The sound of the wind was getting stronger little by little.
At first it sounded like whispers far away in the sky, then it became dense, like spring silkworms gnawing on mulberry leaves, making the ears itchy.
Later on, the noise grew louder and louder, as if thousands of evil spirits were howling at the same time, which was extremely frightening.
The wind howled in the desert, but the people under the sand dunes were shrouded in heavy silence. The only sound they could hear was the trembling and violent breathing of a few sand bandits.
After a long while, someone trembled and said, "The one on the right, is that Lu Chao?"
"No, impossible!"
Qian San clenched the bloodstained long knife in his hand and gritted his teeth and said, "Lu Chao has been dead for a long time. Everyone in the town has seen his body... What the hell is this thing!"
Lu Chao, should be the name of Lu Wanxing’s elder brother.
"Be careful."
Wen Hemian coughed lightly: "The one on the right has no breath, he is not human."
"As expected of Elder Wen, you have good vision."
The man on the left, whose face was covered with a black veil, laughed strangely, his throat seemed to be burned by fire, and his voice was hoarse: "It's a pity that the elder has become a useless person now, and he even needs a little disciple to protect him by his side. How pitiful."
Wen Hemian's eyes dimmed, and he did not respond.
"Wen, Elder Wen?"
Qian San's tone suddenly rose: "You, you are the old senior Wen Hemian from the Xuanxu Sword Sect?! I remember that you and Taoist Jueming are close friends--"
Old senior.
He Zhizhou's mouth twitched when he heard this.
This man was a burly, middle-aged man, while Wen Hemian had a delicate and thin face. Judging from his appearance, he could be called a "young man" at most. But now, Qian San was calling him "senior" in fear and trepidation, which was a bit funny no matter how you looked at it.
Lu Wanxing had also heard of Wen Hemian's name. She still kept holding the compass in her hand and looked up at him with round eyes.
"He is possessed by demonic energy, and also carries the unique spiritual energy of the immortal sect."
Wen Hemian's dark eyes were silent, and his usual gentle smile was gone. Compared with the other party's rough and strange voice, his voice was like the echo of sweet spring water: "Who are you?"
What is Reiki?
He Zhizhou focused his mind blankly, but he only felt layers of demonic aura coming from that person like huge waves.
The man obviously didn't expect that such a weak breath could be detected by him. He was stunned at first, and then burst into laughter: "Hahaha! As expected of you, it seems that even though you have become a waste, you are still useful after all."
He paused, his tone more sarcastic: "After all, he is a genius famous throughout the cultivation world!"
He Zhizhou felt sick after hearing this and retorted, "Yes, yes, you are not like me. You will never make a name for yourself in your life. In the end, others are enjoying a good life in the Xuanxu Sect, while you are living pitifully outside the Demon Realm, unable to even show your face. Speaking of this, I really have to thank the black cloth on your face. Without it, the appearance of the entire desert would have been greatly reduced because of you."
Lin Xun was stunned when he heard this, but fortunately, he was much more reliable than He Zhizhou. He turned his head and asked Wen Hemian seriously, "Uncle Master, do you mean...he was originally a righteous person, but later he turned to the devil's way?"
Lu Wanxing seemed to have thought of something and was stunned.
She was originally the least noticeable one among all the people, thin and small, with low cultivation, but now she took a step forward with a pale face and stood in front of everyone.
A gust of wind whistled by, and a black fog blocked out the sunlight.
She looked up at the man on the sand dune and spoke word by word in a trembling voice: "Are you..."
He Zhizhou looked at her back, and somehow his heart began to beat wildly.
He always had a feeling that a secret that had been buried for many years was finally about to be slowly revealed because of Lu Wanxing's question.
The girl's thin back trembled. Lu Wanxing clenched his sleeves, took a deep breath, and said the name that was extremely unfamiliar but had appeared in his mind countless times: "Liu... Xiuyuan?"
"Liu Xiuyuan? You mean the only survivor of that incident?"
He Zhizhou was stunned, his eyes full of confusion: "Didn't he die a long time ago?"
