Chapter 154: Battle in the Bat Cave (Part 2)

The hundred-odd Miao people were entirely focused on the fierce battle unfolding above the blood pool, paying no heed at all to Zhou Yi and Mu Chen as they seized the opportunity to fish in troubled waters.

Such a prime chance was not to be missed. The Lihuo sword plunged directly into the back of a Miao warrior's heart. Before the man could even react, Zhou Yi swept the blade across his throat.

Moving with lightning speed, Zhou Yi caught the infant falling from the man's grasp, pulled the child into his arms, and rushed back to entrust it to the care of the Bat King. The baby remained fast asleep, without making a single sound.

Zhou Yi checked the infant's breathing; the baby seemed unharmed. Yet when he gently nudged the child, there was still no response. The infant was sleeping far too deeply—something was terribly amiss.

Steeling his heart, Zhou Yi pinched the baby’s cheek. A normal sleeping infant would invariably startle awake from such a shock, but this child showed no sensation whatsoever.

"Brother Yi, what is it?" Mu Chen asked, holding another baby as he hurried to Zhou Yi's side, noticing his furrowed brow.

"Why is this child sleeping so deeply?"

Mu Chen checked the infant in his own arms and found it similarly dead to the world, realization dawning on him. He pressed his index and middle fingers against the baby's neck to carefully examine the cause.

"Well?" When Mu Chen remained silent for a moment, Zhou Yi could not help pressing him for an answer.

"These Miao people are utterly ruthless! They've actually been feeding opium water to such tiny infants!" Mu Chen gritted his teeth as he spoke, a bone-deep hatred for the Miao people taking root within him.

"Opium water? You mean poppy brew?" Zhou Yi's face went completely blank upon hearing this. The news was so horrific it left him incapable of any outward expression, reducing everything to pure, marrow-deep hatred for the Miao.

Laying the child down and entrusting it once more to the Bat King's care, Zhou Yi turned back into the fray, consumed by grief and fury.

The first Miao warrior had not quite died yet. During the brief moment Zhou Yi had spent delivering the child, the dying man had reached out to grab the ankle of another. Though his throat was slashed and he could not speak, physical contact was still possible.

"Die!" Zhou Yi snarled, spitting out the single word as he severed the hand that was about to touch his ankle, followed instantly by a decisive strike to that Miao warrior's neck.

He no longer bothered trying to save the children first; his sole drive now was to slaughter every single Miao warrior in front of him. "Die!" Zhou Yi roared again. Stealth was no longer necessary—even the stealthiest approach could only fool these people for a few minutes before discovery was inevitable. Better to plunge straight into a bloody massacre.

The Lihuo sword hummed vibrantly, sensing Zhou Yi's battle intent and matching his boundless rage. In that instant, Zhou Yi and his blade seemed to merge into one; wherever his mind willed, the sword followed instantly, leaving behind only billowing mists of blood. Zhou Yi swept forward, and none of the Miao warriors could withstand even a single blow.

"Don't panic! Kill them! Use the babies as shields!" a Miao leader shrieked, seeing that no one in his ranks could halt Zhou Yi's onslaught.

With a soft thud, right as the Miao sub-leader finished shouting, Mu Chen's treasured sword pierced his body. The infant in the leader's arms instantly slipped from his weakening grip, tumbling toward the ground.

With a fluid movement akin to fishing the moon from the sea's bottom, Mu Chen scooped the baby into his arms, cradled it safely, and dashed back. Upon his return, he saw that Zhou Yi's situation had taken a perilous turn.

Hearing their leader's command to use the children as shields, the Miao warriors remembered how to preserve their lives. Whenever the Lihuo sword thrust forward, a baby was abruptly shoved into its path. Zhou Yi found his hands completely tied; he had come to rescue the children, not to slaughter them!

Zhou Yi was fighting with crushing frustration. Looking toward the main battlefield, Ming Yu was clearly gaining the upper hand in his solitary duel with the corpse-demon. Every palm strike landing on the demon produced a dull, heavy thud, eliciting a series of wretched shrieks from the creature.

