Chapter 112: Fang Tiansha

Just moments ago, Xiao Cheng seized the perfect opportunity, leapt up, and pierced straight through the second-floor ceiling to reach the third floor, striking with a single sword thrust.

At first, he had attempted a frontal assassination on Leng Yuchan from a distance, which gave her enough time to react, so the attempt failed.

But this time was different. Leng Yuchan’s spiritual awareness could not detect his position at all. Striking through the thirty-centimeter-thick ceiling, Leng Yuchan was utterly defenseless. Even sensing the energy flow would be useless because she believed he was hiding inside the wardrobe, where the energy was similar and indistinguishable in direction.

Moreover, conventional thinking always follows patterns—no one would expect him to attack vertically through the floor; they would only anticipate a horizontal penetration through the wall.

Xiao Cheng had originally intended to kill with one strike, but Leng Yuchan’s reflexes were extraordinarily swift. She twisted just three inches away, narrowly missing a fatal wound; the blade grazed her thigh instead.

“What is this Fang Tiansha?” Xiao Cheng gripped the sword hilt, not withdrawing the blade, and asked in confusion.

“This is Fang Tiansha!” Leng Yuchan’s eyes suddenly gleamed as she saw that Xiao Cheng’s single strike was not enough to kill her. She formed a pair of palms and struck toward Xiao Cheng’s chest.

Xiao Cheng, possessing peak innate spiritual awareness, had already seen through her move. Drawing out his Azure Edge sword, he immediately leapt back, evading her dual palm strike.

Having failed to finish with one blow, killing her now would require more effort. After all, only this sword could harm Leng Yuchan; his true energy could not. But Xiao Cheng was not in a hurry. His strike had already severed her Achilles tendon, greatly reducing her mobility and threat.

Seeing Xiao Cheng retreat, Leng Yuchan quickly dodged, clutching the wound on her thigh and gritting her teeth. Her gaze toward Xiao Cheng changed completely, as if she were staring at a monster.

At first, she had regarded Xiao Cheng as a reckless fool, barely worth her attention. In her eyes, he was merely prey. Their cultivation levels were vastly different; she never believed he could harm her.

Yet Xiao Cheng’s power far exceeded her expectations. Not only could he match her in combat, but his spiritual awareness surpassed hers, and his strange wall-penetration technique now left her seriously injured. Was this really a low-level foundational cultivator at the peak stage?

She knew that if she didn’t kill Xiao Cheng today, it would be her who died. With his peculiar wall-penetration skill, escape was impossible.

“Hmph! How dare you wound me! You will die a most miserable death!” Leng Yuchan snarled.

Xiao Cheng did not respond. As he steadied himself, he lunged again at Leng Yuchan. He showed no mercy toward this naked woman. His Five-Union Sword Technique was elusive and unpredictable, and with her injured thigh, he dominated the fight, gradually cornering her against the wall.

“Diamond Sky Hand!” Leng Yuchan suddenly shouted. A vast, ethereal golden palm appeared in the void. This technique was clearly beyond her cultivation level. As soon as she unleashed it, she spat a mouthful of blood, her face turning pale as paper.

Seeing the golden palm in the void, Xiao Cheng hurriedly retreated. Leng Yuchan’s all-out magical technique was definitely beyond his level to confront head-on.

Leng Yuchan snorted coldly, forming hand seals with both hands and pointing at Xiao Cheng. The golden palm surged toward him.

Xiao Cheng dodged swiftly, but the palm pursued relentlessly, leaving him no chance to evade. With a thunderous crash, the golden palm smashed into a nearby wall. Just as it nearly hit him, Xiao Cheng used an Earth Escape technique to pass through the wall. The golden palm blasted a huge hole in the wall, sending a large chunk flying.

Dodging the strike, the golden palm’s color dimmed significantly. Taking advantage of the smoke, Xiao Cheng lifted the fallen wall fragment and hurled it at Leng Yuchan, following closely after the thrown debris.

