A showdown between two epic-level killers was no less outstanding than the duel between the old devil and General Yi back then. The difference was that the old devil and General Yi"s duel had taken place in the limelight, while w.a.n.g Ling was the only spectator to the clash between these two epic killers.
As the night wore on, Old Antique and Taoist Taotie stood across from each other on the rooftop of the hospital as a cool breeze brushed past.
The lights on the rooftop had long blown out in the clash between auras earlier.
The floodlight covers had directly been shaken to fine powder that had disappeared somewhere along the way.
The clash of auras had also created a mottled pattern of cracks over the ground, which looked very foreboding from a distance.
w.a.n.g Ling suddenly felt that it had indeed been the right decision to send Director Li away and to set up the boundary on the rooftop himself.
These two individuals were very powerful; from the explosive power in the auras, they were at the very least stronger than anyone else w.a.n.g Ling had ever seen.
In spirit power alone, these two people were more or less on par with the Master of Immortal Mansion, Cheng Yu, but their explosive power was truly frightening... This kind of explosive power was something you could only acc.u.mulate after hundreds or even thousands of years.
A regular cultivator had to go through a process to generate spirit power and then spiritual pressure.
Even at its shortest, it still took a few seconds.
But at that moment, whether it was Old Antique or Taoist Taotie, both of them had erupted at once; not including w.a.n.g Ling, only these kind of people who had been dealing with a.s.sa.s.sins for years could do this.
Watching the fight, w.a.n.g Ling realized that after the brief exchange of words following the clash of their auras, the two of them had lapsed into a deep silence again.
It wasn"t because these two fellow brothers who hadn"t met for too long were at a loss at what to say – it was that they just didn"t know where to start.
Both their hearts were actually in a mess.
After a good while, it was still Old Antique who opened his mouth first. "I want to know your true aim."
w.a.n.g Ling"s eyes lit up slightly at this question.
Judging from the invisible array on the rooftop earlier, Taoist Taotie was planning something on a ma.s.sive scale, and it wasn"t just for the sake of revenge; he was only borrowing the motive of "revenge" in order to carry out another aim. The invisible array could stockpile spirit power; when a spirit explosion occurred, it would be able to collect a considerable amount of spirit power.
And as for the ultimate aim of ama.s.sing such tremendous amounts of spirit power... whatever it was, w.a.n.g Ling could pretty much guess that it probably wasn"t for anything good.
Old Antique"s question caused Taoist Taotie to fall silent for a good while before he smiled bitterly under the face mask. "Senior brother, do you really not know, or are you just pretending?"
In the end, Taoist Taotie took a deep breath and said, "Of course, it"s to open the Gate Between Worlds!"
"Why do you want to open the Gate Between Worlds?"
Old Antique narrowed his eyes. "Even if you want to activate it, you should know that the Gate Between Worlds cannot be opened consecutively within a short timeframe." He had already detected fluctuations from the Gate Between Worlds during the survival contest at the combined military training exercise for the six schools previously. Old Antique had never forgotten it. But later, the Gate Between Worlds had somehow disappeared, and no one in the field had known why.
Later on, General Yi had attributed the incident to a mistake on the old devil"s part.
There was no way in the world that Old Antique could ever have expected that the person responsible for shutting the Gate Between Worlds was in fact watching both fellow brothers right now from the shadows.
"They say that to summon the Gate Between Worlds, you can only do it every five years. But it"s not impossible at all to summon it consecutively within a short timeframe." Taoist Taotie sneered. "Each time the Gate is summoned, it requires a ma.s.sive amount of spirit power. And as long as my plan succeeds this time, the spirit power I"ll have acc.u.mulated will be enough to summon the Gate Between Worlds ten times over."
Using tenfold the spirit power to summon the Gate Between Worlds... What kind of operation was this?
Since his first encounter with the Gate Between Worlds six years ago, w.a.n.g Ling had done a lot of research privately, but he had never heard of summoning the Gate at double or more of the spirit power required.
First of all, the five-year cooldown period was set in stone and couldn"t be changed at all. Furthermore, if you wanted to summon the Gate Between Worlds, you didn"t just need to know the summoning array; the most important thing was the reserves of spirit power required. To summon the Gate, the old devil had used up more than a hundred holy weapons. Thus, w.a.n.g Ling"s first reaction was that Taoist Taotie had misunderstood something about summoning the Gate Between Worlds.
You needed to use the summoning array exclusive to the Gate Between Worlds in order to summon it, and you couldn"t use a forged array – in this case, an equivalent exchange was useless!
"After you"ve summoned the Gate Between Worlds, what then?" Old Antique continued with his questions.
"Based on reliable intelligence I received, there"s a type of holy water on the other side of the Gate that will be able to restore my looks," Taoist Taotie replied.
This answer was quite simple and crude, and could be summed up in four words: I want plastic surgery!
Everything ultimately came down to Taoist Taotie"s face.
w.a.n.g Ling could still remember that piece of gossip from Old Antique"s history cla.s.s.
In fact, Taoist Taotie hadn"t been born ugly; it was only because he had cultivated the wrong art that his face had become warped, becoming more and more ugly. No matter what plastic surgery he had, or what appearance-molding elixirs he used, he would instantly revert back to his original appearance in less than a quarter of an hour...
Old Antique never expected that this would actually be the root of all evil in this entire affair.
He had somewhat underestimated his junior brother"s obsession with plastic surgery and molding...
"Senior brother probably can never understand how painful it is to be ugly, right?" Taoist Taotie touched his face mask and said, "Everything changed after I turned ugly. We two fellow brothers were equally famous in the world... But every time we ran a mission, you were the only one whom people remembered, not me! They couldn"t even stand to look at me!"
"Junior brother... you"re thinking too much." Old Antique was stoic.
"Not at all!"
Taoist Taotie yelled, "I once had to kill a hoodlum for an employer, and it hadn"t been an easy mission. But when I was settling the account, I received a poor rating – do you know why?"
Old Antique: "???"
Taoist Taotie: "He asked me why my a.s.s was always facing him!"
Old Antique: "..."
w.a.n.g Ling: "..."
Taoist Taotie clutched his chest as he gasped in agitation. "The whole world only focused on my ugliness; whoever saw my face would puke... Black Gauze was the only exception! But you! Actually killed him!"
Old Antique was silent for a while before he sighed. "I didn"t know that the two of you were so close..."
Taoist Taotie"s face mask trembled, and he released thick killing intent. "I have already laid down thirty invisible arrays for stockpiling spirit power within a radius of five hundred li. My plan will work!"
After that, Taoist Taotie stretched out his hand. "It"s over there, my invisible magic array is set up over... there... ah? Where"s my magic array?"