Though possessed of bones of iron and skin of bronze, and howling in agony, the corpse-demon refused to retreat. *Waa—ah...* The sudden cry of an infant pierced the air. Hearing the wail, the corpse-demon faltered for a fraction of a second. Ming Yu seized the opportunity, striking the creature squarely in the back and driving it directly toward the crying infant.

The corpse-demon's nostrils flared. With lightning speed, its hands shot out, snatching the baby straight from the arms of a nearby Miao warrior, and its jaws snapped shut. The infant's cries were cut tragically short—it had been devoured by the demon.

Having tasted the infant's fresh blood, the corpse-demon let out a long, skyward howl before whirling back to re-engage Ming Yu in mortal combat.

For a corpse-demon to transform into a drought-demon, it required not only the absorption of the heaven and earth's nether qi, but also a vast quantity of vital nourishment during its metamorphosis. The most critical juncture was the emergence of a pair of fleshy wings; if those wings failed to form, the creature would be doomed to wander forever as a mere corpse-demon, never attaining the status of a drought-demon.

These ninety-nine infants had been gathered precisely to provide the sustenance needed for the demon to sprout those wings. Now that the creature had prematurely consumed an infant's blood, its cultivation and power had surged dramatically.

While Ming Cao was managing to suppress the corpse-demon, Yuan Tingyu's situation was growing increasingly dire. Gongyang Lingfeng, the successor to the Tongtian Sect of the Jie Teaching, was versed in numerous supreme arcane techniques and was a reincarnated soul to boot. Both his spiritual cultivation and combat experience far surpassed Yuan Tingyu's, leaving the latter trapped in a desperate cycle of narrow escapes.

Driven to desperation by his disadvantage against the Jie Teaching's profound arts, Yuan Tingyu thrust a hand into his robe and drew out a pair of talismans—the very same Dragon and Tiger Talismans Mu Chen, Zhou Yi, and Baozi had encountered earlier. In an instant, a Green Dragon and a White Tiger materialized, towering more than twice the size of those Mu Chen had summoned.

"Such parlor tricks! Do not embarrass yourself!" Gongyang Lingfeng sneered in disdain at the talismans. He slashed a palm toward the White Tiger, but the beast nimbly sidestepped the blow and whipped around to pounce straight upon him.

Gongyang Lingfeng let out a startled gasp. "Oh? This is rather interesting!" He had assumed the dragon and tiger were mere illusions conjured by the talismans, expecting them to dissipate under a direct palm strike. Instead, his blow had missed, and he could clearly sense that the tiger possessed a genuine physical form, far from a mere mirage.

The dragon and tiger continued to fiercely entangle Gongyang Lingfeng.

Meanwhile, Jiechen and his two junior martial brothers were pitted against the four grand elders of Sun, Moon, Star, and Constellation. These four elders practiced a synchronized joint-combat array, advancing and retreating with flawless coordination, leaving Jiechen and his companions utterly at a loss as to how to break their formation.

Steeling his heart, Jiechen watched as the Elder Sun launched another assault. Jiechen shifted his stance with blinding speed, striking out with intent to kill. Elder Star lunged in to cover his comrade. If Jiechen pressed his attack against Elder Sun, he would inevitably suffer severe injuries himself; yet if he withdrew, there was no telling how long this stalemate would drag on.

Gritting his teeth, Jiechen ignored Elder Star entirely and brought his palm down squarely upon Elder Sun's crown. The elder spat a mouthful of dark blood.

Following through, Jiechen drove a kick straight into Elder Sun's dantian. The elder was sent flying backward, slamming heavily into the cliff face. When he tried to steady himself and resume the fight, his body was utterly devoid of spiritual qi—Jiechen's kick had completely shattered decades of arduous cultivation. With his dantian broken, Elder Sun was reduced to nothing more than a cripple.

Having secured the first victory at the cost of taking a heavy punch to the back from Elder Star—leaving his own spiritual qi churning painfully—Jiechen's sacrifice was well worth it. By crippling Elder Sun, the four elders' synchronized array instantly collapsed due to the missing link, meaning total victory was now merely a matter of time.