He’d just been rescued; how could he let the Badong cultivator take him back?

Tigerheaded Dragon loosened his grip on Su Jing, letting him fall to the ground. Its arms swelled to their fullest size, thick as two five-foot iron rods, whirling into twin circles of flashing cold light that sealed every direction, shutting out wind and rain alike.

The Badong cultivator stretched out a hand, soft and boneless, black as pitch, like a slick serpent. When it reached toward Su Jing, it brushed against Tigerheaded Dragon’s whirling light. Pain lanced through him, and he yanked it back.

But that hand seemed to have eyes of its own. In that fleeting instant, it caught Su Jing’s face. Su Jing was clearly deeply poisoned, eyes shut tight, unconscious. Yet his youthful, slightly unformed features and the small black mole at the corner of his brow matched exactly the description handed down. The Badong cultivator’s eyes lit up with delight. “So he really is here!”

The flute tune shifted. The serpent phantom abandoned Liu Xiaolou and hurled itself at Tigerheaded Dragon. Its tail lashed wildly, hammering down on Tigerheaded Dragon again and again, clashing with the circles of light from his arms dozens of times. Then it gaped its blood-red maw, lunging to swallow him whole.

The storm-like assault left Tigerheaded Dragon gasping for breath. He no longer had room to read the serpent phantom’s moves. Like a mad tiger, he could only whirl his great arms to shield Su Jing and himself.

After just a few exchanges, he could already tell. This Badong cultivator’s cultivation was far above his own. He himself was at the seventh layer of Qi Refinement, while the other was likely at the tenth, maybe had even reached the peak layer.

Liu Xiaolou realized it too. He’d fought tenth-layer opponents before, but always through careful ambushes: striking first from the shadows, then swarming them with overwhelming numbers. Never had he faced a sudden encounter like this one, with no plan and no escape, forced to fight head-on.

The moment the clash began, he flung out the Mysterious True Cord, the Groundbinding Spirit-Scattering Cord

he had once taken from Hou Sheng, a roaming inspector of the Qingyu Sect. Normally, this weapon was dangerous to reveal. Its origins were shady, and if anyone recognized it, trouble would follow. Other than practicing with a reckless fool like Su Jing, he rarely dared show it. But now, in a life-or-death struggle, he had no choice. Any move he could make had to be made here. Wait, and there might not be another chance.

The Mysterious True Cord snaked around the Badong cultivator, its shadow-nodes instantly locking onto the acupoints he had opened. The cord carried one hundred thirty-eight such nodes, the full number of acupoints Liu Xiaolou himself had unlocked, which still covered less than half of his opponent’s.

Even so, having such a cord wound around him was unbearable. The Badong cultivator felt stifled, unable to shake it off or tear it away. When he tried to resist with his true qi, the cord absorbed and dissolved it all, clinging to him like maggots on bone.

The restraining effect of the Mysterious True Cord was simple enough. It blocked the acupoints linked to its shadow-nodes. Within just a few breaths, the Badong cultivator had found a counter: when channeling his true qi, he simply bypassed the sealed acupoints. Even so, the detour threw his circulation off, sapping nearly half a layer of strength.

These two rogue cultivators from western Xiang were proving troublesome indeed. One was a body cultivator, the hardest type to deal with in the Qi Refinement stage, and the other carried this cursed rope. No wonder they’d dared to come rescue someone.

And that Su family prisoner. Orders from above had been explicit. Now that he’d been identified, he could not be allowed to escape. His own cultivation was far superior, but this was a battlefield. He had to finish things quickly before anything unexpected happened. There was no room for talk of honor or fairness.

With that thought, the Badong cultivator shifted the tone of his flute. The rasp turned bright and clear, slicing through the night as the sound spread in all directions.

At the very first note, Tigerheaded Dragon still hadn’t caught on, but Liu Xiaolou knew immediately what he meant to do. Whether it was at a so-called Heroes’ Gathering or in an ambush meant for slaughter, summoning allies was always the move. He knew this trick all too well.

Without a second thought, he flung out the Abyssal Blackstone Formation Disk. The formation came alive, sealing the Badong cultivator and his serpent phantom inside. The flute’s notes cut off at once, silenced within the formation, unable to escape beyond.

The world shifted in an instant. The riverside scene vanished, replaced by a courtyard pavilion. Looking around, you could see terraces and towers, ponds and waterside pavilions, white walls and red tiles, green willows and bamboo. It was the picture of a wealthy household’s estate.

He lifted his head. It was still night, but here the moon carried a pale yellow halo, strangely alluring.

The Badong cultivator was too seasoned to be confused. He immediately realized he had been drawn into a formation. He raised the flute and urged the serpent phantom forward to probe the formation.

The serpent’s tail lashed out in every direction, and with just one round of strikes the Badong cultivator had already judged it. Nothing more than an illusion formation. And one with almost no offensive power at that.

So the western Xiang rogue cultivators meant to sacrifice their formation master, trading his life for a chance to help the Su clan youth escape? If that was truly their plan, it would be troublesome indeed. Best to break this formation quickly.

He didn’t know much about formations, but every cultivator understood the basics. There were only two ways to break one: smash through with overwhelming true qi, or find the formation’s core and destroy it. At once, the flute keened without pause, urging the serpent phantom to crash wildly through the courtyard, sweeping left and right, while he watched closely for any change in the surroundings.

Soon enough, the carved lattice doors before the small pavilion began to flap and sway under the gusts whipped up by the serpent’s movements.

The Badong cultivator’s sharp eyes caught it at once. There seemed to be another realm hidden within. With a single bound, he slipped inside, landing in the main hall. And there, deep within the hall, he saw a serpent’s nest.

The sight stirred a faint recognition, though he could not place where he had seen it before. That hardly mattered. What mattered was that several massive serpents writhed together within the pit, their bodies coiling and grinding against each other. The sight tugged strangely at his heartstrings, and the hall suddenly felt warm…

Outside the formation, Liu Xiaolou sat cross-legged on the ground, his fingers flying through the formation seals as he desperately fought against the serpent phantom’s rampage. His face was pale, drenched in sweat.

From the moment the Badong cultivator stepped into the formation, Liu Xiaolou had gauged his cultivation. The man was at least at the ninth layer of Qi Refinement. Without the Mysterious True Cord still binding him, he might already have revealed power at the tenth layer. Or even the peak layer.

Maintaining the formation was proving extremely difficult. If not for the countless drills he had gone through this past year with the idle young masters of Shenwu Mountain, honing his control until it was second nature, he likely would not have been able to hold on at all.

Even as he kept the formation running, he was also flooding it with Bewildering Fragrance, pouring all his strength into trying to make the enemy lose himself inside.

But the Badong cultivator’s cultivation was simply too high. The scenery and the incense only left him restless and distracted, nowhere near as helpless as Dong Wei had been when he fell into the formation. It wasn’t long before the cultivator snapped out of the serpent-pit illusion and resumed his full assault on the formation.

In fact, he had already convinced himself that the serpent pit was the formation’s core. He summoned the serpent phantom into the hall, ordering it to strike. The serpent forced its way in, its head snapping, body slamming, and tail lashing, shaking the small building to its foundations.

Liu Xiaolou was at his breaking point. Calling out to Tigerheaded Dragon, he quickly told him the key steps needed to exit the formation, then sent him inside.

Tigerheaded Dragon swung his arms wide and charged straight into the building, landing a crushing blow on the Badong cultivator. The sudden attack threw the cultivator into disarray. After trading a few rounds, just as he prepared to strike back in earnest, Tigrtheaded Dragon turned and bolted, vanishing without a trace.