Nightfall

“I’ve been wondering why the Headmaster took you as his last disciple. You may have run into several lucky encounters and reached the Knowing Destiny State early in your age, and you may seem talented to ordinary cultivators in the world. But what has qualified you to be the last connection of the Headmaster in the world? You’re no better than my son, Pipi, not to mention Li Manman, Jun Mo, or Lin Wu.”

The Abbey Dean said, “I finally figured it out, by the time you finished writing this character. I understood that the Headmaster was worthy of his name. Fighting with Haotian was his one and only wrong choice, and he had not made any mistakes except that.”

Snowflakes were drifting slowly onto the street at this moment. Time seemed to have slowed down. Ning Que listened to the voice inside his sense of perception, which naturally reminded him of the Headmaster who was still fighting in Heaven.

The Abbey Dean looked at Ning Que. He had made up his mind to kill Ning Que in the first place, and his determination grew even tougher when he saw the cutlass Ning Que was about to pull out. He couldn’t let Ning Que pull that cutlass out. At first, he was planning to retreat but he was trapped in the numerous cutlasses in Chang’an City. He had to choose another way to retreat after Ning Que started to write the big character with the iron cutlass imbued by the Vermilion Bird.

Ning Que could never be his match even if he could finish writing that character because their power disparity was too significant. The reason he decided to retreat at any cost was those images he had seen.

He saw a dark and somber night earlier.

“It’s a pity that you wrote the letter in the wrong stroke order, and you didn’t have the time to finish writing. I suppose no one could keep me here as long as I want to leave.”

The Abbey Dean said with his arms opened, and it seemed he was welcoming something.

While he was moving, the speed of the time flowing on the street went back to normal.

His fingers were shivering in the chilly wind. He was embracing heaven, and only seven fingers of his showed up because the other three on his left hand had been cut off by the cicada wings of Yu Lian’s.

That was the seven Haotian Initiations.

Seven pure rays of light and overwhelming power cast on him, or to be specific, on his broken fingers.

The pure light cast on his fingers and changed. The ray on the thumb of his right hand turned red, and for the index finger, orange. The rays on other fingers had changed their colors all at the same time.

Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and purple.

The seven rays falling from heaven above made up a rainbow.

A rainbow showed up in Chang’an City.

The rainbow started from the end of the snowy street and rose up into Heaven high above. It had drawn a perfect arc and ended somewhere outside the city.

The rainbow carried unimaginable power which shook the ground of the street. The green stone floors were scattered inch by inch. People standing on the floor were shaken and fell onto the ground. The melting snow and dirty water were blasted into powder.

The Abbey Dean disappeared on the snowy street and flew against the wind, then he traced the rainbow and reached the sky.

The sky was vast. The character Ning Que wrote with the Vermilion Cutlass might be big, but it was far from enough to occupy the whole sky, which left enough room for the rainbow to stretch.

His cutlass had yet to cut down, so the character in the sky hadn’t been finished, either.

His cutlass carried the aspirations of countless people, which were extremely heavy.

And the heaviness was slowing down the sword.

The Abbey Dean was about to walk thousands of miles away on the rainbow.

That was grand power.

The sky was vast enough to keep any proud birds from crossing it, or to prevent any visionaries from seeing its end.

Numerous sword marks and endless Talisman Intent had stirred the Qi of Heaven and Earth in Chang’an City. It was now difficult for the Abbey Dean to leave, so he ascended into the sky and he felt that nobody could stop him.

However, sometimes the sky could be small. It was so small that birds might collide into each other, and people living under the sky might feel suffocated.

A hand appeared in the sky, then it grabbed the Abbey Dean’s feet.

The hand was clean and the nails had been cleanly cut. There was no blood or soil on it. The hand was steady and firm and didn’t shake at all, just like that of a harpist.

That was Eldest Brother’s hand.

On the Wilderness, when Sangsang was summoned by the Kingdom of Haotian and flew into the sky, Ning Que held her by the waist, and the Headmaster, who was standing on the ground, grabbed Ning Que’s foot.

They held each other’s hands because they didn’t want the other one to leave.

Eldest Brother didn’t want the Abbey Dean to leave, either.

The Abbey Dean and him had been chasing each other in the mortal world for seven days and seven nights. The end of the fight was at the corner, so there was no way that he would let go of the Abbey Dean.

He was the Eldest Brother of the Academy, a man seemingly gentle or even dull, but of true wisdom.

He had the purest heart which gave him a clearer vision than Ning Que’s of the real state of the Abbey Dean. He knew that the Abbey Dean’s Taoist Heart was explicit, and that when Ning Que finished writing that character, the Abbey Dean would pay whatever it took to leave.

So he made the preparation and took a deep breath.

At the moment no withered leaf around was rustling, the only thing that was moving was the gown belt on his waist fluttering with afterimages trailing behind.

That was the indication of entering the Limitless State.

He tried to catch up with the Abbey Dean when he stepped on the rainbow and ascended to the sky.

He had never been so close to Heaven and so far away from Earth.

He climbed toward Heaven in the Limitless State, but whether he could return to Earth safe and sound remained unknown.

He chased and chased, taking the risk of his life.

