Eternal Swordmaster
Chapter 33 Temporary Agreement Part One

Chapter 33: Chapter 33 Temporary Agreement Part One

Nighttime

Lin Xin suddenly opened his eyes while lying on the bed.

He sat up and listened closely to the movements next door. Cheng Ruofei and Jiang Yue’er’s soft breathing sounds were still there, consistent with the rhythm of sleep.

Since he had slept in his clothes, Lin Xin picked up his sword, merely readjusted his garments, and changed into a set of Taoist Robe brought from his bundle, though he put it on inside out.

The inside of the Taoist Robe was a light grayish-black. With a pull of the waistband, the entire robe transformed into a form-fitting garment for nighttime travel, and then he pulled over a piece of cloth he had prepared and tied it around his mouth.

"I’m glad I considered the possibility of needing stealth clothing when I came out. Having prepared in advance saved me some trouble."

Lin Xin silently felt a bit relieved that he had come well-prepared. Carrying his sword, he arranged his bedding in such a way that from a distance, it resembled the form of someone sleeping.

Carrying his sword, he cautiously left the room.

"I’m curious to see what exactly Kong Yuhui is planning."

The small courtyard outside was pitch black, even the moonlight was faint, obscured by thick clouds, leaving the surroundings in darkness, allowing visibility of only about half a meter.

Lin Xin carefully stepped forward.

With the Solar Yang Talisman Sword in his hand, he didn’t feel the slightest bit of fear. Although Cheng Ruofei’s plan was to survive the night, he was unwilling to waste the time idly.

He still intended to make another visit to the area shrouded in red mist, for that kind of mist could ignore the damage Inner Qi inflicted upon the meridians. If he really obtained Yin Blood, wouldn’t its effects be even more terrifying?

After exiting the room and descending a few stone steps, Lin Xin looked ahead and could faintly see the white, rounded archway of the small courtyard.

In that direction, he proceeded with uneven steps toward the other side.

Everything around him was eerily silent, not even the sound of crows could be heard.

Pat... pat... pat...

Lin Xin could only hear the sound of his own footsteps, although very light, they still made a slight echo.

After advancing a few steps and about to reach the stone archway of the courtyard, he suddenly felt something amiss.

The sound of footfalls... seemed to carry a slight overlap.

It was as if... as if there was another set of footsteps in perfect rhythm with his own, following right behind him.

Gripping the Solar Yang Talisman Sword tightly, Lin Xin suddenly stopped walking.

Pat.

The footsteps ceased. Surrounding him was quietness, with no further sound to be heard.

He walked a few more steps forward.

Pat... pat... pat...

His steps came to an abrupt halt.

Pat... pat!

Lin Xin’s expression changed drastically. He hadn’t moved for the last step, yet the sound of someone’s footsteps were clearly coming from behind him!

He didn’t dare turn around, as an inexplicable feeling told him that doing so might lead to a dangerously perilous event.

Struggling to calm his emotions, Lin Xin slowly drew the Solar Yang Talisman Sword and took a few more steps forward.

The sound was no more; that overlapping echo seemed to have disappeared.

He quickly took out the Resentment Talisman that Cheng Ruofei had given to him from his pocket, only to see that it had silently burned halfway through.

The top half of the Talisman Paper had turned to black ash, and with a gentle blow from the night breeze, it scattered without a trace.

"It seems that the talisman has taken effect..."

Lin Xin clutched the hilt of his sword tightly and suddenly spun around.

There was nothing.

Nothing but emptiness behind him.

Whew...

He exhaled a long breath and turned back around.

He strolled through the white rounded archway into another small courtyard, which contained a rockery and a water well. To the left, there was a wooden corridor which led, upon following it forward, to the main courtyard where he had originally stayed.

Rushing through the corridor, this time no further oddities occurred.

The main courtyard was quiet, and the pond in the center had been cleared of algae at some point, now reflecting the cloudy sky that obscured the moon.

