Nangong Ning shook her head desperately. "No, we leave together."
Xu Xian endured the heart-wrenching pain, channeling his few remaining scraps of qi to control the spirit bag at his waist, sending it flying into Nangong Ning’s tattered sleeve.
"There’s a golden spirit incense in that spirit bag. Little Wen gave it to me before we left. You know what to do."
"Don't..."
"Listen to me. If you die too, we both die for nothing. Live, go back, and tell the world outside the truth of what happened. Don't let us die in vain."
Nangong Ning’s grip didn't loosen; instead, it tightened. Hot tears didn't just well up in her eyes—they fell in large, heavy droplets.
She bit her lip, shaking her head frantically.
Xu Xian gave a forced smile, his teeth stained with blood, and didn't forget to joke, "Heh... give Li Qingshan a message for me. I didn't want to cultivate immortality; he's the one who kidnapped me. I can choose not to blame him, but he has to take responsibility. I really am the future chief of Houdao Village. If I die, the sect has to support my village. Otherwise, I won't let him go even as a ghost... I'll haunt him to death..."
Nangong Ning didn't respond, her voice lost to her sobbing.
"Go!"
Xu Xian let out an angry roar, nearly a bellow.
"No, please, no!"
"Get out of here!"
Xu Xian finally wrenched his hand free from Nangong Ning’s palm and accelerated his flight backward toward Min Zhan.
In the look they exchanged across the air, everything was understood without words.
"Little Grand-Uncle..."
Nangong Ning clutched Xu Xian’s spirit bag and painfully turned away. Under the desolate moonlight, she sprinted into the depths of the dense forest.
She felt hatred.
She felt rage.
She forgot the pain in her body. As she ran, she felt like a pathetic wretch who had been the first to fall in love, only to flee in a panic.
Only she was left.
Only she was left.
She had to live. She couldn't die. She had to bring the truth out.
She knew her Little Grand-Uncle was right.
But...
"Stupid Grand-Uncle, stupid Grand-Uncle."
"Why did you come back to save me? Why didn't you run away yourself?"
"So stupid, so foolish!"
She muttered to herself, nearly delirious, trying to use those words to offset the pain and self-reproach in her heart.
On the other side.
In the blink of an eye, Xu Xian was caught in Min Zhan’s hand.
Min Zhan mocked, "Quite the touching scene of sect-mate devotion. Even I am moved."
"Heh—" Xu Xian let out a pained, savage laugh.
Min Zhan stared at Nangong Ning’s fading silhouette in the dark night and grinned. "So, I’ve decided to grant your wish. I’ll kill you first, then her. I'll send you both down to be a pair of tragic lovers. Hahaha!"
With that, he prepared to use his blood vines to tear Xu Xian apart before pursuing Nangong Ning.
Xu Xian slowly raised his eyes, staring at him fiercely. He sneered, "If I’m going to die, I’m taking you down with me."
"With just you?"
"With just me!"
He shouted in fury, the veins on his blood-soaked neck bulging.
"Little Book!"
"I'm here!"
The tiny book spirit poured divine radiance into his eyes.
In the depths of Xu Xian’s bloodshot eyes, a fierce light appeared, followed by a simultaneous burst of divine radiance.
Exhausting his spirit essence, he cast his gaze upon the giant snake.
"Let’s die together."
"Ah!"
His voice exploded in a piercing scream that sounded like a sudden thunderclap on a clear day...
Min Zhan’s expression changed instantly. He felt as if he were facing a great enemy. Detecting the Shadow Soul Stone in his palm cracking, he turned his head in panic, his eyes filled with disbelief.
"This... how can this be?"
The Soul-Binding Curse was broken? Without any warning.
The giant snake, which had been immobilized, moved. Like a ferocious beast breaking out of its cage, its nature was completely released.
The hunt began.
The giant snake went berserk.
It lunged at Min Zhan.
Slaughterous intent poured down like a falling waterfall.
Though it lacked intelligence, it was a bona-fide beast king.
