Chapter 877: Who Dares to Touch Her?

“Ugh!”

Under the cover of night, Lei Shuixing had walked only a short distance from the Xu Bang camp when he suddenly let out a muffled groan and crouched down, clutching his head.

“What’s wrong?” Luo Leilei exclaimed in alarm.

She was walking behind him and had seen the whole thing happen without any warning. She quickly stepped forward and squatted down beside him, asking, “Headache? Still not adjusted to the yin-yang… that power?”

Gently pushing aside Lei Shuixing’s hand, she looked at his eyes.

Luo Leilei could clearly see that, even with his disguise, Lei Shuixing’s face was twisted in agony, the pain so intense that it pierced through the disguise technique.

“Ugh!”

Lei Shuixing pressed his two fingers together against his temples.

Despite the excruciating pain, he only managed a stifled grunt, not making any other sounds.

“This doesn’t make sense…”

Seeing that Lei Shuixing wasn’t speaking, Luo Leilei grew anxious and muttered to herself, “Didn’t the adjustment period pass already? Or is it… incompatibility? But if it’s incompatible, why would it flare up now? Lei Shuixing gege, are you okay?”

Lei Shuixing endured the pain for a good while before it seemed to ease, and he managed to force out a sentence: “It’s not my problem…”

If it’s not your problem, then whose is it?

Luo Leilei was baffled.

Seeing Lei Shuixing in such agony, could it be some kind of unseen enemy’s mental attack?

“Enemy attack?” Luo Leilei jumped to her feet, scanning the surroundings warily.

“No…” Lei Shuixing struggled to get the words out, but he couldn’t explain further.

Before his eyes, which had endured black, white, and gray for over a decade, a blurry image suddenly appeared amid the throbbing pain in his eyes and the swelling in his temples, as if his entire brain was about to explode…

And accompanying it was this vague scene!

For a normal person, such a blurry image would be impossible to make out.

But for Lei Shuixing, what he was seeing wasn’t some spiritual vision—it was real, something his physical eyes could perceive.

For the first time in over a decade!

“My eyes…”

In the midst of the torment, Lei Shuixing seemed to understand something.

He braced one hand on the ground and, using his staff for support, shakily stood up. He abruptly turned his head, as if trying to pierce through space to reach the source of the pain in his eyes.

But…

He couldn’t see anything.

Before him, aside from that fleeting blurry image, everything returned to the endless black, white, and gray.

Though it lasted only a moment, the figure in the image—Lei Shuixing thought for a second and remembered it.

“Wu Xiu qianbei!”

“How could it be Wu Xiu qianbei?”

The pain vanished along with the blurry image, but Lei Shuixing was deeply shaken.

He had never seen Wu Xiu qianbei’s face, but that unique aura had been etched into his mind since he was very young.

And now, what the blurry image conveyed…

The figure itself didn’t matter!

What mattered was the aura on that person—it was identical to Wu Xiu qianbei’s!

Sheng Nu Wu Xiu, also known as Sang Qiye, had been captured after the Bai Ku battle and imprisoned in the dungeons beneath Gui Zhe Sheng Shan.

How could he possibly appear in the Yun Lun Shan Mai?

“Xi Er…”

Lei Shuixing murmured softly.

Suddenly, an infinite killing intent erupted from him.

No matter what, the fact that Shen Mo Tong was reacting like this, transmitting an image back to its original owner, meant that its current host was in grave danger.

And just moments ago!

He had barely heard her footsteps…

“Who… dares… to touch… her!”

Lei Shuixing gritted his teeth.

Around his tightly shut eyes, ferocious white eye patterns burst forth, perhaps from the strain, spreading along with bulging veins. In an instant, they crawled across the sockets of his closed eyes, then spread outward, covering half his forehead and half his face, turning it into a monstrous, beast-like visage.

“Bi Sheng Wen!”

Luo Leilei saw it and was filled with shock.

She had never felt such a terrifyingly sharp killing intent from Lei Shuixing gege before, not even when he was on a mission and facing someone who absolutely had to be killed.

Now, without even seeing his enemy, his killing intent had surged to the point of activating Bi Sheng Wen!

“What happened?”

“What does this headache of Lei Shuixing gege’s mean?”

Luo Leilei’s heart sank, sensing that something terrible was afoot.