Lin Xin slowly removed the black cloth wrapped around the blade and cautiously exited through the main gate.

Outside spanned a grayish-white street on which a cold wind blew mournfully.

Standing at the gate, Lin Xin oriented himself and swiftly made his way toward the direction of the daytime graveyard.

"This time, not only do I intend to absorb the red mist, but I also aim to investigate Kong Yuhui’s true purpose." With this decision in mind, he proceeded, hiding his presence as much as possible.

After about half an hour, he swiftly left the town and arrived at the graveyard he had visited during the day.

The clouds gradually dispersed, and moonlight spilled down, casting everything in a ghastly pale light.

Soon he once again set eyes on the red mist enveloping the Redwood Forest, and there sat Kong Yuhui, cross-legged on the ground, with no one else around, just him by himself.

The red mist was slowly inhaled through his nostrils. From a distance, the mist lent Kong Yuhui a faintly eerie charm.

Lin Xin found a slope and hid behind a tombstone, silently watching over Kong Yuhui. He noticed there was a white jade cup placed in front of Kong Yuhui, which, like him, was continuously absorbing the red mist from the surroundings.

"What is that?" Lin Xin’s heart shuddered, his gaze keenly fixed on the cup.

The cup was the size of a palm, with an exquisitely embroidered pattern of little birds on its surface, and around the edges, there were thin, faint cracks.

"Could that be the thing that congeals Yin Blood?" he speculated in his mind. He simply breathed in the red mist while keeping a vigilant eye on Kong Yuhui from a distance.

The red mist slowly spread throughout his body, quickly turning the skin beneath his neck a deep red, much like dye.

Lin Xin continued to mobilize the circulation of Inner Qi within his body with his thoughts.

More than an hour had passed and he had completed another cycle, feeling a vague sense of hunger in his belly, evidently because all the food had been transformed into Essence Qi and Inner Qi.

"Impressive, I had just cultivated my Inner Qi last night," Lin Xin marveled to himself, continuing to breathe in the red mist and started the second cycle of Inner Qi circulation.

At the same time, he took out a bit of dried meat and stuffed it directly into his mouth to replenish his food.

Time ticked away bit by bit, and Lin Xin was nearly finished with his second cycle when suddenly, Kong Yuhui made a move.

He opened his eyes, reached for the cup, gently shook it, then took a small porcelain bottle from his sleeve, removed the stopper, and gently poured its contents into the cup.

A stream of bright red blood slowly flowed from the porcelain bottle into the cup.

Strangely enough, the cup seemed as if it could not be filled, and even as the palm-sized porcelain bottle was emptied, the cup did not appear to be full.

A hint of a smile appeared on Kong Yuhui’s face as he put away the porcelain bottle and gently shook the cup again.

Sssh!

A thick red mist suddenly surged within the cup, a color so much more intense than the surrounding mist, it resembled a cloud of rising blood vapor.

Kong Yuhui lifted the cup, about to tilt his head back and drink it all in one gulp.

Sssh!

A flash of cold light shot out unexpectedly, striking precisely on his wrist and the cup.

Kong Yuhui’s hand trembled, and the cup rolled away without spilling any liquid.

His complexion turned drastically, and he leapt up to try to retrieve the cup.

Whoosh! A dark shadow swept by from the right, a glinting longsword producing a piercing scream as it thrust toward Kong Yuhui’s neck.

"Seeking death!" Kong Yuhui roared in anger, drawing his sword and meeting the attack with lightning speed. He practiced Swift Sword, which was based on the Pine Forest Swordsmanship, augmented with a secret technique for the wrist to achieve extremely fast sword strikes. His Sword Speed was at least 20% faster than that of other experts at the same level.

At this moment, he struck first despite acting second, thrusting his sword like a serpentine shadow, deflecting the dark figure’s longsword and mercilessly aiming for his opponent’s chest.

