Chapter Eighty-Eight: The Truly Strong

“How could this be? Impossible!” The giant fiend let out a pitiful howl of disbelief and shock as its enormous body slowly collapsed.

After being sealed away for who knew how many years, its already frail form was split cleanly in two by Lin Feng’s sword and crashed down upon the altar. Purple blood gushed across the ground, pooling into a spreading lake.

Lin Feng descended slowly from the air on a jade talisman and came to the center of the altar.

Stepping through the foul stench of demonic blood, he walked up to the giant fiend’s head.

He lifted the Kunwu Sword and drove it down in a single strike, piercing straight through the brow to take the demon soul hidden within the creature’s skull.

A crisp crack rang out, and a piercing wail rose from deep within the head.

Clearly, though the previous blow had nearly killed it, a being of the demon race possessed formidable vitality. Only by shattering the demon soul in its head could it be truly slain.

An ordinary cultivator would never have thought to finish it in such a way.

With a hundred thousand years of cultivation behind him, and millions if not tens of millions of demons fallen by his hand, Lin Feng was all too practiced at such things.

“You! You actually killed it! Who exactly are you?” Qian Youyou rose tremblingly to her feet and shouted at Lin Feng in fury, pointing at him.

“I? My name is Lin Jiuxiao.”

“Lin Jiuxiao?”

Qian Youyou thought for a long time, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not recall any formidable figure in Huaxia by that name. Still, so what if he was strong?

The Qian family wielded immense power and had long-standing ties with Liu Xingyun, the honored master of the South Seas. In all the world, there was no one who dared offend the Qian family!

So what if he could cut down a monster with a sword? Under the sky-high power of the Qian family, he was nothing more than a lowly nobody!

At that thought, Qian Youyou straightened her waist, planted her hands on her hips, and pointed at Lin Feng as she roared:

“Since you’re so capable, why didn’t you make a move from the start? If you’d acted sooner, Macros wouldn’t have died, Master Guo wouldn’t have been seriously injured, and my mercenaries wouldn’t have been wiped out to the last man! This is all your fault. You owe my Qian family more than twenty lives!”

Qian Youyou had been spoiled and indulged since childhood. When had she ever suffered such a loss?

Naturally, she would not let Lin Feng off easily. She seized her custom-made Browning pistol, leveled it at him, and turned her pretty brows downward, laying all the blame at his feet.

“I owe you more than twenty lives? And what do you plan to do about it? Kill me with that scrap of metal in your hand?”

“Hmph. I won’t kill you so easily. You will take Master Guo’s place and serve as a slave and servant to my Qian family for twenty years to repay the debt! Otherwise, the full force of the Qian family will be brought to bear, and even if you hide in Huaxia, I can still have you severed head from body!”

No one knew where Qian Youyou had found the courage to think of taking Lin Feng as a servant.

Lin Feng was nearly amused to death when he heard that.

This girl was probably spoiled stupid by her family.

Not far away, the gravely injured Master Guo struggled to his feet and limped over to Qian Youyou.

Grabbing at her with bloodstained hands, he cried out in his heart:

“My lady, aside from Liu Xingyun, the honored master of the South Seas, this man’s strength is probably unmatched in this world! A person of this level is not someone a mere Qian family of the South Seas can provoke. Even if all the powers of the South Seas were joined together, they might still not be his match!”

“If you truly anger him, we may have killed the monster just now only to be slaughtered by him instead. Where would we even go to reason with that?”

Master Guo was too badly injured and had blood choking his throat, so he could not speak clearly and could only keep tugging at her.

At this point, Cao Rengui had also seen the truth: Lin Feng was practically an immortal. How could such a man possibly care about some South Seas Qian family?

So he changed his expression at once, trotted up like a sycophantic lapdog, and flattered him with a fawning smile:

“Master Lin, Immortal Lin, I was greatly at fault before. Please be magnanimous and spare me! As the saying goes, one does not know a hero until fists have been exchanged. If there is anything you need from me in the future, Cao Rengui will absolutely not utter a single word of refusal!”

“Heh heh heh... what do you say?”