First, it had been struck at its seven-inch mark by a foundation establishment boy, then it was imprisoned in a formation by a nascent soul girl, and finally, it had been bound by the despicable methods of the nascent soul old man before it, unable to move...
Its fury had already reached its peak.
Only one thought remained in its mind.
Devour them. Devour them all.
The frenzied giant snake was incredibly fast and decisive in its killing. Min Zhan lost the composure and confidence of a general he had shown before. In his panic, he could no longer spare any thought for Xu Xian.
Hurriedly dodging, he roared in questioning rage, "What did you do to it?!"
Xu Xian fell hard to the ground, face-first. The red vines were retracted by Min Zhan, leaving only shocking, gaping holes in his body...
His blood had run dry.
Xu Xian lay motionless on the ground, struggling to turn his head. He watched Min Zhan, who had failed to dodge in time and had his other arm ripped off by the giant snake.
On that face already devoid of life, the corners of his mouth curled up slightly. In his dim, cloudy eyes, there was a pride that couldn't be concealed.
In a voice only he could hear, he grumbled, "Heh... villains always die because they talk too much. In your next life, keep the nonsense to a minimum."
Noises filled his ears.
The world was shaking.
His sea of consciousness was a blank.
His eyelids grew heavy.
Xu Xian felt very cold...
Life was slipping away...
The mental shock of the Pupil of Insight could not only cause the giant snake a moment of daze; similarly, it could instantly wake the sleeping snake.
Min Zhan’s Soul-Binding Curse was applied to the Blood Infant Patriarch. Because the giant snake was using that body to reconstruct its physical form, it had inherited the Soul-Binding Curse.
That was why it could be controlled by the Shadow Soul Stone.
Under normal circumstances, Xu Xian naturally couldn't sever the connection of the Soul-Binding Curse.
However.
The opponent was a Xiushe. Even if it hadn't fully awakened, even if its intelligence remained closed due to the backlash of the Great Dao, its essence was still that of the ancient soul of the calamitous Xiushe—it was by no means just a beast king stage creature.
Its situation was like its physical body had been reconstructed, driven by a sliver of thought.
Meanwhile, its original soul was still sleeping, or simply couldn't wake up.
What was bound was, of course, only the remnant soul of the Blood Infant.
But as long as the original soul of the Xiushe received a mental attack, out of instinct, it would definitely be startled awake.
And once awake, it would definitely notice the Soul-Binding Curse imprisoning it.
With just a thought, in a brief instant, it could shatter and break that curse.
Others might not be able to break it.
Xu Xian, however, just happened to be able to.
From the moment the Soul-Binding Curse appeared, the Little Book spirit had told Xu Xian about this plan.
It was just that, in their current state, he and the Little Book spirit could only use it once.
Furthermore, it had to be released at close range.
And this time, it wasn't just the Little Book spirit who would fall into a deep sleep—Xu Xian would also fall into a coma, or worse, his mind might directly explode, and he'd kick the bucket...
Xu Xian hadn't used it yet, waiting for the right moment.
He had already made this plan when he told Nangong Ning to run.
He could die.
But he had to take someone down with him.
As Xu Xian drifted in and out of consciousness, the battle between the Xiushe and Min Zhan was decided in a flash.
Having already lost one arm and then having the other ripped away without warning, the old general had reached his end, with no hands left to hold his blade.
Under the Xiushe's maddened assault, he was quickly defeated.
Finally, he sent a command via divine sense to intercept and kill Nangong Ning.
Then, he was swallowed whole by the giant snake. In his final struggle, he glared at Xu Xian on the ground with sky-high hatred.
In his life, he had fought countless battles on the field; what storms had he not seen?
He had survived desperate situations time and again to reach his current status.
Yet he never imagined that the grand marshal of Yecheng would eventually fall at the hands of a mere foundation establishment boy.
How could he be reconciled to this?
"You little brat, don't think you're going to live either."
Rate on N.U.