Bi Sheng Wen, one of the Lei family’s pupils recorded in Tian Xia Tong Shu, was the only one that required post-natal cultivation to master.

Its sole purpose was to squeeze out potential, unleashing superhuman combat power in a short time.

Its side effects were extremely severe.

But before the Lei family’s downfall, Bi Sheng Wen was hailed as the world’s top burst technique.

There was even a record of an ordinary Lei family Wangzuo unexpectedly activating Bi Sheng Wen, successfully ambushing and severing one arm of Tai Xu, then escaping.

Unfortunately,

With the Lei family’s destruction, this top burst technique also vanished without a trace.

Luo Leilei wasn’t surprised that Lei Shuixing had mastered Bi Sheng Wen—she had known about it for a while.

However, the conditions to activate Bi Sheng Wen were extreme anger, an intense will to survive, or the utmost killing intent…

Luo Leilei had never seen Lei Shuixing activate it before.

Because once Bi Sheng Wen was activated, if the user didn’t shed blood, kill, and eliminate the target of their intent,

The eye patterns would never fade!

And every second those eye patterns appeared, the user had to expend vast amounts of life force to fuel the surge in power.

Luo Leilei knew that someone who activated Bi Sheng Wen could hold on for at most a day.

If the enemy didn’t die in that time,

Then the one who fell would be the user themselves.

“Lei Shuixing gege, what exactly happened? Tell me…”

Luo Leilei was panicking.

This inexplicable battle, which she didn’t even know where or how it would happen, had come out of nowhere, and she had no idea what was going on.

After the pain subsided, Lei Shuixing had already perfectly restrained his killing intent, acting as if nothing was wrong.

He turned his head and said calmly, “It’s nothing. You continue on to the mission site. I’m going to kill someone—I’ll be back soon.”

Luo Leilei quickly grabbed his arm, urging, “How can you go kill someone when you don’t even know where or who? Bi Sheng… with this thing appearing, you only have half a day!”

A day was just theoretical.

Under the frenzied drain of life force, a normal person might not even maintain their sanity for an hour.

Luo Leilei looked at the terrifying, protruding eye patterns on Lei Shuixing’s calm face, feeling even more the overwhelming killing intent lurking beneath the surface.

“Xi Er?”

“You just said Xi Er?”

A flash of insight hit her, and she quickly asked, “Is it that one…”

Tap.

A hand rested on her head, cutting off her words.

Luo Leilei froze.

She had never seen Lei Shuixing gege make such a gesture before.

In the night, she seemed to see him smile—just a faint, barely noticeable curve of his lips.

The hand on her head gently rubbed it.

Then, in a voice she had never heard before, one of utmost gentleness, he said:

“In this world, there are always some things you have to give everything to protect.”

“I’m grateful that, even with nothing left, I still have this one tie that keeps me clinging to life…”

“You’ve always asked me why I train so hard with the sword—is it for the great dao? For revenge? Or for the blood debt I carry?”

Lei Shuixing paused: “It is, but not entirely.”

He slightly curved his lips, forming a subtle arc, and gazed into the vast night sky, his voice warm as he continued: “Now I can tell you, I, Lei Shuixing, have lived my whole life for one person…”

“I wield the sword to protect!”

With that final word, the hand on her head vanished.

The gentleness of the night was gone in an instant, replaced by the biting cold of the wind.

Luo Leilei was completely stunned.

She realized that Lei Shuixing gege’s words weren’t meant for her—they were for himself.

Or rather, the person standing before him should have been the one he wanted to protect.

“Xi Er…”

Luo Leilei murmured in her heart.

She wanted to hold him back, but she knew that at this moment, she had no right to.

“Go on, head to the mission point.” Lei Shuixing turned away.

Luo Leilei’s heart raced, and she reached out, but grasped only air.

Watching Lei Shuixing’s retreating figure, she could only ask sorrowfully, “What if—if the person you’re facing has a cultivation level beyond imagination…”

Lei Shuixing strode forward without looking back, simply twirling the Shen Zhang in his hand and tucking it behind his elbow.

“But forge ahead, fear nothing!”

With a boom, a blood mist exploded from him, and his body turned into a streak of light, merging into the heavens and vanishing.

“But forge ahead, fear nothing…”

Luo Leilei stared blankly at the night sky, repeating the last words of the departed, her heart filled with bitterness.

