Candied Hawthorn Skewers
Tianqi Kingdom.
Near sunset, before the sky had fully darkened, several streaks of light and shadow tore through the heavens like an army pressing in on the border, blanketing the sky above the Quicksand River in a layer of darkness.
On a broad plain ten li from the Quicksand River, an old man and a boy stopped in their tracks.
The young child noticed the dark, brooding sky over the river in the distance and tugged at the man's sleeve. In an obedient little voice, he asked, "Master, aren't we going back yet? It's almost going to rain. If we don't hurry back, the candied hawthorns we bought for Brother Jinyu will melt."
Xiao Chen did not understand why buying something from the mountain had taken so long. They had already wandered at the foot of the mountain for two days, and he did not know whether Brother Jinyu would be lonely all alone up on the mountain.
The ignorant little child was still worrying about his senior brother at this very moment, utterly unaware that danger had already arrived.
Lin Qingyun gave no reply to the child beside him. His expression darkened and brightened as he stared at the black clouds drawing ever closer.
These two days had been even harder for him than seeing his family broken apart and scattered, but for the sake of the bigger picture, he had no choice but to make a sacrifice.
He led Xiao Chen to a crooked-necked tree and drew a circle around the trunk. This was the formation he had set up.
"Xiao Chen, sit here under the tree and cultivate for now. Without your master's permission, you are absolutely not to leave this circle," Lin Qingyun said, his voice trembling slightly and his eyes gradually growing wet.
"Yes, this disciple will obey Master's words."
Xiao Chen did not hesitate for a moment. He sat cross-legged within the circle and settled into meditation. Before entering cultivation, he tucked the oiled-paper-wrapped candied hawthorn skewers into his satchel so they would not get soaked by the rain and ruin his chance to share them with Jinyu later.
With tears in his eyes, Lin Qingyun gave a few final instructions, then turned and left.
……
Quicksand River.
The wind howled, and the river roared!
This time, the Star God Emperor had dispatched more than ten imperial guards to encircle and kill Lin Qingyun, in addition to six Nascent Soul cultivators from the Tianqi Kingdom and dozens of top assassins. Even several righteous sects had sent elite forces!
Aside from the Shenqi imperial guards, the other cultivators had no blood feud with Lin Qingyun at all, and they were hardly on good terms with the old god clan either. But after negotiations with the Star God Emperor, they had joined forces with the foreigners against a common enemy and come to the Quicksand River to kill the former sect master of Tianqi's Xuanji Pavilion!
On the riverbank, a Daoist lord in a black robe stood with his hands behind his back between the forces of Shenqi and Tianqi. He was the mastermind in charge of this encirclement of Lin Qingyun: Wenhao Yuanjun, a Tianqi cultivator!
"Wenhao Yuanjun, why haven't you given the order yet? What are you waiting for!?" A sharp-eyed elite commander of the Shenqi imperial guard stepped forward to urge him on when he saw that the human cultivator still refused to give the command.
These more than ten soldiers, each of them highly cultivated and dressed in armor, stood in formation at attention. Though they were the Star God Emperor's elite imperial guards, once they entered Tianqi they still had to obey the human cultivator's orders.
"No rush..."
Wenhao Yuanjun paused in thought, his expression unchanged.
Just as the more than ten imperial guards were growing impatient,
A dragon's roar that shook heaven and earth suddenly came sweeping in from afar!
At dawn, they saw an imposing man holding a blue-edged sword slice through the sky and descend before them.
It was Lin Qingyun!
"Lin Qingyun, this old man really did not misjudge you." Seeing this, Wenhao Yuanjun smiled faintly, very pleased that Lin Qingyun had shown himself.
"I never expected that the one leading the siege against me would be you, Wenhao!"
Lin Qingyun leapt down from the sky and landed beside Wenhao Yuanjun. Facing the line of cultivators behind Wenhao Yuanjun, a sharp, piercing cold light flashed in Lin Qingyun's eyes.
"Haha... I never expected that after fighting each other all our lives, the two of us would still end up drawing swords against one another." Wenhao Yuanjun laughed.
As his words fell, the surrounding spiritual energy began to surge and churn, centered on Wenhao Yuanjun.
Behind him, the river tide also roared with terrifying force. Waves more than ten meters high rose from the water, linking sky and earth as they battered the shore again and again without end.
The crashing waves slammed against the bank like a crazed dragon dancing in fury.
The enormous wind and spray whipped Lin Qingyun's robes, yet he stood there in the gale, facing everyone. When his gaze swept over the more than ten imperial guards, the coldness in his eyes was blade-sharp.
"I, Lin Qingyun, have lived a life of upright integrity. Who would have thought I'd end up being besieged by cultivators of my own race joining forces with outsiders..." Lin Qingyun's expression hardened further. Looking at the squad of imperial guards as though they could devour him alive, he sneered, "Do me a favor and pass a message to your Star God Emperor. Tell him I'm coming for his head!"
"How dare you!"
The imperial guards flew into a rage and were about to draw their weapons and fight Lin Qingyun to the death, when Wenhao Yuanjun stepped in front of them.
"Brothers, do me, Wenhao Yuanjun, the honor of giving me a little face. Let me and Lin Qingyun settle the winner between us."