Eldest Brother was not the only one who had made preparations; Yu Lian had prepared for it, too.

She stared at the word to be finished in the sky, at the corner of some turret in the Imperial Palace, and she took a deep breath.

As she breathed, snowflakes were shattered and poured into her body with chilly air.

Then the air was all burst out from her lips.

The air flows were rubbing each other and buzzing annoyingly.

She bent her knees slightly and concentrated all her power on her feet.

The solid turret rumbled and collapsed in rising smoke and flying dust.

A petite figure was thrown out of the dust and soared into the sky like a stone shot out of the mangonel.

She reached the heavens.

Her body looked so small with the vast sky as the background.

The bloody cutlass she grabbed in her hand still looked quite big.

Then the bloody cutlass was wielded toward the rainbow.

As the edge of the sword and the rainbow clashed, golden and jade sprinkles flickered.

Though the bloody cutlass had been recognized as the Halidom of the Devil’s Doctrine, it still burnt and vanished quickly while resisting the pure light of Haotian Initiation.

There came a crunching sound like paper being torn.

The bloody cutlass turned into an iron rod.

The rainbow bridging the inside and outside of Chang’an suddenly broke from the middle and collapsed.

The Abbey Dean fell from the sky.

And Eldest Brother still held one of his feet.

Yu Lian started to fall, too.

They were like three falling stars.

Boom!

The three landed on the snowy street.

The melting snow was scattered, then smoke and dust rose.

In the smoky and blurred image, Yu Lian was holding Eldest Brother in her arms. Eldest Brother could’ve been shattered while falling from so high above no matter how high his state was.

However, Yu Lian was still seriously injured. Though she was the Grandmaster of the Devil’s Doctrine, and she might have unimaginable strength and flexibility, she still suffered because she fell so hard and she had to protect Eldest Brother while falling.

Her ankles were bleeding, and probably had been broken.

The Abbey Dean was worthy of his title as “the most powerful man in Haotian Taoism in the past thousand years”. He fell on his feet safe and sound. He waved his hand again, and another streak of Haotian Initiation fell down from Heaven overwhelmingly.

Yu Lian flipped her fair hands slightly, and soon two crystal-clear cicada wings appeared on the snowy street.

The power of Haotian Initiation struck the cicada wings.

Both of Yu Lian’s wrists cracked in a moment.

Under the unbearable pain, she was still expressionless and kept the posture of pointing one of her palms to the sky.

Eldest Brother could no longer pull through.

She had to support the sky here for him.

The Academy planned and would have to kill the Abbey Dean in Chang’an City. In Eldest Brother and Yu Lian’s earliest plan, they expected Ning Que to fix the God-stunning Array and to trap the Abbey Dean in an exact position where Yu Lian and Eldest Brother would later devote their lives to make their all-out strike on.

Yet things always went athwart.

Ning Que failed to fix the God-stunning Array in time, and the Abbey Dean was more powerful than the Academy had ever expected.

Fortunately, Ning Que finally finished writing the character. Therefore all Eldest Brother and Yu Lian had to do was to trap the Abbey Dean and save the chance of the last strike to Ning Que.

The rainbow fell down.

The Abbey Dean ascended to the sky.

Then he fell back into the dusty world.

That was when Ning Que’s cutlass made it here.

The iron cutlass was black, while the Vermilion Bird on it was extremely red.

The Vermilion Bird contained the power of an all-out strike of a cultivator in the Knowing Destiny State.

Endless Qi of Heaven and Earth flowed into Ning Que’s body through the pestle, and then the Qi was transferred into the iron cutlass. One strike of the cutlass now contained the power beyond the Five States.

Wildwind suddenly rose on the snowy street.

The wind was brought out by the cutlass.

The mess littered on the street was blown up by the wind and was thrown to the Abbey Dean as the cutlass hacked.

The vision on the street blurred.

Suddenly the figure of the Abbey Dean turned vague and then disappeared.

Only the wind was howling and clashing.

Numerous cutlass edges cut through the air.

Fatal turbulences from the Qi of Heaven and Earth appeared and twisted part of the nearby space.

All the twisted parts reflected like mirrors.

Some reflected knives.

Some reflected a light figure of someone.

Some reflected the indigo Taoist robe.

A piece of cloth from a dark robe drifted down to the ground.

Then the Abbey Dean followed.

His was soaked in blood, with countless cuts all over his body.

Blood flowed out of the wounds.

Some of the wounds were deep, others were shallow, and their shapes differed.

Parts of his flesh had been cut off, revealing the miserable and scary bones inside.

Ning Que had connected all Qi of Heaven and Earth before he made the strike.

The Abbey Dean then had nowhere to hide.

When the edge was hurting his body, the Abbey Dean used the Boundless State of Buddhism Sect like he had done before.

But this time it was different.

Because Ning Que had more than one cutlass now.

He borrowed the cutlasses from everyone in Chang’an City.

All cutlasses in Chang’an City landed on him.

Like the infinite ocean, the number of the cutlasses was inestimable.

The Abbey Dean had slaughtered thousands of people on the street.

Thus it was the time for him to get hacked into thousands of pieces.

He screamed out shrilly, with extreme agony.