"Are there not many cases of people faking their deaths and getting away in the cultivation world? They all say that he died at home from serious injuries, but how many people have seen his body?"
Lu Wanxing spoke hurriedly, and by the end she was crying uncontrollably. She raised her hand and pointed at the man on the sand dune who looked exactly like her brother.
"Did you see that thing? If they can create a dummy like that now, why can't they do it during the battle between immortals and demons?!"
The moment I suddenly heard these words, a strong force hit my chest.
Not only He Zhizhou, Lin Xun's expression also changed: "What do you mean--"
yes.
No matter what the puppet-like dummy on the sand dune is, since he is made to look like Lu Wanxing's brother, doesn't that mean...
When her brother was still alive, the demons had already created something like this?
...No way.
If that's the case, then wouldn't it be——
"You, look!"
Lu Wanxing was more excited than ever before. He trembled all over and handed over the compass he had been holding. His voice was so trembling that it was almost inaudible: "This is my brother's and my compass. Before we leave, each of us takes one. The direction the needle points to is where the other compass is."
The compass needle shook violently along with her arm.
He Zhizhou clearly saw that the pointer was pointing deeper into the desert.
More dangerous and deeper.
"Another compass...in the desert."
A tear hastily slid down her cheek. Lu Wanxing gritted her teeth and said in a hoarse voice: "The man who escaped from the desert that night didn't have a compass on him. Can you understand? When I faced him... the needle kept pointing in the opposite direction."
"So you," Lin Xun looked at her blankly, with thousands of thoughts piled up in his mind, exploding at this moment, "so that's why you have been walking deep into the desert without caring about your safety for so many years?"
So that's how it is.
He had always been wondering, since Lu Wanxing could see that their group had a high level of cultivation, why did he snatch the purse so openly and did not hide after that, as if he wanted them to find it on purpose.
What if she did it on purpose?
Her cultivation level was low, and she could not go deep into the desert alone. She could only travel with powerful cultivators.
Lu Wanxing thought they were thieves who came to look for treasure, so he used this clumsy method as an opportunity and offered to lead them as a guide. However, he was rejected and his efforts were in vain.
So even though she had so many priceless treasures in her storage bag, she insisted on taking risks and entering the desert again and again.
From the very beginning, Lu Wanxing's purpose was not to steal.
She had a secret thought in her mind.
A wild idea that would only be laughed at and ridiculed by others if spoken out.
For this, Lu Wanxing persisted for more than ten years.
"During the chaos of the war, I heard that Liu Xiuyuan was seriously injured and claimed that he wanted to see his hometown before he died."
Wen Hemian's usually steady breath was unusually chaotic, and his voice became increasingly deep: "Not long after, news of his death came from his hometown."
The implication is that almost no one has ever seen his body.
That period was the time of the final battle, and countless monks sacrificed their lives. The death of Liu Xiuyuan alone seemed like a wave submerged in the ocean, nothing surprising at all.
The man standing on the sand dune laughed loudly, and his strange voice sounded like he was sawing stone with a knife.
He seemed even more proud than before. After a brief pause, he raised his hand and pulled off the black cloth covering his face.
"Do you know how painful it is when you successfully deceive everyone, but only you know the excitement and ecstasy, and you can't tell anyone?"
Under the black cloth was an extremely strange face.
Half of the face was that of a fair-skinned young man, while the other half was covered with marks from a fire. The scars looked like crawling insects, making it look particularly terrifying.
Anger finally welled up in Wen Hemian's eyes, and he said his name in a deep voice: "Liu Xiuyuan."
"After so many years, I really want to see with my own eyes what kind of expressions you will show when you find out that I have played you around."
He chuckled as he spoke: "Yes, yes, that's the expression I want! Be angrier! I'm the murderer who killed your friend! Jueming's expression when he found out he was betrayed was so wonderful. So were the townspeople who led the way. They were all buried in the desert, but they had to bear the eternal infamy. How miserable and pitiful!"
He Zhizhou heard the crackling sound of bones when he clenched his fist.
"Let me introduce you first. The one next to me is a traditional craftsman of the demon world, called 'Human Puppet'."
