Chapter Sixty-Two: Murderous Intent on Every Side

As Chen Qi touched down, his lower body still caked in filth, Sun Ruohai seized him and paced him back and forth to keep him from sinking again into the mire.

At the cry, both men hurriedly turned their gaze.

Not far away, the marsh erupted in a vast, violent churn. The entire swamp seemed to quake, mud splashing and spraying in every direction.

Yun Tianxin, having just caught her breath, drew her sword once more. With a roar of wind and thunder, the blade pointed straight at the nearest writhing mass.

The sword tip, wreathed in brilliant violet light, pierced the marsh without resistance and sank in several inches. A stream of blackish-red, foul-smelling liquid burst out along the blade’s path.

The unknown beast beneath the swamp was clearly in pain, and the turmoil only grew fiercer. A low, rumbling roar could be faintly heard from within the mud.

With the roar came a column of muck shooting high into the air, as though it had eyes, streaking straight for Yun Tianxin’s face.

At the same time, a beast emerged: dark green with black, its body five or six meters long, its lower half still submerged in the swamp, only a head like that of a dinosaur exposed.

It was unmistakably a crocodile, its face twisted with savage coldness. Yet unlike the crocodiles Chen Qi had seen on Earth, this beast’s scales oozed stinking pus, and a ring of protruding black spines jutted from its back, making it look like a short-legged stegosaurus.

Driving forward on a burst of fierce wind and putrid stench, its jaws opened wide and snapped toward the woman’s jade-like legs beneath her blue robe.

If that bite landed, it would likely crush even steel plate, let alone a human body not yet tempered into one of iron and stone.

Tilting her head to evade the muck flying toward her face, Yun Tianxin seemed already prepared for this. Her fingers flicked out again and again, unleashing strands of force that knitted together into a long whip of energy, meeting the crocodile beast’s gaping maw head-on.

The collision of force and jaws brought the beast to a brief halt. Yun Tianxin’s features suddenly stiffened, like a fleeting image caught by a camera.

Then the crocodile beast erupted. From within its maw came an immense suction, all at once.

Everything was drawn toward that mouth: the force at close range, the motionless Yun Tianxin, the swamp beneath the jaws, the poisonous miasma drifting in the air. All of it surged toward the huge mouth and was mercilessly swallowed.

Yun Tianxin, pulled toward the maw, dissolved into a cloud of mist and was taken into the beast’s body. Her true form reformed several meters away.

With a grave expression, she made her decision at once.

"Break out to the southeast! You’re at too much of a disadvantage fighting them while holding your breath."

As the words fell, another razor-sharp burst of force cut through the poison haze, briefly clearing the air and granting everyone a breath of freshness.

At that moment, however, the crocodile beast above the swamp seemed to fall into thought. It could not understand why, despite having swallowed that thing, there had been no taste at all.

Had it simply swallowed too quickly?

And what of that identical creature not far away?

While the beast stood in soul-searching confusion, the group hurriedly drew breath and fled southeast at full speed.

Yun Tianxin trailed behind them, her left hand like polished jade repeatedly slapping the swamp air from afar. Each strike sent mud blasting upward, briefly forming wall after wall of muddy barriers several meters high, throwing off the sightlines of every lurking beast with hungry eyes.

Then, a patch of deep-black poisonous miasma that had been drifting quietly to the south of the group suddenly began to move in a strange and eerie way.

The poison haze drifted eastward and soon blocked the party’s path.

The two inner-sect disciples at the front of the fleeing group charged toward it without hesitation.

As their inner-sect robes, embroidered with blue clouds, swelled high with true energy, the two shattered the miasma with a few blows, scattering it to pieces.

The deep-black poison haze burst like a bubble, yet inside was nothing at all, with no sign that any beast had been hiding there.

Before anyone could react in alarm, two more patches of poison haze turned black as pitch and accelerated toward the crowd, forcing the two inner-sect disciples to split their attention and guard separately.

