Standing Brush Peak lived up to its name. It rose like an upright brush, pointing straight at the sky, impossibly steep.
There was but a single crude mountain path leading up. Standing at its foot, the group could well imagine how hard the cultivators of Sanshan City must have labored to hew out this road.
Especially when, back then, the mountain had been swarming with ferocious beasts.
Every step must have cost blood; every stair, a soul.
The flesh of the dead had piled into steps, and the spirits of the fallen had sheltered the living. It was only by the diligence of those who survived that they had finally set foot on this mountain and cleared it of ferocious beasts.
Two years later, new beasts had wandered here, and new cleaners had appeared.
Jiang Wang was no stranger to ferocious beasts, but this was his first time coming to one of these legendary beast lairs.
Because of the generous rewards, many cultivators came to Sanshan City, but most chose to clear Jade Scales Peak together with the main force of Sanshan.
Only a handful of teams chose Standing Brush Peak.
Li Jianqiu had set out with them at dawn, so there were no other travelers on the road.
Led by Li Jianqiu, the group climbed toward the summit. The first stretch was safe; aside from scattered animal bones, there was nothing else.
The mountain path spiraled up around the peak, a cliff on one side and a sheer drop on the other. Now and then, a strange, jarring cry echoed through the valley, raising goosebumps across the skin.
"Careful!" Li Jianqiu suddenly called out a warning, but did not act.
From the cliff edge shot out a serpentine beast. Serpent was the word, yet it was armored in scales the same color as the rock. Such armor made it all but impossible to spot while it lay still.
Jiang Wang's longsword cleared its sheath first. The first killing stroke of the Purple Qi from the East Sword Art — just as the serpentine beast opened its enormous maw, a single sweep of the blade lopped off its forked tongue.
His other hand, cupped in a hand seal, was hardly idle. He snapped a Flame Pellet into the beast's open mouth. Body turning with the sword, he floated back onto the path at the same moment the serpentine beast tumbled off the cliff.
The whole sequence was clean and practiced, without a single superfluous motion. Watching it was a pleasure to the eye.
Since integrating Dao arts into his battle system, Jiang Wang's combat power had more than doubled.
"Oh, a Rock Serpent." Li Jianqiu explained as he walked forward. "Its scale armor is extremely defensive, and its mouth and belly are the weak point. Junior Brother Jiang handled it beautifully. If the beasts on Standing Brush Peak these days are only of this strength and density, it seems we can reach the summit today."
"Senior Brother Li seems very familiar with this place?" Zhao Rucheng asked.
"I've been here before." Li Jianqiu's voice came from up ahead.
He had deliberately held back earlier, wanting to gauge the mettle of these men. The result pleased him.
Zhao Rucheng reacted swiftly, sharply adjusting his stance. If Li Jianqiu read him right, the opening posture of his hand on the sword was of the same school as Jiang Wang's — it seemed both had cultivated that supernormal sword manual that was all the talk, the very one with which Jiang Wang had seized the first-year championship at the Three-City Dao Debate. Hard not to take notice.
Huang Azhan was forever joking around, but he too had finished his Dao art preparations in no time.
Of course, the biggest surprise for Li Jianqiu was still Jiang Wang. He had known that Jiang Wang's Foundation Establishment would bring a qualitative leap, but he had not imagined such a leap. Jiang Wang's strength now far surpassed what it had been at the Three-City Dao Debate.
Such a team — one might not call it mighty, but at least no one would drag him down.
Just ahead was a bend. The moment Li Jianqiu's figure left his sight, a violent surge of Dao essence fluctuations erupted from around the corner.
Jiang Wang hurried a few steps around the turn and saw only the corpse of a centipede-like beast, chopped into several pieces and scattered there. In Li Jianqiu's hands, two blades of fire blazed and roared.
"A Wind Centipede. It can fly." Li Jianqiu explained briefly, then said calmly, "If there were a lot of them, it would be troublesome."
On this narrow mountain path, being surrounded by flying beasts would indeed be hard to handle. Fortunately, only a single Wind Centipede had appeared so far.
Beasts appearing one after another meant they had entered the beasts' haunt. Everyone grew alert.
Huang Azhan, all care, stacked buffs upon himself — Stone Skin Art, Fortify, throwing a pile of Dao arts at himself. Not content with himself, he cast them on the others as well.
