Flower Stealing Master

Chapter 1096: Drawn into the Web

Zuo Lengchan was cursing inwardly.

His plan had been elegant in its simplicity: slip in, seize Wu Tiande, silence every witness, and leave. 

Yuqing Temple was, after all, one of the five branch temples under Wudang Sect’s banner…but with the full strength of Mount Song deployed tonight, bolstered by dark-path masters from across the wulin, one modest Daoist temple hardly merited a second thought.

What he had not counted on was what he found inside. The fighters here were clearly several tiers above ordinary Yuqing Temple Daoists. The moment he sensed something was wrong and began weighing whether to withdraw, he looked around and found his men had already plunged into wholesale slaughter…and the other side, thoroughly provoked, was no longer showing any restraint.

In the span of a blink, dozens of lives had been extinguished. Once that kind of blood debt was incurred, walking away cleanly was no longer an option. 

Zuo Lengchan was a ruthless and calculating man. He knew that retreating now would cost him dearly…and earn him a powerful, unknown enemy into the bargain. Better to see it through to the end and leave no one alive to tell the tale. With the force he had brought tonight, wiping out even a major wulin sect was a straightforward matter.

The tide of battle moved as he had expected…Mount Song surged to a commanding advantage. Then eight archers appeared.

The volleys of arrows descended like curtains of rain, and they became a waking nightmare for Mount Song’s forces. Dozens of elite fighters were felled in moments.

It took tremendous effort and cost to finally cut down those eight bowmen. Yet even then Zuo Lengchan found no satisfaction. Skilled archers were a rarity in the wulin…the precision and discipline of these eight spoke clearly of military training. A cold unease settled over him: I may have walked into a trap!

But before he could think it through, more supreme fighters pressed forward against him, demanding his complete and undivided attention.

Having fought this far, Zuo Lengchan could no longer extract himself even if he wished to. He set his jaw and pressed on, determined to be the last man standing.

Then, at precisely that moment, Ding burst onto the scene. Hard on her heels came Ding Busan and Ding Busi.

Every fighter in the courtyard…Mount Song and Ruyang Palace alike…froze for an instant, hearts lurching with shock. Hands that had been locked in mortal struggle slowed, the killing frenzy ebbing by several degrees.

The Vajra Sect master had just landed a full-force strike of his Great Vajra Palm squarely on Shi Potian’s chest…at the Shanzhong acupoint. 

Shi Potian’s profound internal energy had been enough to survive it, but the blow, backed by decades of cultivated power, had left him gasping and limp, robbed of all strength to resist.

The Sect Master had fought hard for this opening. He moved in to finish the job…and found Ding suddenly standing between them.

“Don’t you dare hurt my Brother Tian.”

The Sect Master knew such moments did not last. He had earned this chance through blood and effort, and now some girl was throwing herself in his path. Fury surged through him. “Get out of my way, you little wretch!”

A colossal force struck Ding and sent her flying.

“Don’t you touch my granddaughter!”

“Don’t you touch Ding!”

Ding Busan and Ding Busi came roaring in, rage and alarm etched across their faces. They planted themselves before the Vajra Sect master…one to the left, one to the right. Decades of working in tandem had made their coordination effortless: one unleashed the Ding family’s grappling technique, the other drove in with the Black Fiend Palm. Their combined assault was seamless, forcing the enemy to defend two threats at once with only one body.

What they did not expect was for the Sect Master to simply stand there and take it.

The Ding brothers’ hearts leapt. Between them they carried decades of cultivated power…by any true measure of internal strength, they stood comparison with even the Xuanming Elders and Black and White Impermanence.

Their expressions changed the next instant. Where their strikes landed, it was like hitting stone…and the rebounding force sent a dull ache rippling through their own hand bones.

The Vajra Sect master bared his teeth in a savage grin. He flicked out two strikes of the Great Vajra Finger. Ding Busan and Ding Busi cried out simultaneously as blood bloomed from their arms.