Liu Xiuyuan seemed to have no sense of urgency and explained casually: "It looks exactly like a real person, right? Back then, when I reached a cooperation with the demons, they used this thing to help me clear suspicion and put all the blame on those townspeople. To be honest, it works very well and I am very satisfied."
"You fucking bastard! You're not a human! Fuck you!"
Qian San couldn't stand it any longer, so he swung the knife in his hand towards the sand dune, but Liu Xiuyuan dodged it by leaning sideways and said with a playful smile: "Don't be so excited."
"But the demons didn't treat you well, did they?"
Wen Hemian should have been furious when his old friend died here.
But he just looked at Liu Xiuyuan indifferently, his body straight, his white clothes breaking through the thick darkness around him.
Only he himself knew that his right hand hidden under his sleeve had unconsciously clenched tightly, with his fingertips sinking into the flesh and oozing hot blood.
"The demonic energy is like poison. Once it enters the body, it is nothing short of torture."
Wen Hemian said: "As for your face and voice, you must have been poisoned by some kind of evil poison. With your level, you wouldn't feed yourself poison, right? Let me guess, you thought the demons would give you gold and silver magic weapons as rewards, but you didn't expect to get only a dose of poison. You had no choice but to become their slave?"
Perhaps because his secrets were completely exposed, Liu Xiuyuan's previous smug look suddenly disappeared and his expression changed instantly.
"You have such a disgusting mouth."
The man standing on top of the dune grinned: "Wait till I tear it off and take a good look at it."
As soon as he finished speaking, several figures gathered around him.
When He Zhizhou looked carefully, he saw dozens of human-shaped puppets rushing out from the darkness, including the one on the sand dune, and rushing towards him with knives in their hands.
The bandits raised their knives to fight back, while Liu Xiuyuan activated the spell, drawing blazing sky fire, and laughed out loud, "I am enough to deal with you. You are a useless person, a coward, and a fool. I am already at the third level of the Nascent Soul. How can you--"
The rest of the words were hastily swallowed before they could even be uttered.
He Zhizhou drew his sword and rushed forward, not giving him even a moment to finish his lines. For a moment, sword energy and firelight overlapped, illuminating the dark desert.
Lu Wanxing looked at Lin Xun beside him and murmured, "Are we all going to die here?"
As soon as she asked the question and saw the hesitation on the latter's face, she already knew the answer.
He shook the compass in his hand vigorously.
The girl looked up and quickly glanced at Liu Xiuyuan, then tightly gripped the compass and ran wildly into the depths of the desert without any warning.
Since I'm going to die anyway, I might as well face the deep-rooted obsession in my mind before I die.
What's more...the needle was shaking more and more violently, and another compass was not far away.
"Miss Lu!"
At the moment, the fight between He Zhizhou and Liu Xiuyuan is obviously the more important one.
Lin Xun hurriedly called out her name, and after weighing the pros and cons, he chose to leap to He Zhizhou's side and draw his sword to help.
Liu Xiuyuan was right, the two of them were no match for him.
The battle between the Golden Core and the Nascent Soul is originally a battle of higher levels, not to mention that Liu Xiuyuan was possessed by the devilish energy of the demon cultivator. The dark aura mixed with flames hit him with a tremendous force.
There were lightning and fire all around, and Lin Xun couldn't dodge in time. He was hit hard in the chest and fell to the ground under the pressure.
He Zhizhou was slightly better than him, but his condition was also very bad, and he probably couldn't hold on for too long;
After many days of recuperation, and with the help of the magical herbs Ningning brought back to nourish his spiritual consciousness, Wen Hemian has recovered some of his cultivation. However, he still has a hard time dealing with the swarms of puppets.
As for Lu Wanxing——
Lin Xun's bones ached in pain and his mouth was filled with the taste of blood. The moment this name appeared in my mind, I heard a loud noise as powerful as a tidal wave.
What is that sound?
With his hazy consciousness, he lay on the ground and turned his head.
Then in the next moment, the pupils suddenly contracted.
