Chapter 648
The store was dark, with only a few green will-o'-the-wisp lanterns floating in the air. On the counter were all kinds of strange objects: demon pupils in glass jars, skulls engraved with spells, and even a dragon finger that was still twitching slightly?
The shop owner was a hunchbacked old man, with a bronze mask covering half of his face. His exposed right eye was cloudy and yellow, as if covered with a layer of corpse oil. He grinned, revealing his dark purple gums: "You two, are you seeking treasure... or are you selling your lives?"
Nangong Wan chuckled, and a wisp of purple flame ignited from his fingertips, forcing the old man to retreat half a step: "Please give me some information."
The old man stared at the purple flame, a trace of fear flashed in his one eye, and his voice suddenly became respectful: "What do you want to ask, distinguished guest?"
Fu Shaoping threw the torn map out from his sleeve and tapped it on the counter: "Dragon Skeleton Abyss."
The old man's pupils suddenly contracted.
Just as the old man was leaning over to take a closer look at the map, Nangong Wan suddenly turned his head - very light footsteps were heard outside the store, and at least five people were quietly surrounding them.
The corners of her lips curled slightly, and the purple flame silently crawled into her sleeves along her fingertips. Fu Shaoping still had no expression on his face, but the scabbard had already made an almost inaudible clang.
The old man seemed to be completely unaware, and pointed his withered finger at a twisted rune on the edge of the map: "This is an ancient demonic script, meaning 'blood key'... The restriction of the Dragon Skeleton Abyss requires a living sacrifice to open it." He looked up, and his single eye lit up strangely, "Coincidentally, there will be a blood moon in three days——"
Before he could finish his words, the store door exploded!
Five black shadows shot in, the leader holding a poisoned bone spike, and pointed it at Fu Shaoping's back: "Hand over the map!"
####**Purple Flame Burning Night**
Nangong Wan didn't even turn his head, but waved his hand back -
"boom!"
The violent purple flames burst out like a huge wave, instantly engulfing the three attackers! Amid screams, their flesh and blood melted like wax, leaving only a few charred bones that fell to the ground with a crackling sound.
Fu Shaoping's movements were even faster.
The sword was not unsheathed, but the end of the sheath hit the throat of another person, and the icy true energy instantly froze his meridians. The last person was so scared that he collapsed to the ground, but saw Fu Shaoping step on the communication talisman in his arms and crush it.
"Who sent you here?" Nangong Wan squatted down, and the purple flame condensed into the shape of a little wolf in his palm, grinning.
The man's crotch was wet: "Xuan, Xuanyin Sect! They are offering a reward for the person who carries the dragon skeleton map..."
Fu Shaoping frowned, raised his scabbard and knocked the man unconscious, then turned to look at the old man who had already shrunk under the counter and asked, "Has the news leaked?"
The old man shook his head frantically, "Our small shop never leaks secrets! It must be...it must be that you two were targeted when you entered the city!"
####**Night Rain Leaving the Ruins**
When we left Baihai Pavilion, it was already raining coldly.
Nangong Wan was playing with a string of newly bought soul-sealing beads, and suddenly chuckled: "Fu Shaoping, it seems like we are being treated like fat sheep."
In the darkness of the market town, countless greedy eyes were following their movements.
Fu Shaoping took off the black cold iron from his waist and tied it to the hilt of the sword. The cold air immediately condensed into fine ice crystals in the rain. He said lightly: "Kill the chicken to scare the monkey."
Before he finished speaking, a sword light flashed out like a white rainbow, pinning the cloaked man who was watching from a distance to the wall! Before the blood could splatter, it was frozen into scarlet icicles by the cold air.
The whole street suddenly became silent.
Nangong Wan smiled and took Fu Shaoping's arm. Her purple eyes swept over the figures who were hastily retreating in the shadows: "Now, can we go shopping properly?"
Deep in the rain, the sound of the Xuanyin Sect's copper whistle to gather disciples could be heard faintly. However, the two had already stepped into a brightly lit restaurant, and their backs were like a knife, cutting off all the sights of those who were following them.
The dusk was blood-red, and the setting sun dyed the official road a dark red like rusted iron. Two black-maned horses trampled the dead branches, and the sound of their hooves was as dull as drums. Nangong Wan leaned on the horse's back, a wisp of purple flame circling her fingertips, teasing a few fireflies that strayed into the flame. The firelight reflected on the cinnabar mole at the end of her eye, which was as charming as poison, and made the arc of her lips that seemed to be smiling even more dangerous.
