The Emperor Reigns Them All

Chapter 345 The Fierce Battle

After the final arrows were fired, Li Ye and others put on close combat blades and rushed to Immortal Court cultivators in an instant. At this moment, just as the Immortal Court cultivators raised their heads, instinctively wanting to fight back with crossbows, but what they saw were glints and flashes of cold steel that had reached their eyebrows.

The crossbow was a long-range weapon, and it was naturally limited in close combat. Although Li Ye and others’ cultivation had been restrained and they could not move in an instant, they were still of the Warrior Mentor Realm. Relying on their agile movement techniques, several short movements caused the Immortal Court cultivators’ crossbow to lose aim.

After successfully approaching, Li Ye flashed sideways, and a crossbow passed over his cheek. It was as though the wind from the arrow could pierce his face. He knew this was just an illusion. His eyes were quiet and cold, and the Luke Sword stabbed out obliquely, and a gleam of cold light flashed.

When the Immortal Court cultivator opposite saw Li Ye rushing in front of him, he panicked and his arrow missed. Despair and fear crept into in his eyes.

When Li Ye attacked, he had no time to change into a close combat weapon. His neck suddenly felt cold, and then blood shot out.

He saw Li Ye’s cold expression, and at this moment he was extremely afraid of his face as if he were Yama, who had the ability to look through souls. He screamed and wanted to jump away, but found that his body didn’t respond at all. At this moment, his field of vision spun, and then he saw a headless body spurting blood.

After killing the enemy with one slice, there was no one in front of Li Ye. He rushed to Huang Jingyuan without hesitation. While the damage and surprise caused by the raid and close combat had not subsided, he was sure that Huang Jingyuan could not avoid mood imbalance at this moment. This was his opportunity.

When Li Ye rushed to Huang Jingyuan, He Shuwen and others also achieved corresponding results. The Immortal Court cultivators in front of them were either killed or repelled. The four of them, plus Li Ye, cooperated with Yang Tingge and Zuo Che’er to fight. So far, six or seven of the dozen of Immortal Court cultivators had died or injured.

At this time, Li Ye and others rushed to Immortal Court cultivators, and the two groups were fighting together, Yang Tingge and Zuo Che’er could no longer launch the crossbow at will. However, they did not pack up Fuyuan crossbow and slay Huang Jingyuan with Li Ye and others, but reload the crossbow and prepare to give them a fatal blow when Huang Jingyuan and others escaped.

However, Immortal Court cultivators had no intention of running away. Even if more than half of his companions had fallen on the ground, and the only remaining cultivators with complete combat power were Huang Jingyuan and three other people, they still chose to fight to the end.

The effects of ambush and assault by Li Ye and others were apparent, which caused great losses to the Immortal Court cultivators. But when they assaulted, killing or injuring the first group of cultivators, Huang Jingyuan and others had changed into their close combat weapons and fought back.

Naturally, none of these cultivators were ordinary.

After engaging Huang Jingyuan, Li Ye attacked hard all the way like a tiger dashing down a mountain. He did not retain his strength at all, and did not give the opponent respite. He knew that the opponent’s strength was overbearing. Once he let the opponent regain strength and turned to defense, it would be his disaster.

Li Ye’s momentum was like a tide, attacking one wave after another. If it were any ordinary cultivator, he would falter. However, despite his calm face, Huang Jingyuan was steady as a rock, defending every attack. Not only that, he was gradually at ease, as if he could fight back at any time.

Huang Jingyuan gradually showed his strength, Li Ye was the first to bear the brunt and the pressure was hard to handle, the taste of which was only known by himself. Huang Jingyuan had the cultivation of Qi-refining Level 1 in the secret region, which was much stronger than Li Ye’s Warrior Mentor Realm. And he was a well-known figure in the Immortal Court. Of course, he had more than a few tricks up his sleeves, and he had strong fighting power.

Li Ye fought exhaustingly, but he did not intend to give up. His eyes were cold and determined.

What Li Ye didn’t know was that although he was fighting hard, Huang Jingyuan felt even more uneasy. Huang was on the verge of losing it.

Out of the seventy-two Earth Devils who came down to the mortal world, half were of the Ground Immortal Realm, and there were a lot of Sky Immortal Realms. Huang Jingyuan and Chen Jizhen even were at the later stage of cultivation of the Sky Immortal Realm. Such power was naturally not just to deal with Li Ye, who was still just at the Spiritual Master Realm.

Even if Li Ye had the support from the demon clan, the Immortal Court didn’t take him seriously.

The Taoist sect had been controlling the Immortal Court for thousands of years since they became the most trusted sect. And the demon clan had been oppressed for the same amount of time. They had been living in hiding and could not come out into the world and roam freely. The Immortal Court had ignored them. They viewed the Red Boy and You Daxiao helping Li Ye fight in Hedong as just child’s play.

In fact, it was actually child’s play. If the demon clan really wanted to make a big deal, the Six Sages would have been out. Sending You Daxiao and Red Boy was, after all, just taking advantage of the situation that the immortals were fighting amongst themselves, and they wanted to just test the waters.

The force of the cultivators brought by Chen Jizhen and Huang Jingyuan would absolutely crush anyone from the demon clan or the Land Buddhism. After all, Jiuzhou was the domain of the Taoist Sect Immortal Court.

What was more, in the Battle of the Immortals, the Immortal Court did not have a way to defeat the gods outside the region, but it had its own secret methods to suppress the demon clan on its own territory.

