On the other side of the battle field, the fight took a drastic turn. It all happened in a second. As the Heavenly Winter Execution ended, the barrier surrounding Zi Moyan and Baotian, already weakened, broke, pierced by a treacherous ice spear. Baotian, without any time to react, was touched directly in the leg by another spear, gasping as he saw the torn limb flying away, falling to the ground. Xiao Chen, merciless, created yet another one, and prepared to plunge it in his chest.
"You fought well" Xiao Chen said, seemingly exhausted by the efforts as beads of sweat rolled down her face despite the cold emanating from her body. "But it's over now"
However, Zi Moyan intervened, protecting Baotian with her own body, deflecting it with a dance of flame of wind and fire. But, as the gap between their weight classes had not disappeared, every strike deflected cost her a finger.
'Ah, it's strange' she thought.
One finger.
'Didn't I once tell Baotian that if I had to choose, I would save my life over his? I don't remember but, knowing myself, it must have been the case'
Two fingers.
'But once again, I have never been that consistent, have I?'
Four fingers, two at once.
'Strange, is it because my body is nearly out of spiritual energy? I can't hear anything'
Two more fingers.
'I wonder, are you shouting, asking me why I'm defending you like this, junior brother?'
A seventh finger, the last of her right hand.
'Hmm, I wonder myself. Or maybe not? Though you never said it out loud, it was always clear to me just how lonely you were'
Her right hand, following its fingers, flew off.
'But maybe you assumed it was different for me? Or maybe you were simply too focused on your own misery to notice. Either way, even though you could never see it, I always felt the same about you as how you felt about me'
The eighth finger.
'I need you in my life, absolutely. I know that with how much you cherish your life, you would eventually choose to abandon me to save yourself in this situation, but I guess I never was as decisive as you after all'
Her index and thumb both flew off, along with the last bit of her spiritual energy. Fingerless and exhausted, she raised the palm of her hand in a last effort to defend herself.
'I wonder… if I had been in my parents' place, could I have been a good mother, and stopped my child from following me in the demonic path?'
In a clean movement, Zi Moyan's left hand was ripped apart, along with her left temple, and she fell to the ground, her head bursting open.
"...
Senior sister?"
Baotian, missing a leg, crawled pathetically toward Zi Moyan, kneeling beside her. He could see her brain, out in the air, part of it frozen by the attack. Her spiritual energy was gone, too. Baotian looked at her, expecting her cranium to start healing, but it didn't happen.
"N-no"
She wasn't breathing, either.
"No, you can't leave me like that" he said.
He shook his head:
"I need you. You're the only one I need. The only person who ever chose me despite every other option. You can't die like that, right?"
…
"Right?"
No answer.
"Please… Answer me… Don't leave me… I beg you, don't die, senior sister! We are supposed to reach immortality together, so stay alive! Please! Please…"
As Baotian wailed, desperately taking out pills and stuffing them in her mouth in hope to save her, Xiao Chen looked at the scene, her face still. As she saw the young cultivator despair, she wondered for a second: was there anyone in the world whose death would shake her that much? And was there anyone in the world that would be shaken by her death to this degree, as well?
'No' she concluded flatly. 'Living for the group is the path of righteousness, valuing individuals over everything else is but an obstacle to enlightenment'
Creating another ice spear, she prepared to plunge it, this time into Baotian's back, with an indescribable bitterness growing in her cold heart.
As he saw that, Liu Jianhong paused, forgetting what he was doing. Before he realized it, memories flooded into his mind, not as a cohesive story, but simply as small bits, here and there, moments that seemed to be from another life:
'Master, how does it look? It's called a croissant, try to have a taste, I made it just for you!'
'Master, master, look! I truly did it, I reached the Qi Refining stage, faster than the others in the clan! Are you proud of me?'
'Ouch, master! Stop spanking me, I beg you! I swear this color fits your hair better!'
'Master, I'm sorry for always putting you through such a harsh time. I… I know that it must be disappointing, for your disciple to be stuck at the Qi Refining stage like that, I'm sorry. And… Thank you for supporting me despite everything. Now that my father and mother are gone, I truly feel like you and Zhenyun are my only family left. You in particular, you're like a second father to me. This disciple will never be able to thank you enough for that'
Liu Jianhong, seeing that Baotian was about to die, felt his head becoming empty. No matter how you looked at it, Liu Jianhong was different from Xiao Chen. Seeing that the man he considered his own child was about to die. His will to fight shattered.
As he stood immobile, both Hanchen and Ye Mu were going as fast as possible to try to catch up, but it was clear they would not be able to arrive in time.
And so, as the ice cut through the flesh and bones, a head flew off, everyone exclaiming at the
"Ah?"
It was not Baotian's, but instead Liu Jianhong's head which had flown off!