At the center of the group, the outer-sect disciples watched the situation anxiously. In their breath-holding state, their strength had fallen to barely seventy percent of normal, and against such venomous things they could very easily die on the spot.

With the two miasma clouds shattered, the hidden beast clearly had no intention of giving up.

Chen Qi felt a current shifting in the air above, then saw the surrounding poison haze gathering toward a single direction, dyeing that area into a riotously colored darkness, as though countless kinds of poison lurked within.

That color was impossible to describe, yet it made one instinctively sense boundless killing intent and feel life itself recoil in disgust.

The airborne poison haze grew thick to the extreme, gradually becoming semi-liquid, like a mass of sticky ink splashed toward them.

Using the terrain here and the countless poisons lying in wait within the swamp, the hidden beast was preparing this terrifying strike.

Seeing the two inner-sect disciples ahead, Chen Qi immediately sensed trouble.

Even before touching that ink-dark poison haze, the oppressive pressure made both of them tremble faintly. Their bodies’ instincts urged them to retreat and avoid the edge of the attack.

Yet out of some reason tied to duty, they forced themselves to hold their ground and did not take a single step back.

In that instant, Chen Qi saw the resolute look in the eyes of the handsome, sword-browed man, and it made his own eyes sting faintly. In any case, he knew he would never be able to do such a thing.

Abruptly, a sword shadow of dazzling purple appeared between the two men, arriving later yet somehow first, racing ahead to meet the liquefied miasma.

At the critical moment, Yun Tianxin, who had been holding off the enemy from behind, arrived once more in time and stood before the group.

The blade trembled slightly, continuously releasing sword radiance as it revolved around the miasma.

Each burst of light carried away a strip of the poisonous liquid, making Chen Qi feel, absurdly, as though someone were peeling fruit.

In an instant, the dense poison haze vanished, while the miasma farther away had not yet had time to gather again. In that brief moment, the sky was clear, the air fresh and bright, the breeze gentle and harmonious.

Though he had already seen her act several times, Yun Tianxin’s display stunned Chen Qi all over again. Sword techniques could be used like this? Such an attack could be broken in this way?

Indeed, inner-sect disciples could not be lumped together as though they were all the same.

Before Chen Qi could close his gaping mouth, Yun Tianxin sheathed her sword and stood tall, taking from her spatial ring a treasured mirror shining with spiritual light.

The mirror was not large, only slightly bigger than a palm. Its frame was made of fine jade and carved with the shape of some unknown fierce beast.

What was astonishing was that the mirror did not reflect a human figure at all. Instead, it contained a vortex brimming with spiritual power, and at the center of the whirlpool was a rune flickering with blue-green light.

Staring at the rune, Chen Qi vaguely felt that it resembled a blue-green eye. The longer he looked at it, the more it gave him the sensation that his vision was improving, that the world had suddenly turned sharper and clearer.

The light within the rune suddenly thickened, the spiritual vortex spun faster, and the mirror, as though animated by some hidden force, slipped from Yun Tianxin’s palm and floated in midair. Beams of light shot continuously into the marsh below.

The beams flew with astonishing speed and were not hindered in the least by the miasma, landing in a seemingly tranquil patch of swamp.

When this beam touched down, it did not vanish like the others. Instead, it spread outward, sketching the outline of a beast.

From Chen Qi’s perspective, the creature was deep brown, without limbs, but with several tentacles, each covered in many suction cups that continuously exhaled and drew in poison haze and filth.

It lurked beneath the mud and had no head. Along the middle of its body were countless eyes, and gray-black miasma seeped from the centers of those eyes, dissolving into the surrounding mire and forming bubble after bubble.

Now its outline carried a faint glow, standing in sharp contrast to the swamp’s dim blackness, making it instantly recognizable.

The beast had not expected to be discovered so abruptly. In its moment of stunned bewilderment, dozens of eyes widened slightly.