Chapter 1454: A Misunderstanding

Whoosh! Snow whirled thick through the air.

Then a brilliant sword light tore across the field of snow. All around it the drifting flakes melted away without a sound, and the wind died.

A figure came bursting out behind the light. Qin Sang had slipped free of the Bitter Winter Talisman's reach without any trouble at all.

Shi Xue felt what was happening behind her, and seeing how quickly he had shaken off the binding, her horror only deepened.

Qin Sang paused for an instant and turned his eyes to follow her as she fled west. He was about to strike when something tugged at his senses, and he lifted his gaze to look past her.

Two powerful auras were closing in fast from that direction. No wonder she was running toward it.

Mystic Heaven Palace after all, and she isn't alone. Two middle-stage Spiritual Infant elders at once. They're worthy of being the North Sea's strongest sect. And who knows how many more experts are on the way.

His thoughts raced. He swept his spiritual consciousness through the surroundings, confirmed that no one else had appeared yet, and instead of fleeing he pointed at the Golden Sinking Sword and swiftly formed a sword seal.

The sword shivered once and shot away. Its cry was like the roar of dragons and tigers, like a thunderclap, and it shook the soul.

The area here was outside the Bitter Winter Talisman's power, but the cold had dimmed the daylight until it might have been a winter night.

In that dark, freezing expanse, the Golden Sinking Sword blazed and crossed the sea like a meteor, aimed at the back of Shi Xue's neck.

Lightning wings beat once at Qin Sang's back, and he came after her himself.

Shi Xue felt the razor-edged aura behind her. Her spine went cold, the back of her neck stung, and her pupils shrank to points.

At that same moment Elder Lan and Elder Mei took in the scene ahead. They glanced at each other and each saw the shock in the other's eyes.

Shi Xue's cultivation lagged theirs a little, but she was far from weak, and now that she headed the Snow-Listening Tower lineage, she had considerable resources behind her.

From the look of things she had even spent a Bitter Winter Talisman and still came off worse. Not merely worse. Beaten outright, and running for her life! Against one opponent, and in so little time!

Who is this man? The two elders were rocked to the core. They flew on recklessly, staring at the figure hunting Shi Xue down, and saw nothing but a mass of silver-white lightning.

He had plainly noticed them and showed no sign of running, chasing her without a care in the world.

Whether he was the sort who repaid every slight or had some other purpose, it meant he had enormous confidence in his own strength.

Both elders felt the weight of it. They might have badly underestimated him!

Shi Xue was in danger and the situation had turned urgent. There was no time to think it through, so they hurriedly took out their astras.

Elder Mei rubbed her fingers together, and a tiny snow-white vortex spun into being at her fingertips, countless streams of cold qi seeming to move inside it. A drop of ice water formed there and fell.

Crack, crack, crack... The sea froze over, and a narrow path of ice appeared and raced toward Shi Xue.

A transparent bangle had appeared in Elder Lan's hand without anyone seeing him draw it, and he flung it into the air.

The bangle spun fast, but it did not go for Qin Sang. It rose high into the sky instead, swelling as it went until, with the radiance pouring off it, a second full moon seemed to hang over the horizon.

This was Elder Lan's Sun-Cradling Bangle, the astra that had made his name.

By then the Golden Sinking Sword was already a hand's breadth from Shi Xue.

With the spiritual sword about to punch through the back of her neck, she could not pin all her hope on the two elders. She grabbed the jade pendant at her waist, its face carved with the image of a door.

The pendant flared, and Shi Xue vanished into thin air. An instant later a halo of light lit up in the empty air some distance off, and she stumbled back into view a shade paler than before, the pendant in her hand already cracked to pieces.

The danger had not passed!

The familiar sting returned. The spiritual sword's speed and its wielder's reaction time were beyond anything she had imagined, and it closed on her again without pausing.

She had not caught her breath yet, and her nerves drew tight all over again. Then help finally arrived.

The path of ice had crept beneath her feet without her noticing. It stopped short and swept upward, layer upon layer of ice spreading and stacking itself into a shield at her back.

Thud. The Golden Sinking Sword struck the shield with a dull sound.

Ice chips sprayed and the shield split apart, but it had turned the blow, and fresh ice kept climbing up to take its place. A new shield formed in a heartbeat.

At almost the same moment, the full moon in the sky blazed bright enough to blind the eye. The mouth of the bangle swung toward Qin Sang's true body behind her and shot out a pillar of light.

Something warned him and he threw himself sideways, but the moonlight still grazed him. An immense force poured down from above, cold enough to freeze the bone, and it carried a ripple of some power he did not recognize.

His first impulse was to call out the Spiritual Infant Talisman Puppet to take the blow for him, a habit so practiced by now that it was nearly instinct.

Then he noticed that the ripple felt familiar. It was much like the freezing bind from before.

His expression shifted. He let go of the idea of the talisman puppet, and with a thought he stirred the Wishing Pearl in his Qihai. A faint golden gale shield appeared around him at once.

Boom! The immense force slammed into it.

The shield contracted and flickered, but it took the strike head-on without breaking.

Not bad! Qin Sang nodded to himself, well satisfied with how the Wishing Pearl had handled its first fight.

As for the freezing bind, it had almost no effect on him through his armor of fire, exactly as he had expected.

Elsewhere, Shi Xue had only just let out a breath after her rescue. She turned to see Elder Lan's Sun-Cradling Bangle come into its power and suddenly remembered that in her scramble to escape she had never warned them. So she shouted, "The Bitter Winter Talisman doesn't work on him..."

Elder Lan understood at once.

The binding force of the talisman and that of the Sun-Cradling Bangle came from nearly the same source. If the talisman had failed completely, the bangle would fare no better.

He hurried to drive the astra, trying to spread the binding force wider, draw up the seawater, and build an ice cage that would hold Qin Sang for at least a moment. But It was too late.

Qin Sang stepped out of the pillar of light untouched and at ease. His figure blurred, the faint golden shield withdrew, and he silently formed a sword seal.

Swish! Swish! Swish! The sword transformed into ten thousand swords that blotted out the sky.

Boom! In a single flash of light, the ice shield exploded.

Shi Xue's eyes went wide and she forced the rest of her warning back down her throat as that familiar sense of danger rose in her again.

Two indistinct figures took shape in front of her. The two elders had finally arrived.

Elder Mei swept her sleeve and shoved Shi Xue far back, out of harm's way.

The strike had failed to land again.

But Qin Sang was pleased rather than angry. The corner of his mouth curved, and he muttered in his mind. Seven-Yin-Soul Killing Array!

This was the moment he had been waiting for, and it caught both elders inside the sword array at once!

Without a sound, the light around them dimmed further than before, and the same premonition of danger seized them both. They bolted outward, one to the left and one to the right, shouting together, "It's a misunder—"

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