Xiao Feng had just barely left the scene, Tian Ji Han and the other three cultivators barely had any time to prepare.
Xiao Ying, the one Yellow Fox Sect member who escaped, had been freed of her restraints under the condition by Tian Ji Han that she help the Heavenly Sword Sect members fight off this enemy. However, at the moment, she was paralyzed with fear.
They could not assemble into formation within time, and couldn’t prepare any traps or ambush for their target, who was arrogantly looking down upon them from the sky.
“That’s…”
“A Spicy Oil boar!” Tian Ji Han recognized the mount. Even worse, he recognized the overwhelming aura of a fellow Golden Cultivator atop of it.
“Hello, brother Ji Han,” said Yin Na, as he sardonically cupped his fists in greeting. When he bowed his head, a pool of filth that he had expelled from his breakthrough earlier fell onto the head of the boar.
The Spicy Oil boar runt floated lazily above the righteous cultivators, looking like a heavy cloud of lard that rained blood-red oil down steadily as it sweated.
Both the rider and mount looked filthy. The Spicy Oil runt was caked in its own feces, and Yin Na looked like he spent the last hour rolling in them. Even though they floated several meters away from them, the Heavenly Sword Sect members could still smell them.
“The rider is a reflection of the mount!” shouted one righteous cultivator, trying to sound brave. “Like the wretched state of the Spicy Oil runt, the corruption of your morals is nothing compared to your rotten exterior!”
“‘Morals?’” Yin Na scoffed. “You righteous hypocrites dare to speak to me of morals?”
The moment Yin Na spoke, the righteous cultivator whom he addressed trembled from head to toe with regret and fear. He felt like Yin Na could kill him on the spot!
But instead, Yin Na rose his hand and withdrew a bucket of water and a towel from his void ring, as if it were a mortal sleight of hand trick.
“I simply forgot to change my clothes!” Yin Na smiled.
He let his old, dirtied robes fall several meters to the ground, as he began washing before the cultivators, completely naked!
“Congratulations on reaching Golden Core, brother Ji Han!” Yin Na said as he poured lukewarm water over himself, standing on the saddle of his mount. “Tell me, did you spend all your time in secluded meditation or was it just that difficult to find me?”
Tian Ji Han bit his lips in the attempt to remain silent. Yin Na was washing as if he hadn’t a care in the world, he looked absolutely defenseless and carefree. How could Tian Ji Han tell Yin Na that both of his guesses were true, that he not only had to do closed-door cultivation for many years, allowing Yin Na to roam the world unchecked, and still have had great difficulty in divining his whereabouts upon reaching Golden Core?
“You don’t have to chase me so relentlessly,” Yin Na sighed as he scrubbed his armpits. “You’re not my keeper, I’m not your dog. You and I don’t owe each other anything, at least, not in spirit stones. Still thinking of others before yourself, eh, Brother Ji Han?”
Yin Na chuckled, while quickly scrubbing large clumps of dirt off his legs. “Heh, I sensed that you sent one little Qi Condensation cultivator away from here seconds before I arrived.”
“How dare he!” The burly cultivator’s eyes flashed red with anger. “Addressing senior Tian Ji Han so crudely and intimately.”
“Washing casually before us,” The righteous cultivators grit their teeth. “This shameless demonic cultivator is too brazen, even if we are Foundation cultivators, he is taking us too lightly.”
“For the Heavenly Sword Sect to fear attacking a demonic cultivator while he is literally washing before our eyes, this is an insult and loss of face we cannot take!”
“Keep talking, but slowly get into position,” Tian Ji Han secretly transmitted the order through his mind. The righteous cultivators were moved to anger, but Tian Ji Han restrained them, while taking strategic advantage of Yin Na’s shamelessness.
At the same time, he secretly transmitted to his apprentice: “Xiao Feng, can you hear me? I need you to get as far away from here as you can, Yin Na has a perfect grade Golden core.”
“Not gonna answer my question, brother Ji Han?” Yin Na kicked the empty bucket down onto the forest floor. “I’m talking about your little Qi Condensation cultivator.”
Yin Na dried himself with the towel, then withdrew fresh folded silk robes from his void ring. These were also black, with the addition of golden floral patterns inscribed into the stitching.
“Is he your long lost brother? A volunteer? Or…an apprentice?” Yin Na scoffed, as he donned the new robes. “I guess you have changed, to suddenly have the desire for a little subordinate.”
Tian Ji Han’s face remained unmoved, careful not to take Yin Na’s bait.
“And don’t think I haven’t noticed the little formation you’re trying to set up,” Yin Na sneered. “Or the little Yellow Fox girl who’s obstructing your whole setup.”
Xiao Ying was trembling behind Tian Ji Han, reduced to a quaking, defenseless girl.
Tian Ji Han cursed in his mind. “I should have sent her with Xiao Feng, she’s in no condition to overpower anybody.”
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“After eluding my hounds so long and even causing so many of its clones to die, I’ll take my time killing her.” Yin Na said, with an assuring smile. “Maybe before my hair gets dry!
“Now, as for your little Qi Condensation cultivator, the one who got away, my Dao brother Deng Ping will get him.”
Tian Ji Han’s eyes widened. He quickly transmitted: “Xiao Feng, can you hear me?”
This second of hesitation was all Yin Na wanted.
“DIE!”
Yin Na shot straight for Tian Ji Han, appearing like a comet of red flame on top of his Spicy Oil boar. Both rider and mount temporarily became a prismatic beam. The speed and momentum was blindingly fast, which Tian Ji Han just barely dodged in time, as he grabbed Xiao Ying behind him.
“Diamond formation!” Tian Ji Han shouted, as the Spicy Oil Boar that missed him scattered dirt and grass everywhere.
