Chapter 96: The Shattered Fate of a Fallen Warrior
by xennovelBoom—!
Cao Guang didn’t even have time to react as a terrifying force pounded him like a raging storm.
Even his peak-level Xuan Meridian sinews and bones let out sounds of unbearable strain.
His serpentine sinews snapped and his tiger-like bones cracked, while a blood mist spread into the air, only to be washed away by the rain!
He slammed onto Long Street, his back skidding along the pavement, ripping through water pools, shattering blue bricks, and leaving behind a heap of debris and mud.
Scorching heat filled the air—the friction of his blood and flesh against the ground radiated intense warmth.
Cao Guang’s head drooped, his hair dripping with blood mixed with rain.
How could this be…
So powerful?!
Was this the unleashed force empowered by the Temple Spirit?
It was incredibly strong… This power should have been his. After years of preparation and hosting the Thousand Buddha Carved Feast,
somehow the Temple Spirit’s power went haywire and ended up benefiting the Ogre!
Cao Guang tried to harness his own divinity, but the Temple Spirit had already betrayed him—there was no hope at all.
Thud—
A dull impact announced the arrival of a towering figure with a devilish, inverted-triangle back and jet-black, cape-like hair that cascaded to his waist.
Its constant, oppressive aura of divine rank from the Temple Spirit froze Cao Guang’s own divine base as if it were encased in ice.
He couldn’t summon even a scrap of his power.
Cao Guang drew in a deep breath—as if clinging to the last vestiges of life—to pump his qi and blood. Even though his sternum was shattered and his internal organs were nearly broken, he gritted his teeth, swallowed hard, and propelled himself off the ground while straining to open his eyes.
Crack!
Thunder tore through the murky clouds as twisting electric serpents flashed; the heavens roared and torrential rain pounded down.
Visibility dropped to nearly nothing.
Combined with the surging, searing blood and the swirling, hot mist rising in the cold winter, everything became maddeningly blurry.
“Ogre—!”
A low growl erupted from Cao Guang’s throat.
The rising heat mist spawned by his blood was instantly torn apart, revealing that the normally cute Cute Cow Mask now looked grotesque and demonic!
It resembled the bull-headed grim reaper from the depths of the underworld.
“Ogre…”
Cao Guang’s roar softened as he stared in disbelief at the scene.
Just when he felt like fighting back with all his might, that will suddenly evaporated.
He watched the figure with hair flowing like a waterfall and cape-like, billowing locks, a body rippling with sculpted muscle and eyes that exuded golden smoke from beneath the mask.
Inexplicably…
his fighting spirit was gone.
He was reminded of the days when he charged off to Jingguang Prefecture, full of youthful ambition and elation, only to be smacked down by a top prodigy of the Divine Sect—whose offhand slap nearly shattered his divine base and left him with broken bones and a ruined body.
“Ogre… who exactly are you?”
Cao Guang staggered, drenched by rain, having sacrificed everything for his own promotion.
But in the end…
it all led to this outcome.
He got screwed by a worthless deity!
Furious and unable to accept his fate, he now longed to know—or rather, to see—the face hidden under that mask that had ruined so many of his schemes…
Who exactly is it?
Is it…
really that bumpkin?
“May I see it?”
Hope and curiosity flickered in his eyes.
Li Che activated his Ascendant Stance, his physical form suddenly towering; after all, Cao Guang was merely a Xuan Meridian martial man—sturdy but insignificant in comparison.
From above, he peered down at the eyes beneath the Ogre mask, from which golden smoke wafted, coldly scrutinizing Cao Guang.
The extreme calm brought by his Ascendant Stance made him completely ignore Cao Guang.
Did he really expect the man to remove his mask?
Who do you think you are… even eligible?
With his fingers spread wide, he clenched them so forcefully that, in an instant, countless gusts and raindrops were captured as though compressed into a tight bundle, the surrounding air roaring as if in a vortex!
Roar—
A fierce, crimson tiger materialized from behind the Ogre, fangs bared and claws extended as it bellowed to the heavens.
