The Desolate Era

Book 41, The Daoguard Tower, Chapter 22 – The Storm

Whoosh. Ji Ning moved forwards at a terrifying speed, instantly avoiding two attacks that swished right past him.

It really was like dancing on the edge of a knife. Ning himself had never been in such an incredibly dangerous situation, and he wasn’t certain that he would survive it. All he could do was to do his best. His wings of electric sword-light and wind sword-light had granted him incredible speed, allowing him to dodge repeatedly.

Slash! Slash! Slash! Slash! Suddenly, the semi-translucent rays of light began to swing over and shoot towards Ning. This caused Ning to immediately grow a bit nervous. Aside from the attacks from the thirty-six stone pillars, he also had to deal with the semi-translucent rays of light. Dodging became even more difficult for Ning now, and the light in this area had long ago transformed into an enormous web.

“Dodge. Dodge. Dodge.” Under tremendous pressure, Ning continuously dodged at incredible speeds and moved in extremely unpredictable, bizarre ways.

“He’s actually dodging?” The Emperors and Hegemons in the castle were all stupefied by this. As they saw it, these attacks were so ridiculously fast that none of them would even be able to react in time. Ning, however, was somehow about to continuously find an empty spot and avoid the furious attacks, evading and dodging past the attacks. Not a single one of them managed to hit him!

“Mixing the Wind Sword Dao and the Lightning Sword Dao together feels absolutely wonderful.” This was Ning’s first time using two different Sword Daos together, and as he continued to dodge the thunder wings and wind wings on his back became increasingly agile and nimble.

He was both fast and unpredictable. The two pairs of wings worked together in an increasingly marvelous way, allowing Ning to become increasingly faster and nimbler as well.

“Wind can support the lightning’s momentum, while lightning can reinforce the wind’s strength.” Ning suddenly transformed into two howling streaks of lightning and wind as his two sets of wings merged together. Now, there was lightning in the wind and a gale in the lightning.

Fast, savage, dominating, unscrutable, mysterious.

Swoosh! Swoosh! Swoosh! The blurry light of wind and lightning flashed past the semi-translucent rays of light. It avoided the attacks from the thirty-six stone pillars with ease as it repeatedly found the openings in the attacks, and it continued to advance towards the castle.

“How is this possible? How is he able to completely dodge all of our attacks? This is impossible!” The Hegemons and Emperors in the castle were growing increasingly nervous. If they were fighting ordinary cultivators, this castle alone would be more than enough to stop their opponents in their tracks. However, Ning was comparable to an Autarch in power! If he managed to get close to their castle, they would lose! This was because Ning was more than strong enough to use his sword-arts to pierce through the castle, and he could also blink straight inside of it.

During the Dawn War, this was exactly what Autarch Bolin and the others had done; they had blinked straight inside the various warships, with the external defenses of no use against them whatsoever. Thus, the only way the castle could be a threat to Ning was by using external attacks against him. The problem was, they could clearly see that those attacks were completely incapable of stopping Ning.

“Go out, go out! All of you, go out! Use every Sithe weapon you have to assault this Daolord!” the Hegemon in charge commanded. “We have to stop him and prevent him from getting close to the castle. If he gets close to us, we’re finished!”

“Everyone, head out!”

“All Hegemons and Emperors on standby must head out immediately.”

“If you can disrupt his tempo even slightly, we’ll be able to land an attack on him. One attack will lead to another, and he might even die by our hands.”

“Let’s do this!” In truth, the Hegemons and Emperors inside were beginning to panic as well. Alas, most of them were needed to control the castle. Even though they had avatars, in the end the castle was only able to send out a total of three Emperors. These Emperors each had two or three powerful Sithe weapons. They stood on the surface of the castle, staring at the distant storm-shaped Ning. Gritting their teeth, they began to attack and attempt to knock Ning off his rhythm.

Swish. A chain flew out towards Ning, seeking to wrap itself around him. Alas, before it even reached Ning it was struck by a semi-translucent ray of light and sent tumbling to the ground.

Clearly, the rays of light could not differentiate between friend and foe. The castle was using many different types of attacks to assault Ning, and these attacks were harmonized with each other to a tremendous agree, ensuring that they wouldn’t cancel each other out. Unfortunately, it was hard for these three Emperors to fully avoid the semi-translucent attacks from the castle.

“Damnit!” The three Emperors were being driven mad with rage.

Alas, their rage was of no use. Ning continued to advance at high speed as he gained more and more familiarity with mixing his Wind Sword Dao and Lightning Sword Dao together. None of the attacks were able to land on him at all. The three Emperors did their absolute utmost to disturb Ning’s movements, but although an occasional attack managed to get close to Ning, none of them were able to actually threaten Ning at all.

