With the explosion of the iron arrows, the black peach blossoms in the rain were split into pieces as they fell to the ground. The metal sheets on the small iron cylinders whistled fiercely as they rushed toward Long Qing.
In the midst of the autumn rain, Long Qing uttered an angry cry and forced all his cultivation power out of his body. The rich Qi of Heaven and Earth was called to create countless transparent shields before him.
The intangible shields were not made of metal, and Long Qing was not a master of Martial Arts; so even though the metal sheets power had been greatly weakened by the shields, they piercingly cut Long Qing's robe like blades. Blood spilled out of the numerous tiny wounds on his body.
Even more terrifying were the flames and blast of heat generated in the explosion, which reflected brightly on the raindrops in front of Red Lotus Temple. After a moment the raindrops quickly evaporated into a white fog with a squeaky sound.
At the very beginning of the explosion, Long Qing had changed the direction of his ghostlike movement. As he touched the wet ground with his toes, he swiftly moved backward from the temple gate into the deserted main hall and slammed onto the clay statue of arhat with the help of the aura in the air and the force from the blast.
The statue broke into several pieces in a mist of dust. He spat up a mouthful of blood and his eyes were full of complicated emotions because he could not understand a lot of the things that happened today.
The revelation and Yama that Long Qing had talked with Ning Que were actually for the purpose of winning time. Even though the black raindrops fell on Ning Que's body, he appeared normal without any sign of poisoning after a long time.
It was hard to imagine that the Second floor of the Academy had invented such powerful Primordial Thirteen Arrows to help Ning Que challenge a cultivator of Knowing Destiny State. Furthermore, they incredibly improved the weapon by adding the explosive thing on the arrow!
Long Qing leaned against the broken statue and struggled to stand up. He viciously looked at the looming black carriage outside the temple and uttered an extremely shrill cry.
However, his cry suddenly stopped.
The second iron arrow had come.
And there was another explosion.
And then the third and fourth arrows arrived.
Constant explosions destroyed the walls and beams of the temple. The statue had become dust and powder. The fire ignited dirty yellow curtains and dumped wooden beams in the temple. Flames rose suddenly towards the sky.
The entire Red Lotus Temple stood in the fire whose flames lit up the somewhat dark world in the autumn rain.
A beast-like roar suddenly rose from the burning temple. It was a roar full of anger, violence, ressentiment and killing. Whoever heard it would hurriedly cover their ears.
Flames sputtered and were extinguished by the autumn rain.
Long Qing came out, his body was dark everywhere, and he looked extremely wretched. The blood with the smell of stench flowing out of his wounds evaporated due to the hot air.
The silver mask on his face had disappeared, revealing his half-covered face.
The covered half of his face was swollen and ulcerated like a red peach.
They were not old wounds, but new.
At a most dangerous moment, an overbearing aura had burst out of Long Qing's natal black peach blossom and isolated the flames from his body. The aura could not isolate the heat and temperature though.
Silver was after all, one of the metals with the highest thermal conductivity.
So half of his face under the silver mask was very severely burned.
It was not the worst injury on his body right now.
But it was the most terrifying one.
Several years ago, when he was hit by Ning Que's arrow at the snow cliff of the Wilderness; he had lived like a walking dead who begged for food and acted in trashy soap operas, having gone through all kinds of tortures and malice in the world. But he was atleast still a good-looking man with a few scars that did not harm his beauty, but make him more charming.
Now he had finally regained power but he hadn't expected such a heavy blow just when he returned to the cultivation world. He had been disfigured.
It was an idea of the disciples at the back of the mountain of the Academy to add the explosive device to Primordial Thirteen Arrows. The new weapon had just been completed by Sixth Brother so Ning Que did not take many arrows at this time.
He initially decided to use the five arrows at the most appropriate time. In the beginning, he thought that he could at least seriously injure Long Qing by means of his seven iron arrows. However, there was now only one arrow left on the string and Long Qing was still alive.
Ning Que was more disappointed to find out that the disfigured Long Qing was not getting mad at all. Instead, when he walked out of the burning Red Lotus Temple, the calmness in his eyes remained the same as if he did not care about the horrible wounds on his face.
The man had proved that he was by no means a normal cultivator of Knowing Destiny State. In fact, he could be compared with Xia Hou after being wounded by Tang, and from the perspective of the mind, he was terrifyingly stronger!
