Formless? Five Elephants?

Jiang Mingzhe feigned ignorance, continuing to circle at a speed of thirty to forty miles per hour.

Duan Yu, however, was terrified, shouting at the top of his lungs, "Elder Brother, Elder Brother! It seems we've been surrounded!"

Jiang Mingzhe paid him no mind. Not until the encirclement shrank to the size of a basketball court did the setting sun finally sink below the peaks.

Night descended, plunging the surroundings into a heavy gloom many times thicker in an instant.

"Sit tight!" Jiang Mingzhe roared.

The moment the words left his mouth, he regretted them.

The kid was riding on his back. If I tell him to sit tight, am I a horse or a carriage?

Unable to suppress a sudden chill, he channeled his internal energy to its absolute limit!

*Whoosh-hum!* In his subconscious, he provided his own engine-revving sound effect.

The dark bluish-green toxic mist surged forth from the Yongquan acupoint with unprecedented vigor, rapidly vaporizing and blending into the heavy veil of night.

Like a cheetah pouncing upon an antelope, Jiang Mingzhe's speed spiked to the extreme. Envoy Fu and the others only saw a blur before their eyes, and Jiang Mingzhe had already cut straight into their ranks.

"Stop him! Quickly stop him!" Envoy Fu was both furious and panicked, leading the women of the Vulture Palace in an attempt to block his path.

Yet Jiang Mingzhe refused to engage them in combat.

He remembered a sequence of events from the original novel:

Duan Yu and Mu Wanqing had been blocked by four women of the Vulture Palace, who suspected them of being runaway disciples of the Wuliang Sword. Mu Wanqing flew into a rage and attacked, her sleeve-darts sealing throats upon drawing blood as she killed three in rapid succession. But against the very last remaining opponent, Mu Wanqing was no match, sustaining multiple injuries. It was only when Duan Yu picked up a corpse and hurled it forward that Mu Wanqing seized the opportunity to unleash a dart and kill her adversary.

Right now, there were a full twelve such formidable women, plus an Envoy Fu who looked even more dangerous, and seemingly some sort of combined attack formation. Naturally, Jiang Mingzhe chose to evade wherever possible.

Relying on his agile and shifting movement techniques, he darted rapidly through the crowd. Drifting sideways and weaving smoothly with extraordinary grace, his feet treading the hexagrams of the Zhouyi—Li, Ge, Tongren, Lin, Sun, Jie, Zhongfu... he swept past countless fists, kicks, and weapons like a wisp of smoke, swiftly carving a massive circle.

The mediocre martial artists of the Wuliang Sword and the Shennong Sect ended up serving as his human shields instead.

Envoy Fu finally snapped to her senses and shouted loudly, "Zuo Zimu, Xin Shuangqing, Sikong Xuan! Call off your useless trash and leave only the elders and protector-level experts to surround and annihilate this scoundrel with me!"

Jiang Mingzhe abruptly halted his steps, forming sword fingers with both hands, and laughed heartily, "Since you've come, none of you are leaving! Behold my Demonic Bone-Corroding Formless Sword Qi of the All-Embracing Heavenly Gods!"

Envoy Fu cursed furiously, "You're at death's door and still spouting such wild nonsense! Come then, I, Fu Minyi, await your sword qi!"

---

With that, Jiang Mingzhe casually pointed a finger and provided his own sound effect: "Swish!"

Fu Minyi was boiling with rage, and just as she wanted to ask if he was a complete idiot, she saw the very spot Jiang Mingzhe pointed at collapse as a Wuliang Sword disciple suddenly tumbled to the ground.

Fu Minyi's lunging momentum abruptly ceased.

The women of the Vulture Palace, along with the top experts of the Wuliang Sword and Shennong Sect, froze dead in their tracks.

Jiang Mingzhe pointed repeatedly with both hands: "Swish, swish, swish, swish-swish, swish-swish-swish-swish!"