The Inner Qi bordering on the Third Layer erupted all at once, giving his sword blade speed and strength a fierce edge. Coupled with the wrist secret technique, Kong Yuhui was confident he could defeat any opponent below the Second Layer within three strikes, and even opponents of the same level would be forced into disarray.

Unexpectedly, the dark figure’s footwork was incredibly fast. With a strange twist of his body, he narrowly dodged the chest thrust, and suddenly from within him burst a cloud of gray powder, shrouding everything within a three-meter radius in an instant.

"Poison Powder? Despicable!" Kong Yuhui’s face turned pale as he swiftly retreated to evade the powder, but he still accidentally inhaled a bit. His head started to feel faint.

The dark figure chuckled a few times coldly and reached out for the cup.

Suddenly, his movements stiffened, and he quickly dodged to the right.

Sssh!

In that instant, a longsword fell where he had just been standing, its blade slicing through the grass and plunging into the ground.

A person in black with a masked face appeared directly to his left, reaching out for the cup.

"Heh heh."

By then, Kong Yuhui had also realized what was happening. His sword burst into a spray of silver light, unfolding like the spread of a peacock’s tail in front of him, dispersing more than a dozen rays of silver light to form a sword barrier pressing toward the two figures.

The sword barrier moved at an astonishing speed and was incredibly sharp.

The two men in black had lost the initiative and could only leap backward to get away. However, the man in the back moved a bit too slowly, almost clipped by the sword barrier. His sleeve was torn, and his arm nearly grazed by the sword barrier’s edge.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, a wave of heat swept around, causing Kong Yuhui’s expression to change as he quickly backed away.

The previous dark figure also paused slightly, secretly pinching something in his hand.

Both were discreetly eyeing the sword in the masked man’s hand, showing a hint of wariness.

The three of them formed a triangle with the cup at the center, none daring to make a hasty move.

"Heh heh heh, Peacock Swordsmanship, I didn’t expect you, Kong Yuhui, to have such a trick up your sleeve. Your actual cultivation isn’t much inferior to that of a Third Layer expert, is it?" the dark figure said in a weird tone that made it hard to tell if they were male or female.

"Isn’t your Green Poison Finger the same? Heh, I thought it was just some poison powder, but it turns out to be the legendary Green Poison Finger," Kong Yuhui sneered.

"And as for you, the one who caused that heat wave, at the Postnatal Stage to be able to generate such a heat flow surely only a few sword techniques exist, it’s unexpected that you’ve managed to cultivate the legendary Flameless Swordsmanship. Had I not deliberately led you both out, it would have been truly hard to draw out the two of you Third Layer experts."

Lin Xin held the Solar Yang Talisman Sword, the recent fight for the cup causing him a cold sweat. With less Inner Qi than the others and a slower reaction speed, had it not been for the slight power of the Talisman Sword he had used at the last minute, he might have been wounded by Kong Yuhui’s sword in that encounter.

Flameless Swordsmanship?

It seemed Kong Yuhui had mistaken his Solar Yang Talisman Sword for another sword technique. But Lin Xin decided to take advantage of the mistake. After all, such a faint use of the Solar Yang Talisman Sword consumed very little of the Talisman Sword’s power. As long as he didn’t activate all the Talisman Formations, one opportunity to use it could be spread out over several uses.

With that thought in mind.

"Kong Yuhui, wanting to monopolize the Yin Blood is not for you to decide alone," Lin Xin said in a pinched voice, deliberately making it sound sharp and shrill.

"So you mean to say you deliberately drew the two of us out?" the dark figure said in a strange voice.

Kong Yuhui’s corner of the mouth curved.

"Exactly. Since I intentionally drew out the two of you, naturally it was not without purpose."

His sword hung downward, and suddenly it started emitting a sound resembling wind chimes.

"Peacock Secret Technique!" the dark figure’s voice trembled slightly, "You’ve actually mastered that, too!?"