Chapter 97: Good Fortune and Misfortune

Walk the night road often enough, and sooner or later you'll run into a ghost.

Ning Xiu just hadn't expected it to happen so soon.

As usual, after killing the fiend, he was about to leave when a burly bald man suddenly blocked his path.

A stone pillar hurtled toward him, tearing through the night sky with a whistle of urgent air.

Ning Xiu stopped in his tracks. The stone pillar halted right before his eyes, a hair's breadth away, the gale lifting his long hair.

"Finally got you. At last I'll beat that brat for once."

The bald man stared at Ning Xiu, chuckling to himself, looking like a child who had found a beloved toy. His face was all slabs of flesh, with a hideous, jagged scar cutting straight across it. When he smiled, it sent a chill down anyone's spine.

"Is this a trap?" Ning Xiu asked calmly, looking at the bald man.

By any measure, this seemed like a trap. A fiend used as bait, luring him into a snare.

"A trap?" The bald man shook his head. "No. This is luck."

It was indeed luck. In truth, the Dark Alliance had sent four men to hunt Ning Xiu from the four cardinal directions, so being discovered was only a matter of time. Unlike the other three teams scouring the land for Ning Xiu, this bald man had simply stayed in his own territory without moving a muscle.

In other words, Ning Xiu had just walked straight into the muzzle of the gun.

"Of course, for me it's good luck. For you, it's misfortune. Rest assured, you won't get away this time." The bald man grinned.

Ning Xiu could clearly smell the scent emanating from the man—familiar, yet revolting.

The bald man before him was clearly a Strange Being, and far more powerful than the two he had encountered before.

And yet, Ning Xiu showed not the slightest trace of fear. He looked at the bald man and said, "I wasn't planning on leaving anyway."

Just yesterday, he had finally scraped together the fee for the ninth level of the Golden Bell Cover. Not only that, he had even raised the newly learned Holy Spirit Sword Technique to its highest level.

And the further one advanced in the Golden Bell Cover, the more each new level was a qualitative leap.

At this moment, Ning Xiu wanted to test exactly how far his strength had come. He stepped forward, feeling the long-dormant blood in his body surge to a boil.

Over the past dozen or so days, Ning Xiu had scoured nearly half of Lingnan, all for the sake of evading the pursuit of the Dark Alliance and the Six Doors Bureau.

But endurance and patience were not the goal—they were only a means, destined to explode in that final moment.

Unfortunately for the bald man, he happened to cross paths with Ning Xiu at exactly this time.

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The bald man's code name was Stone Man. Unlike newly risen Strange Beings such as Faceless and White-Robed, he had been a Strange Being for a very long time.

By now, Stone Man was clearly enraged by Ning Xiu's dismissive attitude. Gripping his thick stone pillar, he swung it wildly at Ning Xiu.

To be honest, this was the first time Ning Xiu had seen a fiend use a weapon. In past battles, these fiends relied almost entirely on their claws and teeth—Faceless and White-Robed included.

The massive stone pillar tore through the air with a sharp shriek, dissolving into overlapping afterimages as it came at Ning Xiu like a violent storm.

Despite wielding such a cumbersome weapon, Stone Man's speed was terrifyingly fast. The pillar in his hands seemed to weigh nothing at all.

Ning Xiu watched coldly, clenching his right fist. Instead of retreating, he advanced.

With a swift step forward, his fist, gleaming with a dark golden light, slammed out.

Boom!

A tremendous crash rang out. The shockwave screamed through the air, and trees all around toppled like dominoes.

"You do have some skill. No wonder Faceless and White-Robed fell at your hands. But let's see how long you can hold out." Stone Man sneered at Ning Xiu, hefted his stone pillar, and spun his entire body like a windmill, smashing toward him.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Ning Xiu still did not dodge. He didn't even draw the Divine Sword of Detainment at his back.

This time, he wanted to test just how formidable the defensive power of the ninth-level Golden Bell Cover truly was.

According to the martial arts manual, at this stage, even a tossed leaf or plucked flower could wound. One could no longer be dealt internal injuries even by an opponent with stronger inner force—unless struck by a divine weapon at the only one-and-a-half-inch vital opening, which alone could bring death.

And Ning Xiu's vital opening? It would never be found by anyone in this lifetime, let alone struck.

Terrifying booms rang out without cease. Ning Xiu and Stone Man were like two humanoid monsters. Within moments, the entire mountain forest had been ravaged beyond recognition by their clash.

Stone Man, meanwhile, had lost all his initial composure. Faced with Ning Xiu, who only grew fiercer the more he fought, a hint of dread crept into his heart.

"Is this guy really an ordinary human? When did the flesh and blood of mortals become this terrifying?"

His surprise was understandable. Even among the families and Strange Beings blessed with divine power, no one had a physical body as monstrous as Ning Xiu's right now. What truly made them fearsome was their nearly immortal regenerative ability. Among Strange Beings, as a Stone Fiend born of mountain forest miasma, Stone Man's physical toughness ranked in the upper tier of the twenty-four Strange Beings. Yet in this exchange, he was actually at a disadvantage!

But that only stoked his savagery further.

"I don't believe I can't break through your damned turtle shell!"

He didn't dodge Ning Xiu's attack. He took the punch square in the chest.

Paying that price, he channeled all his strength, raised the stone pillar high overhead, and brought it crashing down on Ning Xiu's head!

Boom!

Clang!

Two sharp sounds rang out.

Stone Man's entire head was blown apart by Ning Xiu's fist!

At the same time, Ning Xiu was sent flying by the stone pillar, crashing through seven or eight massive trees before slamming heavily into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Headless, Stone Man kept walking forward.

With every step he took, stones from the ground flew up and gathered toward where his head had been. In the blink of an eye, his head had fully regenerated.

"Let's see if you die from that." A cruel, bloodthirsty smile curled at the corner of Stone Man's mouth.

In his view, no matter how powerful Ning Xiu's body was, he still couldn't compare to theirs. He could trade blow for blow just like before, over and over.

This method—which to ordinary people would seem like self-mutilation—was the most natural approach for a Strange Being.

But when he reached Ning Xiu's side, his expression suddenly changed drastically.

The moment the dust cleared, what he saw was a pair of ice-cold eyes.

In that instant of hesitation, countless streaks of bleak sword light flared into being.

"Severing all feeling, severing all life—Sword Twenty-Two."

The sword lights crisscrossed and wove through one another. In that single moment, the entire space was flooded with suffocating sword qi. The frigid sword intent was such that merely drawing near would carve one to pieces.

This was the more powerful technique that the Sword Saint had realized in deep contemplation after his twenty-first strike of the Holy Spirit Sword lost to the Nameless One and he retired from the world. This sword was nearly the pinnacle of mortal swordsmanship.

Sometimes, good fortune is indeed enviable—but conquering misfortune is what truly commands awe.