48: Chapter 48 The Mantis Stalks the Cicada, But Who Is the Oriole Awake?

Lin Yun stood on the opposite bank of the blood river. The demon markings on half of his face writhed slightly, and his gaze swept back and forth between Shen Xiao and Xia Lengbai, his mouth still curved in that composed smile that made people angry just by looking at it.

"Where are you two heading?" His tone was leisurely, as if he had run into acquaintances on the road and was making casual conversation. "The road in the Cave of Ten Thousand Demons is not easy to traverse. Would you like me to give you a lift?"

Shen Xiao did not respond.

His gaze quickly swept over the surrounding terrain. The blood river was about twenty zhang wide, with dark red mist floating on the surface. Lin Yun was on the opposite bank, the path he had come from was behind him, and steep stone walls stood on both sides.

The terrain was very unfavorable for him.

A direct fight was definitely out of the question.

Lin Yun had already established a preliminary link with the heart of the demon emperor, making this cave effectively his home turf. His recovery speed of Qi and precision of control were far beyond his normal state.

Meanwhile, Shen Xiao himself had just dismantled a node, his Qi was bottoming out, and the wounds on his body were still seeping blood.

A head-on confrontation was suicide.

But he didn't intend to run either.

Shen Xiao's gaze rested on Lin Yun for a moment, and a thought suddenly popped into his mind: Lin Yun was fine in every way, except for one fatal weakness.

He talked too much.

In the original work, this guy was a textbook example of 'villains die from talking too much.' Every time he gained the upper hand, he insisted on putting on the airs of an expert, delivering a few pleasantries, enjoying the desperate expression of his opponent, and then slowly dealing the killing blow.

This habit was his flaw.

Shen Xiao did not hesitate. He grabbed Xia Lengbai's wrist with his left hand and used all his strength to throw her toward the side path on the right, while simultaneously charging toward the stone wall on the left.

"Split up to dismantle the nodes! He can only chase one of us!"

This sentence was like a slap in the face to Lin Yun.

The composed smile on Lin Yun's face stiffened for a moment, and then a trace of sinister malice flashed in his eyes.

Split up to dismantle the nodes?

He still wanted to dismantle nodes by himself?

What angered Lin Yun even more was not the content of the sentence, but the tone Shen Xiao used when saying it—not the panic of fleeing, but a kind of disdain, as if to say, "I never put you in my eyes at all."

By what right?

A piece of trash who hadn't even formed a Golden Core, relying on a System picked up from who knows where, jumping around on the chessboard for a few days—did he really think he could turn the world upside down?

Lin Yun took a deep breath, and the demon markings on his face suddenly lit up. A scarlet light spread along the markings, as if magma were flowing beneath his skin.

He raised his right hand, splayed his five fingers, and aimed his palm toward Shen Xiao.

"Since you want to play, then let's have a good time."

The blood river boiled instantly.

The entire river seemed to come alive. The scarlet river water surged into the sky, transforming into countless giant blood-colored hands that blanketed the sky and clawed toward Shen Xiao.

Each of those blood hands was the size of a millstone. When the fingers spread open, thick blood Qi condensed at the fingertips, carrying a nauseating stench, as if they wanted to tear Shen Xiao to pieces.

Lin Yun did not pursue Xia Lengbai.

He didn't even glance in that direction.

His goal had been clear from the beginning: kill Shen Xiao first, then claim the Legacy. That woman was just a minor nuisance to be dealt with along the way.

Shen Xiao began to change direction the moment Lin Yun raised his hand.

He did not run in a straight line, but instead wove through the siege of blood hands along an extremely tricky route. Sometimes he would suddenly stop, causing the blood hands to grab at nothing; other times he would slide along the ground, passing through the gaps between two blood hands.

Every maneuver was perilous. The fingertips of the blood hands brushed past his back, and the wind they stirred up sliced several holes into his clothes.

But he was not injured.

Because what he was doing was not dodging, but guiding.

Every change in direction, every dodge, appeared to be spontaneous, but in reality, he was guiding the attack trajectory of those blood hands bit by bit toward the same area.

That area was the riverbed of the blood river.

Shen Xiao was very clear that confronting Lin Yun head-on in this cave, while Lin Yun was empowered by the heart of the demon emperor, was suicide.

But he didn't need a head-on confrontation.

Lin Yun was using the power of the heart of the demon emperor, and the heart of the demon emperor was connected to the ley lines of the entire Cave of Ten Thousand Demons.

As long as the attack was precise enough and the power was violent enough, he could turn Lin Yun's attacks into tools to destroy the nodes themselves.

This was the strategy Shen Xiao had thought of when he dismantled the first node.

Using force to strike force.

