Chapter 40: A Bloody Purge of the Black Tiger Gang
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Meng Xiangyu was incredibly fast. Even with a heavy sword in hand, his movement remained completely unhindered.
He seemed like a black gale, closing in on Qin Liang in an instant before swinging another sword wreathed in spiritual radiance toward Qin Liang’s neck.
Qin Liang reacted quickly as well and hurriedly raised his sword to block. He soon felt a terrifying, overwhelming force crash into him, sending him flying backward. He slammed into the open ground paved with bluestone tiles in the distance, leaving behind a deep crater.
“Still alive?”
Seeing Qin Liang climb out of the crater, Meng Xiangyu frowned and charged again.
He was unwilling to give Qin Liang even the slightest chance to catch his breath. He had realized that this young man was unusually tenacious. The more tenacious the opponent, the more important it was to crush him swiftly with thunderous force. Otherwise, delay might invite unforeseen trouble.
“Mad Battle Beast Body, First Frenzy—Azure Wolf Frenzy!”
Qin Liang wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and shouted inwardly, secretly circulating his secret art.
In an instant, every aspect of his strength rose. The indistinct phantom of an azure wolf appeared around him, its head thrown back in a howl, its cavernous jaws seeming to swallow the sun and moon.
Whoosh!
The broad sword came down again, cleaving a deep ravine into the ground, but Qin Liang had already flashed away.
“That speed…” Meng Xiangyu’s expression changed once more, and his heart filled with astonishment.
Although Qin Liang was still slower than him, such speed should never have been possible for a fifth-stage Spirit Refiner. It defied common sense.
Whoosh!
Qin Liang, who had flashed to his side, swung his sword. Sword energy rippled outward, stirring up a fierce gust of wind.
Meng Xiangyu raised his broad sword to block. The two swords collided with a resounding clang, throwing off blinding sparks, and both men were forced several steps backward.
“That strength…”
Meng Xiangyu was startled again. Qin Liang’s speed had increased, but so had his strength.
Spiritual radiance protected the broad sword. It had withstood a direct blow from an Origin Weapon and had merely suffered a slightly curled edge; it had not been severed. Qin Liang’s expression grew solemn, and he had no choice but to consider other means.
“Looks like I’ll have to prepare the Three-in-One Fist.”
Qin Liang pondered. That was the name he had given to the martial art he had created by fusing three different fist techniques.
The technique was astonishingly powerful and served as Qin Liang’s trump card, but it consumed an enormous amount of energy. He had to catch his opponent off guard and land a decisive blow. Otherwise, if he became utterly drained after using it, he would inevitably fall into a passive position.
Meng Xiangyu’s expression was extremely grim. The person before him was only a fifth-stage Spirit Refiner, yet he had actually managed to fight him for so long.
“You’re so young, yet already this formidable. I cannot allow you to live. Die!”
As soon as Meng Xiangyu finished speaking, spiritual radiance burst from his hand. He struck toward Qin Liang with a palm, unleashing his signature martial art, the Mountain-Driving Palm.
A palm print formed from spiritual light shot through the air. Within it, indistinct images of collapsing mountains and raging seas appeared, carrying the force of overturning mountains and seas, like a pale golden meteor streaking across the night sky.
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Qin Liang’s expression grew solemn. Meng Xiangyu’s mastery of this martial art had clearly reached perfection as well.
With his Origin Weapon in hand, Qin Liang exerted all his strength and slashed out a cross-shaped burst of sword light.
Swish, swish!
The sword energy formed a cross and tore through the air, instantly splitting the enormous palm print into four pieces.
At the same time, wind rose beneath Qin Liang’s feet. As he charged through the cracks in the palm print, his fist technique had already taken shape.
“Roar!”
A tiger’s roar erupted from within him and resounded across the entire hillside.
A fierce tiger phantom formed from the force of his fists charged through the air. It swelled to more than ten feet in length as it rode the wind, hurtling straight toward Meng Xiangyu.
At the sight of the tiger, Meng Xiangyu’s eyelids twitched. He hurriedly drove his broad sword into the ground, forming a makeshift shield. Pale golden spiritual radiance covered it, making it resemble a small, sturdy fortress.
However, the Three-in-One Fist swept forward with overwhelming force. Wherever the tiger passed, bluestone tiles were torn from the ground.
Rumble!
