Chapter 405 - Instinct-Driven Murder
Song San had recently been feeling that his life was heading downhill.
He wasn't sure where the edge was, where the final drop waited and doom would arrive, but the danger was always there.
As his hand pierced wrist-deep into Liu Feng's back, with his fingers feeling the spine and veins brush against the back of his hand and warm blood coating his palm, Song San felt oddly comfortable.
For some reason, at a time like this, he recalled meeting the guy for the first time.
When he first met Liu Feng, there wasn't much to say about him. Perhaps he would slow down his sister a bit, and that was about as far as Song San cared.
But from that moment onward, an invisible countdown had started. Song San couldn't see the seconds ticking away or know how much time he had left.
It was stupid. Almost instinctive. More of a gut feeling than something backed by facts.
At least back then it was. However, deep down, he knew Liu Feng was dangerous.
Far more dangerous than Song Song, who was just an average woman with monstrous talent and a love for murder. There were plenty of people like that.
Liu Feng, on the other hand, felt like a slow tsunami rolling toward shore. The kind you wouldn't even notice until the water was already above your head.
Everything came to a head when Song San's father, the Blood Step Immortal, was sealed. At that point, it became obvious.
No matter how much stronger someone was, with enough planning, a person like Liu Feng could take them down.
At least that was how Song San saw it. So from that moment onward, he began scheming.
It was a shame too. Because if he didn't hate Liu Feng as a person, he would have loved to do more research with him.
But reality was a cruel mistress.
He had to push the timeline forward. Before his plans could even come to fruition, Liu Feng somehow survived an attack from an immortal, and now he was about to enslave a Nascent Soul beast.
If that happened, then Song San knew he would never leave this mist alive.
'Lord Nascent Cultivator, make a deal with me instead! I can corrode the barrier without Liu Feng's help!'
Song San sent a mental message toward the titanic blue-skinned toad.
As the mental thread stretched toward the beast, he already sensed his sister moving.
He had to get the blue toad on his side before her attack landed. Otherwise, this situation would become dangerous.
Song San wasn't sure his usual countermeasures would work here.
Escaping would be difficult.
But just as the mental thread was about to connect, a powerful wave of mental energy erupted from Liu Feng, like a massive wave snapping a fishing line.
Why did this half-dead nobody always have to try so hard? Song San complained internally.
It was always like this!
Song Song gave him no chance to try again. She was already halfway to reaching him, and within the time it took to blink, she would be close enough to knock his head off.
Song San pulled his hand out of Liu Feng’s back, and what he saw inside the bloody wound annoyed him even more.
There was no pierced heart. Only shattered vertebrae and fragments of rib bone protruding through torn flesh.
The crazy bastard had moved his heart out of the way through who knew what method!
If Song San had to guess, Liu Feng had simply used Qi to force his heart aside. That would have killed almost anyone else.
How did the guy even react that fast?
Song San guessed Liu Feng likely had some kind of mental technique that sped up his thoughts, but did it always activate so quickly?
Damn, that was unlucky.
But he didn’t have any more time to curse internally, because Song Song was already within reach, her right leg covered in crimson armor made from her own blood that looked almost metallic.
A normal person in her situation would have hesitated. A split second spent wondering why she had reacted so late, until after he had already stabbed Liu Feng.
But this was the annoying thing about his sister.
The smarter choice here would have been to take Song Song out with the sneak attack, but she would have sensed the killing intent through her freakish instincts the moment they met on this journey.
Song San only had enough time to raise his left arm and protect his chest.
His sister’s leg sang through the air like a whip, moving at a speed that appeared as little more than a blur.
It was a bit disheartening just how vast the distance between them was, despite both being Core Formation Cultivators.
As her armored heel struck his arm, the disparity in power was laid bare.
The limb couldn't withstand the impact.
It broke instantly.
The arm folded under the overwhelming force with a sickening snap that he felt through his entire body.
But in that fleeting instant, despite his injuries, he forced his body to move and redirected the attack.
The adjustment was small.
Barely enough.