Fu Shaoping was always half a horse's length behind, with the black iron sword lying across the saddle, and the ice crystals condensed on the sword tassel fell to the ground - that was the cold iron murderous aura left in the market three days ago, which has not dissipated yet. His brows were cold and his eyes were like knives, sweeping across the dense forests on both sides of the official road, as if every shadow was hiding murderous intent.
"Do you really want to live in seclusion?" Nangong Wan suddenly chuckled, his voice lazy but with a hint of amusement, "The Xuanyin Sect has posted our portraits all over the Jiuzhou bounty list, even the waiters at the roadside tea stalls can recognize us."
Fu Shaoping raised his eyes and looked at the layers of green mountains in the distance, and said indifferently: "If you make any noise, I will kill you all."
Nangong Wan laughed softly, the purple flames dancing on her fingertips, reflecting the burning fire in her eyes: "Okay, then let's see, do they have more heads, or do we have less patience."
-
The dew was heavy at midnight, and the fog in the forest was getting thicker.
Nangong Wan stepped barefoot on the bluestone beside the stream, her long hair falling like a waterfall, purple flames swirling in her palms, steaming up the water surface with mist. She tapped her fingertips lightly, and the flames coiled around her hair like a snake, burning away the bloody smell.
The third cuckoo's note suddenly changed, the timbre was trembling and unnatural.
A purple light flashed in Nangong Wan's eyes, and her fingertips suddenly flicked, and a broken hair shot out like a needle - "Ding!" With a crisp sound, in the bushes on the other side of the stream, a poisoned silver needle was accurately shot down and nailed into the tree trunk, and the tail of the needle was still trembling.
Almost at the same time, Fu Shaoping did not move, but the scabbard had swept across behind him. With three crisp "clicks", three crossbow arrows broke. The dark green poison on the arrowheads dripped, corroding the ground and emitting pungent white smoke.
"Tsk, I'm not even allowed to take a peaceful bath." Nangong Wan sighed softly, but his tone did not show any annoyance, but rather a bit of interest.
More than 20 men in black rose up from the pile of rotten leaves, their swords woven into a sweet and fishy net, and rushed straight towards the two. The leader had a black Yin blood lotus pierced on his forehead, and his voice was hoarse like sandpaper rubbing against his forehead: "Young Master Fu's head is worth 100,000 spirit stones! Today, we will accept it with joy!"
-
Nangong Wan's wet hair flew, and purple flames suddenly exploded, sweeping out like a sky full of fire. As soon as the two assassins jumped into the air, the flames had already wrapped around their ankles, burning through their flesh and burning their tendons and bones. Before they could even scream, the two had already fallen into their own sword formation and were hacked to pieces by their companions.
When she turned around, a bloodstain appeared on her skirt, but her smile became even more beautiful: "You are worthy of the reward with this little ability? Is there no one left in the Xuanyin Sect?"
Fu Shaoping never drew his sword.
The scabbard hit one man's Danzhong acupoint, and frost spread along the meridians, covering his entire body in the blink of an eye, freezing him into an ice sculpture; with a backhand shake, the other man's throat bone was shattered, and his body flew backwards several feet, breaking a dead tree. When the fifth assassin's scimitar chopped at the back of his neck, the black iron sword finally came out of the scabbard three inches - "Zheng!"
Frost burst out like a waterfall, and the grass and trees within three feet were covered with white light, and ice crystals condensed on the ground. The assassin remained in a chopping posture and froze in place, his pupils suddenly shrinking, watching his blade freeze inch by inch and then break. Fu Shaoping flicked his sleeves, and the ice sculpture exploded and turned into ice dust all over the sky.
-
The last assassin knelt in a pool of blood, trembling all over, watching Nangong Wan melt her companion's weapon into molten iron with purple flames and shape it into a small earring. She tilted her head to look at it, as if admiring her own masterpiece, completely ignoring the corpses strewn all over the ground under her feet.
Fu Shaoping raised the assassin's chin with the tip of his sword, and said in a voice as cold as iron: "Where is the leader of Xuanyin?"
"Here, here." The assassin's lips trembled, his eyes suddenly bulged out, black blood spurted out of his mouth, and his head exploded from the inside out!