Therefore, the mission of Chen Jizhen and Huang Jingyuan was to drive the monks of Land Buddhism back first, and then help Zhu Wen to win the world—unite heaven and earth. Now, in the battle of Immortals, the Taoist sect had a bad start. The four sides of the Tang Empire border were invaded and occupied. During the process of Zhu Wen unifying the world, the Immortal Court was afraid that the Great Cultivators sent down by other deities would ruin their plans.

For Chen Jizhen and Huang Jingyuan, taking down Li Ye and the demon clan was like swatting a fly. Even if Li Ye was extraordinary, but compared to the seventy-two Earth Devils, he was small fish.

In fact, it was what Chen Jizhen and Huang Jingyuan tried to do. They used the Magic Treasures given by the Immortal Court and sensed that the skyline was about to be born so they took the seventy-two Earth Devils north towards Hedong. The two of them left first to scope things out in Taiyuan, but when they remembered Li Ye, they decided to get rid of him first.

What they did not expect was that they crashed and burned.

Huang Jingyuan had been schemed by Li Ye, so he had totally lost face. Thus he wanted to recoup some respect.

However, after entering the mysterious realm, not only did he fail in recouping respect, but he once again fell into Li Ye’s trap. His men had been killed by Li Ye after just a few rounds of fighting.

Most of his men were Great Cultivators of the Ground Immortal Realm, thus it was a big loss even if one fell. But Li Ye and the demon clan took them down like they were cutting crops.

Huang Jingyuan was so furious that he embodied the old saying, ‘one Buddha left the body and the second rose to heaven’. It didn’t matter how stable his mentality was and he was so anxious and worried that he wanted to bite Li Ye’s head off and eat him alive.

When the two of them locked up in battle, Huang Jingyuan thought that he could crush the weakling Li Ye within a few rounds. But he didn’t expect that they were locked in a stalemate! This was not just a matter of Huang Jingyuan losing face, and this had driven Huang beyond the boiling point!

“If it weren’t for the fact that I’m stuck in this secret region of Tao of Heaven and my strength has been rendered to only Qi-refining Level 1, I could kill this mortal within three moves!” Huang Jingyuan got angrier the more he thought about it.

Though there was a ratio in which the secret region suppressed cultivation, like anyone below the Ground Immortal Realm would be suppressed to the Warrior Mentor realm. And the Sky Immortal Realm would be suppressed to Qi-refining Level 1. It all seemed fair but in terms of absolute strength, it weakened the gap between people before entering the secret region.

Huang Jingyuan’s anger was hard to refrain, and his attacks became more powerful. Li Ye’s battle spirit had also been aroused, whose moves were getting more powerful as well.

Huang Jingyuan became more puzzled as the battle wore on. There was a mysterious power in Li Ye’s Spiritual Qi, which was not the simple strength from cultivation. He couldn’t figure out the power’s properties, but he just felt that it was extraordinary.

There was no way Li Ye could match up with him just based on Li Ye’s power of cultivation. But mix in the mysterious power, Li Ye was much stronger. It was as though Li Ye had reached another plateau, and he couldn’t just quickly finish Li Ye off.

Huang Jingyuan could not remain silent anymore, and he yelled in a deep voice, “You’re just a Yang Spiritual Master, how could you battle with me for so long? What is that mysterious power in your body?”

Li Ye didn’t bother replying.

Of course Li Ye wasn’t about to reveal to Huang Jingyuan that after he had comprehended the second realm of the Way of Emperor, he gained the strength of Dragon Qi which also made itself a breakthrough at the same time.

In actual fact, had Li Ye not comprehended the second realm of the Way of Emperor, be it in or outside of the secret region, there was no way he could match up against Huang Jingyuan.

But the fact was that he did comprehend it as soon as he entered the secret region.

Still, they were locked in a stalemate and Li Ye couldn’t exactly relax.

Huang Jingyuan’s strength was still overbearing. If things kept up this way, not only would he not win, but the opponent would eventually gain the upper hand.

As Li Ye came to the realization, he had ideas of retreating.

After setting traps, organizing an ambush and battling till now, they had taken down seven or eight opponents. Yet they hadn’t suffered any loss, so it was a complete victory for them. They wanted to get out while they were up.

Just at that moment, Xiao Hei’s anxious voice sounded in Li Ye’s conscience, “Prince An your highness, another team of Immortal Court cultivators are approaching. They have a dozen or so men!”

As the scout, Xiao Hei was not involved in the ambush but stationed on the outskirts to be on the watch. His duty was to warn them of such situations—where a third party would reap the spoils of the battle between Li Ye and his enemies.

Upon hearing Xiao Hei’s report, Li Ye did not hesitate and ordered He Shuwen and others to retreat. He feinted a move to force Huang Jingyuan back a few steps and instantly turned to leave.

In the exact same moment, an Immortal Court cultivator reported to Huang Jingyuan in a loud voice, “Lord Huang, Lord Chen has arrived!”

The seventy-two Earth Devils were all Lords with land. Chen Jizhen was lord of Earth Beast city, and Huang Jingyuan was lord of Earth Devil city.

When Chen Jizhen met up with Huang Jingyuan, they didn’t move together because each had five or six men, which was quite powerful. So they moved separately to acquire more men and agreed to meet here at the ruins.

“Don’t let them leave!” yelled Huang Jingyuan, who wielded his sword and chased after Li Ye. Of course he wouldn’t let Li Ye escape, and he chased after Li Ye for a long time, passing several ruined yards.

Meanwhile, the remaining two Immortal Court cultivators went after He Shuwen and others.

Of course Yang Tingge and Zuo Che’er were not chopped liver. Since they occupied the high position where they could see everything around them, they quickly loaded their cross-bows and fired arrows at Huang Jingyuan and others.