Nightfall

Snow suddenly fell down from the clear sky, and onto the land stretching for ten thousand kilometers.

Thick snow flakes were like burnt bulrush ashes dancing, occupying the whole blue sky above. The city cooled down fast and became extremely cold. The ice dam on house eaves became chillier and chillier. The ice in the lake was creaking, and even the water in the well at the mouth of the alley was frozen.

Ning Que stood in the storm and snow, with thick snow on his black academy uniform. He was like a bridge which would be snapped anytime soon by the heavy snow accumulated on it.

He was the bridge of this fight. Chang’an City was waving his sword through him to attack the Abbey Dean. But now that the Abbey Dean’s Quietus had been sucked inside by Ning Que through the Practice of Taotie, the Quietus was amplified countless times, or it had become a real thing that was hanging above Chang’an City.

The coldness of snowflakes penetrated the thick academy uniformand reached Ning Que’s skin. He was immediately nearly frozen, with thick frost on his eyelashes and snow powder over his face, looking like Sangsang when she had put on make-up for the first time.

When the coldness reached a threshold, all motion would cease. Ning Que, occupied by the Quietus aura, felt like he had fallen into the deepest abyss. It was so cold that he couldn’t shake, breathe, or even think with his mind frozen.

He had been frozen like the well at the mouth of the alley.

The transparent fluid in his belly was the only part of him that was still moving, but it moved so slowly that it might stop any second now. The fluid had the pride that could break all chains of coldness and Quietus.

His sense of perception had turned into an ocean covered by ice and snow, and amid the sludge in the depths of the ocean, a broken piece was shimmering. Facing the coldness falling from above, it remained quite disobedient and outrageous.

Ning Que inherited the Great Spirit from Youngest Uncle, and he inherited the piece of perception from Lotus. Both of the two were the greatest powerhouses back then, and both of them could stand up to the Abbey Dean as equals.

This was the most dangerous moment he had faced since he was born, and at the moment when he was so close to death, the Great Spirit and the piece of perception which had saved him several times before burst out again.

Suddenly Ning Que started shaking. The frost on his eyelashes and snowflakes on his face were shattered and shot away like arrows, revealing Ning Que’s face.

Blood spewed out of his mouth, dripping down and scattering.

The blood was turbid because of the ice coagulated by blood in it.

Then the turbid blood dripped down on his clothes, his left hand, and then on the array eye pestle. The pestle immediately became burning hot; the blood evaporated into mist and steam blowing over his face.

Ning Que screamed, and he seemed to be in extreme pain. The ice covering his black academy uniform had been shattered, like the stone bridge revealing its original look after the snow over it was blown away.

He opened his eyes. With his trembling hands, he put forth his strength and broke through the snow, then he dropped his sword.

He had to seize the moment of awakening.

He held both ends of the array eye pestle with his hands, sweeping it back and forth in the storm and snow.

Every time he swept, two absolutely parallel lines would be drawn.

A violent Talisman Intent burst out of the storm and snow.

The Two-Horizontal Talisman.

With the Talisman Intent as his cover, Ning Que stomped on the snow and flew backwards. In an instant he was more than a hundred feet away.

The Abbey Dean had made it clear that he was invincible even if his opponent was supported by a city. Ning Que was almost killed by a simple glance on him, so all he wanted now was to escape far from the Abbey Dean.

The further, the better.

The two sharp Talisman Intents were like two hard-steel swords above Vermilion Bird Avenue.

The Abbey Dean lifted his right arm and snapped with his fingers.

Understanding masculinity and defending feminity, that is called Natural Stream.

Understanding its cons and defending its pros, that is called Natural Maneuver.

Understanding its prosperity and defending its disgrace, and that is called Open-Mindedness.

The Abbey Dean used the Finger of the World.

The aura of the fingers ignored the Two-Horizontal Talisman on the Snow Street and flew away in the air.

Ning Que was still flying backwards, with a bloody hole on one of his knees.

Then he fell backwards, with a bloody hole in his shoulder.

After several puffs, seven bloody holes appeared on his body.

The Abbey Dean had moved his finger seven times, which was an indication of Heaven’s will, to cut off humanity.

To cut humanity was to cut off people’s way to live.

The blood was gurgling out slowly, dyeing the snow Ning Que stood on red.

He could barely sit in an ugly position, and he had little strength to wave the sword.

The Abbey Dean then said, “Skills are no better than petty tricks.”

Ning Que knew this was the Abbey Dean’s comment on their last fight, and he agreed with it.

Whether it was pretending to be weak to lure the enemy to get closer, these were all no more than petty tricks in real fights.

“You still have quite a long way to go before you reach the real Great Way, no matter how strong your desire is, not to mention that you’ve taken a wrong way.”

The Abbey Dean approached. The storm and snow were avoiding him.

“I’ve seen your calligraphy. Unlike other people in the world, I don’t like it because you didn’t know how to write in an unskilled way. The strokes of that character were too heavy, so you had to write in an unskilled way.”

Ning Que tried hard to lift his arms and wiped the blood on his jaw, then he said, “If I have opportunities in the future, I would definitely remember your teachings and try to write in an unskilled way.”

“There’s no ‘future’.”

The Abbey Dean sensed that two people were approaching from the storm and snow behind him at a high speed.

He knew that it was the powerful Senior Brother and Sister from the Academy.

But he didn’t care.

The whole city had been frozen by him.

Then what else could the people in the city do?

Not far away from the west side of Vermilion Bird Avenue, there was a block which seemed plain or even shabby. That was quite a common scene in Chang’an City. Beside the government offices, there were shabby and old houses. Prosperity and dilapidation always coexisted, and it was hard to simply define it as good or bad.

The block was called Sanyuanli, a place where the most common residents of Chang’an lived. The angry voice of a young man came out of the woodshed in the backyard of a house, along with the sound of slapping a table.

“A pot of hot water? Why just one pot? It’s not enough for us to drink! How could we bathe our mother’s frostbitten feet? And that guy, why the grumpy face all day? Who was he making the face for?”

A woman was sitting in the bedding pile, holding a three or four-year old girl. She looked at her angry son worriedly and said, “We’ve been lucky enough to have just food and shelter.”

The young man was in a shabby cotton jacket. Judging by his dress and expression, he must be a boy from the countryside.

He sat at the door of the woodshed where the wind kept flowing in. His young face turned pale in the chilly wind, and he said angrily, “How difficult can it be to ask for just one more pot of water?”

It was such a cold day today that ice hung fully on the eaves, and even the kitchen smoke couldn’t go far. The young man worried about his mother’s ill legs and went to the front yard for hot water, but he got only one pot of hot water and the young man in the front yard had criticized him. He was in such a bad mood when thinking about the bad situation he was in at the moment.

At the same time, the door was opened with a creak. Another young man showed up at the door; he was in a firm cotton jacket with a relaxing and prideful expression which obviously was learned from fooling around with the street people daily.

Chilly wind poured in from the door and the woman started coughing, but instead of caring about herself, she cuddled the girl tightly, using more bedding on the girl.

The countryside boy glared at the city boy. As angry as he might be, his clenching hands dared not to move further.

Because the city boy had two knives in his hands.

A chopper, and a kitchen knife.