Chapter 1393: Double-Edged Sword

Qin Sang stood in the empty air, his body wreathed in devilish flames. His indifferent gaze swept coldly over Bifang, Master Feng, and the white-robed man.

Bifang was held in check, while Master Feng and the frog-fish vied to be first. This was a situation Qin Sang had engineered on purpose, solely to buy time, setting these people against one another so that all their attention stayed fixed here.

Master Feng closed on the white-robed man at tremendous speed, unable to wait a moment longer before striking.

The silken threads reappeared along his left arm, but this time they were not a single strand. The ball of threads transformed of its own accord into a square painted scroll.

Within the scroll there was only the image of a tornado and nothing else, the background a faint blue, whether sky or seawater none could tell.

The scroll seemed ethereal. The tornado actually began to turn within it, faster and faster, until at last only a blurred pillar of wind could be seen.

The void around the scroll started to warp, as if affected by the image inside, though nowhere else showed any disturbance.

Seeing this, the frog-fish blanched and cursed inwardly.

In the midst of the frog-fish's frantic alarm, Master Feng, his eyes fixed on the white-robed man's retreating back, spat out a single cold word. "Break!"

The tornado burst abruptly out of the picture. The wind pillar looked slender, yet its howl was deafening, shaking heaven and earth. In an instant the tornado swelled dozens of zhang, swept over a stone mountain, and erased its peak outright, leaving behind a bare, flattened platform.

A streak of azure light broke free of the tornado and shot forth, trailing azure shadow after azure shadow through the void. Only as it bore down on the white-robed man could its true form be seen: a cone of wind.

It looked like a simple attack, yet the white-robed man had no way to dodge it! In his moment of peril, he could only fall back on his old trick. The ice shield surfaced at his back, but this time it was different, seemingly the true body of the astra, forming a pale blue curtain of light.

No sooner had the ice shield taken shape than the wind cone arrived, tearing through the air. After a piercing screech of friction, the outer curtain of light was pierced through with ease.

Boom!

The wind cone slammed into the shield's true body, and it shuddered without end. The two forces gave no quarter to each other. A cracking sound rang out, and two ghastly cracks split open from the point where the wind cone's tip pressed in. A great chunk of the ice shield astra broke away!

With a poof, the wind cone's residual force pierced the white-robed man's chest, opening a bloody hole. He spat blood on the spot and pitched headlong toward the ground. Yet his will to survive was extraordinarily stubborn. His ruined body wobbled back into the air and, mustering the last of his strength, fled on.

Master Feng seemed to sense something and knit his brows. But before he could think it through, the frog-fish, unable to restrain himself any longer, struck at Master Feng.

The white-robed man was gravely wounded and spent, a crossbow bolt at the end of its flight, with no more waves left to make. What the frog-fish meant to do was keep the white-robed man from falling into Master Feng's hands.

A dark-green radiance veiled Master Feng's sight, and the whole stretch of void congealed.

Master Feng snorted coldly and touched the scroll. A new tornado appeared within it. This time it did not manifest a wind cone but, like a gale sweeping away the last of the clouds, scattered the green light into pieces, while his own figure merged into the wind pillar and shot forward at extreme speed.

Knowing Master Feng was no easy opponent, the frog-fish secretly gnashed his fangs at the sight, and a strange gurgling rose from his throat as he spat out a green pill, like a demonic core, or perhaps some kind of treasure.

The moment the pill appeared, the green light finally steadied itself, and grew thicker and thicker. Man and demon each unleashed their supernatural abilities, locked together, yet still closing rapidly on the white-robed man.

As for Qin Sang himself, he appeared to be driving the devilish flames at Bifang with all his might, but it was mostly a bluff. The greater part of his attention was bent on sensing the Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet and the Sky-Eyed Butterfly far away.

***

Beyond the desolate island, while the powerful figures gave chase to the white-robed man, the Rainbow Rat fled for all he was worth and at last caught sight of the storm belt, vast as a curtain across the sky. He plunged straight in.