White Tiger Turbulent Wind Fist!
Breakthrough!
But at that moment it seemed more fitting to call it the Red Tiger, for Li Che’s inner qi had turned a furious red, surging like blazing fire!
“You?!”
Cao Guang never expected the Ogre to be so vicious—he had already given up resisting, yet the Ogre refused to grant him even his final wish.
He simply wanted to know…
is the Ogre really that bumpkin after all!
Cao Guang roared, folding his arms over his chest, only to be struck by a fearsome punch whose unstoppable force shattered all his flesh and crushed his bones!
A resounding explosion ensued!
Cao Guang’s body exploded on the spot, blood and flesh flying as he disintegrated into pieces.
His skin, stained with blood, still bore marks that writhed like tiny tadpoles.
Li Che clenched his fist as countless pre-laid silver threads burst from the ground, fluttering wildly like delicate spider silk in the wind.
But in reality they vibrated at an astonishing frequency, unleashing a terrifying, slicing power!
Pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft!
Every scrap of Cao Guang’s scattered flesh—and that defiant, resentful head—was further cut into even finer shreds.
He delivered the final, decisive blow.
Ensuring that Cao Guang was dead beyond any doubt.
Only then did Li Che calmly retract his attack.
Icy rain pelted down, splattering on the ground into shattered fragments that mixed with bright red blood in rippling circles.
“Temple Spirit… you’re such a coward.”
“It’s just the Temple Spirit of the Tendu Bizarre Temple—understandable.”
Li Che raised his hand to reveal six Temple Spirit divine chess pieces hovering above his palm.
He had used only one.
In fact, he didn’t even truly need to use it.
Because the Temple Spirit… upon seeing the seven divine chess pieces on display, had simply bolted.
Li Che estimated that the divine potency of the Three-Eyed Furious True Sovereign Infant Temple Spirit, if pressed, might even condense two more pieces.
Seven versus two—so the Temple Spirit fled.
Just as Cao Guang had predicted.
That show-off Temple Spirit ended up taking all the punishment on Cao Guang’s behalf.
Cao Guang was beaten to death in an unbearably miserable fashion.
But… he deserved it.
Li Che directed his gaze toward the City Lord’s Residence—which should now be called the Bizarre Temple.
The city’s Bizarre Temple…
soon Feilei City would become a ghost town.
What a pity…
yet Li Che was powerless to intervene.
All he could do was absorb the Temple Spirit’s divine energy, preventing its rapid spread and giving the citizens of Feilei City a chance to escape.
Glancing down at the scattered remnants, Li Che raised his hand once more.
Thousand Analysis Hand!
Hmmm?
Li Che’s eyes brightened as, in his Ascendant Stance, he executed the Thousand Analysis Hand…
The two nascent divine techniques merged together seamlessly.
He even…
found that without even touching the corpse, the divine energy from Cao Guang’s shattered remains was drawn out and condensed into chess pieces.
Dao Fruits could combine with one another.
Nascent divine skills could also fuse together?
The potential for development was enormous.
Cao Guang’s strength was decent—a mid-level divine base—but he got screwed by the Temple Spirit and the perfect counter of his own base.
Otherwise, even if Li Che had wanted to kill him, his Ascendant Stance would have made it take longer.
At the mid-level divine base, a total of eighteen 【Three-Eyed Furious True Sovereign】 divine chess pieces had been condensed—all of mid-level quality, far superior in both divine essence and quantity compared to those at the initial stage.
In a flash of insight, all the divine chess pieces were absorbed into the 【Chess Sage】 Dao Fruit.
The overwhelming aura on his body gradually subsided, and even the hair that had fallen to his waist receded, restoring his robust form.
He faintly sensed slight fluctuations of qi and blood; his muscles tingled as if sour from lactic acid buildup—a clear reminder that the Ascendant Stance still took its toll.
“The Temple Spirit has fled—it should have retreated to the Bizarre Temple…”
“Can the Temple Spirit really run?”