The tiger slammed into the broad sword. Terrifying force surged through it, blasting the sword away. It struck Meng Xiangyu and sent him flying as well, smashing straight through the courtyard wall. He coughed up great mouthfuls of blood.
“How is this possible?”
Meng Xiangyu was incredulous, his face turning deathly pale. He had never imagined that he would be defeated by a fifth-stage Spirit Refiner.
Moreover, the young man had yet to condense his Origin Core, so that punch could only have been a low-grade Yellow Rank martial art. Why, then, did it possess the power of an intermediate-grade Yellow Rank technique?
Meng Xiangyu lay amid the rubble, staring at the deep night sky. He could no longer stand.
Hidden force had entered his body and shattered every one of his meridians. The bones in his upper body had also been pulverized, leaving him on the verge of death.
He had struggled so hard to build the enormous Black Tiger Gang, yet now it had been destroyed at the hands of a single young man.
The commotion drew Feng Yi and the others’ attention. The scene instantly fell into utter silence. Even Feng Yi looked at Qin Liang as though he were a monster, feeling that he had become strangely unfamiliar.
“Little Liang…”
Was this really the Little Liang they knew?
“Gang Leader…”
The surviving elders, hall masters, and the others were equally stunned, unwilling to believe what they had witnessed. The gang leader had actually been defeated?
Qin Liang felt as though all the strength had been drained from his body. His mind was hazy, and he had a powerful urge to collapse and sleep. He planted the sword embryo against the ground, forcing himself to remain upright, then took out a pill and swallowed it.
Seeing this, Feng Yi breathed a sigh of relief and continued battling the Tiger Formation.
To eliminate all future trouble, the other brothers quickly began mopping up as well, slaughtering every remaining member of the Black Tiger Gang without exception.
With even their gang leader defeated, the remaining gang members had lost all will to fight. They fled in every direction amid waves of screams. More than twenty of the brothers were sixth-stage Spirit Refiners, and together they thoroughly cleansed the Black Tiger Gang.
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These brothers truly lived up to their reputation as elite members of the Jiang family; every one of them possessed formidable combat strength.
Qin Liang could imagine that after leaving the Jiang family, Feng Yi and the others had never stopped cultivating bitterly during all their years outside.
At last, Feng Yi found a flaw in the Tiger Formation.
The formation had originally been composed of ten elders. However, Qin Liang had killed the Fifth Elder beforehand, leaving his position vacant and diminishing the formation’s power.
That position was located at the tiger’s leg. When Feng Yi charged in with his saber, it was left undefended, and three people were drenched in blood in an instant.
As the other brothers followed, the formation was completely broken, and the tiger’s form collapsed like a landslide.
Qin Liang walked over to Meng Xiangyu. His steps were unsteady, but that did not prevent him from looking down at his opponent from above.
“Could it be that you…”
Meng Xiangyu’s pupils suddenly contracted as he realized something. Perhaps the young man before him had truly taken that step and fused multiple martial arts together. Otherwise, a low-grade Yellow Rank martial art could never have possessed such power.
“Yes.”
Qin Liang knew what he wanted to say. After replying simply, he brought his sword down, then stored the corpse and all its belongings in his universe pouch.
Seeing that several brothers had already gone to rescue the captives, Qin Liang began clearing the battlefield.
He collected all the corpses scattered across the ground. He was no longer short of low-grade universe pouches, and storing two or three hundred bodies would not come close to filling them.
“Little Liang, don’t tell me you have some plan for all these corpses?”
Feng Yi looked at him strangely. Who gathered the bodies on a battlefield and directly stored them away?
“The spiritual substances within the corpses might be useful. I’ll keep them for now.”
Qin Liang’s words gave Feng Yi a fright.
“Little Liang, I’ve heard that only evil cultivators absorb the spiritual substances within human bodies. You wouldn’t happen to be…”
Remembering Qin Liang’s earlier performance, Feng Yi instinctively took two steps back and asked warily.
Qin Liang’s face twitched. He hurriedly shook his head and laughed.
“Brother Feng, don’t worry. I would never take that path.”
“That had better be true.”
Feng Yi then changed the subject. “Once we’ve rescued the people, we need to leave as quickly as possible. The Black Tiger Gang has an extremely vicious demon beast…”
“Roar!”
Before he could finish speaking, a roar rang out from deep within the stronghold, echoing across the hillside.
The voices of the other brothers came from the distance:
“Everyone, run! The Tiger-Lion Beast has been awakened!”
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