Chapter Ninety: We’d Better Run

As soon as the man in Shallow River’s skin made his move, a tremendous surge of spiritual force slammed into him from behind. He tried to defend himself, only to discover that the power was too overwhelming to resist.

And strangely enough, it felt familiar.

With a furious cry, Ning Xianyu burst out, blasting spiritual force as she charged straight ahead and shouting for him to die. The impact hurled the impostor backward at once.

She did not care whom she was sending flying. Zhao Ling and the others were struck as well, knocked back a great distance, tumbling over and over before crashing face-first into the ground.

Ning Xianyu came out carrying the black cat, pointing at the impostor and cursing him furiously. “You filthy old bastard! You dare scheme against me? I’ll beat you to death!”

With that, she rushed forward, leaped onto his stomach, and stomped down on him several times.

The man doubled over from the pain and shoved her away with one hand.

Ning Xianyu was incensed. “You lousy thing, you still dare to fight back?”

Xuan Yuan Tun Han was nearly driven mad with anger. “You are a cultivator. Don’t you know even one offensive technique?”

Honestly, a dignified Nascent Soul cultivator fighting like a street thug was so embarrassing it was shameful even to say out loud.

Ning Xianyu thought for a moment. “I know military boxing.”

She had learned it at school; the gym teacher had taught the whole class.

“Oh, right. I also know Tai Chi sword.”

She had learned that from her grandmother.

Her grandmother had wanted to learn, but picked it up too slowly. Since the tuition had already been paid, it felt wasteful to let it go, so her mother sent Ning Xianyu to take the classes for her grandmother and then come back to teach her.

“What on earth is Tai Chi sword?”

Even the great demon lord had never heard of it.

Ning Xianyu said proudly, “I learned it very well. We paid for one course, and when I got home I taught the whole neighborhood.”

A superb bargain.

The great demon lord still did not understand a word she was saying, only guessed she might know some sort of sword technique, so he told her to use it.

“Pour your spiritual force into the sword and attack.”

Huh?

Attack with Tai Chi sword?

“Go!”

The fake Shallow River attacked again from the other side, and the great demon lord kicked her over toward him, ordering her to get to work immediately.

Ning Xianyu clutched the treasured sword like it was a firewood poker and was forced to charge forward.

The impostor was equally enraged and struck at her. Under normal circumstances, she should have dodged or counterattacked in kind, but she knew neither. In her panic, she raised the sword to block.

Zhao Ling and the others had already gotten back up. Seeing her fighting stance, they could only feel ashamed.

They could tell at a glance that she was entirely a Nascent Soul cultivator spoon-fed by Xuan Yuan the Ancestor, knowing nothing at all.

Just look at the way she held the sword, her footwork, her movements...

Zhao Ling felt deeply frustrated. How exactly had his own life-bound treasure been shattered? Why did he suddenly feel so wronged?

“Why don’t we run? Send a distress signal to the sect.”

At Ning Xianyu’s level, she would probably be beaten to death in less than the time it takes to burn a stick of incense. For the sake of survival, retreat was the better choice.

The other junior disciples all thought he was right. At a time like this, they should flee.

Ning Xianyu actually thought the same. She felt there was no need for her to keep fighting here.

Once they got out, wouldn’t it be better to let the great demon lord deal with that bastard? Why should she risk her life?

All of this happened in the blink of an eye. Just when everyone, including Ning Xianyu herself, was looking down on her, she actually blocked the impostor’s attack.

That plain thrust of the sword looked utterly unremarkable, with no brilliance whatsoever.

Yet that one strike pierced straight through the impostor’s attack, broke through the shield formed by spiritual force, and drove directly toward him.

Ning Xianyu slowly pressed the sword forward. The impostor launched another attack, and she turned her body like a white crane, slipping past it once more before thrusting ahead.

Pfft!

She had actually hit him.

Eh?

“I hit him?”

“Damn, she actually hit him?”

Did she just get lucky?

Zhao Ling and the others were stunned, unable to believe it.

The impostor, who had been struck, looked at the sword embedded in him, then at Ning Xianyu, and a meaningful smile appeared on his face. “So that’s how it is.”

“So that’s how what is?” Ning Xianyu held her treasured sword, at a loss, not knowing whether to press forward or retreat and give him another stab.

At that moment, the place where the sword had struck suddenly began to spill out spiritual force.

Ning Xianyu forced herself to remain calm and smiled. “Didn’t expect that, did you? The stone I gave you was fake. You never got the real Star-Counting Stone at all.”

The impostor’s expression shifted again, then he let out a self-mocking laugh. “A wasted effort. How unlucky.”

Then, to everyone’s astonishment, his body suddenly deflated as though it were a punctured ball. In no time at all, it collapsed into an empty human skin.

Ning Xianyu jumped in alarm and retreated three meters with her sword in hand.

“What the hell is this? What even was he?”

Zhao Ling and the others gathered their courage to come look, and all at once they understood. “This is a kind of evil cultivator. They kill a cultivator, then wear the skin to become that person’s likeness.”

“But this transformation is too perfect. What kind of pill did he take?”

Ordinary evil cultivators could not even alter their expressions this convincingly, so careful observation would still reveal differences.

But this fake Shallow River was so alike the real one that they had not noticed anything amiss at all.

Ning Xianyu said disdainfully, “I think it’s just that you don’t know him well enough. You can’t even recognize your own junior brother. How embarrassing.”

That bastard great demon lord must have known from the start that the fake Shallow River was a fake, and that he was some kind of evil cultivator too.

But his mouth had been sealed shut by needles. He simply refused to say anything, just stood there and watched her get deceived.

Infuriating!

“It’s all thanks to me. If not for my sharp wit and wisdom in seeing through the true nature of this counterfeit, the Star-Counting Stone would already have been stolen by him by now. Hahaha.”

She really was clever. From beginning to end, the one turning the tide was her.

Zhao Ling and the others had intended to thank her, but hearing her speak with such shameless confidence, they were all speechless.

“Hey, say thank you,” Ning Xianyu said, clearly dissatisfied, staring at them until they did.

She had set aside old grievances to save these people. They ought to thank her.

Zhao Ling and the others could not beat her, but they still bristled. “You also damaged my life-bound treasure.”

“That’s because you’re too weak. If not for me, you’d all be dead already.”

“You, you... thank you.”

Ning Xianyu raised the sword, frightening them into saying it at once.

The great demon lord scratched his head, his beard twitching, and paid her no mind. Instead, he moved closer to that strip of skin and touched the storage pouch beside it.

“This is a clone, not the evil cultivator’s true body.”

He sent the message to her, trying to keep her from getting too smug. She had not really killed the evil cultivator.

Ning Xianyu did not care at all. She had already noticed the storage pouch and hurried over to pick it up, reaching inside to rummage around.

A storage pouch was normally protected by restrictions and could not be opened by just anyone.

But her spiritual force was strong, and the owner of the pouch was already dead, so it was much easier to open.

As she felt around inside, her hand brushed something horrifying. Startled, she quickly pulled it out and dumped everything from the pouch in one go.

The instant it fell out, everyone was shocked.

Inside were more than a dozen human skins, all stretched over frames and displayed there in a scene so ghastly it was chilling.