Before Liang Yan could react, a flash of white light erupted before his eyes; the striped white tiger had already lunged at him.
As the saying goes: "Clouds follow the dragon, and wind follows the tiger."
Borrowing the power of the wind, the white tiger's speed was unimaginably fast. By the time Liang Yan regained his vigilance, the beast was already less than three zhang away, its massive, bloody maw gaping open toward him.
"Roar!"
A violent gust of wind swept toward him. Although his Black Shield blocked the brunt of the impact, Liang Yan still felt a sensation of suffocation.
The clothes covering his body were shredded by the wind, and red welts appeared on his skin. In that instant, he felt as if he could neither hear, nor speak, nor even keep his eyes open. The howling gale had effectively sealed off his three senses: hearing, smell, and taste.
Alarmed, Liang Yan hurriedly activated the "Dispelling Momentum Method" from his *Law of the Unsettled Mind*. A surge of blue light flowed through him, barely managing to scatter the immediate wind pressure. As his senses returned, he looked up to see the woman in black leap from behind the white tiger. With a single step off the tiger's back, she traced a circle in mid-air with her long saber and swung it horizontally toward him.
Black Qi swirled around the blade, and a pitch-black flood dragon coiled upon it, emitting rhythmic dragon roars.
He had already experienced her monstrous strength earlier; now, with a flood dragon attached to her blade, Liang Yan wouldn't dare meet the strike head-on even if he had ten times the courage. He hurriedly retracted his Black Shield and, like a spinning top, bent low and spun across the ground.
The woman's strike seemed destined to hit Liang Yan, but it was inexplicably deflected, slicing instead into the empty ground to his right. The blade light was as dense as frost, carving an arc through the air.
*Boom!*
Though the saber did not strike the ground directly, the blade qi carved a trench nine feet long. The dazzling light left a frost-white scar suspended in mid-air, which lingered for a moment before slowly dissipating.
"Hiss!"
Liang Yan inhaled sharply. Had he been struck by that blade, even with his supreme Buddhist supernatural powers, he would likely have been killed or maimed!
Seeing her strike fail, the woman in black showed a flicker of surprise, but her expression instantly returned to its original state. As she rapidly accelerated her hand seals, the Dragon and Tiger manifestations obeyed her command and lunged at Liang Yan once more.
Liang Yan attempted to speak several times, but he was suppressed by the divine might of the dragon and tiger; he could only struggle to defend himself, unable to utter a single sound.
Though it appeared he was fighting the young woman one-on-one, due to her bizarre cultivation technique, it was no exaggeration to say he was fighting three opponents at once. The black-clad girl's saber style was grand and sweeping; while it lacked intricate flourishes, it excelled in sheer, overwhelming power, with every slash and thrust capable of shaking the heavens.
As the saying goes, "strength overcomes all skill." Despite possessing the two great supernatural powers of the *Hunchun Art* and the *Law of the Unsettled Mind*, Liang Yan found himself unable to overcome her in the heat of the moment.
Since mastering the "Two Fish Twin Array" and integrating the supernatural powers of both Buddhism and Confucianism, Liang Yan had been confident that he had no equals among cultivators of the same rank, and even felt capable of challenging those of higher levels. Before today, he wouldn't have found it difficult to face a seventh-level Qi Refinement cultivator, even if he wasn't at the sixth level himself. He had simply remained anonymous in the Yixing Pavilion because he disliked ostentation.
But this woman had once again taught him the meaning of "there is always a heaven above the heavens, and a person above people"!
Pushing his powers to the absolute limit, he unleashed the first four phases of the *Hunchun Art* and all five forms of the "Coming and Going" from the *Law of the Unsettled Mind*. Without holding anything back, he finally managed to fight the woman to a stalemate.
The two exchanged blows amidst the night, locked in a fierce struggle, yet neither could claim victory.