Li Che smiled as he recovered Cao Guang’s Qian Kun Jade from the blood pooling on the ground and stowed it into his Qiankun Space—this wasn’t the time for investigation.
Gazing toward the direction of the City Lord’s Bizarre Temple, he activated ‘Sleeping Dragon Elephant’, his aura completely converging as he blended into the wind and rain. With light, silent steps, he disappeared.
To truly eradicate a problem, you must remove its root.
The City Lord’s Residence…
it seemed there was still a Cao Qingyuan there.
That was Cao Guang’s root.
It had to be eliminated.
……
……
The LV3-level 【Dragon Elephant Vajra】 further enhanced Li Che’s breath control.
However, as he drifted before the City Lord’s Residence, he saw Li Qingshan, wielding a ram’s horn hammer and subduing two experts in combat.
Li Qingshan, recognizable by his cat-faced mask, was immediately noted by Li Che.
As for the two experts constantly coughing up blood while bearing the hammer—one wore a big-nosed mask, the other a big-eyed mask…
Their divine essence was strangely unique—not that of the Seven Emotions, but of the Six Desires.
Their robust bodies emitted a dark, smooth iron hue and, though incredibly resilient, they managed to heft Li Qingshan’s ram’s horn hammer.
But they couldn’t withstand many more blows; one of them had his chest smashed open, exposing nearly shattered organs with splatters of scarlet tinged with green.
“Corpse God Sect…”
The eyes behind Li Che’s mask shone with a mysterious gleam.
He recalled the 【Desire Beyond Corpse Guan Yin】 wielded by Cao He earlier, a cold glimmer flashing in his eyes.
“Corpse God Sect… could they be after my XiXi?”
“A top prodigy that Cao Guang missed out on, and so they sold her to other disciples of the Corpse God Sect.”
Li Che’s mind cleared as he began to piece together the reasons.
That wooden Corpse Guan Yin sculpture had contained a trace of a corpse curse seal, still being suppressed within the 【Chess Sage】 Dao Fruit.
“The two experts from the Corpse God Sect—clearly, Cao Guang’s ties with them run deep. Things in the capital are far from peaceful…”
“This Cao Guang is truly despicable!”
The angrier Li Che became, the more his eyes grew cold.
If Cao Guang dared try to kill his daughter, then he would kill both Cao Guang and his son!
Step by step, Li Che stealthily withdrew from the battlefield, circled around, and entered the City Lord’s Residence.
The City Lord’s Residence was vast; although its grand octagonal, double-eaved halls had fallen to ruin and transformed into a Bizarre Temple,
the Bizarre Temple sat atop it with cracks spreading like twisted vines, while other buildings—though battered by aftershocks—still barely stood.
He first entered the Bizarre Temple.
Inside, everything was eerily quiet amid the ruin—a chaotic mess with a pungent stench of blood that assaulted his nostrils and made his body tremble.
All that blood…
it was the blood of prodigies… of countless infants…
so many tears shed by parents.
“You worthless scum.”
Li Che muttered a harsh curse under his breath.
Finding no sign of Cao Qingyuan in the temple, his brow furrowed momentarily before he let it go.
He sprang onto the altar and approached the stained Temple Spirit wooden carving.
With a resounding slap on the bald, messy head of the Temple Spirit, he unleashed the powerful suction of his Thousand Analysis Hand.
It was as if he could hear the Temple Spirit’s unwilling, furious roar.
But Li Che didn’t care about its protests—it was nothing more than a bully. He promptly sucked dry the Temple Spirit, condensing the last two divine chess pieces from its essence.
The entire Bizarre Temple fell into complete silence.
Li Che snapped his fingers.
The head of the Temple Spirit wooden carving exploded into fragments of splintered wood.
But Li Che knew he hadn’t destroyed the Bizarre Temple—the structure still stood, meaning the Temple Spirit was not dead.
It would slowly recover.
