When someone righteously bellows "Robber! Villain!" and comes charging at you with a blade in hand, even the most composed person's brain tends to stall for a moment.
Especially when you're standing in the heart of a sect, wearing your disciple robes as proof of your identity, and you only came here to start a little trouble and pick a fight.
That was exactly how Su He felt right now: absurd.
One moment she'd been working out how to demand justice on You-shimei's behalf. The next, her entire field of vision was swallowed by a sword hilt rushing toward her at terrifying speed.
A robber? Me?
The thought had barely flickered through Su He's mind — hadn't even had time to travel down to her limbs and trigger a defensive response — before Gu Chengming's attack had already arrived.
This was no fair sparring match. This was a premeditated ambush.
Su He was at the First Realm, Fifth Layer. Beside her, Li Miao was First Realm, Sixth Layer.
Gu Chengming, in terms of raw power, was only First Realm, Fourth Layer.
In the cultivation world, the suppression of higher realms is absolute. Two full minor-realm layers of difference meant a clear advantage in spiritual energy density, reaction speed, and physical resilience.
But Gu Chengming understood one thing with bone-deep clarity: dead people have no realm. Neither do unconscious ones.
He was gambling on that single instant of hesitation from his opponent — and on the explosive physical burst that his body, freshly bolstered by the preliminary tempering of the Hundred Bones Resonance, could now produce.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance cheers: YES! Now that is decisiveness!]
[Surrounded by powerful enemies, no wasted words, no hesitation — strike first, strike hard!]
[This is the quality a golden finger of its caliber deserves! All that gentleness and restraint nonsense? Pure garbage when life and death are on the line!]
In the same instant his battle cry left his lips, his right hand was already dropping to his waist. The wooden sword cleared its scabbard.
Shing——
Gu Chengming launched himself forward like an arrow loosed from a bow.
No flashy opening form. No elaborate flourish.
And yet, in Gu Chengming's hands, this foundational sword art revealed a power entirely unlike what anyone might expect.
Spiritual energy surged through his meridians — not released outward to form a sword-glow, but channeled inward entirely, drawn deep into the muscle fibers of his legs and arms.
Close the distance!
Su He felt her vision blur. The man who had been standing several zhang away a heartbeat ago was now right in front of her.
The gust of wind that rushed into her face even tossed the hair across her forehead, freezing her expression into something comically slack-jawed.
Her instinct was to reach back for the sword on her back.
Too late.
Gu Chengming's wooden sword struck hard and clean at the Quchi acupoint on her sword-wielding right arm.
Crack!
A sharp, clean sound.
Su He felt her right arm go numb in an instant. The spiritual energy protecting her body scattered on that side entirely, the defensive qi she had only just managed to raise smashed apart before it could fully form.
Then, in the same fluid motion, Gu Chengming flicked his wrist and swept the wooden sword upward — the flat of the blade carrying a deceptively subtle force — and whipped it squarely against the side of Su He's neck.
Fast. Precise. Merciless.
Su He didn't even manage a grunt. Her eyes rolled back, every bone in her body seemed to dissolve at once, and she crumpled backward like a doll with its strings cut.
One down.
Elapsed time: less than a single breath.
It wasn't until the dull thud of Su He hitting the ground reached his ears that Li Miao finally snapped out of her stunned stupor.
"Su-shimei?!"
"You bastard — you have a death wish!"
Li Miao was, after all, First Realm, Sixth Layer — her reaction speed was exceptional. She didn't go for her sword; the range was too close, and drawing it would expose an opening. Instead, her hands flew through a series of seals. Spiritual light flickered between her fingertips, and a pale cyan wind-blade took shape in her palm with frightening speed.
— Now, the narrative law of protagonists practically demands an across-realm kill at a moment like this, which was why the Hundred Bones Resonance was practically vibrating with excitement.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance thinks: so what if she's First Realm, Sixth Layer?!]
[Gu Chengming! Use your body to take it head-on! Show this ignorant woman what a true body-cultivator is made of!]
Gu Chengming's eye gave an almost imperceptible twitch.
Tank it with my body? Did he look like he had rocks in his head?
Faced with Li Miao's strike, Gu Chengming did not retreat. Instead, he stepped sideways — his body shifting like a willow leaf caught in the wind — and rather than pulling back, he pressed in, pivoting on his lead foot in a sudden, eerily fluid sideways spin.
Riding the centrifugal force of that rotation, his wooden sword traced a smooth, curving arc through the air.
It was nothing elaborate — simply the most basic deflection technique from the Huiyuan Sword Art, the "Yield" formula.
The wooden sword landed precisely on Li Miao's wrist just as she was thrusting her palm forward.
A light shake of his wrist — a hairsbreadth of redirecting force transferred through the blade — and the line of Li Miao's spiritual energy output twisted off-course in an instant.