Seeing that her prolonged assault was failing, the woman in black suddenly leaped backward. Simultaneously, she bit the tip of her tongue and spat a drop of essence blood onto her saber. Her left hand formed a seal while her right hand pointed the tip of the blade toward the sky.
As if obeying her command, the black dragon and white tiger leaped back and began to rotate around the tip of her blade.
The girl's expression grew solemn as she chanted incantations. The rotation of the dragon and tiger grew faster and faster, and in the blink of an eye, they condensed into a black-and-white tornado at the tip of the blade.
"Is this mad girl trying to kill me?!"
Horrified, Liang Yan shouted at the top of his lungs, "Miss, listen to me! I am not one of them—"
However, he could not finish his sentence. The girl swung her saber through the void, and the black-and-white tornado flew "slowly" toward him. The rest of his words were like willow catkins in a gale, blocked by the overwhelming wind, unable to travel even an inch further.
The black and white colors swirled within the tornado. It appeared slow, but in reality, it was spinning so fast that it created an illusion. It roared toward Liang Yan like a massive black-and-white millstone dozens of feet wide, intended to grind everything in the world into dust. In an instant, it was only a few zhang away.
Liang Yan had no way to dodge, and such immense power was not something he could withstand head-on.
As the millstone bore down on him, Liang Yan's mind raced. Suddenly, his expression shifted, and he pointed his right hand forward. A bolt of blue lightning erupted from between his index and middle fingers, striking an inconspicuous spot on the lower right corner of the black-and-white millstone.
*Rumble!*
The roaring, raging gale suddenly went silent and dissipated peacefully. The massive millstone before him gradually slowed to a halt, eventually dissolving into black and white energies that drifted away in all directions.
"You!"
The girl in black let out a cry of shock and spat out a mouthful of blood, her eyes filled with utter disbelief.
It turned out that in his moment of mortal peril, Liang Yan had seen through a flaw in her technique. The black dragon and white tiger were not physical entities; the dragon was composed of black mist, and the tiger was made of white smoke.
Though he did not know what kind of divine cultivation method she practiced to manifest such phenomena at the Qi Refinement stage, he knew that forcing such a technique with her sixth-level cultivation would inevitably leave a weakness.
Remaining calm in the face of danger, he had secretly used his "Qi-Observing Technique" and discovered that her cultivation was insufficient to sustain the manifestations. Within that black-and-white millstone, whenever the dragon and tiger merged, they would inevitably revert to mist and smoke. Liang Yan had timed it perfectly, using his "Lightning Refinement Technique" to scatter the smoke, breaking her supernatural power with precision.
With her technique broken, the girl suffered a backlash, coughing up a large amount of blood; she had clearly sustained significant internal injuries. However, her gaze remained firm. Instead of panicking, she gritted her teeth and reached for her storage bag once more.
Having finally caught his breath, Liang Yan saw her preparing another desperate move and immediately cried out
"Fellow Daoist, if you do not help them, these commoners will be beyond saving!"
The shout worked. The woman in black froze, staring at him. "You heartless scoundrel, you actually care about the lives of others?"
Liang Yan silently offered thanks to all the gods of the heavens, thinking to himself, *You finally gave me a chance to speak.*
"Miss, you have truly misunderstood. I am not of the same ilk as them. What is happening to these people is a soul-summoning technique from the Corpse Ghost Sect. If the technique is not broken within three hours, their souls will never be able to return to their bodies."
The woman in black temporarily lowered her saber, her large eyes fixed on Liang Yan with suspicion. "You little thief, are you not playing some sort of scheme?"
Liang Yan gave a bitter smile and replied, "Regardless, let us cease our fighting for a moment and save these people first. What do you think, Fellow Daoist?"
The woman looked at him, then at the dozens of commoners nearby. A flicker of hesitation crossed her eyes, but she ultimately nodded.
Relieved, Liang Yan divided the commoners into groups of ten, using his own techniques to break the spells on them. Using the Buddhist "Vajra Dust Causality" to dispel evil and delusion, he cleared the spells on his group in less than half an incense stick's time.
