Cult of the Sacred Runes

Chapter 170 – Spirit Flame

Lu Feng turned into a phantom; he rushed towards the Du’s two hundred strong men, whizzed through them, and left trails of countless rune sequences in the air.

“Mountain Grasp!” Lu Feng struck without warning. He summoned huge boulders in the shape of a fist, which fell from the sky right onto the Du’s. Some of them were still relaxing and sitting down; and even though, they noticed the sudden attack, they were too slow and exhausted to react.

“Rumble! Rumble! Rumble!”

The giant boulders fell on the two hundred warriors. A quarter of them were immediately crushed by the stance. Lu Feng was a peak four-star condensed prime Warrior, and he used all of his strength by trying to eliminate the Du’s all at once. Most of them were lucky enough to escape the first wave of such a powerful and unpredictable attack.

“Lu Feng, are you out of your mind?!” Lu Ren widened his eyes in disbelief. “I don’t like those dogs either, but they are our family’s dogs!”

Over half of the Du’s died within seconds of the impact. “What have you done?!” Lu Ren was too slow to react. He could not defend the Du’s. Furiously he casted his cold eyes onto Lu Feng. Grunting, he quickly drew runes around himself and turned into a lightning bolt, leaving zig-zags in the dark sky.

Lu Feng’s attack was too unpredictable. Even Lu Ren was unable to read the stance in time not to mention the slower and less powerful Du’s.

“Stop right now or I will break your limbs!” Lu Ren rushed towards Lu Feng, but his path was suddenly blocked by another figure.

“Ye Wei?!” Lu Ren’s lips twitched. His eyes opened wide in awe and confusion. ‘Why are you defending Lu Feng!?’

“Just when I thought you were loyal to us, Lu Feng! Thanks for the demonstration of your betrayal!” Lu Ren roared furiously as he figured out Lu Feng was hiding something with the aid of Ye Wei, “I will torture you until you tell me what is happening!”

His rage passed through his body as he looked down at the smashed corpses of the Du’s; a great surge of powerful Qi burst from his hands and turned into an energy tornado.

The Qi storm swept the ground, the earth cracked in a spider web pattern, and shook the whole valley violently.

‘Lu Ren is much stronger than Lu Zhong!’ Lu Feng’s face suddenly changed as he felt the Lu Ren’s strike grow stronger; he looked worriedly towards Ye Wei, wondering, ‘will this kid be able to defeat him?’

‘Oh well, now there was no turning back. We have to kill all of them. No one can escape; it’s us or them, all or nothing!’

“Take care of the remaining Du’s! I will handle this!” Ye Wei looked quickly towards Lu Feng. His words gave the exiled great assurance.

The runes on Ye Wei’s bones glowed bright, another monstrous burst of Qi swept the valley.

‘What was that? Just a few weeks ago he showed the strength of a nine-star condensed prime Warrior. How did he break through?! I don’t understand. How can this be?’ Lu Feng’s jaws dropped as his body shivered in the dense force-wave emitted by Ye Wei.

‘This kid is just unpredictable in every way!’ Lu Feng was scared of his ally, but he knew there was no time to spare. He produced nine energy globes with another stance.

The balls of Qi turned into nine shadows and surrounded the escaping flocks of Du’s men, quickly killing them off one by one.

“No, you are not running away! Not under my watch!”

Lu Feng was effectively cleaning up the dispersed flock, eliminating the defenseless and panicking Du’s. Meanwhile, Ye Wei was standing against Lu Ren on his own.

‘I need to be quick!’ Ye Wei waved his hands, ten blades of Peerless Qi words burst out from the tip of his fingers. ‘There are more squads around North Hill Bay if they hear or sense anything we won’t survive.’

The Peerless Sword Qi blades was a powerful technique on its own, now, that Ye Wei had the strength of a ten-star condensed prime Warrior. The edge of these blades could easily penetrate the Qi armor of Lu Ren even that they were both at the same cultivation level.

Lu Ren’s eyes flashed with terror. He never expected such power to come from a sixteen year old.

“Buzz!”

The blades were approaching Lu Ren. Nevertheless, he did not underestimate his opponent. ‘I have to treat him as someone one of my own level or I might die.’ His hands started dancing in circles, strands of complex, curved rune sequences appeared and in just a second a shadowy object emerged from the nether.

“Boom!”

In just a blink of an eye, a huge eight cornered prism was created from his Qi. The sharp edges and mirrored sides were reflecting the moonlight, emitting an immense wave of Qi.

The dark prism encaged Lu Ren’s body, all ten of Ye Wei’s Qi Swords were sucked towards the mirrors on prism sides.

The Qi Swords struck onto the smooth mirror but the prism didn’t shatter, instead the swords were stuck onto shining surface. The mirror trapped them like quicksand, nullifying Ye Wei’s attack.

Lu Ren slowly exhaled and hid behind the large spectral prism. He felt relieved that he was able to defend himself. ‘This kid is very strong!’ He thought as he recuperated from the stress brought by the Peerless Sword Qi.

‘Lu Ren is afterall a ten-star condensed prime Warrior. I shouldn’t expect to kill him right away. At least I pressured him enough, so he already spent a lot of Qi!’ Ye Wei told himself as he finished drawing the runes for his next strike.

Ye Wei had another card up his sleeve, the peak high-level Myst stance. He had been practising it for the past three years and even though it still wasn’t perfected, he needed it to be able to kill Lu Ren.