In the end, Li Jianqiu gave him a helpless look. "Is your Dao essence really enough for that?"
Only then did Huang Azhan stop with an embarrassed look.
Halfway up the mountain.
A woman's waist is graceful; a man's waist is powerful. Standing Brush Peak's waist... was treacherous.
The mountain path ended there. Ahead there was no road — only jagged rocks and grotesque trees with gnarled branches.
And in those trees and amid the rocks, crouching or lurking, were no fewer than twenty beasts. Wolf-like, serpent-like, bird-like — of every kind, yet all alike in their ghastly, ferocious appearance.
Beasts had no intelligence, so this was of course no ambush. More precisely, it was that Jiang Wang and the others had stumbled into their resting place.
And of course, the beasts exploded into action at once.
Four masses of fresh, tender flesh so close had driven them mad with hunger.
Li Jianqiu gripped his twin flame blades in reverse and charged into the pack. The blades cartwheeled; flesh and blood blurred.
Zhao Rucheng launched his sword and cut toward one side. He did not crash about like Li Jianqiu, but kept the number of beasts he faced at any one time below three. A single sword darted left and right, always finding the vital spots.
Huang Azhan's hand seals flew. Earlier, when he had been stacking buffs on himself, Jiang Wang had noticed how fast he formed them. Now flames came like a string of pearls, surging with a whistling roar.
He had taken a single-target Dao art of the upper grade of Class D and performed it with the effect of an area art.
Naturally, Jiang Wang was not to be outdone. His left hand finished its seal and pulled — a vine coiled around the wolf-like beast in front, promptly taking off its head with a sweep of his sword.
One kick sent the wolf carcass flying into another tiger-like beast.
While using the momentum to fall backward, Jiang Wang leaned back in the air until his body formed a straight line parallel to the ground.
He was himself a longsword, and the sword in his hand was its tip.
The force of the Purple Qi from the East Sword Art trembled through the mundane iron, letting the blade slice through the serpentine beast like a knife cutting paper.
The serpent's body split in two. Jiang Wang, man and sword together, shot through the splashed blood with narrow margins — not a single drop of serpent blood stained him.
An eagle-like beast dove at him. It was about to crash into the serpent blood flying through the air, which corroded it, and it let out a sharp scream of agony.
Jiang Wang turned, and his sword flew from his hand in a keen shot, spearing into the slender neck of the eagle-beast. One stroke, beheaded.
That ordinary blade could no longer bear combat at this level; it burst apart mid-air.
Jiang Wang had long prepared for this. His hand seal had been complete for a while; with a flick of his wrist, he condensed a blade of fire.
Only then did the serpent blood fall to the ground, etching pit after pit into the rock.
Jiang Wang angled his flame blade and charged forward, colliding with the tiger-like beast that had been knocked aside earlier.
The flame blade pierced through its heart. Jiang Wang grabbed the tiger-beast by the neck with his left hand and hurled it aside.
This whole sequence of combat was deft and seamless. Had it not been for the Dao Essence Control Art granting him perfect command of his own Dao essence, he would never have managed it.
And by now, Li Jianqiu had fought two rounds through the pack. Of the near twenty beasts, only two remained alive. Two Wind Centipedes.
They seemed to know no fear; they had no concept of fleeing. Still, from left and right, they dove fiercely.
Li Jianqiu rose into the air. His twin flame blades crossed in the air, and the two Wind Centipedes broke into four pieces, falling with him to the ground.
Zhao Rucheng had already sheathed his sword; he seemed to have felt no pressure.
As for Huang Azhan...
"Senior Brother Li, awesome!"
He could still enthusiastically flatter. He, too, was unharmed.
Jiang Wang casually flicked out his flame blade. He could not compare with Li Jianqiu's abundant Dao essence; he conserved wherever he could.
Now his Star River Dao Spiral generated nine pellets of Dao essence each day on its own. Coupled with his own meridian-charging practice, his Dao essence accumulated quickly. But in this kind of high-intensity battle, he could not sustain it for long.
Li Jianqiu stepped over the beast corpses and advanced.
With the beasts no longer obscuring the view, Jiang Wang noticed a massive boulder ahead, with something carved upon its surface.