But now the dead were dead and the disabled were disabled. They didn’t have any ability left to face Feng Zhang and both were afraid he’d ruthlessly turn on them.
Little An didn’t flee. The bones all over his body showed faint traces of cracks as he knelt on the ground and watched the sea of fire, two trails of bloody tears flowing down from his eyes sockets. He opened his mouth. No sound came from it, but everyone could feel he was crying.
Feng Zhang turned around, his face full of a gloomy smile. “In the end, I still need to act personally!”
His smile suddenly froze. A fearsome feeling came from behind his back, like a terrifying ominous beast awakening within the blaze.
A wild scream soared to the heavens.
That wasn’t a sound that a human could make. Feng Zhang turned his head back. He saw a black shadow stand up from within the fire and shake off the flames off his body. It was a full ten feet tall with a pair of pointy horns that pierced the dome of the sky.
Two dots of red light suddenly lit up!
Li Qingshan had been lying inside the flames, not moving an iota. Just as he expected from the beginning, his [Tiger Demon Bone Refining Fist] finally broke through to the first layer in this crisis of life and death!
No mighty strength gushed forth like in his imagination. He felt his body undergo an extremely strange change. Everything was being torn, altered, and remodeled. The flames gradually became not so scorching hot and difficult to endure. He still didn’t dare to open his eyes.
The words the green bull once said echoed once more in his ears: “You can only be said to have genuinely learned this supernatural skill after you cultivate both sets of fist arts to the realm of the first layer.”
His eyes were tightly closed, but seemed as if he could feel that small skeleton charge his way through the heavy blaze, hear the cries of his heart.
Little An!
A feeling he couldn’t put into words rose from inside his heart, turning into a wild scream to the sky.
Li Qingshan stood up inside the flames. His eyes suddenly opened. The burning red light wasn’t hiding in the depths of his eyes anymore but thoroughly exposed itself. He lifted a step forward, and an iron hoof stamped the mountain god’s head to pieces.
The flames seemed like a lotus flower blooming to the four sides under the pressure of an invisible momentum. He walked step by step out of the sea of fire.
Everyone still left alive on the mountain peak held their breaths and widened their eyes.
A huge stature majestic as an iron tower. Pitch-black skin that seemed cast from black iron. Secretive bestial patterns extending from the head all the way to the four limbs. Two feet turned into hooves, two hands transformed into sharp claws.
A pair of bull horns so incisive it seemed they were about to pierce through the sky. Fire-red hair, or one might say mane, wildly draped loose behind as it danced blindly along with the light of the fire.
The monster aura soared to the heavens. The legend begins here.
Feng Zhang stretched his hand inside his bosom. A wild wind flitted past his body, the red hair even gliding across his face. His body stiffened, his jaws clacked together, and his body trembled.
There wasn’t any more idea about resistance his mind whatsoever. There was only one thought left: “Run!” A monstrous demon, even a low level monstrous beast, wasn’t something someone like him at the realm of qi refining second layer could withstand. Apart from the wind-stitching blade distributed by the Eagle Wolf Guard, there wasn’t any decent spiritual weapon on him that would allow him to battle an evil monster.
Li Qingshan’s goal wasn’t Feng Zhang. Lu Tingrui turned around without the slightest hesitation and ran away when she saw Li Qingshan walk out of the sea of fire. The effect of the talisman was still there and her speed was indeed extremely fast.
She soared in the air. Giant claws grabbed her head from behind. Li Qingshan said, “Tell me, who’s a monster!” The voice was hoarse and deep like the vibrating grind of metal, filled with a grim desire for murder.
The fierce teeth were eerie white, and the red light inside the eyes flickered without shape or form!
Lu Tingrui opened her mouth but only made involuntary gurgling sounds. She amounted to a first-grade master who could run rampant for a while inside the martial world, but when had she ever seen a genuine monstrous demon. She felt like a mouse who’d fallen in the palms of a cat, having met its natural enemy. A boundless terror weight down heavily on her. This sensation was more terrible than death.