Li Che didn’t know how to dismantle or destroy a temple—those techniques were mastered only by the experts from the Temple Guardian Division and the Divine Sect.
He exhaled a mouthful of stale air.
He cast a long, lingering gaze at the Bizarre Temple.
“They say that Bizarre Temples at the Jiuyou level and above can even form a ‘Gui Que’, trapping people inside with no escape, while the Temple Spirit roams freely within, its power immensely amplified…”
Luckily, this Bizarre Temple had not transformed into a Jiuyou Bizarre Temple—it had not unleashed the ‘Gui Que’.
Otherwise, the citizens of Feilei City… would have been massacred.
Now, at least, the citizens still had a chance to survive.
“Where did Cao Qingyuan go?”
“Did he hide?”
Beneath the Cute Cow Mask, Li Che’s eyes flickered subtly.
In his heart, the 【Chess Sage】 Dao Fruit pulsed strongly; in the next moment, the colossal chessboard of heaven and earth crashed down, enveloping everything.
In the eyes of the Gaode Chess Sage, nothing could remain hidden.
With a light step, Li Che drifted out of the temple like a gentle breeze, merging with the storm.
……
……
Cao Qingyuan dashed out of the City Lord’s treasury, the Qian Kun Jade in his hand now brimming as his masked face looked utterly grim.
The Cao family… is finished!
Second Master Cao He had been smashed by Li Qingshan’s hammer, and it seemed that Cao Guang’s sacrificial offering to the Temple Spirit had gone disastrously wrong.
What was Cao Qingyuan to do?
He could rely on no one—only gather the treasures from the treasury and prepare to flee.
Head to the capital and seek refuge with his maternal family!
Cao Qingyuan had managed to distinguish himself among Feilei City’s four princes, breaking into the divine base stage thanks largely to his mother’s influential clan in the capital.
After all, his mother’s family was a renowned noble clan in the capital!
Years ago, when Cao Guang went to the capital for cultivation, his looks and decent talent attracted his future wife, leading her to marry him.
Although now his mother’s relationship with Cao Guang was strained—he was practically cast aside by her—what did that matter to Cao Qingyuan?
The child was innocent!
Clatter, clatter…
Rain and wind roared like pillars while electric serpents roiled amid dark, dense clouds, their occasional flashes illuminating the desolate world.
Cao Qingyuan slung a broad-bladed Smooth Iron Long Blade over his shoulder, dressed in black, and wore a mask to avoid detection as his aura retracted while he pressed against the wall.
As long as he could escape Feilei City, he’d be safe.
Feilei City was finished.
He cared not whether his father was alive or dead…
His mother had only kept him in Feilei City for the sake of the Thousand Buddha Carved Feast that Cao Guang had spent years preparing.
Now that the grand plan had collapsed, Cao Qingyuan too had to make his escape.
Outside the City Lord’s Residence, the phantom image of a terrifying ram’s horn hammer hovered midair before crashing down with a thunderous explosion as a master’s raw qi surged violently.
Cao Qingyuan shrank back; there was no mistaking that the intimidating figure in the cat-faced mask was none other than Li Qingshan—a renowned martial force from the Yunzhou Divine Base Chronicles!
Even with just a tenth of divine energy, his power was terrifying!
He took a detour!
After all, he was in possession of the entire treasury of the City Lord’s Residence—treasures that many top Divine Base experts would covet!
These were things so valuable that even the best in the Divine Base Chronicle would long for them!
So if he could escape the city and survive, relying on these treasures—even if the Thousand Buddha Carved Feast had brought him little—
he would live in absolute comfort.
Once in the capital, he’d have the means to rub shoulders with powerful nobles on his mother’s side, perhaps even…
challenge his way into the mid-level divine base!
The treasury compensated for what the Thousand Buddha Carved Feast could not!
Most importantly…
that one prized treasure in the treasury…
Cao Qingyuan thought of it and his breathing quickened.
He hurriedly clutched his mid-quality Qian Kun Jade, activated Breath Convergence, and edged along the wall in the darkness!
