Chapter 261 — Section 263: Like a Hot Knife Through Butter

Tang Duo was a wretched rider; all he could manage was not falling off. But the horse beneath him was a well-trained warhorse, and it ran like a gust of wind.

When Xin Li saw Tang Tang charge straight in with Huo Ma'er and the twenty-odd men, his heart settled comfortably back into his chest.

Idiot!

So what if he was a Heaven Roll warrior?

The five hundred men he had brought were his own elite troops, and among them were more than seventy Sky Road-rank warriors. Against strength like that, even a Heaven Roll powerhouse who threw himself at them would find only death. The reason he had led his men out to attack was precisely that he was not certain the three powerhouses on his side would be sure to win.

This battle—one way or another, it had to be won!

Xin Li's small eyes narrowed to slits, his killing intent sharp and cold. His heart resolved, he raised his arm and roared: "Kill!"

"Kill!" Everyone thundered in response, savage looks surfacing on their faces.

Watching the distance between them shrink, Tang Tang's eyes turned suddenly ferocious, and he vaulted up from his horse's back. That abrupt move caught everyone utterly off guard; the few men at the front of the column had never expected Tang Tang to spring from the saddle.

Riding the momentum of the galloping horse, Tang Tang's leap was frightfully swift.

To the men in the column, Tang Tang was like a shooting star, bursting suddenly before them—a blur of afterimages that wiped out their field of vision in an instant.

The warrior at the very front turned ashen with terror and frantically raised his sword, but a force like a landslide came crashing through the blade. He had no time even to scream before he felt himself struck by a monstrous beast.

Boom!

His body flew backward like a ball smashed by a powerful blow, at an astonishing speed. Several warriors behind him could not dodge in time; bang, bang, bang—each one who was struck screamed, spat blood, and tumbled from his horse.

The scene descended into chaos.

With one swing of his weapon, Tang Duo's fighting spirit blazed hotter still.

Seizing the chaos, he tapped his toes and shot up in a blur of afterimage, like a galloping horse, his wolf-fang club dragging along the ground and carving a deep furrow, dirt spraying everywhere.

True force surged and churned within him; had Tang Tang looked closely at that moment, he would have seen a thin white mist shrouding the wolf-fang club too, coiling without cease.

The Stance of the Crane!

His last step drove deep into the earth, and Tang Duo's body came to a brief halt—but the next instant, he vanished.

At the same moment, a low, resonant whistle rose in the air, and the wolf-fang club wreathed in the Stance of the Crane was terrifying in its majesty.

Woom!

Sweep Away a Thousand Armies!

Wherever the wolf-fang club swept, the slightest touch struck like a thunderbolt, sending men flying with gouts of blood. Three figures spun away screaming

Tang Tang felt an indescribable exhilaration. Beneath the Stance of the Crane, his brute strength and his true force fused perfectly, seamlessly. The most ordinary of moves became, in his hands, astonishingly fierce.

But by now the others had reacted as well; several figures bounced up from their saddles and rushed at him.

Tang Tang let out a sharp cry, exhaling and giving voice, and whirled the wolf-fang club in his hand—woom—a tremulous note slicing through the air as several blade-gleams and staff-gleams met.

Boom!

Tang Tang's feet sank; his soles drove into the ground.

The others felt as though they had slammed into an immensely thick wall; their chests tightened, the true force within them stalled, and they could not draw breath. Every heart filled with dread. Tang Duo's ferocity surpassed anything they had imagined.

But when their eyes fell on Tang Duo's position, their pupils shrank involuntarily.

Where Tang Tang had stood a moment before, there was no one.

Not good!

Their faces altered drastically—but before they could react

A ghostlike figure flickered past and was gone.

Several streaks of cold light mingled with the lingering echoes of a night cat's wail, and several jets of blood spurted into the air. Four warriors clutched their throats, eyes bulging like dying fish, disbelief and deep terror surfacing on their faces.

Tang Tang drew back the wolf-fang club, now wielding the Sickle-Blood Cat Blade.

In the air lingered the faint, ominous cry of the cat, and his drifting, unpredictable form moved like a phantom. He seemed always to foresee attacks a step ahead. His own attacks were equally strange and impossible to read—vanishing beneath a horse's belly, bursting up from blind angles with incredible speed, every strike aimed surely at an opening.

The cold gleam raised in his hand flickered in and out among the crowd.

Fifteen seconds—and suddenly Tang Tang's vision opened wide; he had cut clean through the enemy's formation. Two forces charging at each other at such frightful speed made this, for Yan, a natural battlefield. In a high-speed clash like this, both sides had precious little time to react. But for Yan, his powerful intuition let him sense danger and his opponent's intent a step ahead.

Tang Tang brought his intuition to its fullest expression as well.

Behind him, Huo Ma'er and the others all wore looks of disbelief.

They had actually punched through the enemy's formation

This... how was this possible!

"Kill!" A roar exploded suddenly in their ears, and they woke as if from a dream.

They turned and looked: that drifting figure, as though about to dissolve into the wind, had turned back and was charging into the enemy's main force once more.

Hiss!

A chorus of sharp, indrawn breaths. That there existed in this world a man so ferocious!

Huo Ma'er, spurred by Tang Duo's move, felt his fighting spirit boil over. He drew a deep breath, wrenched his horse's head around, and lunged back toward the enemy, his curved saber raised high: "Kill!"

The warriors of the Fire Wolf Tribe answered with a thunderous roar.

Xin Li was both shocked and furious. In a single exchange he had lost nearly twenty men. These five hundred were elite troops he had hand-picked; every one was a treasure, and in the blink of an eye more than twenty were dead. How could his heart not ache? Tang Tang's display of overwhelming strength left him aghast, but when Tang Tang wheeled about and came after them, that gesture of utter contempt sent a surge of blood straight to Xin Li's head.

When had Xin Li ever been so ignored?

A flash of ruthlessness crossed Xin Li's eyes, and he shouted in a deep voice: "Halt!"

The column jerked to a stop. They were elite troops after all, hardened and formidable, warriors who had lived their whole lives in this desert, every one of them a consummate horseman.

"Rear ranks, abandon your horses and meet the enemy!"

Xin Li showed a composure far beyond the ordinary. Tang Tang was now less than ten zhang from them.

The warriors at the rear of the column abandoned their horses one after another and turned to surge toward Tang Tang.

Xin Li's judgment was indeed keen: the speed the horses added could not threaten Tang Tang, and would only give the slippery, elusive Tang Tang cover. In that last wave of attacks, several men had fallen to Tang Tang striking suddenly from beneath a horse's belly.

Tang Tang cut his way into the crowd of dismounted warriors in an instant.

His true force was still only of the sixth rank, giving him no advantage against these warriors—but he had grasped the Stance of the Crane, and the power of his martial techniques had doubled.

Sparks struck from the Fire Sickle Ghost Claw blazed like fireworks, gorgeous—and steeped in the breath of death.

The Fire Sickle Ghost Claw ranked at the bottom of the Peerless List, yet it was a Peerless martial technique through and through!