Chapter Ninety: He Really Knows How to Play the Game

A faint, wet sound of steel entering flesh was swallowed by Shen Qingkong’s words.

Luo Tian stared unblinkingly at Shen Qingkong and Fang Zheng. He had already seen Fang Zheng slip his hand into his storage pouch, and when he drew it out again, it was not the healing pill he had spoken of, but a short sword.

The moment Fang Zheng’s fingers closed around the blade, a savage look flashed across his lips. Then, with no hesitation at all, he struck like the wind, and the sword pierced cleanly into Shen Qingkong’s back.

Shen Qingkong had never imagined that his beloved disciple would turn on him like this. Aside from the pain, there was only sorrow.

“You dare kill me?”

“Master, I dared to go with you even into the dragon’s den and tiger’s lair to contend for the True Flame of Yuan-Harmony with the three Core-Pill powers. What is there I would not dare to do?”

Fang Zheng believed victory was already in his grasp, and his tone no longer held the deference and humility of the past.

To murder one’s master!

Luo Tian clenched his fists. This was far too explosive.

Only, he had no idea what sort of grudge or conflict existed between these two that could drive matters to such a point.

“You beast! You vile disciple!”

Shen Qingkong coughed several times. The flames of fury in his heart seemed ready to burn him alive.

“I treated you well. How could you commit such an act of utter treachery?”

Seeing the huge wound across Shen Qingkong’s back, running from his left shoulder to his right waist, Fang Zheng could not help but feel a trace of gratitude toward Zhang Henshui, the Core-Pill expert of the Thousand Waves Sect. If not for that Thousand Waters Severance, which had shattered the defensive flesh of his master’s back and nearly reached the heart, his own thrust might never have worked so smoothly.

Blood gushed out in threads, bead by bead forming a scarlet line as it dripped to the ground.

The wound on Shen Qingkong’s back had never truly settled. Old injury had not yet faded before new injury arrived, and the blood on the ground had already pooled into a small patch, clearly reflecting Fang Zheng’s now vicious, frenzied expression.

“Treated me well? Master, do you still like to tell lies with your eyes open? You are already dying, and you still refuse to look reality in the face?”

Fang Zheng’s voice turned dark and sinister.

“I followed you through life and death, blocked the men of those two Core-Pill experts for you. And after you obtained the True Flame of Yuan-Harmony, you actually planned to bestow it on your darling grandson, Shen Lingfei?”

“Why? On what grounds?”

As though recalling once more how Shen Qingkong’s decision had inflicted grievous harm on his soul, Fang Zheng suddenly roared aloud.

“I have followed you all these years. Even if I have no great merits, I still have bitter service to my name. Which of the tasks you assigned did I not carry out perfectly for you?”

Luo Tian curled his lip. As an outsider, he truly found it difficult to judge such matters. After all, what sort of relationship existed between master and disciple here, how they had treated each other, no outsider could know.

Still, he ought to hide more carefully. Once Fang Zheng obtained Shen Qingkong’s treasures, he would likely prepare to return to the sect. If he remained hidden here, they might collide soon enough.

Luo Tian was deeply tempted by both Shen Qingkong’s lifetime of collected treasures as an elder of the Divine Sun Sect and by the immensely valuable True Flame of Yuan-Harmony. But he knew full well the difference between himself and Fang Zheng. Even though he had only just entered the Meridian Flow Realm, his yuan force was like a surging river—vast in momentum, heavy in substance, immeasurable in quantity. It was absolutely not something a Qi Condensation cultivator with a bit of luck and fortune could contend against.

“But what have you done for me, Master?”

It seemed Fang Zheng had been holding back a great many words for a very long time, and now he finally had the chance to speak them. He was in an extraordinarily excited state, like a spring compressed to its limit, ready to rebound the instant the outside force was removed.

“You let me work like an ox and a horse, to be ordered around at your whim. No matter how diligently I served, I still could not compare with the treatment given to the elite disciples of the Shen family! I know what your four great clans do to suppress disciples of foreign surnames, but I do not care. Yet you should at least give me rewards worthy of what I have given, should you not?”

“That short sword of yours is made entirely from Yuan-Breaking Jade. Otherwise it could never have wounded me like this. What more could you possibly be dissatisfied with?”

Shen Qingkong said weakly. His expressionless stare fixed upon his disciple, his gaze dead and dim, as if he were thinking of something far away.

Yuan-Breaking Jade?