Suddenly, an icy chill pierced him to the bone; every hair on his body instantly stood on end.
In the darkness against the wall, a Cute Cow Mask suddenly manifested, followed by a long spear that, like a roaring serpent, lunged forward with a thundering cry.
The spear moved so swiftly that it created a void in the air!
Countless raindrops clinging to the spear burst forth, forming a dense mist of water!
“Ogre!”
Cao Qingyuan’s eyes narrowed.
How could that damn thing be here?!
Yet he reacted even faster, his eyes blazing—Ogre’s Breath Convergence was far superior!
While he had been skulking along the wall, that damn thing managed to ambush him!
How did Ogre even find him?
Pfft—!
The speed was too fast, the strength too terrifying!
In the opening of the ambush, the long blade Cao Qingyuan had just drawn—before he could even swing—it was blasted away by a spear thrust, his arm’s skin exploding and bones shattering in a grotesque twist.
That strength…
how could it be so terrifying?
“Li Che—!”
Cao Qingyuan, with little regard for anything else as cold rain lashed his face, panted heavily, even tasting the blood in his throat!
He roared Li Che’s name, intending to expose Ogre’s identity and give him a momentary lapse in his killing intent.
But he was disappointed.
Ogre remained unmoved, like an emotionless killing machine, as a spear directly pierced his chest.
The terrifying force hurled his body against the wall, denting it instantly into a web of radiating cracks.
At that moment…
Cao Qingyuan’s divine base barely began to rise from behind his head.
Pfft—
A crimson long spear, streaked with what looked like blood engravings, suddenly emerged, only to plunge again.
Thud, thud, thud—
Cao Qingyuan’s body was pinned against the wall like a target, as the spear repeatedly stabbed in and out over eight times.
Xu Ji Eight-Link Bone-Shattering Spear…
Cao Qingyuan’s body was utterly pulverized, his eyes wide with defiant anger…
yet his aura had completely faded.
He never understood, even in death.
After being so low-key, how could he still be ambushed by Ogre?
Li Che looked coldly at the lifeless Cao Qingyuan, pressing his fingers against his face to absorb his divine essence and gently close his glaring eyes, letting him rest in peace.
Li Che thought his people were, in their own way, kind.
After retrieving the tightly clutched Qian Kun Jade from Cao Qingyuan, Li Che’s thoughts stirred—such a treasure… there was something truly valuable hidden within the Qian Kun Jade!
But it wasn’t the time to investigate; after all, the treasury of the City Lord’s Residence now belonged to Li.
Li Che carefully searched the corpse, confirmed there was nothing left, then decisively drew his gun and turned to leave.
He didn’t bother to help Li Qingshan—there was no need.
Those two Corpse God Sect cultivators were nearly smashed beyond repair by the hammer.
Li Che still had one final matter to handle.
……
……
In the Xu Ji Courtyard, within the main hall.
Dense, gushing blood flowed unceasingly.
Xu You’s head pounded and his whole body trembled; his eyes widened as he forced up the taste of blood from his throat, nearly on the verge of nausea.
“No…”
Xu You staggered to his feet as the scene before him slowly came into focus.
He could smell the stench of death.
He recalled Old Li, his father Xu Nanming, and his elder brother Xu Helil—faces so ghostly it seemed they might devour his flesh.
No—they weren’t really out to devour him!
Xu Helil had even armed himself with a bone-picking knife!
Xu You felt as if he were falling into an icy cavern, his heart completely chilled.
When he finally regained full senses, all he could detect was the sharp, overwhelming stench of blood; looking around the hall, he was stunned.
His father Xu Nanming had been hammered to death; Xu Helil had also been beaten down.
Dead… everyone was dead…
He saw a boiling cauldron nearby, his face unreadable—was it sorrowful tears or bitter relief?
He staggered to his feet once more.
Crack!
Amid the flashing lightning and rolling thunder.
At the doorway.
A slender figure wearing a Cute Cow Mask stood silently at the entrance.
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