Eternal Life by Dual Cultivation-Chapter 197 - 156: Flow Shadow Ice Cicada: Fellow Daoist Ling, Please Wait

"...ROOOAR!"

Suddenly, a series of roars like muffled thunder erupted from the water, and the surface began to churn violently.

Soon, a jarring patch of crimson spread through the river, as if a vat of dye had been overturned.

A moment later, a Dragon Race girl with an arrogant gaze walked slowly out of the water. She was clad in soft armor as black as ink, and in her hand, she carried a long, slender straight blade that pulsed with a red glow.

In her other hand, she dragged a serrated tail belonging to a pale gray water beast several dozen feet long. It was as dead as could be.

The water beast's bloated body bore several shocking wounds. The most severe one had snapped its spine in two.

The Dragon Race girl walked onto the riverbank step by step, set down her prize, and began to butcher it.

The storage pouch on her person had limited space; she couldn't possibly pack up the entire enormous creature. She could only cut off the most valuable parts.

"It's that Long Nu..."

Faint gasps of surprise sounded as a group of male and female cultivators swarmed over on their flying swords from several hundred yards away.

Judging by the patterns on the jade pendants at their waists, they seemed to be a team from the Cui Family, fifteen people in total.

The Dragon Race girl raised her head, glanced at them coldly, and continued with her work.

The male cultivator leading the Cui Family group hesitated. He recognized the young woman as the one who had been standing at the very front of the Dragon Race contingent before they entered Dragon Soul Valley.

Clearly, this was not someone an ordinary cultivator could afford to provoke.

However, with their absolute numerical superiority, the situation seemed entirely different.

The Cui Family male cultivator plastered an enthusiastic smile on his face and said gently,

"Miss, I am Cui Yuanzhen, a descendant of the Cui Family's main branch. The inner core of this Mastiff Flood Dragon Beast... is very important to me. I wonder if you would be willing to part with it?"

His plan was to convince her to give up the inner core of the Third Rank Water Beast, and then he would just offer her some Spirit Stones as compensation.

'No matter how strong she is, she's still just a Foundation Establishment Cultivator. There's no way she can fight all fifteen of us at once, right?'

The Dragon Race girl's red lips parted, and she spat out a single, ice-cold word:

"Scram!"

"..."

The smile on Cui Yuanzhen's face froze.

He never expected this Dragon Race girl to show him no face whatsoever.

"Fellow Daoist, don't push your luck!"

Cui Yuanzhen's voice turned cold. "There are fifteen of us here, and more of our family's brothers and sisters are on their way. Are you sure you want to make an enemy of us?"

The Dragon Race girl tightened her grip on the long, slender straight blade pulsing with red light and slowly stood up.

"You want to die? I'll grant your wish!"

Before her voice had even faded, Cui Yuanzhen's vision was filled with a blinding torrent of Sword Qi.

"No—"

Cui Yuanzhen was terrified. A suffocating sense of crisis instantly enveloped everyone present.

In his haste, the two protective Spiritual Artifacts that activated automatically on his body only held for less than a breath before being shredded by the relentless Sword Qi.

Then, his vision went black, and his Divine Soul plunged into eternal darkness.

In less than ten breaths of time, the Dragon Race girl had already sheathed her blade and lowered her head to continue with her task.

On the ground lay fifteen new corpses, their eyes wide open in death, blood pooling everywhere.

Perhaps they had never understood just how vast the gap in power could be between a mediocrity and a genius of the same Cultivation Realm.

A short while later, the Dragon Race girl finally finished butchering the water beast, then stood up and began to loot the belongings of the dead Cui Family cultivators.

After making her rounds, she had acquired over twenty storage pouches and storage bracelets, as well as flying swords, crowns, boots, and magical robes.

Now that she had enough storage magical artifacts, she pondered for a moment and finally decided to take the entire water beast with her.

By the time another wave of Cui Family cultivators arrived, all that remained at the scene were pools of blood that had yet to dry and corpses that had been stripped clean.

"...Bastard! Who dares to harm the disciples of my Cui Family? Who did this?!"

The young man in the lead roared in fury.

The rest of the men and women also wore expressions of righteous indignation. The Cui Family was one of the Nine Great Families of Yuzhou, and its disciples had always been arrogant and looked down on others.

A female cultivator knelt, examined the scene carefully, and said with certainty,

"Brother Ming Feng, the attacker was likely a single person, and they can't have gone far!"

"One person? Are you sure?"

Cui Mingfeng's expression changed slightly, as if he couldn't quite believe it.

If what his clan sister said was true, then the opponent was most likely one of the handful of Immortal Seeds from the Nine Great Families.

'If that's the case, wouldn't sending the twenty or so people with me be like serving up food on a platter?'

"...Forget it. We'll go find Brother Yuan Song. This is beyond our ability to handle!"

After a brief moment of deliberation, Cui Mingfeng chose to back down.

Although his talent and strength weren't anything special, he at least knew his own limits.

...

After leaving Jingyue Lake, Ling Changqing flew at a low altitude on his flying sword, his speed not particularly fast.

Over two hours later, the distant glint of blades and swords, along with the commotion of Spiritual Artifacts clashing with various Divine Techniques and Magic, caught Ling Changqing's attention.

It was at the edge of a primeval forest with ancient, towering trees. Dozens of female cultivators were launching an all-out assault on a strange, massive tree wreathed in black mist.

These female cultivators were all dressed in matching sapphire-blue magical robes. Every one of them was as beautiful as a flower, and they formed a sword array, their coordinated attacks striking in perfect harmony.

The tree was over three hundred feet tall, its dense canopy like a giant umbrella. Its countless branches and leaves writhed and lashed out like venomous snakes, constantly emitting low, bizarre hisses.