However, a strike that should have killed him outright was reduced to a devastating injury instead.
His arm immediately began to swell as he sensed a minuscule amount of Song Song's blood entering it.
Under normal circumstances, that alone would have killed him before he even realized what was happening.
But Song San had experience dealing with Song Song's blood.
He understood how it worked. To counter it, he had created a poison specifically designed to kill the foreign blood and had already injected it into himself.
However, the surrounding cells were being converted into the same type of blood the poison targeted. As a result, the swelling wasn't being caused by Song Song's blood alone. It was his own poison reacting like an overactive immune system.
Song San acted without hesitation. His remaining healthy hand swept through the air, casually severing the infected arm.
The detached limb exploded into fragments of flesh and bone an instant later.
Anticipating this, he manipulated his Qi with practiced ease, ensuring that every droplet of blood and every fragment of flesh were pushed away before they could touch him.
As expected, Song San thought.
The gap between him and his sister was growing wider. Reality like this always felt like a crushing weight on his chest. He never understood how someone like Liu Feng could tolerate it.
Liu Feng likely saw the same thing happening all around him.
In fact, there were even more people surpassing Liu Feng than there were surpassing Song San, since Liu Feng's talent was lower.
How could he endure knowing that people who knew less than him, worked less than him, and understood less than him would eventually surpass him?
While Song San was thinking this, his sister never slowed down. She moved like a shadow, already within striking distance again.
He used his tongue to push a fake tooth loose before biting down and crushing it.
The moment it shattered, shadows spilled from his mouth and raced across his body with alarming speed, spreading over his skin like living ink.
This was one of his final contingencies.
A last-resort artifact forged from the corpse of his daughter's mother. Its creation had been neither simple nor humane, requiring a willing sacrifice and a lengthy ritual to complete.
The darkness spread upward, covering his chest. Yet Song Song was already upon him. The artifact was powerful, but it wasn't instantaneous.
She had simply been too close.
Before the shadows could fully envelop him, she still had enough time to land a strike.
Anyone else forced to make a decision in that brief moment would have aimed for the exposed section of his head.
That was exactly what Song San wanted.
The visible area was little more than skin and the retina of an eye, a carefully prepared distraction meant to draw attacks away from anything important.
Failing that, most cultivators would have targeted the shadow-covered chest.
Song Song did neither.
Without the slightest hesitation, she went for his remaining arm.
Flesh tore and bone shattered as the limb was ripped away.
Song San reacted instantly, imploding the Qi within his shoulder and severing the connection before his sister's virus-like powers could spread through the rest of his body.
Damn it!
Judging by the look in her eyes, the annoying thing was that she had made the perfect choice for maximum damage without thinking.
Song San could respect someone like Liu Feng. If Liu Feng made the perfect choice for a situation, he had clearly thought about it, gone through the process of understanding the problem, and slowly discovered the answer. Or at worst, relied on experience.
Song Song, on the other hand, made the perfect choice simply by following her instincts.
It truly was annoying.
As the shadows swallowed Song San, he cast one final glance toward Liu Feng.
The man had a green translucent construct surrounding his chest.
Calm as always, he didn't even look in Song San's direction, remaining completely focused on whatever deal he was trying to strike with the blue toad.
Almost as if he wasn't the one who had just been stabbed through the chest.
Song San smirked.
He respected the willpower and the scheming. But he no longer had the luxury of thinking about the guy.
Would the mist array interfere with the shadow teleportation technique? Song San wondered.
After all, it was fundamentally just a Foundation Technique refined into an artifact, one that strengthened it to something approaching the level of a Core Technique.
If he was teleported somewhere inside the mist, then one way or another, Song San knew he wouldn't be getting out alive.
However, outside the mist was a different matter.
He could easily escape before Liu Feng could bring down the seal and the mist array.
Darkness surrounded Song San.
For a brief moment, there was no sound.
No sensation.
Only endless blackness.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself outside.
Blue sky stretched overhead, and the mist lay far behind him.
A smile appeared on his face.
My victory!
But as his senses spread outward, that thought came to an abrupt halt.