One billion kilometers… nine hundred million kilometers… eight hundred million kilometers… Ning moved closer and closer to the castle, and as he did so a full-blown panic began to erupt amongst the Hegemons and Emperors inside. They all knew that once Ning reached the tower, they would die.

“Let’s run!” When Ning reached a distance of two hundred million kilometers from the tower, the Emperors inside began to break down. None of them harbored any further hopes of being able to stop Ning.

Boom! The entire castle transformed into a streak of light that hurriedly began to fly away. At the same time, the castle deactivated its spacetime suppression field as it begin to teleport away.

“Do you really think you’ll be able to escape?” As soon as the castle began to flee, the semi-translucent rays of light all completely vanished. Now completely unimpeded, Ning instantly appeared in front of the castle. He reached out with one hand, touching the castle’s exterior.

“Blink.” Ning used just a tiny amount of Immortal energy to command the Dao to envelop him, instantly blinking him inside. The tough external shell of the castle seemed to have transformed into a gentle curtain of water which Ning easily passed through, arriving inside.

The Hegemons and Emperors inside all revealed looks of despair.

Slash! A streak of sword-light howled outwards, slaying two of the Emperors on the spot.

“Put down all of your treasures and accept capture. I’m willing to spare your lives for now,” Ning said.

“Huh? Spare our lives?” The Hegemons and Emperors were all rather shocked. Ning had pursued them with such ferocity and had instantly slain two Emperors upon entering the castle. This had truly scared them out of their minds.

Ning frowned. “It seems you would rather die than live, then?”

“No, we want to live! Live!”

“All of us want to live!” The Hegemons and Emperors immediately divested themselves of all their treasures and Sithe weapons, then obediently lined up in front of Ning.

Ning waved his hand, pulling them all into his estate-world. He then waved his hand a second time, pulling the treasures into a different estate-world.

“These so-called ‘Sithe progeny’ are still members of our own Chaosverse. I hope that they aren’t absolutely loyal to the Sithe,” Ning mused. When Ning had first arrived at Purgatory, his goal was to weaken the enemy as much as possible; there was naturally no way he would show mercy. But now that he already gained victory and entered the castle? Ning wasn’t going to just murder these people unless necessary.

Ning had been able to immediately recognize two of the Emperors as true Sithe. They were being ignored and suppressed by the prime essences of the Chaosverse, which was proof of their identity! The others, however, were actually ‘Sithe descendants’! They were creatures of this Chaosverse who had been born and bred here.

……

Ning put away the entire castle, then collected the thirty-six stone pillars as well. He was in a superb mood. “I defeated those Hegemons and Emperors, broke into the castle, and managed to avoid using too much power.”

Ning was feeling absolutely wonderful. During this battle, the only thing he had done was use his wind sword-light and lightning sword-light to dodge and evade. Evasion-arts consumed much less of his energy than full-force blows; all that flying which Ning had engaged in was perhaps at most on par with what would be consumed by a single sword-blow. Blinking into the castle used up very little energy as well.

He had been able to achieve his goals with a minimum amount of effort. How could he NOT be happy? He began to warp through space, arriving at somewhere else where the other Hegemons and Emperors were gathered.

“Eh?” Ning stared forwards, rather puzzled. There were a series of palaces off in the distance, with the central palace being the largest one. It was surrounded by a scattering of smaller palaces, and they were all connected into an enormous palace complex. Ning could vaguely sense the auras of many Hegemons and Emperors within the palace complex; there had to be more than twenty of them scattered throughout that place.

“I have the feeling that this palace complex is even more dangerous than the castle.” For some inexplicable reason, Ning shivered. He knew that this was his subconscious warning him of the danger. “Judging from how the palaces have been laid out, this should be some sort of enormous formation.”

Ning couldn’t help but feel a bit of wariness when faced with such a formation.

“There’s no rush.” Ning sat down in the lotus position. “Let me first spend some time meditating on my Wind Sword Dao and Lightning Sword Dao.” When he had been flying forwards at high speed earlier, he suddenly had the feeling that he could merge his Wind Sword Dao and Lightning Sword Dao on a deeper level.

It was similar to how Ning was planning to perfectly join his Space Sword Dao and Time Sword Dao into a Spacetime Sword Dao. Ning now felt certain that he could also perfectly join his Lightning Sword Dao and his Wind Sword Dao together into a ‘Storm’ Sword Dao.

“Perhaps I might find an unexpected surprise from this.” Ning immediately closed his eyes, allowing his awesome Sword Dao Domain to spread out around him as he began to meditate.