The Rainbow Rat let out a long breath, his eyes darting about. Once inside the chaos of the storm belt, all traces of him would be wiped clean, and even if those people gave chase, they could never find him again.

A look of struggle surfaced once more in the Rainbow Rat's eyes, the ripples fiercer than before.

"No need to rush! In a little while, I'll treat you well, and repay you for hunting me across ten thousand li," the Rainbow Rat murmured to himself, his tone bitterly cold.

The Rainbow Rat had in fact been possessed by the white-robed man!

With so many experts drawn to the island, the white-robed man had known there was no chance of escape by his own strength alone, and had already fallen into despair, when by chance he discovered that the Rainbow Rat had, for some reason, slipped into a weakened state. A plan took shape in his mind, and he saw hope.

Following his earlier scheme, he used the ice box and the array to draw everyone's attention while he resolutely abandoned his own body, his primordial spirit tracing the connection of the mark to find the Rainbow Rat's true body with precision.

Tracking secret techniques of this kind had always been double-edged swords. Especially when the one who cast the curse fell into a weakened state, it could well turn into a death warrant.

Long ago, Old Devil Mou, separated from Qin Sang by an even greater gulf in realm, had used a similar curse to hunt Qin Sang, only in the end to have his remnant soul locked down by Qin Sang with the aid of the Fire Curse Seed and destroyed in a single stroke.

The Rainbow Rat's main body had not yet finished his transformation and was precisely in a weakened state, so it was only natural that the white-robed man had slipped in through the opening.

The Rainbow Rat had never dreamed the white-robed man still had the power to strike back.

Forcibly possessing the Rainbow Rat, the white-robed man suppressed the Rainbow Rat's consciousness for the moment and seized control, secretly sending voice transmissions to Bifang and the other demons, misleading them and luring them toward his own discarded body.

Bifang suspected nothing and was duly taken in, while the white-robed man, working the Rainbow Rat's body, made his clean escape.

Had it not been for that wild variable, the Sky-Eyed Butterfly, the white-robed man would already have succeeded. He had only to reach safety, and then he could deal with the Rainbow Rat at his leisure, accomplishing both his revenge and his escape at once.

"Who's there?!" the white-robed man shouted.

Possessing the Rainbow Rat's body, the white-robed man wore a strange smile on the creature's pointed muzzle, a smile that suddenly froze on his face as he whirled around. Behind him, of all things, had appeared a mysterious black-robed figure.

The white-robed man felt as though he had been plunged into an ice cellar. The black-robed figure had been trailing him for who knew how long, and he had sensed nothing at all.

The plan he had believed flawless had long since been seen through. He noticed that this one was not among the Spiritual Infant cultivators who had appeared on the barren mountain. Could there be a third party as well, circling beyond the island and lying in wait?

No, that's not it! The white-robed man forced himself calm and at last caught the telling detail. It isn't an immortal cultivator. It's a puppet!

The thought had barely flashed by when the white-robed man felt a fierce wind bearing down and dodged in haste.

This place was nearly at the limit of Qin Sang's perception, and he could only issue the most direct command through the soul imprint. Having so recently been hunted himself, he had no courtesy to spare for the demon race of the North Sea.

The Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet wasted no words and struck at once.

The white-robed man was horrified and dodged in a panic. But possessing the Rainbow Rat, with his attention still divided to suppress the Rainbow Rat's consciousness, he had little strength left, and was in no way a match for the Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet. He was instantly beset by danger on every side.

Poof! A great hand tore through the air. Just as the body was about to be split open, a white shadow flashed out from the Rainbow Rat, seemingly not a Spiritual Infant but an illusory spiritual body.

Crack! A bolt of lightning came without warning. Seeing the spiritual body about to flee, the Sky-Eyed Butterfly struck in time. The spiritual body was terrified and hastily shrank back into the Rainbow Rat's body.

"Tribulation lightning!" the white-robed man, utterly aghast, blurted the words out, and regretted it on the spot!

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