A crushing sense of defeat settled inside him.
Followed closely by dread.
Yet outwardly, he continued smiling.
“Do you have to try so hard and be so malicious, Liu Feng? You never intended for me to get out of this alive at all, did you?” Song San said.
He chuckled and looked into the distance.
There, suspended in midair, stood a monkey covered in golden fur. Beside it floated a massive three-eyed white snake.
Song San considered how he had ended up in this exact location.
Had it simply been an accident?
The thought didn't last long.
The Misty Mountain Range covered an enormous area. Even if someone had been waiting outside, the chances of him randomly teleporting to the precise place where they happened to be were negligible.
No. There was only one explanation that made sense.
Liu Feng had somehow used the blue toad to gain control of the mist array.
Song San let out a quiet breath.
He had been played. There was no point denying it.
“You were right, Bai. He did show up.” The golden-furred monkey curled its lips, revealing sharp white canines. “This time he won't escape.”
“Of course. My spies in the human territories have infiltrated quite deeply,” Bai, the large three-eyed snake, replied.
But the golden-furred monkey wasn't interested in flattery and paid more attention to Song San.
“Heh, missing both your arms. You look like a tree without branches, human.”
The golden monkey didn't hesitate. The moment it sensed hostility, it moved. There was no warning, no exchange of threats, no testing strike. One instant it stood several dozen meters away, golden fur shining beneath the pale light, and the next it was already crossing the distance.
Song San reacted immediately.
He drew a sharp breath and then exhaled.
Poisonous mist burst from his mouth in a thick torrent, spreading outward across the field. The vapor rolled along the ground like living water, climbed into the air, and wrapped itself around trees and rocks alike.
Wherever it touched, grass withered into black sludge and leaves curled inward before falling from their branches. Within moments, the entire area was covered beneath a blanket of green-gray fog.
The monkey charged straight into it.
Song San could still hear it moving. His senses were heightened within the poison that would kill anyone else. But what he felt as he moved through the poison cloud was not good.
He immediately jumped backward, trying to widen the distance and buy even a second more for the poison to work.
A second was all he needed.
Unfortunately, the monkey needed less.
A golden blur burst through the poison.
Then came the punch.
Song San didn't even fully see it.
Pain exploded through his body. For a moment, his mind refused to understand what had happened while a ringing in his right ear refused to stop. Then he looked down.
The entire lower left side of his abdomen had been destroyed.
Simply blasted away by the power behind that punch.
His robes were gone. The flesh was gone. Even sections of bone had vanished beneath the force of the blow. Intestines spilled from the opening, sliding across the blood-soaked earth. Some loops had been crushed flat, compressed into grotesque shapes that barely resembled organs anymore. Others had split apart completely, leaking their contents into the wound.
The monkey had committed fully to the strike. Its forearm remained extended.
Close enough.
Song San lunged forward.
Blood poured from his ruined torso as he threw himself toward the monkey. He had no arms. His poison cloud wouldn't act quickly enough.
So he opened his mouth and bit.
The golden monkey's eyes narrowed.
Its other fist moved.
Dense Qi wrapped around the arm like armor, compressed so tightly that the surrounding air warped around it. The punch landed before Song San's teeth could touch fur.
He felt the first row of teeth explode.
Fragments blasted through his mouth and throat. Several shattered completely, while others were ripped free at the root. The force continued forward without slowing.
His jaw collapsed.
The lower half of his face caved inward before bursting apart in a spray of blood, shattered teeth, and strips of flesh. He felt pieces of himself flying away through the air. His tongue suddenly had nowhere to sit.
The world tilted.
Song San's body spun sideways and crashed into the ground. Blood poured from the ruin that had once been his mouth. His hearing faded beneath a high-pitched ringing while the poisonous mist continued drifting across the battlefield, swallowing everything beneath a pale green haze.
Lying there, barely conscious, Song San stared upward through his remaining eye.
He could no longer feel half his face. Usually, he wore a porcelain mask, but somewhere during the fight, he lost it.
Ah, what a life... This might actually be the end, he thought.