Lin Feng glanced at Cao Rengui. Such a fence-sitter was utterly beneath notice.

If not for a special need, Lin Feng normally would not even deign to look at him.

But at the moment, Lin Feng did have one matter that required him.

Thus, he merely lifted a hand and rewarded him with a slap.

Crack!

With a sharp smack, Cao Rengui rolled out like a ball of flesh.

Thinking Lin Feng meant to kill him, he scrambled back up at once and threw himself around Lin Feng’s leg, wailing miserably:

“Great Immortal Lin, I truly didn’t know your divine powers before! If I had known you were a sword immortal descended to the mortal world, even with ten times my courage I would never have dared offend you, old sir!”

“I beg you, I beg you, please spare me this once!”

Cao Rengui had no shame at all, and his courage was no greater than a mouse’s.

Before long, the fellow had actually been scared into wetting himself.

Lin Feng kicked him away in disgust, ignored Qian Youyou, and strode straight toward the eye of the formation at the altar’s center, where he began leisurely gathering the spiritual objects scattered on the ground.

These spiritual objects had all been planted here by special methods, for the purpose of sustaining the great formation over a long period and binding the fiend in place.

Thus, they were basically patches of medicinal fields.

The fields were not large, but because they had long been nourished by spiritual energy drawn and enriched by the great formation, they were of extremely high grade and especially suitable for cultivating spiritual herbs.

When Qian Youyou saw that Lin Feng had not only ignored her, but was even daring to harvest the spiritual treasures she had painstakingly found, she immediately flew into a rage and blocked his way, making a scene:

“Did you hear me or not? From today on, you are a servant of my Qian family. If I tell you to go east, you are not allowed to go west! I am telling you to kneel right now. Did you hear me!”

Lin Feng turned around and looked at Qian Youyou. His eyes narrowed, and an overbearing aura that made one’s liver tremble burst forth from his body.

It became a whirling gale that pressed straight toward Qian Youyou as he coolly spat out a single word:

“Get lost!”

“What? You dare tell me to get lost? You are my servant now, do you understand? What right do you have—”

Before Qian Youyou could finish, Lin Feng flicked out his sword finger and unleashed the Autumn Water Sword Finger.

Sword intent swept through the autumn air, and an incomparably sharp strand of sword qi instantly flashed past Qian Youyou’s head, striking the underground palace wall behind her. A sword mark over a meter long and more than three inches deep appeared at once.

Clang!

The explosive cry of sword qi echoed through the entire underground palace for a long time.

“Leave within one minute. You may still live. Otherwise... die.”

“You...” Qian Youyou still wanted to be stubborn, but a strand of bangs slowly slipped down from her temple, and at last she recognized reality.

Just now, she had only narrowly escaped decapitation!

And yet he had only flicked his finger!

Qian Youyou, who had received a full Western scientific education, could never have imagined that a person’s body could actually contain internal force, and that a powerful martial artist could project it beyond the body to kill from afar.

Razor-like force could kill without leaving a trace.

Master Guo had still been uncertain of Lin Feng’s strength a moment ago, but now he could confirm it completely: this man’s cultivation was absolutely at the Grandmaster level!

A Grandmaster-level expert!

In all of Southeast Asia, how many people could possibly reach such a realm and such power?

Count carefully, and there were only a handful:

Huaxia’s War God, Yun Qianshang;
Liu Xingyun, the honored master of the South Seas;
Wu Wangda, the Nine Rivers Master;
Tie Jianxiong, the Iron-Sworded Fist Lord of the Southern Wastes;
Luo Jiuchuan, the Blade King of Jinling;
Lang Gesang, the Clouded Blade Hewer of Tibet...

These were the great figures with Grandmaster-level strength, so few they could be counted on one hand.

If the young lady went on being willful, she might well bring the Qian family an enemy on the same level as Liu Xingyun. That was sheer madness!

Under absolute strength, Qian Youyou finally became afraid, though she still said with forced ferocity:

“Hmph! Just remember this. I, Qian Youyou, will not let this go!”

With a sharp and unwilling look in her eyes, as though she had suffered a great grievance, Qian Youyou supported Master Guo and headed toward the exit of the underground palace.