Nightfall

The outcome of the fight in the Verdant Canyon had already been doomed. The sound of Chinese zithers and bamboo flutes had vanished. And no one was able to resist the charge of tens of thousands of cavalries; not Jun Mo, even if he hadn’t been injured; not Liu Bai, even if he would be willing to change his flag now.

The Academy could only draw back into the Verdant Canyon for temporary shelter, but the West-Hill Palace had already prepared for this.

Since the result had already been settled, Ye Hongyu cared no more about what was happening in the Verdant Canyon. She walked to the divine chariot slowly and peacefully, and her steps were firm though she was injured.

She still had a long way to go before she could catch up with the cultivation state of Jun Mo’s, but she was good at fighting. And the key point was that she was calm, and she did not restrict the fight to just between the both of them out of pride.

This was also the fight between the West-Hill Palace and the Academy.

She wasn’t fighting for herself.

So the fight had to be ended with the victory of the West-Hill Palace.

Numerous cavalries arrived, bringing dust and shaking the Verdant Canyon.

Second Brother was standing at the front of the Verdant Canyon. His iron sword had long left his hand, turning into a dark sword light, shuttling back and forth on the broad open field.

As heavy as the iron sword was, it shuttled so fast that its edge which seemed blunt tore those armors like paper as soon as it touched them, and blood incessantly seeped out of the torn armors.

The sword barely touched those enemies, but wherever it passed, those cavalries fell onto the ground like small hills, with their chest bones collapsing. And those war-horses hit by the iron sword kept falling down.

The sound of heavy objects falling onto the ground came from the Verdant Canyon from time to time, with more dust and moans of people. The iron sword shuttled, and no one knew how many cavalries had fallen off the horses and died, or how many war-horses had neighed miserably and fallen onto the ground.

Yet the power of a human being was after all limited.

The speed and angle of Second Brother’s flying sword showed no signs of slowing down, but other people knew that the Psyche Power in his sense of perception was being consumed at an unbelievable speed, and if he kept doing this, his Psyche Power would drain up no matter how vigorous he was.

What was more fearful was that the cavalries of the Divine Palace had charged at the fearful iron sword regardless of their own lives. That was probably because of their vision of victory or because of the inspiration drawn from the revelation made by the Great Divine Priest of Relevation. The number of the cavalries flowing to the Verdant Canyon had exceeded the rate of Second Brother’s killing.

Several cavalries had gotten rid of the iron sword. They passed by Second Brother, and charged violently toward the Verdant Canyon.

Second Brother waved his right hand. He did not call back the iron sword, but instead, the iron sword was operated to cut horizontally, cutting more than ten cavalries into halves like harvesting straw.

Then he looked to those cavalries for a moment.

Long ago, Ning Que asked his teacher Yan Se how powerful Second Brother was as a man at the peak of the Knowing Destiny State. Master Yan Se considered it for a while before answering, “You’re dead once he lays his eyes on you.”

Then Second Brother took a glance at the cavalries.

The Psyche Power from his sense of perception flew to the cavalries and went right into their brains. Those cavalries were not cultivators, but they had brains, so they died.

This was just one scene of the whole battle, like a corner of a stormy ocean which had little influence on the overall situation. When countless cavalries charged regardless of their own lives, nothing could survive from it.

As Xu Shi and Chen Pipi once said, no cultivator in the world could resist the charging cavalries unless the cultivator was over the Five States and was in the Beyond Mortality State.

Xu Shi was the most powerful man in the military force of the Empire of Tang, and nobody knew the power of the cavalries better than he did. Chen Pipi was the youngest genius of Haotian Taoism, and he knew the rules of cultivation better than anyone else.

The conclusion drawn by the two men could stand the test.

Second Brother was powerful. He had reached the highest point of the Five States and had stood at the peak of Knowing Destiny State for many years. He would be qualified to challenge the Sword Sage, Liu Bai, but he had not crossed the threshold.

He was waving the iron sword before tens of thousands of cavalries; his armor had turned black and torn. He was slowly becoming pale, like a black rock in roaring waves that could be crushed at anytime.

Nobody knew if the Headmaster did this deliberately or not, but the disciples on the Second floor of the Academy, who had reached the peak in their own field for many years, could make the perfect and most powerful combination when united.

With mere changes, the combination of the disciples on the Second floor of the Academy could deal with powerhouses like the Abbey Dean of the Zhishou Abbey or the Chief Preaching Monk; they could also keep soldiers numbering tens of thousands from marching one step closer just like what they were doing before the Verdant Canyon.

It was a pity that the combination, which could defeat every enemy, had been split because they were too busy saving the Tang Empire from attacks from all other countries in the world.

Several of them fought with the Hierarch of the West-Hill Palace in the back of the mountain of the Academy.

Eldest Brother fought the most powerful opponent of the Academy.

The disciples who showed up before the Verdant Canyon might be powerful, but they were not the perfect combination. They were not flawless, and the flaw had been caught by Ye Hongyu today.

The roles Beigong Weiyang and Ximen Buhuo played on the battlefield in the Verdant Canyon were crucial. While their cultivation states were common, they played very important roles.

Because they were the only two living in the world who had comprehended Haotian Taoism through tonality.

And they were the flaw.

Because they were irreplaceable.

And Ye Hongyu had bet her personal failure and life on getting rid of them.

Beigong Weiyang and Ximen Buhuo sat under the shelter. They looked pale and there was blood all over the place before them.