Clink clink clang clang! Countless hidden weapons hit Li Qingshan’s body, arousing a cloud of sparks. Li Qingshan turned his head around and said, “Get lost!”
The sound waves fused with the monster aura and struck like a heavy hammer. Chu Xin flew out seventy or eighty feet, his head crooked. He was dead enough that he couldn’t die again.
A second-grade master lying on the ground suddenly leaped up high and pasted a talisman on his sword, attaching a layer of astral aura on the sword. It turned out he’d been playing dead all along, and now wanted to use the present opportunity to sneak on Li Qingshan from the back.
Li Qingshan was about to turn his head around when a tiger tail lashed out through the air like a steel whip, almost whipping the second-grade master into two halves across the middle. Li Qingshan looked back and watched his own tail with amazement, suddenly realizing his body had a new function. His body’s reflexes had come before even his consciousness.
Li Qingshan casually squeezed. The head shattered like a watermelon. The next moment, his figure disappeared from where he stood.
One by one, he appeared beside those second or third-grade disciples still remaining and started a great slaughter. There wasn’t anyone alive left on the mountain peak after a few breaths. The only one left was Feng Zhang as he crazily escaped down the mountain.
Li Qingshan slightly bent his knees. The ground fissured with a loud rumble as his person was already soaring in the air.
Feng Zhang was in the middle of running for his life when a black shadow dropped from the sky and stepped on his body with the momentum of a hundred thousand pounds.
Feng Zhang’s cultivation could also be said to be extraordinary, but he unexpectedly couldn’t muster the slightest ability to resist in front of Li Qingshan’s absolute speed and strength. Fresh blood sprayed wildly from his mouth: “Monster, you’re a monster!” His two hands gripped the ground. He couldn’t match Li Qingshan’s present strength, but even if Li Qingshan were to loosen his foot, his viscera and spine had already been stamped to pieces. He was only surviving thanks to his innate true qi.
Li Qingshan stooped down and said in a deep tone, “I am going to tear off your limbs one by one.” The red light in his eyes was as blood. One who had human hatred and wrath like him was ten times more cruel and brutal than ordinary monsters and demons.
Little An pulled Li Qingshan’s hand. Li Qingshan impetuously slapped a casual palm his way: “Get lost!”
A spark appeared in his mind when he saw Little An. Li Qingshan abruptly stopped his hand. Little An almost fell down from the blow of the wild wind he’d set off. He watched Li Qingshan with alarm, not sure what to do.
“Little An, sorry, I…” Li Qingshan clutched his head. The red light went out from between the seams of his fingers.
Little An approached once more and grabbed Li Qingshan’s hand, or one might say claws.
Li Qingshan forcibly resisted all kinds of savage thoughts and killed Feng Zhang in one stamp, giving him a quick death. He watched his own hands turned into beast claws, all kinds of hysterical thoughts pushing and shoving inside his mind. He knelt on the ground and issued a wild howl to the sky.
The curtain of the sky was pitch dark. Thick black clouds hid the stars and covered the moon.
Above the clouds’ curtain however was a sea of clouds drifting up and down under the splendor of the stars and the light of the moon, boundless and endless. It was tranquil like the realm of immortals.
A white figure stood eminent and alone above the sea of clouds like an immortal removed from earthly dirt, the jade on her clothes fluttering around. Gu Yanying’s head was lowered when her black eyes suddenly shrank, glowing with golden light, sharp like an eagle’s as they pierced the clouds’ veil to land upon Li Qingshan.
Her feeling hadn’t been wrong. The breath she’d smelled on Li Qingshan’s body when she’d seen him under the Huangshan pine wasn’t from his lack of washing, but was a genuine monster breath. It was only because it had been too faint that she hadn’t dared be certain, so she’d let Li Qingshan drink a cup of Bodhi brew to make him lose control of his true qi in an instant and make it increase greatly. Only then did she make certain of her own judgment.
Not only the monster breath appeared more distinctive, he also didn’t break through to the second layer of qi refining, because the physique of monsters were different from humans and things were different for them.