As his words fell, Wenhao Yuanjun pointed his sword at Lin Qingyun!
The instant Wenhao Yuanjun moved, Lin Qingyun saw one of the imperial guards quietly break away from the group and dart off in the direction he had come from, but he paid it no mind.
He soared into the heavens to fight Wenhao Yuanjun, the man he had battled all his life!
In an instant, blade light and sword shadows filled the sky!
Soon after, when the remaining imperial guards and the other cultivators saw Wenhao Yuanjun falling into disadvantage, they all joined the fight, determined to kill Lin Qingyun even at the cost of their lives!
At the same time,
Xiao Chen, who had been sitting in cultivation at the base of the tree, felt the stirring of heaven and earth in the distance and opened his eyes.
Just then, the imperial guard who had slipped out of the battlefield also discovered Xiao Chen's presence. Without another word, he charged at him with a halberd in hand.
"Take his life!"
Seeing the enemy close in, Xiao Chen tried to circulate his inner power to resist, only to discover that his limbs had been bound by an invisible force and he could not move.
"Pfft!"
A halberd pierced through Xiao Chen's chest!
The moment blood soaked Xiao Chen's clothes, a ring of crimson light suddenly lit up around the tree roots. The invisible force binding Xiao Chen's limbs spread outward, while also knocking back the imperial guard who had launched the sneak attack.
The formation Lin Qingyun had laid in advance began to activate, and the blood gushing from Xiao Chen's chest was continuously drawn toward the core of the array!
Sensing the flow of blood, the crimson light devoured the blood in Xiao Chen's body like a hellish hunger.
From beginning to end, Xiao Chen had no power to resist!
"No! I! Want! Brother! Jinyu!"
"Wait... for... me..."
"Ah!" With Xiao Chen's final cry of agony, his life force was completely absorbed by the formation!
Hundreds of li away, a peach blossom tree suddenly burst into brilliant light.
Inside the tree hollow, Lin Jinyu, who had been cultivating in meditation, only felt heaven and earth tremble, and a blinding radiance flash before his eyes...
The dazzling light vanished in an instant!
When the light faded, Lin Jinyu was suddenly gone from the tree hollow, as if he had never been there at all!
……
On the riverbank of the Quicksand River,
"Lin Qingyun, surrender quietly! You can't escape!" shouted one of the imperial guards of the Shenqi Empire.
The battle seemed to have come to an end. Lin Qingyun was covered in several wounds, and his blue-edged sword had already been snapped in two. He lay collapsed on the ground, barely clinging to life.
Wenhao Yuanjun was in even worse shape than Lin Qingyun. Half dead and unconscious, the several Nascent Soul cultivators who had come with him were either maimed or dead, and only three imperial guards of the Shenqi Empire remained. As for the assassins who had joined the siege, not a single one was left alive.
But Lin Qingyun had ultimately been defeated.
The three remaining imperial guards exchanged glances and decided to deliver one final blow to finish Lin Qingyun off completely. Yet at that critical moment, a thunderous roar suddenly rang out from the horizon!
"ROAR!!"
On the distant horizon, the black clouds seemed to come alive and suddenly fell from the sky!
That!
That was actually a black dragon!
The dragon's body was mountain-sized. Its sudden plunge instantly wiped out the remaining siege force, leaving not even a single complete corpse behind!
The dragon had come suddenly and left just as abruptly. It extended its claws to seize the half-conscious Lin Qingyun, and with a dragon's howl that shook heaven and earth, it rose into the air and vanished at once!
It turned out the black clouds in the sky had been this dragon all along.
No one had expected that the siege against Lin Qingyun would end in such a theatrical fashion.
The imperial guards dispatched by the Star God Emperor, together with the assembled experts, had still failed to kill Lin Qingyun completely despite suffering heavy casualties, and instead had watched him be rescued by a dragon of unknown origin!
All that remained of the combined siege force was the imperial guard who had broken away from the battlefield to assassinate Xiao Chen.
The smoke and dust settled, and it seemed everything had been decided.
Then, in the churning wind and waves of the Quicksand River, a human figure broke to the surface. It was the barbarian Di Zhonggu, whom they had summoned.
Di Zhonggu had actually arrived even earlier than the combined force. The fellow had been hiding at the bottom of the river, preserving his strength and waiting for the right moment, only to never expect Lin Qingyun would be snatched away by a dragon.
At present, unable to worry about where that dragon had gone, Di Zhonggu quickly made his way to the crooked-necked tree. By the time he arrived, he was stunned by the scene before him.
The crooked-necked tree had already lost all signs of life, and beneath its yellowed roots lay a boy whose chest had been pierced by a halberd. The boy had already lost his vitality, and there wasn't a single drop of blood on his clothes.
The boy's arms were wrapped tightly around something, as if even in the final instant before death he had still been protecting something.
Di Zhonggu could not help prying the boy's arms open, and what he saw made even this veteran of countless battlefields deeply moved.
What the child was protecting in his arms was a skewer of candied hawthorns.
The oiled paper wrapping the skewer had already torn open, and the red hawthorns exposed inside looked as though they had been stained with blood, the only color left on the boy's body.
Di Zhonggu did not quite understand why the child had still been guarding the candied hawthorns in his final moments.
Presumably, that skewer must have been very important to him...