The riverbed was the weakest point because the blood river itself was the place where energy was most concentrated in the entire ley line System, and it was also the most structurally fragile place.

This wasn't something Shen Xiao guessed; it was a sentence explicitly written in the original work: "Beneath the riverbed of the blood Qi river, the Yin-Sha Qi accumulated over ten thousand years in the Cave of Ten Thousand Demons is sealed. Once it erupts, it will be enough to destroy all living beings within a hundred miles."

Lin Yun might have forgotten this sentence, or perhaps he hadn't paid attention to it at all.

But Shen Xiao remembered.

Every step he took brought him closer to the very edge of the riverbed. It looked like he was being forced into a dead end, but in reality, he was making a deal with Lin Yun using his own life.

Using himself as bait, making Lin Yun foot the bill.

Lin Yun clearly hadn't realized the true purpose of this plan.

He only saw Shen Xiao dodging in a sorry state under the siege of his blood hands, nearly being caught several times, yet escaping perilously at the last moment.

This feeling of "almost being able to kill him" made Lin Yun's mindset become anxious bit by bit.

He increased the output of his power.

The energy of the heart of the demon emperor poured crazily into the blood river. The number and size of those blood hands surged again, each carrying a destructive force, crushing toward Shen Xiao frantically.

Under the impact of such violent power, the riverbed of the blood river began to develop tiny cracks.

The cracks spread like a spiderweb, and dark red rubble peeled off from the bottom of the riverbed, carried away by the bloody water.

Shen Xiao dodged while secretly observing the direction of those cracks.

Not enough yet.

The cracks weren't deep enough.

He gritted his teeth and accelerated again, making his dodging movements more expansive. He no longer sought to avoid them completely, but instead intentionally exposed his body to the attack range of the blood hands.

Several blood hands grabbed past his face, almost touching him, and one of them even tore through the flesh on his left shoulder, blood instantly dyeing half his arm red.

But Shen Xiao did not slow down.

He had to make Lin Yun feel that "a little more effort and he could kill him," otherwise this cautious Child of Destiny would not continue to invest more power.

Lin Yun had indeed taken the bait.

The moment he saw Shen Xiao's left shoulder injured, the entire blood river completely lost control at this moment.

The river water surged into the sky, transforming into a giant blood hand the size of a small mountain. The five fingers closed together, and with the momentum of a thunderbolt, it slammed down fiercely toward the riverbed location where Shen Xiao was.

This was the moment.

In the instant before the blood hand descended, Shen Xiao suddenly grabbed a Medicinal Pill from his waist, bit it, and swallowed it.

That was not some miraculous healing medicine, but the Spirit Explosion Pill he had pilfered from Nangong Li's pill room earlier—it could boost his Qi by thirty percent in a short time, at the cost of being weak for three full days after the effect wore off.

But now was not the time to consider the aftereffects.

The moment the Spirit Explosion Pill entered his stomach, a scorching power surged from his Dantian, sweeping through his entire body like a raging fire.

Shen Xiao did not waste this power.

He extracted all the remaining half of the [Guiyuan Dao Seed] energy in his body, rapidly fusing it with the violent Qi of the Spirit Explosion Pill in his Dantian.

The moment the two forces collided, his Meridians felt as if they were being scraped by knives, but he did not stop.

He bent his waist, exerted force with his legs, and shot into the sky like an arrow released from a bow, charging toward the giant blood hand slamming down from above.

Lin Yun saw this scene and a cold sneer curled the corners of his mouth.

Suicide.

But Shen Xiao's target was not the blood hand at all.

The moment he reached mid-air, he suddenly veered in direction, slamming into the rock wall at the very edge of the riverbed like a cannonball—that was the weakest point where he had guided Lin Yun's attacks to bombard countless times.

"Boom..."

His fist struck the rock wall.

Golden light and blood light exploded simultaneously. Two extreme energies erupted at that point, like two torrents colliding at a narrow bottleneck.

The cracks spread at a speed visible to the naked eye, rapidly expanding from a gap the size of a fist to a fissure several zhang wide.

Immediately after, an indescribably terrifying aura gushed out from the fissure.

It was an extremely Yin and cold, extremely profound power, like resentment accumulated over ten thousand years, carrying the scent of decay and deathly silence, frantically gushing out from deep underground.

The underground Yin-Sha Qi.

The moment he struck the rock wall, Shen Xiao had already used the force to roll backward, landing on a protruding rock, but he could still feel the stinging sensation as the Yin-Sha Qi brushed against his skin.

It was too cold.

That cold was not a cold of temperature, but a cold that acted directly on the Soul.

Lin Yun's expression finally changed at this moment.

He watched the gray vortex gushing out from the crack in the riverbed, feeling his link with the heart of the demon emperor being violently impacted by that Yin-Sha Qi, as if someone were striking a chain with a heavy hammer.