Luo Tian did know of this material. It had exceptional effects against yuan force defenses. If enough of it were gathered together, or if one obtained Yuan-Breaking Jade Essence, then forging it into a weapon would make it almost unstoppable.

“Old thing, you gave me this Earth-rank upper-grade Yuan-Breaking Sword precisely so I would obediently work myself to death for you, did you not? Don’t think I do not know that unless one is of your Shen family’s true core bloodline, one can never obtain the Condensed Yuan Pill in this lifetime!”

Fang Zheng snorted coldly.

“Though I became your disciple and did not need to change my surname to Shen, I still received some preferential treatment. But I have already reached the Ninth Transformation of the Meridian Flow Realm. And how old am I? Such a genius, if he cannot become a Core-Pill expert, would that not be a terrible waste? I must obtain this Fire Yuan Spirit!”

“Hah.”

Shen Qingkong swept him with a contemptuous glance.

“Even if you do obtain it, you still cannot become a Core-Pill cultivator.”

“What? Old thing, what did you say?”

At this, Fang Zheng instantly grew anxious. He had risked his life to commit patricide, and returning to the sect was likely impossible now. If he still could not increase his strength and had to wander alone outside, he would surely encounter countless dangers.

“For the last time, this master will point out the path of cultivation for you. Using elemental spirit as the core to condense a pill not only takes time, it also requires a certain level of talent. I fear you do not meet the standard. Most importantly, you probably do not know why your progress has been so fast, do you?”

A flush rose across Shen Qingkong’s face. This was not recovery from his injuries, but rather a sign of a last burst of life before death.

A Core-Pill expert, about to die before his eyes?

Though merely a bystander, Luo Tian still felt an indescribable emotion.

“W-why?”

Seeing the strange curve at the corner of Shen Qingkong’s mouth, Fang Zheng suddenly felt a surge of ominous foreboding.

“Of course it is because you have overdrafted the potential of your future cultivation.”

Knowing that his time was short, Shen Qingkong seemed to cast everything aside.

“Among all the most outstanding disciples of foreign surname in the sect, we draw them under our wing. Once we discover someone with the potential to reach Core-Pill level, we bestow upon them cultivation resources mixed with the powder of the Death-Extinguishing Pill.”

The Death-Extinguishing Pill?

All color vanished from Fang Zheng’s face in an instant.

This pill could overdraft a cultivator’s future path and part of their lifespan in exchange for faster cultivation in the present. Yet its effects were slow to appear and required constant, unbroken consumption.

And once the quantity accumulated, its effects would snowball, becoming more and more obvious.

All hope was lost!

Fang Zheng roared in fury, the hand gripping the sword hilt tightening even further as he suddenly shoved forward.

With a soft thrust, a sword tip glimmering with a green-gold sheen pierced out through Shen Qingkong’s chest.

The Divine Sun Sect truly did have broad thinking and endless methods. In order to preserve the status of the four great clans, they could truly be said to spare no effort.

A nameless rage suddenly rose in Luo Tian’s heart. He was not a saint, yet he still felt sorrow at such a thing.

“Can’t take it anymore? Hahaha.”

Shen Qingkong smiled triumphantly, his eyes filled with boundless mockery.

“Do you know why I was willing to tell you this? Because you are about to die with me.”

As soon as the words fell, Luo Tian sensed the surrounding elemental energy beginning to stir.

What was Shen Qingkong trying to do?

His divine eyes blazing with golden light, Luo Tian instantly saw that within Shen Qingkong’s dantian, a Core the size of a dragon’s eye, though dim in color, was storing up power within itself. Then, in but an instant, it suddenly began to expand!

This old bastard was going to self-destruct?

Luo Tian’s spine went cold at once, cold sweat pouring down.

When a Core-Pill expert gathers all the power of his lifetime into a single instant of explosion, the resulting destructive force is terrifying beyond measure. The higher the quality of the core, and the greater its number, the more terrible the power.

There was no time to flee. Setting aside how quickly the blast’s aftermath would spread, given the terrain as it was, Luo Tian’s best course was to drop flat and keep as low as possible, not to turn and run.

Fang Zheng was still in a daze when he sensed something wrong with Shen Qingkong beside him. In an instant, he thought of the possibility of a Core self-detonation. While inwardly cursing that the old thing had never before mentioned the ultimate method of killing an enemy available to Core-Pill experts, he forcefully pushed off with both feet and shot backward like an arrow!

Bang!

The sound was not loud, but Luo Tian’s heart suddenly filled with alarm. The elemental energy ahead of him was now surging toward him like a tidal wave!