Chapter 268: The Two Principles Divine Sword

The Sang troupe’s Legend of Madam White Snake was excellent in its singing, acting, lines, and plot. Even though Ding Songyan had watched plenty of stage plays, TV shows, and movies in his last life, he was thoroughly absorbed. The only thing he couldn’t quite stomach was the makeup and costumes.

Jiang Lanting watched with rapt attention, his expression calm and shifting only now and then with the story. Ding Songyan glanced over and couldn’t tell whether he was on guard against the Ghost Yu Way at all. He was also curious whether Jiang was putting himself in Xu Xian’s place or Madam White Snake’s.

As the act neared its end, servants came around with big kettles to top off the small pots on each table, and latecomers and people leaving early moved about the theater.

On the stage, several pillar lamps and two hanging lamps blazed brightly, lighting it up like day, while below the stage there were only scattered candles, making it dim everywhere.

A martial artist in a dark combat outfit walked past behind Jiang Lanting, strolling toward his reserved seat.

Suddenly, he caught a faint, elegant fragrance.

It was like a lit match dropped into a pan of hot oil, and the malice buried deep inside him flared up all at once.

The malice surged up with tremendous force and, in an instant, consumed his body and mind.

His eyes turned bloodshot. With a rasp, he yanked a hatchet from the back of his belt and swung it hard at Jiang Lanting.

At that moment his mind held only one thought: "If I can’t have him, no one will." Though he had only seen Young Master Brightstream from afar a few times, and had only paid a lot tonight to reserve a seat near Jiang Lanting, that didn’t stop such an absurd idea from taking hold of him.

As he drew the hatchet, the muscles of his arms bulged visibly and his whole body seemed to swell. At the same time, Jiang Lanting drew his own sword with a ringing sound from a scabbard marked with a yin-yang fish logo.

One side of the blade was red and gave off a faint heat. The other was black, cold, subdued, and withdrawn. This was the Flickerlight Sword, the blade that had made Jiang Lanting famous in the jianghu. It was a gift from his master, Perfected Xiang, and it nearly rivaled divine weapons like the Eight Swords of King Yue.

As he drew his sword, Jiang Lanting had already gotten up in one smooth motion. The void around him turned half deep black and half tinged with crimson, and where the two met stood Jiang Lanting himself and his Flickerlight Sword.

He thrust out the sword, and red and black surged and tangled, colliding at the tip.

The two extinguished each other at once, leaving a stretch of perfect emptiness, from which a faint gloom welled up.

Boom! Sword and hatchet clashed with an explosive sound, but the emptiness swallowed it, and it never carried outward.

The hatchet shattered silently, and the violent shockwave that followed hurled the deranged martial artist away. He slammed into the ground and, without so much as a grunt, passed out cold, blood trickling from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.

Almost at the same instant Jiang Lanting turned and struck, the shadow under the feet of the servant who had been refilling water there came alive. With a flash of cold light, it shot toward the shadow of Young Master Brightstream.

This was the real killing blow!

Jiang Lanting did not rush to turn or try to dodge. He spread the five fingers of his left hand and pressed hard to the side and rear.

A blinding sunlight erupted as if the great sun shone straight down, and the two shadows quickly faded away until they were gone.

"Hurt the shadow, and you hurt the body." But first there had to be a shadow to hurt!

What Jiang Lanting had manifested with the Boundless Forms Art was the Lizhu House’s Great Sun Divine Palm.

Under that blazing golden light, a man with his face covered in black cloth and dressed in night clothes was revealed, with nowhere left to hide in the dark.

Jiang Lanting’s Flickerlight Sword turned and cut at this Ghost Yu Way Dharma Realm assassin.

Red and black yin-yang fish appeared in illusory form around him again.

Has Young Master Jiang reached the Dharma Realm? As expected, the Ghost Yu Way sent an Earth-class assassin... Gripping Frostshade, Ding Songyan had no chance to step in before he saw Jiang Lanting handle things himself.

That performance and the changes in the void around him could not be explained by the Great Proliferation Realm.

Ding Songyan suddenly remembered the look on Jiang Lanting’s face when Fifth Xie had warned him to watch out for another attack. After a few breaths of thought, he had accepted with a charming smile.

Ding Songyan had thought then that Young Master Brightstream had some trump card to surprise the Ghost Yu Way. Now it seemed Jiang Lanting had been sure back then that he would reach the Dharma Realm within days and could face the Ghost Yu Way’s second attempt with a Grandmaster’s strength.

A Dharma Realm master at twenty-five.

That put him on par with another well-known "gentleman" on the Martial World’s Jade Tree Rankings, Spotless Gentleman Su Yunzhang.

And what Jiang Lanting had just used was the Two Principles Divine Sword, a style that could be forceful or soft, overpower with force or turn a small force against a great one, dissolve strength through yin and yang, and bring light and dark together as one.

Out of the corner of his eye, Ding Songyan looked at the servant who had been carrying the big kettle. Once the Ghost Yu Way assassin had pulled out, the man’s real shadow reappeared, tattered and seemingly asleep.

Then the servant collapsed, unconscious.

Everything he had just done seemed to have been done at the assassin’s direction, through the shadow.

Since hurting the shadow hurt the body, then whatever the shadow did, its owner would roughly do too. However, this was under the premise that the owner was unconscious and could not "control" his own shadow.

Ding Songyan had been fooled by the two shadows merging into one, which was why he hadn’t caught anything through the Chaos Realm the moment the man approached.

With this experience, he would be better at telling them apart in the future.

Is this the Dharma Realm form of the Spitting Sand to Strike Shadows Chapter? And was the first attacker manipulated through Treacherous Hearts? Ding Songyan left the table and watched the fight between Young Master Brightstream and the assassin.