'I, elder Xiao Chen, swear in the name of my Xiao clan that, after obtaining the location of my former disciple, I will do my utmost to fulfill my promise and kill Liu Jianhong'
That was the promise she had made to the mysterious masked cultivator, Shen Hui. Obviously, she didn't mean a bit of it: as a key member of the Xiao clan, she would never tarnish its honor by slaying her own ally and, while Liu Zhenyun and Shen Hui were both early stage Nascent Soul cultivators that could seemingly fight above their weight class, she was clearly more reticent about making the greatest genius of the realm her enemy.
But as she saw thin strings attached to her hand, which deviated the direction of her attack at the critical moment, she now realized how foolish she had been. Obviously not being satisfied with her empty promise, they had used some kind of advanced technique to turn it into some sort of heavenly oath, forcing her to keep her word.
And that was how Liu Jianhong died, as a consequence of a scheme of someone he never even met. When he died, Liu Zhenyun was elsewhere, Zhang Baotian was too focused on Zi Moyan to even notice it, Ye Mu immediately began to fight Xiao Chen to stop her from attacking again, and Hanchen, too weak to damage her even if she didn't protect herself, reported his attention on direction from which the strings deviating his former master's attack had come from. In his last instant of clarity, not a single person cared for the poor man who, for all his life, had remained good.
Baotian, still fully focused on Zi Moyan, tried to make energy circulate through her body to stimulate her healing capacities, but to no avail, as he had already exhausted nearly all his reserves. Quickly taking out spirit stones and crushing them in his hands, he absorbed their energy as fast as possible without the slightest care for the drawbacks, his nose bleeding profusely. Even then, his late stage Qi Building's energy wasn't enough to stimulate Zi Moyan's regeneration. Matter of fact, he didn't know if even a Core Formation cultivator could do such a thing as stimulating a peer's regeneration.
"Please… senior sister, I need you… ahh… stay… please, please, I beg you-"
Slap!
Feeling a sharp pain in his cheek, a shocked Baotian turned to look at Hanchen, who had just slapped him:
"Wake up, you fraudulent master!" the young cultivator shouted. "Can't you see that what you're doing is useless?"
"I-"
"Wake up, Zhang Baotian! You, you demonic bastard who managed to fool me for the last three years, who outplayed the righteous path when you were just a weak Qi Building cultivator no different from me, you, the infamous figure of the demonic path! I bet you were planning to refine me after the advancement made me vulnerable, weren't you?"
Baotian looked down, making the young cultivator clench his teeth:
"You're a garbage person, and I'm ashamed I even got to know you!" he said. "But right now, what we need to stay alive, not only Ye Mu and me, but also you and Zi Moyan, is precisely this cunning trash! But you're so occupied wailing that you didn't even notice that your master was dead!"
Shocked, Baotian turned around, paling as he saw Liu Jianhong's headless corpse. Feeling indescribable emotions welling up inside of him, he tried to look for the head but instead, Hanchen pointed toward another direction:
"Look, it's not what's important right now!" he said. "The strings that changed the direction of master's attack, they came from the same direction as where Liu Zhenyun should be right now! There is no such technique mentioned in the Liu Sword Scripture and from what I understood from your fight, there is a deep bond between this elder and his disciples. Do you understand what it means?"
"I… you mean…"
"There is currently someone powerful enough to manipulate my former master's movements from this far, hostile to the Liu clan, in the same place as Liu Zhenyun is! It means that right now, as they are confronting each other, it's likely that he won't be able to reach us for a while! With Liu Jianhong and Xiao Fengyu dead, the only obstacle left is my former master, elder Xiao Chen, and using this Nascent Soul-level killer move earlier seems to have exhausted her, since senior Ye Mu is able to stall her right now!"
He put his hands on Baotian's shoulders:
"So please… I'll ask you from fake disciple to fake master, do something. I want senior Ye Mu to live, I want to live too, I even want you and senior Zi to live!"
Hearing this, Baotian came back to reality. Yes, he couldn't heal Zi Moyan in his current self. He couldn't assist Ye Mu in fighting Xiao Chen either, and the poor fox would soon be overwhelmed. Hanchen was in the same situation. So what could the two of them do?
As he reviewed every dangerous situation he had been through, every technique he had learned through his journey, and every single pill, scripture, artifact and piece of knowledge he had accumulated, Baotian found the answer. He turned back to Hanchen, and looked him in the eyes:
"You're right, Hanchen" he said. "From the moment we met fifteen years ago and I learnt you were an Earth Talent, I was always planning on sacrificing you"
As the young cultivator frowned, he continued, a sarcastic smile on his lips:
"And you know what? The only way for all of us to survive, including you, is for this Earth Talent to be sacrificed"
And as Baotian pronounced these words, another fight was taking place amongst the Martial Devouring Mountains.