In the distance, among the rolling sand dunes, a small hill was pushed down with a loud bang, and the yellow sand was flying, making it impossible to see its specific shape.
He concentrated his mind and saw the thin back of the little girl in his gradually clearing vision.
Lu Wanxing was swinging his fists, again and again, hitting the sand dune with all his strength. Her hands were covered in blood, but she never stopped.
Then the hill began to tremble and collapsed one by one from the upper layer. When only one tenth of the height was left, she finally stopped waving her fists, and instead stretched out her hands to scrape the yellow sand out bit by bit.
Lin Xun coughed up a mouthful of blood, heard the sound of He Zhizhou falling to the ground, and Liu Xiuyuan laughed.
The sand and gravel were slowly falling like the sea surface at receding tide, far away in the distance. He forced his eyes to look, and in the endless yellow sand, he suddenly saw a streak of white.
Lin Xun originally thought it was an illusion.
But Lu Wanxing was also stunned, and then he sped up and tried his best to dig away the sand.
The first thing that came to light was a crawling skeleton.
Then came the second and the third.
What was very strange was that these people, who had long since lost their breath, were huddled together tightly before they died, with their bodies pressed closely against each other with almost no gaps between them.
It's as if...it's trying to protect something.
Lu Wanxing's actions continued.
When the sand and soil were almost completely dug away, something seemed to fall to the ground from above a skeleton.
Lin Xun saw her lower her head and her shoulders trembled uncontrollably.
And behind the skeleton, surrounded by everyone, was a person who had been dead for a long time.
He fell to his knees, his leg broken and the bones in front of him in a mess, but his back was straight, his hands clasped across his chest, tightly protecting something.
Lin Xun saw it clearly.
It was a sword that was completely white and glowed faintly in the darkness.
The secrets that have been hidden for many years are finally revealed at this moment.
He saw Jueming and his sword.
“This is my brother.”
Lu Wanxing stared at the skeleton beside Jueming for a long time, then suddenly turned around and looked at them. Over and over again, she said to them or to herself while crying, "Did you see it? This is... my brother."
She has been struggling for too many years relying on a vague and baseless idea.
Whenever Lu Wanxing wanted to give up, he would inexplicably think of the late night when he parted with his brother.
Because his father died early and his mother was frail and sickly, his brother took on the burden of the family early on and is the greatest hero in Lu Wanxing's heart.
That day she felt uneasy and held onto her brother's sleeve without moving. Lu Chao looked at her for a long while and suddenly asked softly, "Wanxing, do you remember what Daddy said?"
Her father was a scholar with a very sour tone, which was out of tune with the tough temperament of the desert. He often spoke flowery words to the two children, which made it impossible to understand.
Lu Wanxing didn't like listening to it since he was a child. Later, his father died while saving someone, and he never heard it again.
She was still young at the time, and had long forgotten those long and difficult sentences. She went through a confused circle in her head, and finally raised her head and answered him in a childish voice: "Daddy said, be a good person!"
My brother seemed to laugh at that time.
He smiled handsomely, his eyes gently curved into crescent shapes, and he leaned over to touch her head.
"Yes. Don't forget it."
Before leaving, Lu Chao said to her: "Wanxing, be a good person."
Then the night soaked the boy's tall shadow. She watched the hero in her heart gradually being swallowed by the darkness and finally disappearing.
It was a long time later that Lu Wanxing suddenly realized that perhaps when he left, he knew that there was a high probability that he would not come back.
But he still moved forward step by step without wavering, and until his death, he did not forget the promise he had made to her.
——When the Demon God came to the world and Jueming was seriously injured, judging from the posture of his skeleton, he was the first one to drag his dying body forward little by little and use his body to protect the Sword of Killing Evil.
Soon more and more people moved forward, and their fragile flesh and blood built barriers, allowing the long sword that could kill all demons to remain in the world.
They knew they were doomed to die, and could only risk their lives in this way to protect the monks' hope of killing the evil demons.
Unfortunately, fate played a trick on them. These brave warriors who were ready to die bravely all became despised sinners. The Sword of Evil-Slaying was covered in dust and never appeared on the battlefield again.
