Chapter 896 The Glorious Resurgence
“Have you forgotten the kindness that the late Grand Master Ye once shown you and your order, Situ Lei!? And yet you bring enemies to our doors today?!”
Clad in robes of crimson-red silk, the present Grand Master of the Creed of Divinity Lu Chuan demanded furiously.
The atmosphere in the breached stronghold was rank with the odor of blood.
Eight of the nine-layered perimeter defenses of the Creed’s stronghold had been breached, leaving only the final one — the one at the Summit of Divinity, where the Creed’s great hall stood — still barely holding. With the help of the Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Glare Situ Lei, dozens of enemy champions had surrept.i.tiously infiltrated the Creed’s stronghold even before the alarms were raised, culminating in the deaths of more than half the Creed’s forces by the time the Bell of Divine Invocation was rung.
“Hahahaha, it’s a brutal, dog-eat-dog world out there, Grand Master Lu. Being kind doesn’t take you far; it only makes you soft. In the past, the Creed survives because it once had Lu Jiuchang the Windslicer amongst its ranks, then there was the formidable Ascetic Yundao and his gifted prodigy student the Cloudwater Crusader. We of the Order, naturally, had to grovel and sc.r.a.pe for your leniency. But look at where you are now? Ruined, decrepit, weak. Your predecessor Grand Master dead in the wilderness while your most gifted and most promising boy genius is a broken and battered man. Surely you can’t expect me to continue swearing my fealty to you?”
At forty, the hulking Situ Lei with his bald head and long beard made him look every bit the loud and dangerous giant that he was.
“Fealty?” Lu Chuan smirked bitterly, “By fealty, you mean bringing men up here as guests when they were actually enemies? We gave you a feast. We showed you our hospitality as host and this is how you repay us?!”
“It’s all business, Lu Chuan,” said the bald-headed Grand Master of the Order of the Golden Glare. “Nothing personal. I need to swear my allegiance to the Faith of Sacred Zest and I need something to prove my loyalty. What else could be better than the destruction of the Creed of Divinity, the Faith’s most bitter enemy? I can’t think of a better gift.”
Those words he uttered with not a hint of guilt or remorse on his face.
The champions and the rest of the rabble that made up the invading forces of the Faith and the Order had overrun the Creed’s stronghold. With their weapons drawn and their backs arched at full readiness to launch their final attack, the mob surrounded the Creed’s forty to fifty still-surviving members at the gates of the inner cloisters where it was a morbid scene of arrow-ridden corpses and pools of blood everywhere.
“Hahahaha, Grand Master Lu, we meet again,” Yi Xuanzi called as he emerged from the crowd of invaders, his silk robes trimmed with white cloud-like embroidery billowing as he moved forward with a broad, wicked grin on his face. “It appears that our feud is finally coming to an end. I daresay that the Summit of Divinity is going to be the Summit of Sacred Zest before the day ends.”
Lu Chuan looked like he was going to have an aneurysm. “Over my dead body, you sc.u.m! We’ll die defending the honor of the Creed even if it’s to the last man! I challenge you to single combat, Yi Xuanzi!”
“Hahahaha!” the Grand Master of the Faith of Sacred Zest guffawed sonorously like a drum, “As if you’re qualified enough to be my match, Lu Chuan. You’re not even Cla.s.s VII. In fact, you’re even worse than the Li Zhiyuan of old. I bet that the Creed must be out of good men or how could a filth like you could ever be Grand Master?”
Lu Chuan’s face squirmed and twisted with suppressed rage.
It was humiliating enough for the Grand Master of a militant order to be disgraced in such a way.
“That’s true. I admit that my talents are nothing if compared to my junior Zhiyuan. But he was ruined because of some insidious plot! As First Student of the Creed, it is my duty to keep the tradition and uphold the honor of our order!” Lu Chuan responded sternly with every shred of dignity he could salvage. He recollected himself and went on, “The Creed champions for nothing beyond the protection of the weak and the preservation of peace in these lands. I have faith that an order that exists for the good of society will endure. This is only a test and a challenge that we must overcome. So long as one of us survives, our spirit and our values would exist. Forever.”
Those words sent determination, dignity, and defiance coursing through the veins of every acolyte and student of the Creed who could still bear arms.
