The Divine Martial Stars

Chapter 910 The Apparition’s Flight

“You know what? You scum really are tiresome. You call yourselves champions and think you deserve respect, but here you are, willing to go as low as threatening the safety of others just to achieve your means. For the love of Heavens, that level of hypocrisy… Is this how Cultivators of Arccustone, the biggest and strongest religious and militant order in the Northern Steppes, conduct themselves? Well, congratulations, you’ve managed to antagonize me.”

Li Mu’s hand shot up and he lung an arm, hurling a searing-white Spiritual Qi bolt that screamed through the air, arcing like a boomerang as it curved towards somewhere from whence the voice had come from but from behind it.

The resultant bang elicited an eruption of dust and air.

A ghostly figure, dark and shadowy, rippled into appearance.

“Y-You… You can see me?!”

But that was just for one fleeting second. Before Li Mu could take a good look at the umbral and opaque figure, he discorporated before his voice was even gone.

Next, Li Mu heard something strange in the air. Something like water swirling in the brook.

Li Mu drew his saber. Sensing an attack, he swung it around so furiously that the air shimmered with afterimages of his weapon.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

Fiery sparks burst out like a thick display of fireworks.

Li Mu checked his weapon. Parrying those attacks had damaged the surface of his weapon’s blade. Nicks and dents, some deep and long, sprinkled all around the surface and jagged chips lined the weapon’s once-sharp edge in sporadic intervals.

“I guess that’s the end of this trusty instrument.”

Li Mu remarked dryly as he sheathed his weapon.

What appeared to be a weapon believed by many in this world as an instrument of death with special or even eldritch properties was actually just a simple and ordinary saber to Li Mu. Star River Cultivators employed arcane Taoist crafts and star metal to produce various magical weapons. Any single one could easily eclipse this saber, either by sharpness or strength. But the saber was synonymous with Li Zhiyuan in this dimension and Li Mu had never once thought of switching it for something else, although he did not think that it would become so damaged that it could not be used anymore.

Repairing it would have to wait then. In fact, he might do it himself when he has the time.

Li Mu projected his Divine Consciousness to areas surrounding him.

All he could sense was an empty street, arid and barren of life and activity.

He could feel even the minute movements of insects underneath the street’s flagstones, yet he could not detect the presence of the shadowy figure still drifting around him unseen.

Then he heard it again. That same ethereal sound — like something was flowing in running water.

Li Mu’s eyes constricted at once that they mimicked that of a feline’s. That allowed him a vision that could pick up even the faintest detail.

He could see it now. Something silky and thread-like, slithering and streaking through the air like a living creature.

That was what nearly destroyed his weapon — this strange and capilliform object that could defeat even steel and iron.

Li Mu reached forward and caught it with both his bare hands. He spun his arms in a rolling motion and coiled the unknown thread around his forearm, then he yanked it hard.

At the other end of the line, the shadowy figure of his assailant, like a fish getting caught by a hook, got forcibly drawn out into the open, the very fabric of space rippling like a rumpled piece of cloth

“That’s not possible!”

Despite the obscured appearance of the assailant, his voice and tone betrayed the palpable hint of shock and disbelief.

He could not understand just how his deadly strings that could slice through steel failed to shred Li Mu’s hand. That it was coiled harmlessly around the latter’s forearm like an ordinary yarn was just simply incomprehensible to him.

At the end of the line was a handle. It was quickly released by the dark shadowy figure to prevent himself from being drawn straight into Li Mu.

Then, like a fish trying to escape back into its domain, the shadowy assailant vanished in a flash.

Li Mu picked up the handle-like object. It felt like the grip of a Taoist horsetail whisk, only instead of a whisk, this was just a string. Albeit one that could easily cut through almost anything. That was how that shadowy assailant was able to manipulate and control the string without injuring himself.

“So… A horsetail whisk kind of weapon, eh? But an incomplete one…”

Li Mu could barely confess any interest in the weapon.

He never had any sort of fondness for strange and weird weapons.

But he was, however, more interested in the movement technique that his ghost assailant has been using to keep himself unseen.

Li Mu had been observing his assailant closely.

That was not Taoist magic nor was it something that used the irregularities of the terrain to confuse the enemy’s sights, but rather, a quaint technique that allowed its user the ability to remain invisible in the pockets of the Time-Space fabric. So long as the user refrained from using any Spiritual Powers or Mana, he or she could remain undetectable.

If only he had something like this in his former lives, then he would have been able to kill any champions one or two ranks greater than his.

Li Mu projected his Divine Consciousness, the ancillary spiritual sensing technique of the Xiantian Skill discipline. Yet even with it fully activated, he failed to track down the wraithlike assassin.

“Interesting.”

Li Mu paused to think. He tried attacking from different directions with more volleys of Spiritual Qi projectiles, but to no avail. He just couldn’t capture his enemy’s movements.

The peculiar sense of dread caused the bristles on his back to stand on end.

The cold steely tip of a dagger as slender as a viper’s fang peeked out of thin air and swiped at Li Mu’s throat from the back.

But with lightning-fast reflexes, Li Mu’s hand reached back around and seized the hand that was holding the dagger. Then with superhuman strength, he dragged the wraith-like assassin out of his discorporated state with every semblance of a farmer plucking a carrot out of the ground!

The movement technique that the assassin was using was beyond any doubt unique and remarkable, but there was one glaring weakness: the state of being invisible could not be maintained if and when its user launched an attack.