The wall, over a meter in diameter, crashed toward Leng Yuchan. She was caught off guard by the Diamond Sky Hand and hastily raised both palms to block the wall.

“Bang!” A tremendous explosion. The wall shattered under her counterstrike, sending countless bricks flying back the way they came.

Then horror flashed across her face. She saw countless bricks flying backward as Xiao Cheng darted through them. Although many bricks blocked his path, he passed through unhindered. It was as if the bricks exerted no force on his body, or as if his body had been fragmented to slip through the bricks—an extremely eerie sight.

With a series of thuds, the bricks hit the ground. The golden palm in the void behind Xiao Cheng slowly dissipated. Leng Yuchan’s lower abdomen now bore a sword, from which a few drops of blood fell quietly to the floor.

Leng Yuchan trembled all over, her complexion fluctuating between pale and ashen. Xiao Cheng’s sword had struck precisely at her dantian, instantly annihilating over twenty years of cultivation.

“You… you’re only at the peak foundational stage, how could you kill me?” Leng Yuchan asked the question that plagued her heart most. Clearly, Xiao Cheng was far weaker than her, no match for her strength, yet she was the one defeated.

“Because I came to kill you, I can kill you!” Xiao Cheng said coldly.

Though it sounded unreasonable—‘because I want to kill you, I can’—it was a truth forged from years of killing.

Killing is killing. It’s not a spar, not a duel. Victory over the opponent is unnecessary; one must simply destroy the opponent’s body by any means to achieve death. That had been how he killed Xiao Guowei before, and it was no different now.

“Hmph! If I die, you will surely die too. The Fang Tiansha I mentioned is no lie!” Leng Yuchan said with a chilling smile, clearly unable to grasp the ‘truth’ Xiao Cheng spoke of.

Xiao Cheng had escaped her spiritual awareness, but also evaded Wang Qiyi’s innate third-rank spiritual perception. Could it be that Xiao Cheng’s spiritual awareness had already reached beyond the innate third rank?

“How strong is your spiritual awareness? Yet your cultivation is only peak foundational?” Leng Yuchan asked curiously.

“My spiritual awareness? About peak innate. As for why my spiritual awareness and cultivation don’t match…it’s because I’m someone who came back from the future!”

“Someone from the future? Ha! That’s ridiculous!” Leng Yuchan laughed uproariously. It was the funniest cold joke she had ever heard.

Xiao Cheng shook his head. Telling the truth and yet no one believed it.

He revealed his greatest secret because it had long weighed on his mind, and sometimes felt suffocating. Leng Yuchan was about to die anyway; he wasn’t worried the secret would spread.

After confessing this secret, he felt a surge of clarity, his resolve shining brighter than ever.

“Now you can die!” Xiao Cheng said, thrusting his sword forward. The blade hummed sharply as it pierced up through her heart, impaling her completely on the spot.

Leng Yuchan’s eyes widened in shock as she looked at Xiao Cheng, blood foaming at her lips. Then she smiled with relief, as if freed from a great burden.

Xiao Cheng withdrew the Azure Edge sword; it bore no trace of blood. Moving his spiritual awareness, he scanned his body, sensing an inexplicable presence within. Rolling up his sleeve, he found a complex black mark the size of a thumb on his arm, resembling a tattoo.

Xiao Cheng realized this must be the Fang Tiansha Leng Yuchan spoke of. He tried to erase it by various means but failed, likely due to his insufficient cultivation. He guessed the person who implanted the Fang Tiansha mark was at least a Golden Core expert.

Since he could not remove it, he decided not to care.

Xiao Cheng then went to the room where Leng Yuchan had first spoken with Wang Qiyi. There, he found the hand-copied Songyang Heart Sutra by Wang Qiyi and opened it to examine.

“This Songyang Heart Sutra has problems!” Xiao Cheng muttered to himself as he inspected the manuscript.