Chapter 227 — The Great Sage Who Restores the Seas (Part Two)

Only the utterly orthodox exorcising curses of the Daoist and Buddhist gates—the auspicious-demon-breaking wards—could shield one from a Blood God passing through the body. This White Python was a demon; his garments and armor bore talismans too, but they were of the yin and depraved order. How could they withstand the highest arts of the demonic path?

Pfft! Pfft! Pfft! The sounds came in quick succession. The blood-shadows across the sky drew back and reassembled into thirteen towering Blood Gods, while below lay a dozen-odd sets of armor and weapons and empty husks of beasts. In the space of a few breaths the Heavenly Snake King had lost more than ten demon kings.

The Heavenly Snake King was greatly alarmed. Seeing the Blood Gods come at him again, warned by what had just happened, none dared cut at them with blade or weapon. He knew only pure-yang treasures could restrain them. Retreating into the ranks, he drew out a treasure, raised it to the sky, and a net of fire fell over the onrushing Blood Gods.

This Qian Heaven Blazing Yang Net was refined from the Qian Heaven True Gang mingled with the true fire of the sun—utmost yang, utmost gang—the very bane of the Blood Gods. The thirteen Blood Gods darted left and right within the net; every touch of its weave burst out a cluster of crystalline radiance laced with Qian Heaven true fire, flinging them back.

The Blood Gods were full to bursting with yin qi and feared no fire net. They charged endlessly, slamming into the Qian Heaven Blazing Yang Net with repeated thunderous reports and violent shuddering, till the Heavenly Snake King was frantic with anxiety.

At this rate it would not be long before the Blood Gods broke the net. The Heavenly Snake King raised his lance and gave the order: the million demon soldiers shifted formation and came rolling in a killing tide toward Liao Yanqiao.

Before the Blood Gods broke free, settle Liao Yanqiao first. With the master dead, any spell or treasure would lose its power. His own side was strong in numbers, and the Heavenly Snake King was confident of finishing the enemy.

"Junior sister, your turn!"

Liao Yanqiao fell back, and from behind him flashed a young woman dressed as a Daoist nun, riding a white bear—none other than Zhou Chen. Seeing the demon host come rolling toward them, vast and imposing, Zhou Chen showed no fear. She reached out and took a plantain leaf three inches across, exquisitely delicate. With a shake it grew to three zhang, and she raised it into the air and cried, "Senior brother, help me!"

Liao Yanqiao nodded and pressed his palm to Zhou Chen's back.

Rumble! Boundless true essence and dharma power poured into Zhou Chen's body. She hurriedly channeled it into the plantain fan, and with a crack-crack-crack the three-zhang fan swelled a thousandfold to three thousand zhang. Its body flowed with strange radiance, strings of jade pendants hanging down. Zhou Chen fanned it once at the sky, and a yin wind rose from the ground.

This yin wind was truly something to behold: murky and vast, it churned the rivers and overturned the seas, uprooted mountains and toppled rivers. With a weird howling wail, tornadoes blotting earth and sky tore space itself apart, grinding the five-element primal forces along their path to powder and drawing them all into the yin wind.

The countless demon soldiers charging head-on took a blast of that yin wind, and tens of thousands in the van were instantly blown no one knew where, life or death unknown. Fortunately the Heavenly Snake King's troops were well drilled; at once they formed up in arrays, dharma power coursing through them, array linked to array, and held against the yin wind. With Liao Yanqiao's support Zhou Chen fanned again and again; gust on gust of yin wind held the demon soldiers hard in place, not advancing a fraction.

Wheeze! Wheeze! Liao Yanqiao was actually panting. "Junior sister," he gasped, "I am literally holding off a million with my own strength here. That plantain fan drains dharma power too fast—even I cannot sustain it."

The plantain fan was a leaf of the Great Yin from the very hour of the opening of Heaven and Earth. The greater the dharma power, the greater its might, unlike other treasures that have a limit beyond which all the power you pour in is wasted. This too is the difference between treasures of the higher grade and the lower.

Zhou Chen shot him a look. "Senior brother, you think just because you have a great shaman's body you are invincible under Heaven? That Maitreya Buddha who wagered with our master could swat ten of you dead with one palm. And you insisted on this scheme of mine. Well? Now it has backfired, has it not?"

"Heh heh, not at all, not at all! When has your senior brother ever miscalculated?"

Liao Yanqiao chuckled twice, and just then a burst came from the distant demon ranks: the thirteen Blood Gods had finally broken the Qian Heaven Blazing Yang Net. Blood-shadows wavered, the whole sky flushed red, and behind them a slaughter began that threw the demon rear into chaos.

The Qian Heaven Blazing Yang Net was pure-yang true gang; the plantain fan was a leaf of the Great Yin. With the yin wind howling, the pure yin qi waxed immense, and with the Blood Gods hammering from within, caught between the two it burst at once. Thousands of blood-shadows whirled through the sky, reaping countless demon lives in an instant. Each demon soldier drained added another shadow; like a rolling snowball of blood they multiplied, ever more numerous, ever more vicious.

With every increment of the Blood Gods' power, one more blood-shadow could be split off. With Liao Yanqiao's cultivation, at the outset he could split off only a few hundred; now, greatly replenished, the shadows had swelled to a thousand in number.

The Heavenly Snake King's demon soldiers fell into utter rout. Liao Yanqiao, too, could barely hold out; he quickly had Zhou Chen put away the plantain fan and ordered the Poison Dragon and twenty or thirty other demon kings to lead picked troops in a charge. With the enemy formation already in disarray, Liao Yanqiao—though he had only two hundred thousand Return-to-Void demon soldiers—had a fierce momentum and perfect order, and swept through like splitting bamboo. In an instant he scattered the million demon soldiers across the field, and the Heavenly Snake King, seeing the tide turn, kept his head and swiftly ordered a retreat.

Liao Yanqiao pursued all the way; the Heavenly Snake King led his broken troops within Coiled Snake Mountain and at once activated the restraining arts to block the pursuit, then regrouped.

Fearing the enemy would steady their lines and come counterattacking—and that with his own numbers he could not hold—Liao Yanqiao quickly withdrew.

In this battle nearly a hundred thousand of the enemy's demon soldiers were slain and fifty thousand taken captive or subdued; nearly a hundred thousand sets of armor and a hundred thousand fine divine weapons were seized—a tremendous haul. But the enemy's foundation was not broken, only some of their vitality spent, and Liao Yanqiao too needed to regroup. Both sides had their concerns, held their troops in place, and bided their time. The Heavenly Snake King secretly sent men to Mount Wudang to beg for aid, and the situation bore a faint air of the storm about to break and fill the tower with wind.

Within the Jade Pillar Immortal Estate, Liao Yanqiao said to Wen Yanlan, "Eldest Senior Sister! We've struck it rich this time. A pity the Master isn't here—otherwise we could seize this chance to lay out the Grand Array of the Dutian Demon Gods and refine Serpent Coil Mountain in one stroke. Then we could take all three thousand seven hundred peaks around the Two Realms Pass into our grasp."