My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 714 - Dusk and Shadow - Part 1

Several days later.

It was autumn. A pale, overcast sky loomed above.

A sudden gust of wind stirred the air. A withered leaf twirled down from a branch, the first to fall. Then more followed, breaking free and drifting into the distance.

“Here,” Li Yuan said, coming to a stop. He turned to survey the surroundings. The sky stretched high and wide above the desolate, open expanse. Barren land, far-flung mountains, this was a place well-suited for either a final duel or a burial.

“Alright,” Huyan Hai replied, halting as well. After a few days of recovery, he was back in peak form.

The two men spread apart, putting distance between them.

SHING! Huyan Hai ran two fingers solemnly along his blade. The Qi surged from the land around them, coalescing into a golden vortex that clung to the weapon, transforming it from a mere tool into something formidable.

Li Yuan recognized this power. It was a skill known as Mountain-River Armament, a deadly art used by assassins.

Huyan Hai didn’t rush forward. Instead, he suddenly ground his hands together. With a sharp crack, the blade shattered, splintering into jagged shards that floated in midair like slivers of broken glass.

He flicked his fingers.

One shard shot toward Li Yuan like a bullet, slicing through the air with a whistle.

It looked unremarkable, but it carried the crushing weight of mountain and river energy, more than enough to kill someone at the lesser stages of true knowledge.

Still, this was only a probe. Huyan Hai had only heard rumors about Li Yuan’s strength. He needed to feel it for himself.

But then, a wave of despair struck him, sudden and suffocating.

Bleak thoughts flooded his mind, pulling old memories up from the depths like corpses from a lake.

Huyan Hai reeled, alarmed. He forced the emotions down, breathing deeply to regain control.

Even so, for one fatal moment, his mind had slipped. And in battle, even a moment was enough to die.

He looked up again.

Li Yuan was already holding the flying shard between his fingers. Casually, he flicked it aside, sending it clattering away.

Huyan Hai let out a bitter laugh.

The Emperor of Tang...far too cautious. No openings at all.

Still, the probe had yielded something.

First, anyone who attacked the Tang Emperor would fall into despair and experience grief so intense it seemed to compound. That meant there was only one real shot at victory, and that was at the very beginning before that despair took root.

Second, the Emperor excelled at close-quarters combat. Those fabled hands of his, the ones written into the Mythic Rankings, Huyan Hai had heard of them. Now he had to face them head-on.

Just then, Li Yuan’s voice drifted over.

“What character is that?”

“Fusion,’” Huyan Hai answered. Then he added, “You want to learn it?”

“I’ll help you pass it on. Are you opposed to it?” Li Yuan smiled.

Huyan Hai snorted. “Beat me first.”

Without another word, he surged forward.

The shattered blade had formed eleven shards, all floating by his side. They gleamed coldly. If they weren’t hovering, one might mistake them for any other weapon carried by a martial artist.

In the blink of an eye, Huyan Hai was upon Li Yuan, the eleven shards slicing toward him from all directions.

Li Yuan calmly raised a hand, just his left.

Fingers splayed wide, it was like a forest suddenly sprouting into being, a living barrier that intercepted all eleven blades charged with the power of mountains and rivers.

In that moment, the sorrow swelling in Huyan Hai's heart surged like a tidal wave. The memories he'd buried deep, the wounds of past lives, came flooding back, grief after grief rising unbidden, merciless and relentless.

The sadness he had once forgotten now attacked his mind like a storm, wearing down his will with frightening speed.

But Huyan Hai's will was not so easily broken. He forced that will into his right hand, and that hand struck forward, reaching for Li Yuan’s hand.

Yet something was wrong.

His hand had turned black. Dark threads, silent and sinister, curled around his fingers like smoke. The eerie blackness clashed grotesquely with the golden aura of mountain and river energy that had once empowered him.

A black hand reached for another hand.

Li Yuan saw the darkness too.

It was an unexpected force, something neither Mister Mu nor Tuoba Yin had ever mentioned.

That could only mean one thing. There had been infighting in the Northern Wasteland. And since it was Huyan Hai standing before him, alive and armed with this forbidden power, it meant Huyan Hai had held back a terrifying trump card.

Mister Mu had already turned traitor. There was no reason for him to keep secrets, so he must have genuinely known nothing of this black hand. That confirmed it: this was Huyan Hai’s secret weapon.

And Li Yuan, even with strength far beyond his opponent’s, did not let down his guard.

The hand that had blocked the blades suddenly withdrew...or at least it tried to. It didn’t budge.

The black hand was pulling, dragging with it a terrifying gravitational force that clung to him like the gaping maw of some void-beast devouring the world.

But even as Li Yuan tried to pull his left hand back, his right hand had already begun to move.

The left was an open palm, a forest of defense.

The right was a clenched fist.

And just then, Huyan Hai let go of the blades entirely, abandoning the Qi-infused weapons he'd crafted so carefully. Or perhaps, the fusion character had only been a feint, a clever distraction, a ploy to draw Li Yuan's focus.

The true killing move was his hand.

Li Yuan had Mythic-ranked hands. But Huyan Hai had hands of his own.

They simply hadn’t been seen before.

They hadn’t needed to be.

Now, his other hand came crashing down.

Black energy surged forth, dense and violent, like a thunderhead about to swallow the city whole. It enveloped Li Yuan entirely, like nightfall smothering a forest.

The pull intensified, growing several times stronger.

Li Yuan’s left hand was being dragged in, sucked toward those twin black hands.

SMACK! The hands met.

Black clouds blanketed the forest of fingers. It was as if eternal night had arrived.

Li Yuan felt the pull continue, and worse, it had begun to drain him. His strength was being stolen, leeched away by the blackness.

But just then, his right hand arrived like the setting sun bursting through the horizon, a blinding blaze of dusk.

The Qi around him turned thin and pale, glowing a faint, mournful gold.

The black clouds crushed down, threatening to flatten the forest beneath them, only to find that a blazing sun had risen in the west.

The blazing sunset crashed into the black cloud above, its glow tinged with a mournful hue.

But the cloud didn’t budge.

It wasn’t just a stormcloud; it was the gaping mouth of some unspeakable beast. And once it sank its teeth into something, no power could pry them open again.

The cloud remained still, but Huyan Hai moved.

The sunset’s sorrow, heavy and overwhelming, engulfed him in an instant. A wave of despair surged through his soul. Pain he’d long buried erupted like a tidal wave, battering his mind. Memories came flooding back, some etched deep in his heart, others deliberately forgotten for being too painful to bear. There were moments from his childhood. There were memories of his death.

Grief, in its most primal and unbearable form, surfaced in all its brutality. Amplified a thousandfold, it clawed its way out of him, threatening to rip apart his very mind.

Huyan Hai held on for a second.

A second later, his face was streaming with tears. His teeth chattered. Snot ran freely from his nose.

With a sharp jolt, he bit down hard on his tongue.

Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

The pain gave him another second, but only one. Then, he let go.

His body slumped to its knees, head tilting back toward the sky, eyes wide with despair. Every thought had been crushed. Every spark of will was extinguished.

Li Yuan withdrew his hand in one smooth motion, flexing his fingers.

His eyes lingered on the tendrils of black mist still unraveling from Huyan Hai’s hand, deep in thought.

Had he done nothing, that hand might’ve drained him completely.

What was that power?

The thought flickered in his mind, but there was no time to linger on it. He looked at Huyan Hai, now kneeling in utter ruin, eyes blank and filled with death’s quiet longing.

Then he raised his hand and brought it down in a swift arc.

SMACK! A sting bloomed in Huyan Hai’s neck, and then came darkness.