“Well, there you go, Li Zhiyuan? What’s it gonna be?” the dark-hooded figure smirked derisively even though Li Mu has him firmly in his grasp. “I’ve just pricked you with my Deity’s Bane poison. You can be as powerful as a Class XI champion, still, you’ll succumb to the poison and lose all your powers! In just moments, you’ll be back to what you originally are: a defenseless and ordinary man! Wait! What the…?!”

He was halfway into his gloating when he realized that the arm that was lifting him up from the ground wasn’t weakening at all. Still as strong as an iron grip, Li Mu grinned sardonically at his restrained prey, without even the slightest anxiety or rage at being poisoned at all.

“Spying, ambush, poisoning… Pity… Is this the conduct that behooves the great Arcusstone?” Li Mu muttered as he gave the prey in his grasp what looked like a gentle shake.

Crack! Crack!

But what the assassin felt was nothing near gentle at all. He could feel his arm nearly popping out of his socket at first, then came the jolts of pain that came in several agonizing waves that his knees buckled and he nearly collapsed. He could barely count the number of bones that were just fractured by that “gentle shake” alone. Blood trickled out of his nostrils and breathing was very much all he could do, let alone retaliate and break free.

“ARGGHH! YOU!” The assassin snarled, “HOW DARE YOU!”

Li Mu’s hand swiped around his face with a vicious smack as he growled, “Oh, shut up.”

Only now did he realize that the assassin was clad in a strange scale armor that enveloped even its wearer’s limbs and head like a fitting bodysuit.

“What sort of armor is this?”

This was the first time Li Mu saw something like this.

He ripped off the part which covered the assassin’s head, revealing the face of a sixty-year-old man with features as unremarkable as the next man.

“Heavens, a Class IX. With that smug and conceited tone, I would have thought that you were that Class XI champion that everyone was reciting praises about. What? You think that just because you have that quaint armor and this interesting movement technique, you’ll be good enough to assassinate me? In your dreams, old man.”

Only by removing the man’s mail coif was he finally able to detect the assassin’s true rank.

“That’s impossible! Why!? Why is the Deity’s Bane poison not working on you!” The older man lamented bitterly, “I’ve killed even Class X champions with that poison before! There’s no way that Class XI champions could escape this poison unscathed!”

But Li Mu has neither the interest nor patience to prolong this conversation. “How about a trade? Tell me about the essence of that movement technique you were using and I’ll tell you why did your poison fail to work on me. That’s a fair exchange.”

“Heh! What sort of fool are you taking me for? A three-year-old retard?” The assassin scoffed, his aura showing signs of weakening.

“You should know when to give up,” said Li Mu, who began groping all over the assassin brusquely, peeling the scale mail armor off him.

The assassin was wearing a tunic underneath the layer of armor, with a few personal effects that he kept close to him, including a manuscript bearing the title “The Apparition’s Flight”.

Li Mu riffled through it. All he needed was a few glances to be certain that this was what he was looking for. This really was the manual for the ghostlike movement technique.

The assassin’s face immediately sank into a pallid white like a defeated cockerel that had just lost a fight, looking both despondent and venomous.

“Well, congratulations. I am lucky, am I? At least I’ll not have to torture you for the movement technique, right? You’ll get to have a quick and clean death,” muttered Li Mu as he began flipping through the pages of the manuscript.

“Heh,” The assassin began cackling all of a sudden. For one moment he was beginning to crack into the manic and demented grin of a man who had just gone mad.

He stared at Li Mu with maniacal glee. “What a pathetic thing you are, Li Zhiyuan… You know nothing about the sort of enemy you’re up against…” hissed the assassin. “You can be the youngest Class X champion the Northern Steppes has ever seen, but that won’t change a thing. You’re dead meat.” With bitterness and rancor thick in his voice, he cackled again, “I’ll see you in the Purgatory… I trust that my wait will not be long… Hahahahahah! You might be powerful in your own right… But not powerful enough to defy them!”

Black slime-like substance began pouring out of his mouth.

“What’s this? Suicide?

“Looks like I’ve underestimated his pride.”

Li Mu was rather surprised.

What came next was even a bigger surprise.

As if he had just fallen into a vat of acid, the elderly assassin’s body began to melt and decay, releasing an odoriferous, rotting stench. He was almost fully a sickening and unrecognizable mass of half-molten flesh when he threw himself at Li Mu with his limbs spread wide open.

“I’d be damned, can you do this too?”

Li Mu commented dryly as his eyes gleamed with mild interest.

But all he needed was just a kick of his heels and he easily evaded this surprise and desperate attack.

The black slimy mass crashed to the ground, eliciting a litany of angry sizzles as the substance gnawed at the flagstones, leaving a deep hole that bored straight down into unseen depths.

The battle was finally over.

Unfazed, Li Mu stood just right there and began reading his newly-acquired manual.

The street was just as empty and barren as before, save for the same mist that scattered all around him.

Li Mu pored over the Apparition’s Flight with the focus and concentration of a jeweler cutting his finest gemstones.

All it took was just barely twenty minutes and Li Mu was done with his first sitting.

He decided to read all through it again.

Without even an hour, Li Mu re-read the manuscript three times, with every minute detail all etched in his mind.

Just in time for the mist to slowly subside.

Passersby began to emerge with many of them wearing dubious and confused stares.

“What happened just now… I felt like I was walking around in circles.”

“Hey, you there! You had the same feeling too? I felt the same thing! It was like stepping into some sort of dream…”

“Something’s fishy with that mist…”

As the unknowing pedestrians gathered to talk about what just happened, they remained unaware of the real fight that had taken place just not long ago at the exact spot where they were standing, and before long, the streets once again went back to their usual noisy and crowded state.

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