"Cassia and the Sword of the Evil-Slaying God. Oh wow."
Liu Xiuyuan grinned and laughed even more happily: "I was wondering why they disappeared, it turns out they were buried in a place like this - thank you, young lady, if I can get through with them, my future life will be settled!"
Perhaps it was because he saw Lu Wanxing's red eyes, he sighed, with flashes of lightning and fire at his sides, and walked towards her step by step.
"I know you are very sad. My brother has done so many things, but he is regarded as an unforgivable traitor. I am also very sad, but... secrets should be secrets. After today, no one will know, right?"
"Fuck you!"
Qian San's eyes were bloodshot, veins popped up on his face, and he swung his fist at Liu Xiuyuan: "What kind of secret is this? I'm here!"
How could Liu Xiuyuan care about such ordinary people? He sneered and his demonic energy overflowed. Without any extra movements, he knocked Qian San far away.
He wanted to go on.
However, when Qian San fell to the ground, another figure stepped forward and blocked his way: "I saw it too."
"Me too! You bastard, why are you pretending? You are so weird and don't speak human language. You are sick!"
"I know that too! What's the point of attacking a little girl? Disgusting!"
"I'm ○ you ○○○○○!"
Two, three, four.
The bandits holding knives stepped forward one after another, standing between the pile of bones and Liu Xiuyuan, blocking the latter's way like an indestructible wall.
"Just you guys?"
Liu Xiuyuan sneered: "You are trying to hit a rock with an egg. You are overestimating your own strength. Not only you, but also those monks are in my pocket. How many of them came this time? Six or seven? If they fall into the ambush, they will all die."
As he opened his mouth, his fingertips moved, and a dark white lightning flashed forward like a shadow, and was about to hit someone in the chest, when suddenly a white shadow attacked him without warning.
The two forces collided and both dissipated into smoke.
It was a sword light.
Liu Xiuyuan frowned impatiently and looked towards the source of the sword energy.
He thought that the one who launched this attack would be He Zhizhou, who was more impatient and had a higher level of cultivation.
However, the person who stood up in the billowing smoke and dust and the strong wind turned out to be the young demon cultivator who always looked timid.
He held the bloody sword in his right hand and clenched it tightly with his left hand, with a few streaks of white light leaking out from between his fingers.
It was a round night-shining pearl.
Lin Xun raised his hand and stood up straight. Amid the unbearable pain all over his body, he raised his hand to wipe the blood from the corner of his lips.
Is he scared?
Of course I'm scared.
He was timid and cowardly, and was secretly laughed at by many people, who said he was the most useless waste in the Dragon Palace.
But even he has people and things he wants to protect.
He witnessed all the past events buried deep in the desert.
He knew about the sacrifices that had been misinterpreted and forgotten.
He wanted to tell them openly that everything was being witnessed.
Beliefs that are never expressed will never become secrets.
Even if it meant death, he... didn't want to escape anymore.
Lin Xun clenched the long sword in his hand, and the sword made a humming sound, causing the Zhuxie Sword in the distance to glow faintly.
The sword energy surged up like a growing vine passing through his entire body. The dragon boy seemed to hear the sound of his own blood flowing, and almost subconsciously, he clenched his left hand tightly.
Compared with his predecessors who were buried in the sand, there was not complete darkness around him.
No matter what, this light will always be with him.
As for now.
It's his turn to save the person who brought him this light.
Lin Xun held his breath, lowered his eyes, and felt the sword intent surge in his body, filling every inch of his flesh and blood.
He had never drawn his sword as fast as he did today. The snow-white sword energy made the world as bright as day. When the sword was swung up and down, the flowing bright light slowly outlined the whole world.
The white light gradually appeared, and in the endless darkness of the sky, a whistling shadow suddenly appeared.
Moving as fast as lightning, with a force as fierce as a gale, the pressure that spread out in all directions caused huge waves to empty out -
In an instant, all sounds fell silent.
The distant figure gradually became clear.
One of the bandits opened his eyes wide, his voice trembling uncontrollably: "This is, this is a dragon——!"
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