Looking at Long Qing standing in the rain with blue smoke around his body and a cold face, Ning Que squeezed out a bitter smile. He wondered if Long Qing really was the Son of Yama.
He indistinctly saw the shadow of Yama, though he was not sure if he saw it on Long Qing's body. He was very sure though, that the shadow had come down on the burning temple.
It represented death.
It also represented despair.
Even then, Ning Que would never fall into despair until he was convinced that he was about to die.
He looked at Long Qing and said, "You have had a tragic life and you look quite pathetic right now, but that matters little now. You are destined to lose and will lose in the future. If today you are lucky enough to survive, you will still be defeated by me sooner or later, because Haotian has decided everything. The more tragic your life is, the more ridiculous it will be in the tales of cultivation world."
"You always like to talk nonsense when you are unsure or unprepared."
Long Qing seemed very calm and he said in a calm voice, "But as you just said, tragic story and plots do not matter right now. Today I will kill you."
With the constant autumn rain, Jing Fu faded and eventually vanished.
The fallen knights outside had waited for a long time. Once Jing Fu vanished, they spontaneously walked toward the carriage without any order. Some of them rode uninjured horses, some walked in silence.
They were once the mighty cavalries of West-Hill Divine Palace, those squires had even reached Seethrough Realm after taking Earth Pills.
The five cavalry commanders had reached the Peak of Seethrough Realm which meant each of them could fight with Ning Que for a few rounds. As for the most powerful Commander Zimo, who had reached the top of Seethrough State, he was so close to Knowing Destiny State just as Ning Que.
Such a group of powerhouses was enough to mop up those insignificant small countries. In fact, they had destroyed many Taoist Altars of Martial Art Sect and Tianshidao's headquarter altar at Mountain DargonTiger.
On the other side of the black carriage, in front of the burning Red Lotus Temple, Long Qing again called out his natal black peach blossom, with a petal that was almost withered and would seem to fall at any time.
In fact though, what he called was not peach blossom, but the sword in it.
It was an all black intangible Taoist Sword slowing rising from the black peach blossom.
Ning Que suddenly shook his head.
He turned back and ignored the Prince Long Qing behind him.
Instead, he aimed at those fallen knights with his iron arrow.
When a cultivator reached a higher state, he would become more sensitive to danger.
Zi Mo was the most powerful man among fallen knights, so he was the first to sense danger when Ning Que's arrow aimed at him. Without any hesitation, he jumped into the water-logged bushes.
He used to be a commander of West-Hill Divine Palace and a professional soldier. He knew clearly that if he wanted to survive on the battlefield, grace did not matter at all.
But he was not who Ning Que was aiming at.
Ning Que knew that one arrow might not be able to kill the mighty top Seethrough cultivator.
His last arrow was aimed at another commander on the horse.
There was a loud boom.
Without any chance to escape, the commander at the Peak of Seethrough Realm was shot. His upper body was smashed into pieces which then fell to the ground with blood and flesh like rain.
Some of the body parts fell in the water-logged grass with blood splashing. Some fell beside those fallen knights or even touched their faces.
Although they had witnessed their companion's death, the fallen knights remained expressionless.
They just intently stared at the black horse carriage in silence.
Ning Que looked at them and realized that the cultivators in black clothes were really masters of killing who deserved respect and even awe.
On the battlefield, the best way to show your respect for an opponent was to kill him. Ning Que rarely showed his respect but when he did, it indicated the beginning of the most bloody and complete battle.
Like every battle in the past years.
Sangsang habitually held the big black umbrella and was going to stand beside Ning Que. However, the chilly aura inside her body suddenly got weird. She coughed with pain.
Ning Que pushed her back onto the soft couch in the carriage, jumped to the top of the carriage and closed the skylight with his feet. Then looking at the fallen knights not far away from them, he gently swung his sword.
His first attack arrived at the shaft, cutting off the reins tied to the Big Black Horse.
Ning Que knew clearly that the horse would not snap the reins on its own although it could. The horse appeared to be shameless, but on the contrary, it was very faithful. If Ning Que did not cut off the reins, it probably would stay with them and be killed in the end.
So Ning Que cut off the reins and set it free, which also meant he did not expect to leave the place alive.
A flying sword shrilly split the air and appeared in front of Ning Que.
Ning Que turned his wrist and fought back with podao.
The attack seemed random, but was extremely precise in fact.
The heavy and solid blade directly threw the flying sword away. It was like a scavenger who found something useless and discarded it into the sewer.