. Although Chen Changsheng's spiritual sense intensity far exceeded that of ordinary cultivators, to a powerhouse like him, it wasn't too exaggerated.
How exactly did Chen Changsheng do it?
Xiao De looked at the hundreds of swords in the snowy sky and remained silent.
He couldn't figure it out. But at least he could now be certain that Chen Changsheng's simultaneous control of these hundreds of swords must be consuming his spiritual sense at an extremely rapid rate.
If the battle continued like this, the likely scenario was that Chen Changsheng wouldn't fall, but his spiritual sense would be exhausted first.
"How much longer can you hold out?"
Xiao De withdrew his gaze and looked at Chen Changsheng, saying, "If you insist on staying here, the final outcome can only be me beating you to death, fist by fist."
The hundreds of swords floated quietly in the snowy sky, guarding Chen Changsheng's surroundings.
This could be seen as a defensive sword formation, or as an offensive vanguard camp. But it also looked like a prison.
It was hard for others to break into this prison, and it was also hard for Chen Changsheng to walk out, because he didn't dare open the door.
So, how much longer could he hold out?
"I don't know." Chen Changsheng thought for a moment, then said, "At least until Zhou Tong is dead."
When he heard these words, Xiao De finally understood, and was somewhat shocked.
Actually, Chen Changsheng had already stated his stance earlier. But he and the surrounding imperial experts didn't believe it.
But now, Xiao De increasingly believed his words, because even now, Chen Changsheng still hadn't left. He still stood before the stone steps.
Chen Changsheng was here, so he and so many imperial experts could only stay here as well.
Today's arrangement by the Great Zhou imperial court was originally to kill Wang Po and Chen Changsheng. But after fighting until now, Xiao De had already given up on that idea.
He knew Chen Changsheng still had methods he hadn't used—relying only on these swords in the snowy sky, there was no way to defeat Old Eunuch Lin in the National Academy.
If Chen Changsheng used those methods, he could at least break out and escape.
Why didn't he leave? Could it be that he really was stalling for time, waiting for Zhou Tong to be killed by someone else?
Chen Changsheng didn't say anything more, because he had already given his answer, twice.
At the very beginning today, it was him and Wang Po who wanted to kill Zhou Tong.
Later, it evolved into the imperial court using this matter to kill him and Wang Po.
The situation had been constantly changing, swinging back and forth.
That person still hadn't appeared, probably held back in the imperial palace by his senior brother.
The Li Palace had been quiet, presumably temporarily suppressed by that Sage. But naturally, that Sage couldn't do anything else.
The most crucial change in the entire situation was that Iron Tree hadn't managed to kill Wang Po, but instead was killed by Wang Po.
So, tracing back to the source.
The matter had returned to its original starting point.
It was still about killing Zhou Tong.
So he would hold out here, until Zhou Tong died.
He believed Zhou Tong would definitely die.
No matter who killed him, he would die.