I readied myself to receive his blow, mustering whatever qi I could in order to withstand his blow. Cheng Kun was a Saint Realm cultivator, which meant that he could easily slay me if I wasn't careful. That didn't mean I would die so easily, though. Like I said, real-life battles weren't as simple as brute strength or might is right.
That was why we developed techniques. In order to make up for the differences between strengths. If everything was down to raw might, then why bother developing techniques? Everyone would just focus on growing physical strength.
Of course, that didn't mean stronger cultivators didn't have an advantage. They still had an undeniable advantage. Underestimating them and thinking I could win just because of my techniques or experience was just as naïve as my opponent believing that this was a guaranteed victory for him simply because he had a higher cultivation realm.
So I drew Abyssal Edge and got ready to slash his palm with my sword.
As it turned out, I never got the chance.
Before Cheng Kun could reach me, four other sect leaders descended upon him. Bai Yao Cai stood in front of me, his hand raised to conjure a white barrier. Wu Xing and Long Feng Meng struck from opposite directions, derailing Cheng Kun and sending him crashing away to the side. Xing Chen stood by my side, already placing artifacts to set up a formation.
Cheng Kun scrambled to his feet, snarling and bleeding from his mouth and a couple of wounds, but he wasn't going to give up. Not until someone spoke up behind him.
"Don't you think you should stop there?"
Shan Ben Yuan Jian had not drawn his sword or moved in a threatening manner, simply standing behind Cheng Kun with both of his hands resting on the gnarled dome of his wooden walking stick. Yet his presence was far more intimidating than all of the other sect leaders put together. The old leader of the Azure Water Sect froze, his face pale and damp with cold perspiration.
"This…this is between me and the White Herb Sect," he managed to splutter indignantly. "Why are all of you interfering? This is none of your business!"
"Are you kidding?" Xing Chen snorted. "Of course it has everything to do with us! This is the intersect tournament! Not only did you give a fake prize, you attacked the winner simply because the disciple of your sect didn't win! You're destroying the integrity of the tournament and displaying contempt for the other participants through your corrupted behavior and terrible sportsmanship! If the winner was a disciple from the other sects except yours, you'll do the same!"
"Trying to poison the winner of the intersect tournament simply because he's not from your sect, you really have sunk to a new low, Cheng Kun," Long Feng Meng added with a scowl. "Do you want to go to war with the other major sects?"
"Your dishonesty threatens us all," Wu Xing said softly. "Attempting to murder a disciple right in front of our eyes, handing out a fake prize and trying to poison him…is that the way a leader of an orthodox sect should behave?"
"Fake prize?" Cheng Kun sneered. "I only said I would give out a five veined spirit pill to the winner. I never said what kind of spirit pill it would be. A Marrow Corrosive pill is still a five veined spirit pill!"
"By the same logic, Xiao Ye is free to give the spirit pill to whoever he wants, now that he owns it. Now that your scheme backfired and it's your own disciple who got poisoned, you want revenge?" Bai Yao Cai's lip curled into an icy smile. "Truly getting a taste of your own medicine, old Cheng Kun."
The scoundrel roared and lunged forward, only to freeze when he suddenly felt the immense spiritual pressure from Shan Ben Yuan Jian behind him. He dropped to his knees, perspiring profusely and unable to move.
"Didn't I say that you should stop there?" The ancient swordsman asked, his tone mild yet somehow suffused with a sort of strength that sent chills running down my back even though I wasn't the target. I could only imagine how Cheng Kun felt under all of that pressure.
"Aren't you going ooverboard bullying me like this?" He spat, wiping the blood from his mouth. Everyone stared at him before bursting out in laughter. Well, almost everyone, anyway. Shan Ben Yuan Jian was not amused, while Wu Xing simply smiled.
"You still have the face to say that after trying to kill a disciple of another sect who is one major cultivation realm beneath you! How thick can your skin be?" Bai Yao Cai shook his head incredulously.
"Utterly deluded," one of the spectators said. "Maybe he went mad after his sect lost the intersect tournament?"
"Nah, we always knew that Cheng Kun was one of the most shameless people ever. This isn't the first time."
"Yeah, he goes around bullying and oppressing other people, but when something's to his disadvantage, he turns around and accuse the other party of being evil."
"You…!" Cheng Kun was visibly bristling at the talk of everyone in the spectator box, but he was unable to refute any of them. "Shut up! All of you! Just…shut up!"
"Oh, wow…how scary! Now that he can't argue back, he tries to silence us."
"What's new? That's how all bullies behave."
"I told all of you to shut up!" Cheng Kun roared, trembling from rage. He turned on the other major sect leaders, as well as me, who was hiding behind them. I might be the protagonist with plot armor, but I wasn't stupid. I wasn't suicidal enough to go to the front and directly confront an opponent who was several times more powerful than I was.
If I had to fight, I would, and I had my methods of surviving against a stronger enemy, but I didn't get this far in life by recklessly charging into unnecessary fights. Let the sect leaders handle this. I was going to sit back and munch on popcorn instead.
Cheng Kun was still glaring at them, a threat pouring out of his mouth. "If you don't move, then I'll kill you along with him!"
"Oh?" Long Feng Meng was amused, a smile creeping over her aged but still pretty face. "And how do you intend on doing that? Against five of us? Never mind us four, you couldn't even defeat Master Shan Ben Yuan Jian on your own."
"Who says I'm on my own?" Cheng Kun sneered. He snapped his fingers and yelled at somebody unseen. "Release the Kraken…ahem, I mean release the corpse puppets!"
At his command, human figures shot out from nowhere and soared through the air. Streaking through the heavens, they plummeted toward the ruined stage and landed heavily, leaving gaping craters in the broken dust.
"Corpse puppets…?" Xing Chen repeated, horrified. "You…!"