The Diamond formation adapted to its target being within the center of the formation, and the righteous cultivators closed in on the center.
Yin Na hopped off the boar, letting the cultivators attack the mount itself.
His body curved in the air like the nimblest of swallows, as he dived for the Yellow Sect Fox girl Xiao Ying, his outstretched hand turning into a sharpened, demonic claw.
Clang! At the last second, Tian Ji Han intercepted Yin Na from the side with a move called Drilling Elbow. The move temporarily knocked the wind out of Yin Na, and successfully ejected him outside of the Diamond Formation.
“You’re too late, Yin Na,” said Tian Ji Han. “Killing her won’t earn you anything…I already reported her account to the Heavenly Sword Sect.”
“Oh?” Yin Na’s eyes turned a darker shade of black. “Is that true?”
Tian Ji Han knew that Deng Ping was missing from the details of Xiao Ying’s story. It was not her fault, since she had fled the sect grounds before she could know what happened to either of the cultivators. But like him, she was fixated on Yin Na after her escape. However, Tian Ji Han had kept the possibility that Deng Ping would still be in the picture in the back of his mind, waiting to show up or strike.
In actuality, he predicted that a cautious cultivator like Yin Na would have waited in the shadows, while letting Deng Ping finish the job of killing the last witness instead.
He did not dismiss the possibility that cultivators could carry rare high-tier treasures that completely masked their presence from the detection of Golden Core cultivators. Regardless, he only detected the approach of Yin Na in his spiritual sense earlier.
The fact that only Yin Na arrived was suspicious indeed.
“Yes, it is true,” said Tian Ji Han. “Now you answer me: Deng Ping is dead, isn’t he?”
Yin Na did not answer him.
Yin Na attacked the Diamond Formation which had manifested a rainbow-colored shield, with the other cultivators forming its vertexes. His Spicy Oil boar was trapped in the center of the formation, imprisoned and momentarily stunned.
“You!” Tian Ji Han began to show signs of anger. “It’s your nature, I know you all too well. You stabbed him in the back after earning his trust!”
Yin Na flew several circles around the Diamond Formation. Having reached Golden Core, he could now fly, albeit much slower without a mount.
“I need to look for holes in this Diamond Formation’s defense,” he thought. “That one cultivator on the East vertex is only in early Foundation stage, he is the weakest link. But Tian Ji Han and the Yellow Fox Sect girl are right in the middle, with my boar…”
Battles were won and lost based on split-second decisions. Yin Na had to make a choice.
“Sword Rain, Nine Fireworks Chain Reaction!”
Yin Na’s hands rapidly made incantation symbols.
“F*ck!” everyone except Tian Ji Han were witnessing Yin Na’s techniques for the first time in person.
The Sword Rain was a Late Foundation strength spell, which sent torrents of blue, flashing swords down into the general vicinity. As long as the user had enough qi, swords would continuously rain down. Even though each sword would completely dissipate upon touching the ground, they were sharp enough to cut off limbs if they made contact with flesh.
The Nine Fireworks Chain Reaction, however, drew upon the cultivator’s real stock of explosives, specifically from a specific recipe of fireworks made from Exploding Lily petals, Fire Essence Stones and Saltpeter. As long as the cultivator had these ingredients within his inventory, the spell would automatically make the fireworks on the spot, and scatter them from his person, throwing nine of these bombs per second. The ingredients required were already common alchemy and crafting ingredients, and thanks to Yin Na’s plundering of the alchemy treasury, he was not going to run out of bombs anytime soon.
The Sword Rain and Nine fireworks spell bombarded the Diamond formation, serving as a loud, demoralizing distraction for the cultivators as they struggled to maintain the shield of the array.
“Hmm, their defenses can’t be penetrated by these techniques.”
Amidst the chaos, Yin Na got out a treasure looted from the Yellow Fox Sect: an ebony zither.
He begun strumming the zither, whose tunes came out as powerful sound waves. The sound waves could not penetrate through the Diamond Formation’s physical shield, but it could reach the ears of the Righteous cultivators.
“Aghhh, my eardrums!”
“I can’t maintain the shield and cover my ears at the same time!”
“Don’t give up!” Tian Ji Han was running from inside the Diamond Formation, working on suppressing the Spicy Oil Boar while patching holes within the defense of the Diamond Formation. “These sound-induced attacks from that zither may work on Foundation stage cultivators, but not on Golden Core cultivators such as myself.”
Simultaneously, he was firing projectiles and other attacks from inside the formation, which Yin Na easily dodged mid-air.
Tian Ji Han nearly tripped over the bent-over figure of Xiao Ying, who was covering her ears and trembling like a forest animal in the center of the formation.
“Xiao Ying!” Tian Ji Han screamed. “Don’t forget our agreement! You need to contribute to the fight in order to attain leniency!”
Xiao Ying looked up as she was cupping her ears.
“If we die here, you getting a trial doesn’t even matter anymore. You’ll just die next, and the sacrifices of your Sect brothers and sisters will have been for naught. Why are you standing still when your chance to avenge your Sect is right here?”
“My Sect…” she recalled in an instant the brutal climb from becoming an Outer Disciple slave to finally acquiring the ability to cultivate as a beginning Inner Disciple of the Yellow Fox Sect. She suddenly could only remember the good memories, from the rare, occasional feasts and plunder from her higher-leveled Sect seniors, to the smiling faces of her Sect sisters and brothers.
“I must… avenge them!” She stood up, wiping away the last of her tears. She withdrew from her bag of holding clutching a fistful of several talismans.
On each talisman was a poorly-drawn character of 谧. “Silence.”
“L-Let me into your formation!” she shouted.