Nightfall

Kept Heading North

Thick clouds blocked out the sky and brought darkness. The blue Rognon Sea down the cliff was tranquil and charming. The river by the cliff kept roaring cheerfully.

After a very long while, Ning Que came back to life. His face was extremely pale due to excessive loss of blood. He seemed lost and took a few minutes to recall what had just happened. His chest was badly wounded. He covered it with one hand and tried to stand up, but found it very difficult.

It took him a fairly long while and lots of pain to accomplish such a simple move. His Academy suit was ragged and the blood stains were frozen in the chilling air. He seemed like a ghost coming right out of hell.

Since the battle was over, the big black horse had come out of the woods and stood by his side. Seeing him being weak and miserable, it came to support him with its warm and firm body.

Ning Que stroke on its neck and put on a bitter smile in appreciation. He looked around and saw bodies scattered on the banks as well as in the river. But blood was already washed away by the running water.

The hundreds of powerful cultivators like hungry wolves were all dead now. Many were killed by him. And the others were killed by Long Qing. There was a trace of weird grey on their faces and made them looked even more withered, which was probably a result of their psyches being drained by Long Qing.

Ning Que noticed a few dozens of dead birds lying around the bodies of some divine priests. There was blood and flesh by the birds’ beaks, which suggested that the bodies were highly toxic.

Long Qing was lying dead by his feet. His eyes were wide open as if he was still staring at the grey sky with everlasting grief. Ning Que would never clean after his enemies. But this time he had to crouch down to search for something on Long Qing. He found nothing in his black divine robe, but was surprised to see some golden lights vaguely shone in Long Qing’s wounds. He frowned and wondered what those could be.

He picked up an iron arrow from the ground, pierced into Long Qing’s body to pull out the golden lights, and found those to be extremely fine golden threads. And there were many.

Ning Que knew another lunatic in the cultivation world who had done similar things to herself. Ye Hongyu used to plant many golden threads into her body in order to fight against his Practice of Taotie. He never expected that Long Qing would do the same.

The poison in those cultivators’ bodies, as well as the golden threads in Long Qing’s body were obviously traps for Ning Que. In the feast of fighting previously, Long Qing absorbed the psyches of his soldiers by using Grey Eyes. If Ning Que had applied the Practice of Taotie, he would have been trapped by Long Qing and the result would probably be completely different.

Ning Que looked at Long Qing’s eyes and found them even brighter than when he was alive. He was stunned. There were many key factors in the battle today. It was the most unexpected for his enemies that he never applied the Practice of Taotie.

He discussed this with the Headmaster many years ago. Although they had a world of different opinions regarding gourmet, they did agree that human meat tasted worst.

They had such a conversation because both of them had done such crazy things. But of course when it came to a life or death choice, like when he carried Sangsang on exile for hundreds of miles years ago, he would definitely eat whatever he could find, not to mention applying the Practice of Taotie.

He did not use it today because he thought Long Qing had other plans, the most powerful one. It was also why he was searching on Long Qing. But he found nothing.

Long Qing had kept the Arcane Tome of the Sand. In the capital of Song he used this Arcane Tome to defeat the Fourth Brother’s River and Mountain Sandbox. There should be some parts of the Arcane Tome left. But where was it now?