"That's Wang Lei," Wu Xing murmured, recognizing one of the puppets.
"General Jiang!" Huang Qian Jin shouted from the spectator seats. Whoa, I didn't realize he was here. Oh, now that I thought about it, he was among the most vocal spectators, shouting all those insults at Cheng Kun and questioning his integrity. He had been stirring up criticism of Azure Water Sect's patriarch all along, which had now reached its peak. But now his tone had lost all of its mockery and scorn, instead filled with outrage and disbelief. "Why do you have General Jiang's body?!"
"General Jiang is one of the Huang Kingdom's greatest heroes, who gave his life up in the service of the country when fighting off demonic sect invaders. For you to desecrate his body so…" Bai Yao Cai's words were dripping with contempt. "How dare you…?"
"I dare, so what can you about it?" Cheng Kun retorted with a grin. "All those corpses are useless to everyone, lying six feet under, so I might as well make use of them!" He laughed. "General Jiang, Wang Lei, Yue Fei, Quan Zhi Shang, these are all legendary heroes at the top of Saint Realm! Absolute powerhouses when they were alive! And now I have their strength and abilities at my command! None of you will be leaving here alive today!"
"You…you are betraying us?!" Jin Shan Dian demanded, his face pale. He hadn't been part of the sect leaders who helped to protect me, probably because he held a grudge against me for defeating his son, Jin Lei, but he wasn't stupid. He understood the meaning of Cheng Kun revealing his trump cards here.
The guy was basically staging a coup d'état and planned on killing everybody here so that his sect would be the only one left. He wanted to swallow the other six major sects and become the preeminent superpower in the Tian Xuan Continent. This, coming from an orthodox sect, might seemed pretty unbelievable, but then again we lived in an era of constant warfare and conquest. Their values were different from ours.
What I thought was a virtue, such as peace, wasn't necessarily considered as such here. Instead, ambition was encouraged in a world like this, which gave rise to the stupid "might is right" and "strong eat the weak" nonsense. Ironically, the victors were those with amazing strategic sense, and not necessarily the one with the greatest military might (though you could consider strategy, cunningness and intelligence as a form of strength).
To be honest, I wasn't at all surprised by the sudden turn of events. In fact, I probably had subconsciously predicted it. After all, this was suspiciously a rip off of the betrayal of True Sun Sect in the manhua Banished Disciple's Counterattack. I wasn't sure what to say other than that the author chose to copy one of the worst written webnovels ever…like seriously, it was almost as if the whole world, every young master, their lackeys, friends and servants, and their sects wanted to kill the protagonist for no reason other than because he was the protagonist. It was so juvenile, honestly. "You're trash, so you must die!" "Oh, you're not trash, but you humiliated me by proving me wrong when I insulted you, so you must die!" Seriously?
Huang Qian Jin looked pale, but Hui Ying had immediately gone in front to shield him. I wasn't sure what he could do, though – my mentor was peak Innate Realm at best, not even Saint Realm. Would he really stand a chance against…?
Cheng Kun snuck a glance at him. "Sorry, your highness, but you'll have to die here. I'm afraid your father wouldn't care about your life if my sect emerges as the preeminent superpower and the only major sect in the kingdom. Even his majesty will not risk offending me." He then grinned. "Of course, given the resources I have at hand, who's to say I won't become the next emperor anyway?"
That treasonous statement alone ensured that he wouldn't let a single person leave this place alive. Not after what they had heard.
To everyone's surprise, it was Shan Ben Yuan Jian who spoke up.
"You seem to have a lot of confidence in these dead puppets of yours. Have you really misjudged our strengths to the point of complacency? You truly have lost your way, Cheng Kun."
Cheng Kun turned on him with a snarl. "It's useless to bluff, old man. I know your strength well. Even you can't handle so many ex Saint Realm cultivators at once. They might be dead, but they are a lot stronger than before, especially after all the modifications we've made!"
He glanced at the fallen Bai Ning Shuang, who was pretty much dead after consuming the Marrow Corrosive pill. A shadow crossed his face.
"Don't worry, Ning Shuang. We'll find a way to save you after we conquer the whole Huang Kingdom!"
"You're talking as if you've already won." Shan Ben Yuan Jian sighed and shook his head. "Have you really gone so far off the edge?"
"Why don't we find out if I've gone mad or not with your own body?!" Cheng Kun bellowed. He gestured toward the corpse puppets. "KILL THAT OLD BASTARD!"
Their expressions unchanging, probably forever frozen in that state of rigor mortis, they charged forward and attacked Shan Ben Yuan Jian. The old man barely flickered his gaze upward, both his hands still on the wooden walking stick.
Then he raised it, the layers of wood peeling back in golden and silver flames. A sword had been concealed within the walking stick all this while, an antique, elegant weapon that must be centuries old. With a single swing of his sword, Shan Ben Yuan Jian sent thousands of swords raining down from the heavens.
The corpse puppets never knew what hit them.
One moment they had him surrounded, their weapons or fists glowing ferociously with a myriad of colored qi. The next, they were completely obliterated, impaled and sliced apart by countless swords. Those who survived the hail of arcane blades didn't make it within ten meters of Shan Ben Yuan Jian before he lashed out with his sword.
I couldn't follow his movements, so fast were his strokes that they were little more than a blur. A second later, the two corpse puppets who survived the first onslaught were cut into pieces by several direct slashes from Shan Ben Yuan Jian's swords.
As the body parts scattered to the ground, no blood flowing from them because they were long dead, the ancient sword saint and legendary patriarch of the Ten Thousand Sword Pavilion – said to have reigned over his sect for at least a thousand years – slowly turned to a trembling and stunned Cheng Kun, his voice soft and mild.
"…is that it?"