As the Sect Master moved to press his advantage and finish them both, the two old devils showed why they had terrorized the wulin for decades. At the razor’s edge of death, one of them snatched the pipe from his waist while the other uncoiled his nine-section chain whip…one aimed for the eyes, the other drove straight for the groin.

In those few desperate seconds, they had already reasoned it out: the man had clearly mastered the Iron Bell Shield…the Golden Bell Armor technique…but no one could extend that protection to their eyes, and the groin remained far more vulnerable than anywhere else.

The Vajra Sect master’s face changed. He fell back instantly into defense. The Ding brothers had no intention of pressing…they retreated sharply, putting distance between themselves and him, staring across at the man with unconcealed alarm.

Song Qingshu had observed the entire exchange with perfect clarity. Yes, Ding Busan and Ding Busi had been defeated by him in just a few moves…but that was entirely a matter of disparity in movement technique, which had made the whole contest one-sided from the start.

It was the same principle as in The Smiling, Proud Wanderer: if Dongfang Bubai…the Invincible East…had relied on raw striking power alone against Ren Woxing, their actual cultivation levels were not worlds apart. But once that terrifying Qinggong was unleashed, Ren Woxing had been utterly at her mercy.

The Vajra Sect master had no particular distinction in movement technique. In that specific regard, the Ding brothers actually held a slight edge. Their fearsome reputation was no empty rumor. Had they not walked blind into the Indestructible Vajra Body and suffered for it at the outset, a real contest between them would have been no easy victory for the Sect Master…it would have taken well over a hundred exchanges before he could expect to prevail.

In terms of pure cultivation, Ding Busan and Ding Busi sat roughly at the same level as the Xuanming Elders and Black and White Impermanence. They simply lacked a technique with the extraordinary elemental properties of the Xuanming Divine Palm or the One Finger Zen…which meant, in a direct contest, they would likely come out the slightly weaker pair.

While Song Qingshu was turning this over in his mind, the Vajra Sect master had already dismissed the Ding brothers and lunged straight for Shi Potian. He had read the situation clearly: the old brothers were no real threat to him. The boy was the troublesome one.

The Vajra Sect master was a dark-path devil…he harbored none of the orthodox sects’ notion of knowing when to stop. He lived by the principle: when your enemy is down, finish him. He intended to end Shi Potian quickly.

Shi Potian had taken the full force of the Great Vajra Palm against his Shanzhong point. His deep internal reserves had allowed him to absorb it without dying, but the accumulated power of decades behind that strike had left his whole body weak and trembling, unable to summon any strength.

Ding, watching his condition, moved in front of him with desperate urgency…arms spread wide, hoping to shield him even for a moment, to buy her beloved a breath of time.

This all reads long in the telling, but from the instant Ding had been sent flying to the moment Ding Busan and Ding Busi were blasted back, no more than a few heartbeats had passed.

The Vajra Sect master had been obstructed again and again. His fury had reached its peak. When he saw Ding standing before Shi Potian with her arms outstretched, he struck without the faintest mercy.

Song Qingshu had no particular fondness for the vicious Ding. Watching her stumble into danger, he hesitated…did he intervene or not? Somewhere deep down, part of him preferred not to. But to stand there and watch a girl in the bloom of her youth perish, and do nothing…that, he found he could not harden himself to.

He was still wavering when he caught sight of another figure moving, and Song Qingshu relaxed.

As Ding was on the verge of meeting her end, a figure materialized before her. 

A fist drove straight into the Vajra Sect master.

The Sect Master smiled coldly and summoned every iota of his Great Vajra Palm…prepared to shatter this interloper’s hand bones in a single exchange.

Fist met palm.

The sound of splintering bone that the Sect Master had imagined never came. Instead, he himself stumbled back several steps, his complexion cycling between pale and red. It took him a long moment to recover, and when he did, his gaze locked on the newcomer with deadly intensity.

“What technique is that?”

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