That pair of hands seemed to genuinely unleash invisible sword qi invisible to the naked eye. Wherever he pointed, people were sent tumbling over horses and horses flipping over men. First it was the Wuliang Sword disciples, then the Shennong Sect disciples. Almost in the blink of an eye, over thirty people had collapsed, crying out miserably in succession, "I've been hit by a sword! It punctured my lung, I can't breathe!" "Me too, me too! My lung has been pierced as well!"

Sikong Xuan touched the painful welt where he had been whipped earlier and cried out in grief and indignation, "Old man knew he could wield Formless Sword Qi! His nickname is literally the Invincible Divine Sword!"

Fu Minyi rebuked angrily, "What is the point of dwelling on that right now? This kind of formless sword qi must consume a massive amount of internal energy. He's just a youth; even if he started training in his mother's womb, how deep could his cultivation possibly be? Send your minions and disciples in to attack at once!"

Hearing this, the various experts all felt a chill in their hearts. Fu Minyi's intent was glaringly obvious—she meant to use the lives of the two factions' subordinates to deplete Jiang Mingzhe's cultivation.

Jiang Mingzhe shook his head with a wry smile, "Hey, young lady, that's not how you lead a team. When leading a team, you must balance kindness with might. While blind leniency certainly won't work, treating people like dogs the way you do—who wouldn't resent you in their hearts? Sooner or later, they'll launch a rebellion against you."

Sikong Xuan and the others exchanged glances, thinking that this fellow Long Aotian made a lot of sense. In the eyes of these divine envoys, people like them probably weren't even treated as well as dogs.

Fu Minyi snapped angrily, "I don't need lecturing from the likes of you! Are you all deaf? Send men up to kill him immediately!"

Jiang Mingzhe looked up and laughed, his wild demeanor fully exposed, "Want to exhaust Laozi's internal energy? Very well, as you wish! Receive my move—Myriad Swords Return to Sect!"

With that, he thrust out all ten fingers simultaneously, shooting them wildly toward the sky. Those with weaker cultivation levels in the surrounding area collapsed to the ground one after another, wailing miserably.

The tiny hairs all over Fu Minyi's body stood on end!

One must know that condensing Qi into a sword and harming people invisibly was already a near-legendary martial art. Yet the sword qi unleashed by this Long Aotian could actually shoot up into the sky and then rain back down—how could this still be considered mortal martial arts? To call him a terrestrial immortal would not be an exaggeration at all!

The other experts were also scared out of their wits, subconsciously taking steps backward.

Fu Minyi's eyes held the look of someone who had just seen a ghost as she suddenly shrieked, "I remember now! My master once mentioned that the Great Evil Man mastered a technique called the White Rainbow Palm Force. Once cultivated, the palm force twists and turns at will, impossible to guard against. You! You really are their son!"

The more she spoke, the more terrified she became, continually retreating as she shouted urgently, "The son of the Great Evil Man has already mastered this martial art, let alone the Great Evil Man himself! Sisters, we cannot die here; someone must return to report this news to the master. Break out in different directions!"

With that, she leaped into the air and hurled three small vials, which shot toward Sikong Xuan, Zuo Zimu, and Xin Shuangqing respectively: "These are this year's antidotes! Hold this man off, and it will be a supreme contribution!"

Jiang Mingzhe smiled, "Did I say you could leave? Taste my sword!"

---

Fu Minyi instantly twisted her body and dodged frantically. As she landed, she stumbled, feeling a suffocating tightness in her chest as if a piece of burning charcoal had been shoved down her windpipe. Overcome with dizziness, nausea, and rapid heart palpitations, she felt her soul leave her body in terror. *Could it be that I failed to dodge his sword qi?* she thought. *Or did the shockwave of his sword qi alone injure me?*

Though her thoughts were in complete disarray, she didn't dare slow her pace for even a second, pouring every ounce of her cultivation into a desperate, life-or-death sprint. Fortunately, Jiang Mingzhe did not unleash any more sword qi; whether it was because Sikong Xuan and the others had blocked it, she had no way of knowing.