Beigong looked in pain and resentful. He reached out his trembling fingers and tried to rearrange the strings on the Chinese zither, only to find that his power had been used up.

One single string couldn’t possibly make a melody.

Wang Chi held pills in his both hands. He fed his Senior Brothers with the pills nervously, saying in a shaking voice, “It’s OK.”

Sixth Brother held a hammer and was standing in the front of the shelter. He silently looked at the battlefield not far away. When seeing the charging cavalries getting rid of the iron sword approaching, his hands clenched.

Mu You was staring at the vague figure of her Second Brother who was going to leave at any moment. Worry and tension were all over her beautiful face. Her finger which was pulling the red string was shaking.

If those cavalries kept approaching, the tactical array she was holding would be the last defense of the Academy disciples.

And she knew clearly that the cavalries were too many and their impact too powerful. It was impossible for the array to resist the enemies alone.

Fourth Brother was a designer of the array and he knew the situation very well. So instead of looking at the battlefield or the red string in Mu You’s hand, he kept doing calculations on the Sandbox, eyebrows tightly knitted.

As Ye Hongyu had planned, he found himself unable to work out any way to solve the current crisis.

The Chinese zither’s strings had been broken, and the bamboo flute was dripping blood. No one in the world could make the zither and the flute ring again.

But at the bottom of every desperate pit there was always a silver lining.

Sometimes a dead well would give out fresh water that would change the whole story.

And when the cavalries were about to reach the Verdant Canyon.

And when everyone thought that the Chinese zither and bamboo flute would never sound again.

Out of the depths of the Verdant Canyon came the sound of the zither.

The sound was clear and peaceful.

But everyone there felt astonished or fearful when they heard it.

Here came the gentle autumn breeze.

A scholar walked into the Verdant Canyon.

He was in a dusty cotton jacket.

He had walked over mountains and rivers on his straw sandals.

His water ladle had broken into pieces after knocking down Master Qi Mei who had grown almost as powerful as Buddhas.

He had only a wooden rod on his waist.

He walked towards Beigong and picked up the Chinese zither. Then he held it in his arms and played it with his right hand.

There was just one string left on the zither.

And that was what his finger was playing with.

The string vibrated and buzzed.

Then his finger pressed, and the string vibrated again.

There was just one string left on the zither.

But he had made a melody out of it.

The melody was moderate, peaceful, and of extreme elegance.

On the field in the south.

In the West-Hill Divine Palace Coalition Army camp the Chinese zither rang.

The harmony of the melody was like the lofty mountain and flowing water.

Nobody would guess that the sound was made out of one string.

The ten priests in red around the chariot looked fearful upon hearing the sound of the zither, and they stopped their hymns immediately.

The grand divine chariot suddenly looked shabby due to the elegant melody.

Deep behind the voile of the chariot, the wrinkles on the Great Divine Priest of Revelation’s face were deepening at an unbelievable speed as the melody went on.

There was a cracking sound. Then the floor of the chariot broke, and it fell heavily on the ground.

In the front of the Verdant Canyon.

With the booming sound, countless cavalries were hitting the ground heavily.

The peaceful and elegant sound of the zither carried no killing aura at all, but it had killed numerous people.

The field was as silent as death.

Only the sound of the zither echoed.

All the soldiers in the Coalition Army were too shocked to say anything.

Ye Hongyu was standing on the field, she suddenly turned back and looked at the Verdant Canyon, with disbelief all over her face.

The Great Divine Priest of Revelation who seemed much older than before looked out of the voile and into the Verdant Canyon, mumbling, “Why is he here? Where’s the Abbey Dean?”

Beside the quiet horse carriage.

Liu Bai looked at the Verdant Canyon and sighed, “You’re so lucky to have seen Mr. First striking, and to my surprise, he learned how to kill.”

The sound of the zither became fainter and fainter, like the swans gliding away.

It was at that moment when the cavalries on the field started screaming. Numerous cavalries, lying beside their war-horses, were struggling.

Eldest Brother grew silent when seeing the scene.

Ye Hongyu was right. Beigong Weiyang and Ximen Buhuo were the flaws before the Verdant Canyon, because they were the only two living in the world who had comprehended Haotian Taoism through tonality, and they were irreplaceable.

But she did not know one thing.

When the disciples of the Academy cultivated at the back of the mountain, they did not do it all by themselves. All the disciples had become the most powerful in their own fields before the Headmaster took them in as his core disciples. Now that they were willing to enter the Academy and study, that meant they were sure that they could learn better knowledge in the Academy.

And that meant that someone in the Academy was qualified to instruct them.

And that was to say, that man was better than them in all fields that they used to dominate.

That man wasn’t the Headmaster.

The Headmaster was surely knowledgeable, but he was a lazy and irresponsible teacher.

He had taught the Eldest and Second Brother by himself, and he started to loaf on the job when he met the Third Sister, Yu Lian. And as for the core disciples he had taken after that, he basically taught them nothing.

It was someone else that had been teaching those disciples.

The man was named Li Manman.

He was the Eldest Brother of the Academy.

Over the years, he had been teaching the disciples on behalf of the Headmaster.

He was good at almost everything that the disciples at the back of the mountain were good at, except for Talisman Taoism and fighting.

No matter whether it was the zither, Go, calligraphy, painting, cooking, or making tea.

He was good at all of them.

And he was the best among all.

He was the best in the world.