The assassin was surrounded by gloom hiding countless illusory poison sand grains, but under the Great Sun Divine Palm and Light-Dark Merger, they were destroyed again and again and could not do their work.

Jiang Lanting’s sword struck like thunder, or cut and countered at once, or drew the enemy off course and sent him sprawling. He suppressed the Ghost Yu Way assassin’s short sword and long spike through several moves in a row and nearly knocked one of the weapons from the man’s grip.

Illusory legs sprouted from the assassin’s back, and with them he made an unbelievable change of direction and dodged Jiang Lanting’s killing stroke.

He wanted to sink back into the dimness, but the Great Sun Divine Palm kept striking out. Where was there any shadow left to hide in?

Jiang Lanting knew this tailor-made countering style thoroughly, clearly having rehearsed it countless times.

In just a few moves, the Ghost Yu Way assassin was driven to the edge of the brick-and-stone stage.

On the stage, some people fled in a panic, some crouched in place, some screamed at the top of their lungs, and some hid behind the pillar lamps, each in their own way.

Jiang Lanting’s toe touched down and his sword split into rays of light as it thrust. The assassin tried to draw it off with his short sword while opening his mouth to spit out the real poison sand which was colorful and bright.

His long spike counterattacked as well.

He seemed to have seen the chance slipping away and chose to attack ferociously for a few moves to create an opening to flee.

Jiang Lanting turned his body sideways to avoid the poison sand and changed his sword move through the red-and-black yin-yang fish while his left palm lit up with brilliant sunlight, meeting attack with attack.

Just then, on the stage, beside a performer crouching in terror, a jet-black shadow suddenly shot up and flew like an arrow at Jiang Lanting’s back.

There was a second assassin!

This time the Ghost Yu Way was using two assassins to kill Young Master Brightstream!

Though the second assassin was only at the perfected Great Proliferation Realm, by teaming up with a Grandmaster, he was more than enough to deal with Jiang Lanting, who was supposed to be only at the Great Proliferation Realm.

The two were only about four meters apart. In the blink of an eye the second assassin was on top of his target, and just as Jiang Lanting was going all out in his exchange with the other assassin, a chill rose from his tailbone and shot straight up to the base of his skull.

The second assassin not only lunged in with a thrust at Jiang Lanting’s back but opened his mouth and spat deadly poison sand at the back of his head, each grain like an iron lotus seed able to punch through a skull.

Suddenly, a crystalline longsword came in, drew a graceful arc, and with its hidden candlelight intent drew in the poison sand grains and the sword alike and wrapped them up inside.

A ringing clatter passed in an instant. Ding Songyan’s sword shook, and the poison sand reflected back toward the assassin himself.

The assassin hurriedly dodged but was still hit by two grains.

Ding Songyan was about to draw him into his sword momentum when the people on the stage, those who had been hiding and those who had been screaming, all turned red-eyed and rushed this way with no fear of death. Some jumped off the stage to attack, some threw objects they were holding, and some fought each other, like madmen.

Sigh... Ding Songyan sighed, changed the direction of his sword, and thrust.

A point of candlelight lit up, yellowish and warm, shining into the sea of consciousness of everyone there, driving out the darkness and ghostly schemes.

The actors stopped moving, their wicked thoughts melted away, and their twisted expressions eased one after another.

By the time they had recovered, Ding Songyan had lost track of the second assassin.

Jiang Lanting had also been affected by all this and had not been able to retain the first assassin.

The Liangyuan Wazi guards and the constables on patrol nearby soon arrived.

Ding Songyan sheathed his sword and worked with Jiang Lanting to tell the constables what had happened.

Young Master Brightstream was easy to recognize and came from a major sect, so the constables just took notes and did not "invite" the two to the prefectural office to give a statement.

In this attack, the worst injured was the hatchet-wielding martial artist who had been affected by Human Hearts and Ghostly Schemes, followed by a few members of the Sang troupe. Jiang Lanting had actually held back against the former, or the man might have died. The Sang troupe members were only lightly hurt thanks to Ding Songyan’s timely rescue.

"Look at you. How can your self-control be so poor?" Jiang Lanting crouched beside the injured martial artist, shaking his head in contempt as he gave him a pill with a decent healing effect.

The man, dazed but full of shame, said, "I was delusional..."

"What kind of answer is that?" Jiang Lanting laughed in exasperation and, not bothering with him any further, stood up and walked back to his seat.

He looked at Ding Songyan with bright, beautiful eyes and said with a smile, "Though I had my own lifesaving tricks, I still have to thank you for saving my life, Brother Ding. A life-saving favor can’t be repaid. I’ll just have to give myself to you."

"Huh..." Ding Songyan was struck dumb.

Young Master Jiang, that joke isn’t funny.

Jiang Lanting burst out laughing.

"What, you don’t think I’m good enough for you?

"All right, all right. I was only kidding."

Phew... Ding Songyan quietly let out a breath.

Jiang Lanting sidled up to him with a grin, and asked with some curiosity, "Did you feel even a little spark just now, or did you recoil completely?"

"Saying I felt nothing would be a lie," Ding Songyan admitted honestly. "But only a little."

Jiang Lanting nodded in satisfaction.

"I should get you another pill. But there’s nothing with an effect like the Tiger-Leopard Dragon-Concealing Pill. There are the ones for boosting yang and qi, nourishing yin and beautifying the complexion, harmonizing yin and yang, or helping people have children. Pick one."

Ding Songyan smiled.

"What does the one that nourishes yin and beautifies the complexion do?"

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