“Your Highness, what happened to your hand?!”
Xie Lian’s right hand, and everything traveling up from it, was covered in blood. His entire right arm was thoroughly dyed red, and the shaking that racked the limb could not be written off as a minor issue. Yet both his hands still firmly gripped the white silk band to keep everyone from being blown apart by wild winds.
“What happened to you?!” Shi Qingxuan cried.
Xie Lian came back to his senses a little and shook his head. “It’s nothing…just a small injury. I’ll be fine once we’re back up there.”
“That white light was you?” Shi Qingxuan remembered. “Your Highness, you broke those two apart?”
“I’m a swordsman, after all,” Xie Lian replied.
Shi Qingxuan had guessed right. At the moment right before Hua Cheng and Lang Qianqiu’s blades clashed, Xie Lian darted in. He’d randomly taken a sword from the stacks of weapons on the shelves and made two particular moves between the sword and the scimitar.
In the first move, he knocked away Lang Qianqiu’s greatsword. In the second move, he blocked the scimitar Eming.
The strength of those two moves was not only powerful but extremely precisely controlled. Even when Xie Lian blocked both blades, the force of the strikes did not rebound onto the attackers. This was because, with Xie Lian sandwiched in the middle, he had used his own sword and arm to absorb both attacks completely.
Lang Qianqiu’s greatsword was manageable, but Hua Cheng’s scimitar was a force to be reckoned with. The sword Xie Lian had used was one from Hua Cheng’s collection, so naturally it was also a formidable blade. When those two blades crossed, it blasted that blinding white light. With the two moves, the first strike against Lang Qianqiu’s greatsword caused a crack in Xie Lian’s sword, and the second strike against the scimitar Eming shattered it to pieces.
All of this was done within a fraction of a second, faster than the eye could see. Shi Qingxuan looked at the tragic state of Xie Lian’s right hand and determined that the whole right arm was probably badly mangled.
He said, “Your Highness, you’re…so full of vigor. I can’t believe you blocked them single-handedly!”
The Flower-Crowned Martial God: Sword in One Hand, Flower in the Other. Shi Qingxuan had only remembered the flower. He had forgotten that Xie Lian ascended because of his sword.
Thinking back on how close of a call that was, Shi Qingxuan’s heart was still racing. “Thank goodness Your Highness had those moves, otherwise who knows how many pieces Lang Qianqiu would have been cut into by Hua Cheng.”
The strange thing was, Lang Qianqiu appeared to be unharmed, but he remained in a stunned state, like his soul had left his body.
“Qianqiu?” Shi Qingxuan called. “Qianqiu, are you all right? Wake up! What’s with you? Has your sight not returned yet?”
Riding on a tailwind, the group finally reached the heavenly capital. Dragging and carrying, they rushed past the Ascension Gates and ran straight for the Palace of Divine Might. Since Lang Ying couldn’t enter the palace, Xie Lian settled him in a small side chamber. No one seemed to be on duty, so he shouted within the communication array:
“Are there any fellow heavenly officials here? Please, everyone, come quickly to the Palace of Divine Might! It’s an emergency; we have a wounded official!”
As he shouted, Shi Qingxuan snapped his fingers and switched back to his white Daoist robes. He waved and released a hundred thousand merits. “It’s two wounded officials!”
Xie Lian said hurriedly, “Lord Wind Master, don’t get so excited. We can ask normally; there’s no need to distribute any merits. Everyone will naturally come once they hear us.”
“No, Your Highness,” Shi Qingxuan said. “You have to know, giving out merits works a hundred times faster than asking alone!”
Soon enough, a voice came from the distance, “Who’s wounded?”
When the word “who” was uttered, the voice was still far away, but by the end of the question, the person had appeared—Feng Xin. He entered the hall, looked at Xie Lian, then at Lang Qianqiu, his face faltering.
“I’m fine, but Lord Earth Master seems to be badly wounded,” Xie Lian said.
After a moment of silence, Feng Xin asked, “What happened to your right arm?”
“So what if he’s injured?” another voice came. “There are so many heavenly officials, and who among us has ever returned unscathed after a patrol?”