Ze Tian Ji (Way of Choices)

Chapter 982 – The Pear Blossom Falls

The Carp tribe leader and the Grand Duke from the Deer tribe glanced at each other, both suddenly a little uneasy.

The Bear tribe leader and the generals ceased their attempts to attack and gazed at the observation platform.

The wrinkles on the Xiang clan leader’s forehead seemed to deepen as doubts began to emerge.

Madam Mu calmly gazed at Chen Changsheng, and it was impossible to tell what she was thinking.

No one had any hopes for Chen Changsheng, but just a single sentence from him had caused everyone to change their judgment of the situation.

Because when he said those words, Chen Changsheng had a very calm expression and indifferent voice, both concealing a formidable confidence.

No, he was not even concealing it. This confidence was like his sword, piercing through the clouds with incredible speed and power. Everyone who heard his voice felt their eardrums throb in pain while everyone who saw his face felt like their eyelashes were about to be chopped off.

The Demon Lord could easily tell that there was no false bravado in Chen Changsheng’s eyes, only a calm and determined intent to kill.

Black Robe’s schemes took into account every possibility, and he had assuredly calculated that Chen Changsheng would immediately venture across tens of thousands of li once he knew of Luoluo’s marriage. He had probably also calculated that the demi-humans would choose this moment to temporarily play the bystander. Since he had not made any arrangements, he must have been sure that the Demon Lord could kill Chen Changsheng.

He thought the same.

He did not understand where Chen Changsheng’s confidence came from.

As the supreme master of the snowy plains, the Demon Lord was used to having everything under his control.

This sort of feeling that something was seemingly beyond his control caused him many negative emotions.

He waved his sleeve as if shooing away these emotions.

The sleeve stirred up a cool breeze which swept up the pear blossoms and caused them to dance.

This sight caused a burst of muffled gasps to rise from the surrounding crowd.

Flowers being swept up in the wind was a common sight. The reason for these gasps was the strange phenomena taking place.

The pure white pear blossoms had inexplicably turned black, and this was the purest black, without the smallest impurity. Moreover, the orbits of those seemingly soft flowers were bizarre, and they seemed imbued with a great weight.

Black was the absence of light.

All the light falling from the sky seemed to be absorbed by the Demon Lord’s sleeve.

This was also the reason the tiny flowers had become so heavy.

The space beneath the pear tree seemed to deform.

What sort of demon technique could produce this sight?

Chen Changsheng calmly stared into the Demon Lord’s eyes, paying no attention to the fact that the surroundings had become pitch-black.

In this world of darkness, those identically black flowers seemed to disappear.

Suddenly, an extremely dim smear of white appeared in his vision.

An extremely dim white was gray, like the sudden appearance of the morning sun after journeying in a lightless abyss.

It was a pear blossom, silently floating behind him.

Let alone Chen Changsheng, even the demi-human experts observing this battle had not noticed it.

Chen Changsheng gazed at the Demon Lord, seemingly unaware.

The pear blossom that was gradually turning white suddenly trembled, then shattered.

The pliable petals transformed into countless thin threads that danced in the wind, at times blazing in the light, at times painted black by the darkness.

It was beautiful and bizarre. No one knew just what exactly had happened.

At this moment, the clear and bright cry of a sword rang out over the observation platform.

Fierce sword intent descended, and those petal strands were powerless to resist. One by one, they shattered and dropped to the ground, transforming into black wisps of smoke and vanishing from this world.

A sword bursting with an archaic aura had appeared, quietly floating in the air behind Chen Changsheng.

This sword gave off the feeling that no matter who attacked Chen Changsheng, they would receive its powerful and callous counterattack.

This sword was like Chen Changsheng’s most faithful guard, a companion that would never betray him.

……

……

This was the first time many people had seen Chen Changsheng’s sword style, this legendary sword style.

Chen Changsheng was still very far from the Divine Domain, but many people believed that his sword style had already surpassed the domain of mortals.

As Su Li’s legacy disciple, and considering that Qiushan Jun had been missing these last few years, Chen Changsheng was now publicly acknowledged as a grandmaster of the sword.

Information on his sword style had already been spread around the world, and all the demi-human personages present knew of it. However, seeing it with their own eyes still left them stunned.

The Demon Lord’s visage remained unaffected. On that night in the mountains, he had already experienced Chen Changsheng’s sword style, so he knew this was far from all of it.

He took a step forward, moving from the darkness to the light, the pear tree behind him about to turn into a silhouette.

The cold darkness howled as it rose, taking up the remaining pear blossoms on the ground and casting them toward Chen Changsheng.

Those pear blossoms did not move quickly, and they could even be described as slow. They gave off a feeling of incredible weight.

Upon seeing this, the demi-human experts experienced a powerful foreboding that if they touched these pear blossoms, they would assuredly be put in a most sorry state.

The problem was that there were several thousand pear blossoms floating in the air. How could Chen Changsheng avoid all of them?

Even if he could avoid them, what would happen to Princess Luoluo standing behind him?

……

……

The Demon Lord knew what Chen Changsheng would do.

Countless swords would surge out of that sword sheath called the Vault Sheath, slicing the thousands of pear blossoms into threads to be swept away in the wind.

The same method he had used to deal with that first pear blossom.

In truth, the Demon Lord was inviting Chen Changsheng to do this.

Because just like every other cultivator on the continent, he was also curious to see just how many swords Chen Changsheng had brought out of the Sword Pool in the Garden of Zhou.

More importantly, after that night in the mountains, he had prepared a method specifically meant for killing Chen Changsheng.

Once the sky of pear blossoms was hacked down by Chen Changsheng’s rain of swords, death would descend.

What would happen next would be just as the Demon Lord had imagined, as had the Xiang clan leader and many other experts.

Swords shrilly howled as powerful sword intents ran the breadth from earth to sky. Deep and straight lines were slashed through the hard floor of the observation platform as those floating pear blossoms were cut down, countless terrifying spatial fissures flashing between them.

This sight caused fear to engulf the eyes of many. Let alone the pear blossoms as heavy as mountains or those fierce sword intents, the spatial fissures produced by the clashes of two powerful Qis would be enough to kill the vast majority of those present.

After some time, the pear blossoms had all fallen to the ground, leaving behind no trace except for a faint fragrance.

The frightening spatial fissures gradually closed like some fiend from the abyss closing its eyes.

Several hundred swords floated in the air, a torrential rain on the verge of descending.

In this rain of swords, Chen Changsheng quietly gazed at the Demon Lord.

The pear blossoms had been exhausted, but he was not dead.

Because the Demon Lord’s move had not appeared.

The Demon Lord had an expression of unprecedented solemnity, with even a hint of shock.

He stared into Chen Changsheng’s eyes and asked, “And what sort of sword style is this?”