You have someone you want to protect, but don’t I as well?

In this world, no one has to live for others, no matter how bloody their past.

“Always fixated on the past, never considering the family by your side or the future…”

“Fool!”

“You’re just like big brother and dad… all fools! All idiots!”

Luo Leilei clenched her fists and shouted angrily at the empty night sky, tears welling in her eyes.

She gazed into the night for a long time, as if seeing scenes and figures from another world in front of her.

In the end, though, she couldn’t take a step in the opposite direction.

Under the night sky, a low, self-mocking laugh echoed: “Dad, oh dad, if I died, would you step out of that rundown blacksmith shop for me?”

She paused, then gave a bitter smile.

“No!”

“Maybe, from the day I was born, I was never in your eyes…”

Purple lightning flashed.

Magnificent thunder wings unfolded behind Luo Leilei. With a light flap, she glanced in the direction Lei Shuixing had gone.

Purple lightning tore through the sky, illuminating the darkness for a brief moment, and the figure disappeared.

High above the ninth heaven.

The spot where Rao Yao Yao had been sitting was now occupied by a veiled woman.

“Xuan, Tong, Heng, Chi…”

Yu Zhiwen changed her hand seals while staring at the massive Tianji array “Yun Jing World” before her, her star-like eyes showing an unusual hesitation.

“This incantation should be correct.”

“But I’ve never dealt much with world-type Tianji arrays like this. Why was I called here?”

“Where did Si Tu Yongren run off to?”

Though muttering to herself, Yu Zhiwen didn’t stop her hands, instead changing the seals rapidly to quickly familiarize herself with Yun Jing World’s rules.

Rao Yao Yao was an outsider and could only use array commands to activate a few basic functions of Yun Jing World.

As the second on the Dao Department’s heavenly rankings, Yu Zhiwen, even without prior experience with Yun Jing World, aimed to take direct control upon arrival.

Communicating with the Dao principles through hand seals, commanding the Tianji with incantations.

The complexity and profundity of this were far greater than simply manipulating a Tianji array with commands.

But no matter how difficult, Yu Zhiwen only hesitated briefly before brimming with confidence!

“Zhen, Yan, Fa, Heng…”

“Da, Ming, Shuang, Jue…”

“That’s it!”

As she finished the incantation, Yu Zhiwen’s star-like eyes lit up.

Forming the seal, she pushed it straight toward the thousands of shimmering spirit mirrors in front of her.

“Decree!”

With a clear shout,

The thousands of spirit mirrors before her flickered abruptly.

Anticipation appeared in Yu Zhiwen’s eyes…

But then, like a malfunctioning machine, a buzzing sound erupted in front of her.

And then,

With a snap,

All the spirit mirrors went dark!

“Huh?” Yu Zhiwen’s star-like eyes nearly bulged, and she stood up in shock, staring in disbelief at the scene.

“Failed?”

“That’s impossible. My incantation couldn’t be wrong, and my seals are absolutely accurate.”

“But why are all these spirit mirrors black?”

Yu Zhiwen was terrified.

If she had taken over Yun Jing World only to break it, she’d never be able to clear her name, no matter what.

She hurriedly tried again.

The process was flawless, the hand seals and incantation without a single error.

Yet the dark screens of the thousands of spirit mirrors refused to recover.

“It’s over, it’s over…”

Yu Zhiwen’s heart raced, and under her veil, her beautiful face was flushed with panic.

She had never made such a major mistake in the Dao Department.

What’s more, this was on the battlefield, at a critical hub of the layout.

The Tianji array was disabled…

That wasn’t the scary part.

The scary part was that for this disabled Tianji array, Yu Zhiwen had no idea what the problem was, so she had no way to fix it!

Drip.

The communication bead activated at that moment.

Yu Zhiwen picked it up and saw it was from Rao Jianxian.

“It’s over, it’s over.”

“How did it happen so fast? I just broke Yun Jing World, and Rao qianbei already knows…”

Gritting her teeth,

Yu Zhiwen steeled herself and answered the communication bead.

Rao Yao Yao’s serious voice came through, straight to the point:

“Si Tu Yongren just sent a message: There’s a Tianji master in Yun Lun Shan Mai disrupting the Tianji Dao principles and seizing control of Yun Jing World from him… He said you probably can’t see anything now, but before that, did you notice anything unusual?”