Chapter 534: An Ambush in the Stone Forest?
The Tianji Pavilion Master walked up to Su Ming without the slightest hesitation and handed him the jade bottle.
“Take it. The day the map is drawn will be the day our karmic ties are settled.”
Su Ming took a deep breath.
With the utmost solemnity, he extended both hands and accepted the jade bottle from the Pavilion Master.
“Thank you, Pavilion Master.”
He carefully stored the bottle away in his most secure storage pouch. Then, he took the two jade slips and three golden talismans flickering with strange formation lines that the Pavilion Master handed him, putting them away as well.
At this point, the three main ingredients for the Heaven-Mending Pill were finally all collected.
Seeing the transaction was complete, Master Xuanming didn’t waste another word of nonsense.
“Let’s go.”
He dropped those two words, didn’t even bid farewell to the Tianji Pavilion Master, and turned around with a big stride, heading out of the side hall.
Su Ming offered one last bow to the Pavilion Master, then hurriedly followed with Qingfeng and Mingyue.
The group walked out past the mountain gate of the Tianji Pavilion, flanked by its two coiled-dragon stone pillars, and returned to the teleportation stone hall halfway up the mountain.
...
The light of Myriad Manifestations City’s massive teleportation formation gradually faded. Su Ming and his group of four stepped down from the formation plate.
Master Xuanming’s withered finger flicked, and the dark ebony airship once again swelled in the wind, hovering steadily in midair.
The four boarded the airship. It transformed into a streak of light, speeding off towards the Northern Frontier.
Looking back, the sky of the Central Continent, which always seemed to be shrouded in a lead-gray layer of clouds, was slowly being left behind.
On the airship, Su Ming sat cross-legged at the stern, his eyes slightly closed. The *Like Water Art* circulated within him at the gentlest pace, not wasting a single thread of spiritual energy.
“Disciple,” Lin Yu’s voice suddenly rang out in his Consciousness Sea from within the Xuantian Ring, carrying a rare note of seriousness.
“Master, what’s wrong?” Su Ming responded silently in his heart, without even lifting an eyelid.
Lin Yu’s Soul Body floated in the void, its faint blue glow intensifying slightly. “Three hundred li ahead, there’s a stretch of gray stone forest. Three people are hiding inside. Two at early Golden Core, and one at Peak Golden Core. Their auras are very mixed, carrying that stench of copper from being soaked in piles of spirit stones for years, just like those from Myriad Treasures Pavilion.”
“Master, what do you think they’re after?” Su Ming asked in his Consciousness Sea.
“What else could it be?” Lin Yu snorted coldly. “At Myriad Treasures Pavilion, you made them lose face in public. Even though that fat manager apologized, they can’t swallow this humiliation. Besides, there are always a few clever fools in merchant houses.”
“Peak Golden Core,” Su Ming murmured. “Could they see through Senior Xuanming’s cultivation?”
Lin Yu let out a mocking laugh. “That old cunning bastard has suppressed his aura so well even I almost mistook it. You think those wastes from Myriad Treasures Pavilion can see through it? In their eyes, this airship probably has one old man at Qi Refining leading three fat sheep at Foundation Establishment.”
Su Ming gave a slight nod and said no more.
Ahead, the airship had already entered the region of the gray stone forest.
This stone forest was incredibly vast. Thick, gray stone pillars jutted straight up from the ground, soaring into the clouds like countless broken swords pointing at the heavens. Mist and fog swirled between the pillars, blotting out the sky and sun, devouring the already dim light and exuding a chilling, murderous aura.
Just as the airship was about ten zhang away from the tallest cluster of stone pillars...
“Boom!”
Three black shadows shot out from behind a massive stone pillar like arrows loosed from a bowstring, accompanied by a piercing shriek of tearing air, and hurtled straight toward the airship.
Leading them was the cultivator who had wanted to search Su Ming’s Consciousness Sea back at Myriad Treasures Pavilion. He radiated the spiritual pressure of a Peak Golden Core expert. In his hand was a ghost-headed broadsword glowing with a dark red light, its blade carving a blinding, blood-colored arc through the dim light.
Flanking him, two cultivators at early Golden Core sealed off all possible escape routes for the airship, one on each side.
“It’s people from Myriad Treasures Pavilion!” Qingfeng shot to his feet, his hand already on his sword hilt, his face turning deathly pale in an instant.
Mingyue let out a startled cry and instinctively pressed closer to Su Ming.
The leading cultivator hovered in midair about ten zhang in front of the airship, a vicious grin curling at the corner of his mouth.
“Kid, the rules in Myriad Manifestations City protected you. But out here, your luck has run out!” His voice was as grating as a broken gong, shaking dust loose from the surrounding stone pillars.
As a guard of Myriad Treasures Pavilion, he was determined to wash away the disgrace their branch had suffered today.
“Leave behind that rubbing diagram of the formation plate and all the spirit stones on you, and I might let you live!”
The leading cultivator roared, raising his ghost-headed broadsword. The blade’s light pulsed, ready to strike at any moment.
Su Ming sat at the stern of the airship, calmly watching the scene unfold.
However, Master Xuanming, standing at the bow, didn’t even slow the airship down by a fraction.
He didn’t even bother to glance up at the three Golden Core cultivators blocking their path.
The old man simply raised his withered right hand with utter casualness, his wide gray daoist robe flapping loudly in the wind. Then, that dry, bony index finger gently pressed down against the empty air ahead.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no dazzling flash of spiritual light.
It was like flicking away a speck of dust.
An invisible force, like a massive, silent hammer, slammed into the leading cultivator.
“Aghhh—!”
A bloodcurdling scream tore through the sky.
Before the leading cultivator could even swing his ghost-headed broadsword, the ribs in his chest collapsed inward across a large area in an instant. Blood, mixed with chunks of his internal organs, sprayed from his mouth.
Like a torn burlap sack, his entire body was blasted backward ten times faster than he had come, smashing violently into a massive stone pillar.
“Boom, rumble!”
The stone pillar snapped in two, dust billowing up into the sky. The Peak Golden Core cultivator was buried under the rubble, his aura instantly weakening to its extreme, his fate unknown.
The two remaining early Golden Core cultivators froze mid-lunge, halting in midair.
They stared at their comrade’s gruesome end, their eyes wide, their eyeballs practically popping out of their sockets. A fear that originated from the depths of their souls drenched them like ice water, turning their blood cold.
Terrified out of their wits, the two didn’t dare to leave behind a single bravado-filled sentence. They spun around frantically and turned into two streaks of light, fleeing madly into the depths of the stone forest.
Master Xuanming did not give chase.
He slowly withdrew his hand, placed both hands behind his back again, and stared calmly ahead.
“Go back and tell your building master,” Master Xuanming’s raspy voice, though not loud, pierced clearly through the howling wind and landed precisely in the ears of the two fleeing cultivators. “If you touch my people again, next time it won’t be just your cultivation that gets crippled.”
The two cultivators stumbled in midair, scrambling and rolling as they disappeared into the thick fog of the stone forest.