“Well said, Senior Lu Chuan. Rousing words, I must say.”
A voice echoed across the stronghold.
Lu Chuan’s face broke into an expression of surprise and disbelief as he tore his head around and looked back.
A sharp-gazed man in tunic as white as snow and face as fair as milk, whose das.h.i.+ng looks could leave any other man jealous in his wake slowly entered from the other side of the gates with two children tagging along beside him. He drifted past everyone, suave and gallant like a G.o.d striding amongst mortals as his very person radiated an a.s.suring presence that could infuse anyone with confidence and warmth.
“I-Is that you?! Junior Zhiyuan!?”
Lu Chuan gasped, totally astounded.
He stared at Li Mu skeptically, wondering if his eyes were deceiving him.
Lu Chuan and Li Zhiyuan both joined the Creed together as fellow students when they were still boys. Despite being talented in his own right, Li Zhiyuan’s extraordinary gifts dwarfed him in almost every way. But that did not make him bitter in the least. In fact, they remained close like brothers. With barely a hundred acolytes and students, the Creed of Divinity remained a militant order of moderate size and that has helped to maintain their friends.h.i.+p.
Lu Chuan himself was similarly stricken with grief when he knew about Li Zhiyuan’s fall from grace.
Many times he visited Li Zhiyuan, hoping that he could provide some form of help or consolation, but nothing he did manage to lift his best friend’s spirits at all.
It was after the demise of the previous Grand Master that Lu Chuan was elected his successor. Filled with dreams of rejuvenating the Creed’s success for the sake of his mentor and his best friend-c.u.m-junior, he worked tirelessly day and night, devoting literally every waking minute of his life to the affairs of the Creed that he eventually had no time to visit Li Zhiyuan.
“Senior Li?!”
“Junior Zhiyuan, is that you?!”
“You’re back!”
The rest of the Creed — or what remained of it — and those who could recognize him were all shocked.
“What is going on, junior Zhiyuan?” Lu Chuan could positively sense Li Mu’s radiating aura and Mana. Not even the old Li Zhiyuan in his former glory possessed such a rich and robust presence. “Could it be that he’s…”
A notion — one so distant and yet so too miraculous to be true — rose in his mind.
“You’ve done well, senior Lu Chuan,” Li Mu nodded to him approvingly as he strode near. “I’ve returned now. So leave the rest to me.”
“Zhiyuan…” Lu Chuan did not know what to say.
“Is it true?! Could it really be true?!
Has Fate finally smiled upon us finally!?”
Meanwhile.
“Li Zhiyuan?! How the h.e.l.l are you still alive?!”
Yi Xuanzi’s eyes squinted skeptically.
The Grand Master of Order of the Golden Glare Situ Lei was just as astounded himself.
“What’s going on?!
Li Zhiyuan should be a cripple by now!”
Yet nothing about Li Zhiyuan screamed cripple at all.
“You’re right,” said Li Mu as he slowly drifted closer and stood face-to-face before Yi Xuanzi. “Perhaps it really is time that the feud between the Creed of Divinity and the Faith of Sacred Zest should come to an end. Here’s one chance, sir. If you can survive three blows from me, I’ll spare you.”
“How dare you, Li Zhiyuan!” Yi Xuanzi growled at Li Mu, transfixing him in a glare that held for seconds before he suddenly broke into a guffaw, “Hahahaha, I see now! This is a ruse! You’re just a cripple who thinks he can fool and frighten us!”
About two seasons had come and gone since word of Li Zhiyuan’s tragedy took the world of warriors by storm. Hardly anyone did not hear about what happened. That was why Yi Xuanzi was positively certain that Li Zhiyuan was only trying to frighten him by putting up an intimidating facade and he could not allow himself to be hoodwinked.
Apparently, Situ Lei was thinking the same.
“And you think you are a match to Grand Master Yi?” taunted the leader of the Order of the Golden Glare. He paced towards Li Mu with deliberate slowness, not only to terrify Li Mu but also to display his loyalty to Yi Xuanzi. “You’re only Cla.s.s VI even at your best days before you were defeated and turned into a cripple in the ring. And here you are, thinking that you can scare us away? Try me, perhaps?”
