Chapter 123: The Green Lotus Sword Song
“What kind of ability is this?”
“Jerry?”
“How can this be...?”
Under the incredulous gazes of Jessica, Brenda, and Catherine, a strange tide of radiant flames surged from Yan Luo’s body. When the light faded, a man stood beside him.
He appeared to be in his twenties or thirties, with a tall, slender build. Draped in simple white robes, he possessed an elegant, otherworldly beauty. His long hair fell like a waterfall, and his eyes seemed to hold the stars. His entire being resembled a flawless piece of jade, a pool of autumn water, a sliver of moonlight. Yet his sharply arched brows, outlined like strokes of ink, lent him an edge as keen as a sword fresh from its sheath.
Though the three women were foreigners, even they could not help but feel their hearts stirred at the sight of a man so beautiful that he seemed carved from jade, an immortal banished from Heaven and descended into the mortal world.
He was breathtaking.
There was even something unreal about him, as though he had stepped from a waking dream.
The man’s appearance was identical to Yan Luo’s.
The system had no disguised heroic spirit.
Therefore, Li Bai was naturally not a golden-haired, blue-eyed foreigner.
The Drunken Sword Immortal, Li Bai!
This heroic spirit had a far better appearance than the Second Master, who stood nine feet tall, wore a beard two feet long, had a face as red as a date, and even sported a green hat. Had the Second Master appeared here instead, the three women would probably have been wondering only one thing:
Why was his face so red?
A weapon was thrown toward Li Bai.
The Millennium Thunderstruck Peach-Wood Sword!
The overwhelming majority of Yan Luo’s consciousness was focused within this incarnation.
Li Bai caught the sword in his right hand and flourished it with a graceful twist.
Dashing and carefree.
Then he recited two lines of poetry:
“Have you not seen the Yellow River’s waters descend from Heaven, rushing toward the sea, never to return?”
“Have you not seen the bright mirror in the lofty hall lamenting white hair, black as silk at dawn, white as snow by dusk?”
This was precisely the skill:
Bringing in the Wine!
As the verses left his lips, Yan Luo as Li Bai swept the Millennium Thunderstruck Peach-Wood Sword through the air. In truth, he did not seem to be wielding a sword at all. At the very least, it could not compare to the sword dance of Lady Gongsun described in Du Fu’s poetry. Rather, he seemed like a calligrapher wholly absorbed in writing his own verse—or a painter rendering the scene contained within the poem.
The sword swept through the empty space before him. Space became a canvas, while sword energy transformed into paint, splashing forth a surging river that seemed to descend from the Milky Way in the Ninth Heaven. Then, strands of sword energy as fine as silk outlined the graceful figure of a beautiful woman combing her hair before a mirror.
As the sword light flowed, the girl’s dark hair turned white as snow.
This was poetry. It was painting. It was also a majestic spectacle in which the surrounding space and scenery transformed: a great river falling from Heaven and rushing toward the sea, surging onward with the unstoppable might of Heaven and Earth. It carried, too, the desolation of time’s passage, the mercilessness of the years, and the sorrow of a once-radiant beauty left only with parting.
With the extension of Yan Luo as Li Bai’s wrist, the scroll formed from sword energy flew toward the Black Death God.
“What kind of attack is this?”
The Black Death God had once faced priests wielding the power of light in the Middle Ages, knights who used battle aura, and even strange African sorcerers. But this was the first time it had encountered an attack like this—energy shaped into a painting by a sword.
It could not understand such an attack.
Nor could it evade it.
“Slice, slice, slice...”
The Black Death God was drawn into the painted scroll. Sword energy erupted in all directions, instantly shredding the black robe covering its body. Under the repeated grinding and slicing of the sword energy, the evil spirit—whose body had been condensed from ghosts—was torn with countless cracks in its transparent form.
“Roar!”
The Black Death God bellowed. The two flames burning within the eye sockets of its skull dimmed noticeably.
“Could the evil spirit have been gravely wounded?” Brenda murmured, her gaze unfocused.
“Impossible! The Black Death God once ravaged Europe. Even in its weakest state, it could not have been injured so easily! A spirit transformed into pure energy cannot be defeated!” Catherine gritted her teeth.