Li Miao felt a powerful force slam into her side, throwing her body involuntarily off-balance. The wind-blade she hadn't quite finished releasing cut harmlessly through empty air.
Wide open.
This was the classic script for a body-cultivator dominating a spell-cultivator. Once you got inside their guard, a spell-cultivator's fragile defenses might as well be paper against someone built to fight up close.
Gu Chengming might have been a "fake" body-cultivator, but his swordsmanship was vicious.
He gave Li Miao no time whatsoever to recover her stance.
Sword hilt, driven into her abdomen with a short, explosive strike.
Inch force.
"Ugh!"
Li Miao's body jackknifed. The pain blanked out her mind.
Gu Chengming pressed the advantage immediately — closing in, reversing his wooden sword in his grip, and bringing the pommel down like a hammer, clean and efficient, against the back of her skull.
Thunk.
That sound hurt just to hear.
Li Miao's eyes closed. Her body went limp and she pitched forward, landing directly on top of the still-twitching Su He.
The two of them piled up like a stack of toppled figurines, thoroughly, tidily unconscious.
The entire sequence had been smooth as flowing water, without a single wasted movement.
From Gu Chengming's opening war cry to both women hitting the ground: no more than three breaths, start to finish.
Gu Chengming let out a quiet breath of relief — though the one reacting most extravagantly was the Hundred Bones Resonance.
It hadn't exactly been the primary contributor to this fight, but rounding up, it was more or less an across-realm kill, and right now it was so thoroughly satisfied it could barely contain itself from letting out a triumphant howl.
[The Hundred Bones Resonance thinks: with the body of a First Realm, Fourth Layer — two enemies at the First Realm mid-stage, eliminated in an instant! Who in this world could possibly stand against us?!]
[Under heaven, there are only two heroes: the Hundred Bones Resonance, and Gu Chengming!]
[Affection +10]
Listening to the string of notification chimes in the back of his head, Gu Chengming's lip gave the faintest, almost imperceptible twitch.
He'd won through technique and cunning with the Huiyuan Sword Art — and yet the Hundred Bones Resonance had already rewritten the story in its own head as his flesh being invincible.
Honestly. What does this victory have to do with you, exactly?
Still — a performance had to be seen through to the end.
Gu Chengming quickly rearranged his expression, slipping back into the look of a man who'd narrowly survived certain death.
He didn't spare a glance at the two "bodies" on the ground. Instead, he swept his gaze rapidly around the surrounding area.
Then he lowered his voice, and in a terse, grave tone that was clearly meant only for himself, he murmured:
"That was close... I never expected those two to be such formidable opponents. If I hadn't risked everything on a desperate gamble, I might not have walked away from this today."
"And furthermore..."
Gu Chengming crouched down and made a show of examining the two women's robes, then rose again with his brow furrowed and his voice dropping even lower with gravity:
"To operate this brazenly at the very gate of a sect market, and in Daoning Gate disciple robes at that... there is something very deep going on here."
"They must have accomplices lying in wait nearby."
He snapped upright, shot out a hand, and grabbed the still-dazed Jiang Lu by the wrist.
Jiang Lu jolted from head to toe. He finally came back to himself — took one look at the two senior shimeis lying unconscious on the ground, still faintly twitching — and his voice cracked:
"G-Gu-shixiong... this, this this this..."
He pointed at the two women, his finger trembling.
These were Daoning Gate shimeis!
Right in front of his eyes, right under his nose — Gu-shixiong had knocked them both out in two moves?
And what had Gu-shixiong shouted just now? Robbers?
Jiang Lu's mind was a complete mess.
He was straightforward, not stupid — no matter how he looked at it, those two shimeis were nothing like robbers.
But Gu Chengming gave him no time to think.
"Jiang-shidi! Stop staring!"
Gu Chengming's face radiated righteous urgency, edged with the particular exasperation of someone watching a junior fail to grasp an obvious truth:
"We cannot linger here!"
"Those two were bait — the real killing blow is still coming!"
"Move! If their accomplices surround us, neither of us is getting out!"
Jiang Lu was so rattled by his dramatic tone that he lost all independent thought. He'd been about to ask "are you serious?"— but then he looked at Gu Chengming's expression, utterly and absolutely solemn, then looked back down at the two shimeis who were, indisputably, very much unconscious on the ground...
Somehow, inexplicably, he almost believed it.
Could it be that something truly terrifying had infiltrated Wenjian Sect?
"Move!"
Gu Chengming didn't wait for an answer. He seized Jiang Lu's hand and sprinted at full speed toward the Outer Sect disciples' residential quarter.
He left behind only two pitiful Daoning Gate female cultivators, sprawled in an undignified heap at the entrance to the disciple market in the cold wind, waiting for the patrolling enforcement disciples to come find them.
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