The extremely Yang and hard blood Qi energy collided violently in the same space with the extremely Yin and cold underground Yin-Sha Qi.

The two forces were like water meeting fire, instantly triggering a violent energy explosion.

"Boom..."

The entire cave was shaking.

The water of the blood river was blown into the sky, and rubble and dust filled the entire space, visibility instantly dropping to extremely low levels.

Lin Yun's body shook violently, a mouthful of blood sprayed from his throat, and he staggered back several steps, only stabilizing his figure by bracing one hand against the rock wall behind him.

The blood Qi energy within him completely lost control at this moment, and the link to the heart of the demon emperor suffered a brief rupture.

His power plummeted.

Lin Yun raised his head.

He hadn't expected that Shen Xiao's true goal was never to fight him, but to detonate the Yin-Sha Qi beneath the riverbed and use the conflict of the two extreme energies to backlash against himself.

This move was too sinister.

Shen Xiao stood on the rock on the opposite bank, a trace of blood overflowing from the corner of his mouth, but he didn't wipe it away.

His gaze locked onto Lin Yun, and seeing the other's aura clearly oscillating, the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.

The plan succeeded.

From guiding Lin Yun to attack the riverbed to detonating the Yin-Sha Qi, every step was within his calculations.

Now that Lin Yun's link with the heart of the demon emperor was severed and his power had plummeted, it was the best time for a finishing blow.

Shen Xiao did not hesitate. He tapped his toes on the ground and charged toward Lin Yun.

However, just as he was about to rush across the center of the blood river...

A bone-chilling coldness rose up from in front of him.

It was not an attack, but an ice wall.

An ice wall, dozens of zhang wide, rose from the ground, blocking the way between him and Lin Yun.

The ice wall was three feet thick, its surface covered in a layer of deep blue frost, emitting a bone-chilling cold that completely sealed off the path ahead.

Shen Xiao stopped abruptly, his pupils constricting slightly.

He turned his head to look at the source of the ice wall.

Xia Lengbai.

She had not gone to dismantle the nodes.

She hadn't even taken this opportunity to attack Lin Yun.

She stood on a blood-colored stalactite hanging upside down from the cave ceiling, her hands forming Seals. Cold Qi swirled around her, lowering the temperature of the entire cave by several degrees.

Her expression was calm, but her eyes were somewhat off.

It was not the usual cold scrutiny, nor the cunning from when she tested Shen Xiao earlier, but an indescribable, fanatical light.

She was not looking at Shen Xiao, nor at Lin Yun, but at the empty air in front of her.

Shen Xiao followed her gaze, but there was nothing there.

But Xia Lengbai clearly "saw" something.

Her lips moved slightly, as if she were talking to someone, or perhaps talking to herself.

A chill suddenly ran down Shen Xiao's back.

A projection of the Heavenly Dao?

No, a projection of the Heavenly Dao could not manifest inside the Cave of Ten Thousand Demons; the degree of ley line turbulence here was enough to shield most prying into heavenly secrets.

Then who was she talking to?

Before he could figure it out, Xia Lengbai had already lifted her head, her gaze landing on Shen Xiao.

That gaze made Shen Xiao's heart creep out.

It was not murderous intent, not hostility, but a gaze that was almost pathological, as if she were admiring a work of art.

"Shen Xiao," she said, her voice lower than usual, carrying a hint of hoarse excitement. "The oracle of the Heavenly Dao is that only one of you two can live."

As soon as she finished speaking, her hands formed Seals again.

All the cold air in the cave suddenly condensed, adding another layer of ice Seal outside the ice wall.

Not only the exit, but the rock walls on both sides were also covered in frost, forming an airtight ice prison.

Shen Xiao was trapped inside the cave.

Lin Yun on the opposite bank was also in the ice prison.

Xia Lengbai stood on top of the ice prison, looking down at the two people below, a smile slowly curling at the corners of her mouth.

That smile was gentle—so gentle it made one's spine run cold.

"Begin your death match," she said softly, as if blessing a grand wedding. "I will offer a congratulatory gift to the victor."

As soon as the words fell, the ice prison fell into dead silence.

Shen Xiao stood where he was, watching the slender figure above, with only one thought in his mind.

This woman was even more thoroughly insane than written in the original work.

He took a deep breath, shifted his gaze away from Xia Lengbai, and landed it back on Lin Yun on the opposite bank.

Lin Yun was also looking at him.

The two of them were separated by an ice wall, their gazes colliding in the air.

The corners of Shen Xiao's mouth twitched slightly, he grinned, and gave Lin Yun a thumbs-up.

Then he slowly turned his wrist, pointing his thumb downward.