“What is his relationship with my brother?” Jessica was filled with regret.
“Rise, my warriors!”
Clusters of light flew from the Black Death God’s ghostly body like falling rain, plunging into the corpses scattered across the ground. At once, countless bodies around the square rose to their feet, transformed into revenants.
These were not corpses animated by a virus. They were netherworld revenants formed when the power of death was infused into dead bodies, similar to the zombies of the East—but far stronger than ordinary undead.
“Attack!”
At that moment, the Black Death God seemed to have become a necromancer. At its command, more than a hundred revenants charged toward Yan Luo’s incarnation, wearing the Heroic Spirit Mask. The corpses surged forward like a tide.
The skill: The Swordsman’s Journey!
Holding the wooden sword, his long black hair streaming behind him and his white robes snapping in the wind, Yan Luo as Li Bai stepped forward to meet the densely packed tide of revenants.
“The wanderer’s tassel is tied with barbarian cord; the Wu hook gleams like frost and snow.
“Silver saddle shining beneath a white horse, swift as a shooting star.
“Within ten paces, one man slain; after a thousand miles, no trace remains...”
The charred wooden sword swept through his hands, trailing streaks of black light. He slashed, stabbed, cut, carved, brushed, and thrust. Whenever the weapon struck a revenant, it unleashed not only the sword energy erupting from the blade but also the peach-wood sword’s own power to ward off evil.
One revenant after another collapsed behind Yan Luo as Li Bai strode onward.
The power of death was dispelled.
“Even in death, the bones of the hero retain their fragrance, never shamed before the heroes of this world.
“Who can inscribe the scriptures for you, when your hair has turned white?”
Under Yan Luo as Li Bai’s Swordsman’s Journey, every one of the more than a hundred revenants summoned by the Black Death God was slaughtered.
“This is impossible!”
“He is far too powerful!”
“Who is he?”
The three women were utterly shaken by what they had witnessed.
In a Europe where mysterious powers had vanished, this force of more than a hundred revenants would have been enough to destroy a small town. Yet they had been swept away with overwhelming ease by a mysterious and beautiful man wielding a wooden sword that appeared to possess little destructive power. It was completely beyond their imagination.
“The Drunken Sword Immortal, Li Bai, truly is the strongest of all the masks I possess so far. The power of his skills is remarkable... But the life force and spiritual force sustaining this incarnation will not support many more uses. I’ll end the battle with the strongest move!”
Yan Luo made his decision.
The incarnation of Li Bai suddenly leaped into the air.
In an instant, thunder and flames burst from the Millennium Thunderstruck Peach-Wood Sword!
It was like fireworks blooming on a summer night.
The peach-wood sword, this magical weapon, seemed to have drawn out the thunder and heavenly fire it had once absorbed. Wave after wave of azure lightning arced across its surface. Then the current spread through the air, weaving above the blade into an azure lotus as large as a water vat.
An azure lotus formed from thunder!
Countless arcs of electricity condensed into its petals, while clusters of flame erupting from the blade formed its scorching-red stamens.
Li Bai threw back his head and laughed. Then the sword descended.
The strike fell from midair, carrying an azure lotus formed from thunder and flame, like an immortal flying down from beyond the heavens.
The three women of the modern world stared, dumbfounded, at the radiant bloom of lightning atop the sword. The lightning sphere, shaped like a lotus and as large as a water vat, reminded them of the plasma ball lightning from some futuristic weapon.
The Azure Lotus Sword Song.
At that instant, Li Bai’s figure vanished. It seemed that every ounce of vital essence and spiritual force comprising his body had merged into the enormous azure lotus, leaving behind only his laughter and singing.
“Flowers blaze with karmic fire, the azure lotus descends. Mortal life is but a dream; only my song remains!”
“I, Li Taibai, take my leave! Hahahahaha...”
Amid his grand and unrestrained laughter, the Black Death God’s body was completely swallowed by the azure lotus, whose petals were thunder, whose stamens were flame, and whose form was woven through with crisscrossing sword energy.