He vanished and with speeds as quick as lightning, he reappeared more than twenty meters away, just in front of Li Mu. The Cla.s.s-VI Grand Master twisted around and wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his golden saber and yanked it free from its sheath in a flas.h.i.+ng golden arc of roaring death that came boring down on Li Mu’s head.
“CAREFUL!” Lu Chuan cried, rus.h.i.+ng forward to help as quickly as possible.
He too had exactly the same line of thoughts, thinking that Li Mu must be trying to scare their enemies away by pretending to have regained his former powers. After all, he of all people understood full well the damage that the injuries and the slow poison had caused Li Mu.
But it was too late — he was just too far away.
Li Mu made his move.
Ignoring the incoming blade, his hand shot up and swiped forward like a whip.
Crack!
The glimmer of gold was gone as quickly as it appeared.
Situ Lei spun on where he stood like a spinning top from the incredible blow.
What was supposed to be a brutal slash that could have cut him into halves from head to toe evaporated like vapor.
“You should be thankful that I decided not to kill you with one blow,” Li Mu remarked with frost and steel in his voice, “But it’s only because I want you to suffer more before you really meet your maker.”
He did not even wait for a reply. Another t.i.tanic smack struck him, a battering ram that easily shattered his jaw.
This time, Situ Lei did not spiral around at where he stood. Instead, he crumbled to the ground in a crumpled heap with his face b.l.o.o.d.y and disfigured from all his broken teeth.
There was not a single soul who was not flabbergasted by this unbelievable turn of events.
The Order of the Golden Glare was but only a lesser militant order that barely commanded any respect and influence, but its Grand Master Situ Lei was not one to be trifled with. Being a powerful warrior in the early phases of Cla.s.s VI himself, no one could believe how just two blows across the face, could render him defeated and broken like a beaten dog lying on the ground.
Or, like a full-grown man giving a p.u.b.escent boy a painful and harsh whacking.
“What in Heaven’s name is this?!
“No Cla.s.s VI warrior is capable of something like that!”
Lu Chuan was just halfway from coming to Li Mu’s aid when he froze, rooted to the spot by both disbelief and joy.
“It’s true…
“Junior Zhiyuan… He’s back… He’s really back…”
He squeezed his eyes shut and felt a warm wetness threatening to streak down the face of the young Grand Master of the Creed.
Fang Yuan and Fang Mei both stared in silence, their eyes gawking with amazement.
“That’s Master Zhiyuan! He’s incredible!”
All eyes were on Li Mu right now as he slowly sauntered towards Yi Xuanzi. “How about you? Do you still think that this is all just a facade?”
Yi Xuanzi said not a syllable, but deep inside, fear began to engulf him like a ravenous beast.
“L-Li Zhiyuan! W-Was that all just a bluff?! You’ve been pretending to be a cripple all this while?!” He gasped as the notion of withdrawing slowly began to take hold of him, constricting around his neck like a vice that he felt suffocated.
Li Mu ignored the question and simply said with deathly silence, “You have one chance to attack.”
Yi Xuanzi could hardly breathe. The invisible weight of fear and stress was crus.h.i.+ng down on him that it was all he could do to remain standing before Li Zhiyuan. His mind reeled wildly as he struggled to come to terms with his comprehension. “No. Not even the old Li Zhiyuan had such an overwhelming presence! What happened?! Did he stumble upon fortune instead that he has had an ascension?!”
“G-GO! STAND DOWN! WE STAND DOWN!”
All shaky and panicky, muttering a bunch of gibberish at first, Yi Xuanzi gave the word to retreat and he immediately spun around to flee.
“Bad move,” Li Mu shook his head, feigning sympathy, “You had one chance, yet you squandered it.”
He waved and threw his arm forward.
The golden-bladed saber that Situ Lei left on the ground floated up and shot ahead like a hawk. In a blinding flash of gold, it scythed through Yi Xuanzi, who had just reached more than a thousand meters away, at his waist, cleaving through flesh, bones, and viscera. Then it burst out his front in a gruesome eruption of thick-red blood and he crashed to the ground in two b.l.o.o.d.y halves.
With its work done, the golden saber made a sharp veer in the air and streaked back towards Li Mu, landing right in front of him by impaling its blade into the ground.
“That’s the Gale Grasper technique!”
Lu Chuan cried out loud.