Nangong Wan waved her sleeves to block the flying brains, frowned and looked at the twisted curse mark on the neck of the corpse: "Heart-eating poison? It seems that the old monster has taken out all his family assets." She kicked the frozen stumps at her feet and said frivolously, "Hey, are you still going to Qingshan Town now?"
Fu Shaoping shook off the blood on his sword, and the sound of returning it to the sheath cut off the last insect chirping: "Let's go."
-
When the blood moon appeared from a gap in the clouds, the two figures had disappeared at the end of the post road.
Behind them, charred bones and ice sculptures were silently displayed, like an absurd ritual. As the night wind blew, the embers of the purple flames drifted like fireflies, and ice flowers condensed from frost quietly bloomed on the corpses.
In the distance, the copper whistle of the Xuanyin Sect sounded as mournful as a ghost crying, but no one dared to chase.
As the setting sun dyed the post road a rusty iron color, Nangong Wan was burning a Xuanyin Sect tracking talisman with purple flames. The talisman paper twisted and screamed in the flames, and finally turned into green smoke and dissipated. "The seventeenth batch," she counted lazily, "the old monster is really persistent."
The ice crystals on Fu Shaoping's sword tassel fell to the ground. After the battle in the market three days ago, the murderous aura of cold iron has never dissipated. "Shut up." He shook off the blood beads on the scabbard, and the assassin's body that had just been frozen in the distance "cracked" into ice chips.
The bonfire crackled in the cave. Nangong Wan shook open the blood-stained package, and the hidden weapons rolled all over the ground with a clang. "Poisoned diamond darts, bone-piercing nails." The purple flame swept over, and the poison turned into green smoke. She suddenly raised her eyebrows - the route on the sheepskin fragments in the interlayer of the black iron token could be pieced together with their map.
"Interesting." Fu Shaoping rubbed the cold marrow pill with his fingertips, and the ice-blue pill rose white mist in his palm. Nangong Wan was about to tease, but the Thousand Machine Lock suddenly "clicked" and the keyhole snake eye flashed red. The two looked at each other, and suddenly there was a rustling sound outside the cave.
Purple flames and frost rose at the same time! As Nangong Wan's skirt fluttered, three black shadows turned into torches; Fu Shaoping's sword was not unsheathed, but the cold air froze the attacker's crossbow arrows in mid-air. "The eighteenth batch." She crushed the throat bone of the last assassin and pulled out the bounty order with blood and ink still wet from his arms - a new red mark was added next to the portrait: "Whoever captures Nangong Wan alive will be rewarded with purple flames to practice secret arts."
The bonfire suddenly shook violently. The ancient demon characters on the sheepskin map oozed blood and twisted into a new route. Fu Shaoping raised the still twitching assassin leader with the tip of his sword: "Speak."
"Blood Moon. Ahead of Time" Black blood suddenly gushed out of the assassin's seven orifices, and countless red threads emerged from under his skin. Nangong Wan retreated three steps quickly, and the purple flame formed a fire net to burn the poisonous insects. On the top of the mountain in the distance, a blood moon was tearing through the clouds.
The black iron sword was finally unsheathed. Frost filled the cave like a tide, and all the spoils were instantly covered with ice armor. Nangong Wan's fingertips turned into a long whip with purple flames, and his smile bloomed like a poisonous flower: "It seems that the seclusion will be postponed."
Fu Shaoping stepped on the frozen Thousand Machine Lock and half a dragon scale fell out of the lock core. The moonlight shone on the scale, reflecting the giant blood key array diagram that gradually emerged under their feet and spanned the entire cave.
-
When the purple flame burned through the last barrier of fog, Nangong Wan suddenly grabbed Fu Shaoping's sword tassel.
"Wait." The flames on her fingertips condensed into a phoenix, flapping its wings and flying through the void. Wherever the flame tail swept, the thousand-year-old miasma retreated with a hiss as if it saw its natural enemy, revealing the ancient path strangled by vines. The stone steps were covered with dark red moss, and stepping on it would ooze out blood-like mucus.
Fu Shaoping's sword scabbard shook slightly, and frost spread along the steps. Wherever the ice crystals crawled, the six-eyed poisonous spiders dormant in the cracks of the rocks froze into ice slag and rolled down the cliff.
The moment the valley bottom suddenly opened up, Nangong Wan's Purple Phoenix suddenly screamed and dived down. The cold pond exploded into a three-meter-high water curtain, and countless fluorescent spores splashed out from the waves, as if someone had crushed the Milky Way and scattered it here. After the mist dissipated, a small green bamboo building stood quietly by the pond, and the bell tongue of the bronze wind chime on the eaves was actually half of the tip of the "Xuehong" sword.