Ye Wei needed time to prepare for his ace, therefore he used the Peerless Qi Swords to keep Lu Ren busy, as he did not want the ten-star Warrior to use a flare scroll while he drew the runes for Selenic Triple-Primal Sword.

If Lu Ren used his scroll, everything would be over. Ye Wei, Lu Feng and even the entire Ye family would not survive the Lu’s family wrath.

“Rumble!”

Ye Wei injected his Qi into the sequence. The runes turned into a constellation-shaped network, flew high up in the sky, and lit up the whole valley. It then transformed into a three feet long sharp-edged sword.

“Die!” Ye Wei pointed his finger towards his opponent and yelled. His cold voice sent chills over Lu Ren’s body. The Qi Sword surrounded by star constellations rushed towards the enemy all at once at an incredible speed.

Supported by Ye Wei’s amplified Qi, the long ancient sword’s energy presence was twice as strong as when he used it before the recent breakthrough.

Lu Ren gasped in panic, as the sword closed its distance from him. A hundred feet wide pit appeared around his body and kept growing as the sword fell lower. The stance created a large web of fissures as it dug the pit deeper and wider.

“This Sword stance is a high-level myst stance!” Lu Ren was standing right in the middle of the pit. His face lost all of its colour, surprised by incredible strength of Ye Wei’s attack.

“Rumble!”

The long Qi Sword with hundreds of runic constellations reached its target. It seemed to everyone at the valley that the whole world shook. A dusty smoke cloud shrouded the space, and thunderclouds emerged in the night sky. Ye Wei’s attack just created a storm.

“Ye Wei’s sword attracted the violent energy of nature!”

“A sixteen year old boy’s Qi did all of this?! Even the strongest youngster in my Family, Lu Fan, didn’t reach this level at the same age!” Lu Ren heart was filled with horror as he felt and saw what Ye Wei was capable of.

Lu Fan wasn’t just a strongest youngster in the Lu family, but also the strongest in the whole Qing State. He was known all across Zhou dynasty’s reign for being smart and powerful, a true genius. But even he was not capable of using a stance of this scale at the age of sixteen.

“He is way stronger than Lu Fan! How is this even possible?!”

Lu Ren did not expect such a small city like Green Moon to be the birthplace of a terrifying genius. ‘I didn’t think anyone outside of the three royal families could be this strong, this young...’

To maximize the Selenic Sword’s destructive power Ye Wei used the Falling Star form, and guided the primal energy from the surroundings into his strike. ‘Falling Star form became a lot stronger since I started training at the Drakehead...’ He thought.

Few Du’s that were trying to flee from the valley were stunned by the Qi storm, swept off their feet. They knew their doom was near, trembled in fear, ‘How could he be so strong?!’

“I remember him! He was the joke between martial families, the red Sentient Student who everyone! What did they feed him?!” The remaining Du’s finally realised what a big mistake they made to mess with the Ye family.

In their last moments they hated Lu Feng for turning the Du’s against the Ye family three years ago, frustrated that now he was wiping out the Du’s with a Ye, oblivious about the fact that they were just collateral damage.

“This guy! He doesn’t really need me here!” Lu Feng also saw the Qi storm created by Ye Wei’s stance. He was glad that they didn’t remain enemies.

Ye Wei’s intense glare fell onto Lu Ren.

“No survivors!” Ye Wei channeled his whole strength, all his Qi went into the Qi Sword that he held so tight.

The sword’s size made the strike look much slower than it was. Lu Ren saw the sword’s trail but couldn’t react in time. It landed right onto the spectral prism.

“Crack! Crack!” The prism cracked from where the ten sword struck, quickly shattering under the pressure of Ye Wei’s stance.

“I’ve underestimated him!” Lu Ren widened his eyes in shock.

The raging Qi was pressing against Lu Ren, his pupils shrunk to the size of a needle’s tip. It was too late to defend himself with a stance. His ten-star condensed prime cultivation level was useless against Ye Wei’s speed. Instead he took a few scrolls out of his sleeve and immediately tore all of them.

Screens of runes appeared around Lu Ren, forming numerous defensive stances.

However, put before the edge of the long Qi Sword, Lu Ren’s last line of defense was almost non-existent. Although slowed by the layers, the sharp edge managed to pierce through all of the protective stances. Lu Ren helplessly watched as it mercilessly burrowed into his body.

“Plop!” Lu Ren’s face was pale as a piece of paper, his blood gushed out from his mouth and the bone deep wounds on his body.

Bones were broken, flesh was torn, Lu Ren was coverd in blood, barely alive. Although the sword was strong, the defensive stances did absorb a fraction of the sword’s momentum.

Ye Wei was levitating, staring at Lu Ren from above. He was panting, his face pale. Even under the effect of supernova stance second evolution, his Qi and will force were drained by the use of this devastating strike.

“Ye Wei! Stop!”

Lu Feng leaped forth, landed next to Lu Ren before Ye Wei was going to finish his opponent.

“What? Are you changing sides again?” Ye Wei was confused.

“In the Lu family, once a cultivator reaches ten-star condensed prime level, they will be asked to light up a candle light in the clan’s ancestral hall.”

“If the cultivator dies, the fire will die, and the smoke of the dying flame will become the image of what the deceased cultivator saw before death.” Lu Feng looked at Ye Wei and said.

“That was close... Couldn’t you have told me this earlier? My family could be wiped out because of this!” Ye Wei sighed as he pulled back his fist.