Seeking Truth with a Sword-Chapter 568 - 511: Drooling

Chapter 568: Chapter 511: Drooling
Murky blood, covered by a shallow layer of dust, trickled slowly along the road, pooling ahead.
Li Ang unhesitatingly drew the Radiant Crossbow from his chest and pulled the trigger, aiming at Yuan Sou.
A point of light, composed of Spiritual Energy, swiftly converged into a sphere and shot out along the arrow groove.
Yuan Sou stood his ground, the reflection of the light sphere growing larger in his eyes.
BUZZ!
A sword shadow, too swift to be seen, flashed past. Yuan Sou’s longsword slanted towards the ground, and a spray of brilliant, firework-like points of light blossomed before him. He strolled through the fading shower of light, completely unscathed.
Li Ang’s pupils constricted. With his vision enhanced by Mo Si, he could barely make out what had just happened—Yuan Sou had performed a flourish with his sword, spinning it in several circles around the light sphere fired from the Radiant Crossbow. The silk-thin threads of Sword Intent released from the sword’s tip pierced the light sphere, neutralizing all the Spiritual Energy within and rendering the explosion harmless.
The purity of his Sword Intent and his control over its power had both reached the absolute pinnacle.
"Nobody move!"
Shouts and curses in the Turkic language erupted from a distance, rapidly drawing nearer as the Turkic Practitioners stationed in Tongluo City surrounded the crossroads.
Tongluo City, situated deep within Turkic territory, was a moderately sized city. The Turkic Practitioners stationed there consisted of only one at the Cloud Patrol Realm; the rest were at the Rain Listening Realm.
Seeing this, Li Ang fired the Radiant Crossbow at Yuan Sou three more times in quick succession. Simultaneously, his right arm summoned a talisman plate, aimed it at the ground, and unleashed two talismans: The Wind Sand Talisman and the Vortex Talisman.
Instantly, a fierce wind howled, kicking up clouds of dust. All the stirred-up debris was then drawn into a swirling tornado, creating a sandstorm that concealed him and He Siping.
"Go!" Li Ang hissed at He Siping. He stomped on the ground and darted away from Yuan Sou. He Siping also transformed into Body Sword Light and followed.
The appearance of Zhao Ming’s Yuan Sou and Ghost Shovel in Tongluo City was obviously no accident.
An inner traitor must have surfaced within Chang’an City, leaking the information of this small team to Zhao Ming...
But who could it be?
Those who knew about this were just the people initially present in the Immortal Residence Hall.
The Emperor, the Crown Prince, the Prime Minister, the Sacrificial Officer, the Garrison Commander, plus people like He Siping.
No one had the motive to betray Yu Country,
could it be that there was a Zhao Ming spy among the Turkic Caravan?
As these thoughts raced through his mind, Li Ang leaped onto the rooftops. Pushing his Telekinesis to its limits, he dashed forward, each step propelling him more than ten meters. Wherever he passed, the tiles on the rooftops shattered as if a hurricane had swept through.
"Where do you think you can run?" a low, ghostly voice suddenly echoed from ahead.
Li Ang skidded to a halt, his boots crushing a dozen or so Glaze Glass tiles and exposing the wooden roof beams beneath.
He Siping also emerged from Body Sword Light, his expression grave.
At the far end of the rooftops, a burly figure blocked their path. It was Ghost Shovel, clad in a bloodstained butcher’s apron, slowly picking scraps of flesh off his chopper with coarse, cracked fingernails.
"He Siping. Li Ang." Ghost Shovel’s voice was low and resonant. "One is Yu Country’s Crown Prince’s Assistant, a man with a boundless future, destined to be a nation’s Prime Minister. The other, one of the youngest Academic Palace Patrols in Yu Country’s history. I wonder what your flesh and blood will taste like."
The moment the word ’like’ left his lips, Ghost Shovel crossed the distance in an instant, appearing before He Siping. His chopper, already raised high, came whistling down in a heavy chop.
There were no flashy lights or sounds, no sweeping arcs of Sword Intent—only pure, brutal strength and speed.
He Siping’s pupils contracted violently. His longsword, though struggling, valiantly met the chopper’s speed, positioning itself to intercept the descending blade.
Then, BOOM—
He was sent flying by the blow, his back smashing through the walls of three houses before he crashed to the floor of a building two houses further back.
Dust filled the air. Li Ang’s peripheral vision caught the direction where He Siping had vanished. After spending the past few days together, he knew that this Senior Brother He, so admired by Cheng Juxiu, was a Cloud Patrol Realm cultivator even stronger than Cheng Juxiu or Sui Yi.
He was only a step away from the Candle Cloud Realm. But this step was like a chasm.
He pressed his lips tightly together, drew the Triangular Spear—disguised as a walking stick—from his waist, and thrust it toward Ghost Shovel’s head. As he thrust, the spear rapidly extended, section by telescoping section.
This might be his only chance to make a move.
Time seemed to slow. A torrent of thoughts swirled in Li Ang’s mind. Countless Mo Si filaments coursed through his body, enveloping the muscles beneath his skin. They flowed through his palm and into the Triangular Spear, imbuing its surface with a pitch-black sheen, as if it had been dipped in ink.
In a world moving too fast for the naked eye to perceive, the tip of the Triangular Spear was reinforced, layer upon layer, by the Mo Si.
If it struck just once, the myriad threads clinging to it would rip open the target’s flesh, mincing it into bloody chunks...
THUD!
The spear tip failed to reach Ghost Shovel’s head. The creature raised a hand, and a large, jagged-toothed maw splitting open in its palm clamped down on the spear blade, halting its advance.
Ghost Shovel looked down at Li Ang, his gaze deep and cold.
He tilted his hand slightly. With a CRUNCH, the maw in his palm bit off the Triangular Spear’s blade and spat it aside. Then, he slammed that same palm into Li Ang’s chest.
BANG!
Li Ang was sent flying backward, collapsing more houses, his body buried beneath the rubble of the fallen buildings.
"How about it?" Yuan Sou approached with a smile, his longsword dripping blood—evidently, he had already taken care of the Turkic Practitioners stationed in Tongluo City.
"The taste isn’t quite right," Ghost Shovel said slowly, the serrated mouth in his palm chewing a piece of flesh torn from Li Ang’s chest. "The aura of his Spirit Veins is very faint."
"He’s just a sham genius with only six Spirit Veins, after all. It’s normal for their aura to be faint," Yuan Sou sneered.
Both he and Ghost Shovel had a penchant for cannibalism. However, Yuan Sou consumed humans purely for pleasure. Ghost Shovel, beyond his own liking, had another motive: his Cultivation Technique allowed him to seize the Spirit Veins of others and make them his own.
Every time he devoured a so-called cultivation genius, Ghost Shovel grew stronger.
"Business first. Capture Li Ang alive; kill the rest," Yuan Sou said, glancing indifferently toward the collapsed houses to his left. He casually flicked a streak of Sword Qi toward where He Siping lay.
RIP—
Like tearing through brittle cloth, the Sword Qi effortlessly shredded the collapsed stonework. The Turkic commoners trapped within the ruins were sliced into pieces without even a chance to whimper.
Just as the Sword Qi was about to reach He Siping—CLANG!
A longsword adorned with a red tassel plummeted from the sky, embedding itself deep in the earth. Like an ancient reef defying the tide, it intercepted Yuan Sou’s Sword Qi.
Streaks of Sword Qi scored the surrounding rubble, leaving straight, deep gashes.
A figure drifted down, plucked the longsword from the earth, and fixed a sharp gaze on the two from Zhao Ming.
Imperial Palace Tributor, Shen Tuyu.