In the blink of an eye, the women of the Vulture Palace scattered like birds and beasts, fleeing in every possible direction, not a single one daring to look back even once.

Jiang Mingzhe chuckled and turned his gaze to Sikong Xuan and the others, "Why aren't you running? Come to experience Laozi's Void-Breaking Formless Sword Qi?"

Sikong Xuan's expression turned peculiar as he muttered in a low voice, "It's the Demonic Bone-Corroding Formless Sword Qi."

Jiang Mingzhe slapped his forehead, thinking it was all that Fu Minyi's fault—going on and on about formless sword qi this and formless sword qi that, completely throwing him off track.

Putting on a bold front, he retorted, "What do you know? The Formless Sword Qi exists somewhere between the tangible and intangible. Externally it slaughters flesh, internally it severs souls. If I were to actually unleash it, your physical bodies and souls would be utterly annihilated. In my mercy and respect for all living things, I used a lower-tier technique—the Innate Body-Breaking Formless Sword—to allow your souls to descend to the netherworld for reincarnation."

Having witnessed Jiang Mingzhe display such terrifying might earlier, Duan Yu had kept his mouth shut the entire time, terrified that speaking would cause his elder brother to lose focus and misguide his internal Qi. At this moment, however, he couldn't help chiming in, "Elder Brother is truly benevolent and kind-hearted! No wonder you can master such earth-shattering martial arts—they are actually ten times more formidable than my father's One-Sun Finger!"

Earlier, he hadn't dared to mention that he hailed from the Dali Duan family, but in his excitement, he had accidentally let it slip.

Yet in his state of agitation, he remained entirely oblivious, his mind solely focused on Jiang Mingzhe's greatness: *No wonder Elder Brother looks down upon the techniques of the Xiaoyao Sect. That Northern Dark Divine Art sucks away others' cultivation to use as one's own, acting no different from a common thief stealing people's wealth—how could it ever compare to Elder Brother's Innate Formless Sword Qi? What's more, he even knows that Demonic Bone-Corroding Formless Sword Qi which sounds even more impressive! Wait, formless?*

He was an avid enthusiast of the I Ching and Buddhist scriptures, and this term "formless" struck right at the heart of his passions. Subconsciously, he began to wax poetic: "As for this concept of 'formless,' the Treatise on the Meaning of the Great Mahayana states: Ultimate truth possesses no form or appearance, and Nirvana transcends the ten forms! What are the ten forms? The form of matter, the form of sound, the form of smell, the form of taste, the form of touch, the form of birth, abiding, and decay, the form of male, the form of female, the form of non-self, and the form of non-dharma! When my Elder Brother speaks of this Formless Divine Sword severing your souls into nothingness, it is actually guiding you all into the realm of ultimate emptiness..."

He rambled on and on through a lengthy discourse that not a single soul understood. To Jiang Mingzhe, it felt as though a giant, buzzing horsefly was circling his back. But since this was his sworn brother of life and death, he could only offer a fierce nod and say, "My brother speaks wisely!"

Sikong Xuan frowned deeply, "So it actually has to do with the 'formless' of existence and non-existence? This old man originally thought it meant that, but now that the sword qi has invaded my body, it feels just like being poisoned by a scorpion. I thought it referred to the forms of snakes, spiders, scorpions, toads, and centipedes—the five-phase sword qi..."

*As expected of a professional!*

Jiang Mingzhe inwardly admired him, thinking that this old man was quite something to be able to deduce that it was centipede venom. But why hadn't he exposed the truth earlier instead of letting those Vulture Palace women get scared off by him?

Just as he was about to press for answers, a shrill cry suddenly echoed out: "Let go of me right now! Otherwise, if my daddy finds out you bullied me, he'll definitely beat you to death!"

Though the voice carried a mix of anger and fear, it remained sweet, tender, and melodious. Jiang Mingzhe found it intensely familiar. As he paused to recall, his eyes suddenly widened: It was Zhong Ling's voice!