"You've prepared it a long time ago?" Nangong Wan raised her eyebrows, her wet skirt sticking to her calves. She deliberately stepped on Fu Shaoping's shadow and watched the ice beads on his black iron sword tassel fall on her instep.
Fu Shaoping brushed away the dust on the door lintel. A fire scorpion crawled out from the inscription of the word "Guixu" and was nailed to the pillar by him with his sword energy. "Ten years ago." he said.
-
The dragon-skin lampshade woke up under Nangong Wan's palm.
"Is this the old dragon from the East China Sea?" She jumped into the purple flame, and her scales immediately turned into a strange rainbow color. Back then, this beast swallowed three villages and was hunted by them for a whole month. In the end, Fu Shaoping's sword pierced through the gap between the scales.
The frost on the bookshelf was melting. Fu Shaoping's sword intent froze every book. When Nangong Wan pulled out a copy of the "Poison Sutra", fine snow fell on her knees. She suddenly chuckled - a page that recorded the solution to "Purple Flame Backlash" had a small drunken nightshade carved on it with sword energy.
A sweet and fishy smell wafted from the herb garden in the back mountain. The red face grass sucked the blood she dripped yesterday, and the veins of its leaves pulsated like human blood vessels; in the stamens of the black ice lotus, the pupils of an assassin were frozen and dilated with fear. Nangong Wan kicked the soul-eating mushroom that Fu Shaoping had just transplanted: "This thing will eat up the whole mountain."
"Just right." Fu Shaoping used the tip of his sword to pick up a centipede that was about to launch a sneak attack, "It would save you from running around."
-
On the third blood-moon night, Nangong Wan threw the newly refined purple flame into the cold pond.
At the moment when the water surface was boiling, Fu Shaoping suddenly jumped in. The black iron sword split the flames, and the frost and purple fire twisted into a giant dragon that rushed into the sky, exploding an ice and fire meteor shower in the night. When the ice crystals fell to the ground, she saw Fu Shaoping's mouth curled up for the first time, and there were still a few unmelted stars hanging on the ends of his hair.
"Mad man!" Nangong Wan shook off the sparks from his sleeves, but felt a flash of sword marks on his wrist. Last night, when he was half asleep and half awake, it seemed that frost was lingering here.
The wind chimes rang softly, startling a pool of fireflies. In the dark, the nightshade quietly blossomed, and the sword energy left by Fu Shaoping this morning was still condensed on the petals.
Before the morning dew dried, Nangong Wan stepped barefoot through the wet mud of the herb garden, her toes stained with the blood of the star-shaped red face grass. The demon grass had drunk her blood again last night, and its leaves were swollen like a baby's palm. She casually pinched off a piece, and the juice splashed on her wrist, burning out light purple smoke.
"If you cheat again, I'll turn you into lamp oil." She snapped her fingers and burned all the grass leaves. The purple flames drifted towards the bamboo pavilion with the wind, and happened to collide with the sword energy that Fu Shaoping pushed out of the window. The ice and fire collided, and tiny crystals exploded in the air, falling all over the wind chimes under the eaves.
The broken sword of "Xuehong" swayed lightly, ding——
The black ice hairpin that Fu Shaoping tied up his hair reflected the morning glow, and the frost had not yet dissipated. He held a green porcelain bowl in his hand, and at the bottom of the bowl were a few frozen lotus seeds - they had just been fished out from the bottom of the cold pond last night, and the lotus cores were still condensed with sword energy.
"Eat it." He placed the bowl on the stone table. The moment the bottom of the bowl touched the bluestone, a thin layer of frost spread out, freezing several fire ants that were crawling onto the table.
Nangong Wan propped up her chin and drew circles on the edge of the bowl with her fingertips: "Young Master Fu is now even in charge of breakfast?" She deliberately let the purple flame wrap around the ice lotus, watching the frost and the flame rub against each other, "Poisoned?"
Fu Shaoping turned and walked towards the herb garden. His sword energy swept across the mud puddle that Nangong Wan had trampled on. A drooping Solanum nigrum plant suddenly perked up, and ice crystals covered its stems and leaves. "Hmm." He turned his back to her, and his voice was as light as the mist on the cold pond. "Highly poisonous."
(End of this chapter)