He glanced at the woman in black and saw she had only managed to save a few people. He immediately walked over to her side to help clear the rest.
The commoners woke as if from a dream, claiming they had experienced a long, strange slumber. They had no idea why they were outside Pingfeng City and began shouting, "We were possessed! We were possessed!" Several cowards fled in terror, while the rest, after checking their belongings, scattered toward the city.
As the crowd dispersed, the woman in black turned to Liang Yan and said calmly, "I did not expect your methods for dispelling evil to be quite so sophisticated. Now, can you tell me who you actually are?"
Liang Yan smiled bitterly. "Mere parlor tricks!" He then proceeded to explain the entire sequence of events to her.
It turned out that when Liang Yan first arrived at Pingfeng City two days ago, he learned there were five days left before the exchange meeting. He had checked into an inn, planning to find an opportunity to scout the mountain for the Golden Spirit Monkeys.
That night, while resting at the inn, he accidentally overheard cultivators in the adjacent room plotting to plunder mortals. With his keen senses, he heard their conversation clearly. They belonged to a small sect called the "Corpse Ghost Sect," which specialized in ghost-path cultivation and favored using living sacrifices to bolster their strength.
Liang Yan had not intended to interfere; he did not consider himself a paragon of virtue, and since he was currently struggling to protect himself, he had no desire to waste time on others.
However, when the two men mentioned the "Golden Spirit Monkeys," his interest was piqued. Upon listening more closely, he learned that the Corpse Ghost Sect had discovered a Golden Monkey King among the troops on Pingfeng Mountain, with strength roughly equivalent to an eighth-level Qi Refinement cultivator.
The brain of a Golden Monkey King could serve as a medicinal catalyst of extraordinary quality. Consequently, the Corpse Ghost Sect had sent the "Red-Faced Ghost," one of their "Three Ghosts," to capture it.
Upon arriving, the Red-Faced Ghost found the monkey king difficult to handle, so he had sent his subordinates to capture hundreds of mortals using evil techniques to temporarily boost their strength for the final strike.
Although the Golden Spirit Monkeys did not have high cultivation, they lived in groups. Liang Yan had been uncertain about his chances of obtaining the Spirit Monkey Wine, but knowing a King existed made his chances seem even slimmer.
After much thought, he decided to use the Heavenly Secret Pearl to hide his cultivation and infiltrate the Corpse Ghost Sect's stronghold on Pingfeng Mountain as a victim. He planned to wait until they were locked in a fierce battle with the Monkey King, then slip in like a thief in the night to snatch a jar of the wine.
Of course, if circumstances allowed, he wouldn't mind helping the commoners along the way.
Liang Yan recounted the whole story in one breath, though he naturally omitted his private motive of stealing the wine. He claimed he was driven by righteous indignation and had infiltrated the group of commoners to track down the villains' stronghold and wipe them out.
He spoke with such righteous conviction, occasionally glancing at the woman in black. He saw her expression gradually turn to one of shame; her face grew redder and redder until she looked like a ripe apple.
"Fellow Daoist, your righteousness is profound. You risked your life to save these people from disaster, yet I recklessly interfered. I am truly ashamed. Please, accept my bow!" The woman said with utmost sincerity, preparing to bend down in a formal salute.
"No, please don't!"
Liang Yan hurriedly stopped her, his own face flushing. He thought, *This woman is far too straightforward; she believes everything I say. She is a hero fighting for the people, while I am merely a petty man seeking small profits. If I accept her bow, I would be truly shameless.*
In his haste, he had grabbed both of her hands. Realizing this, he pulled back and laughed sheepishly. "There is no need for that, Fellow Daoist. I had a backup plan prepared."
The woman in black replied gracefully, "Your humility is truly admirable!"
Liang Yan felt even more embarrassed by her praise. He cleared his throat and said thick-skinnedly, "It is nothing, nothing. It is simply the responsibility of us righteous cultivators. By the way, calling each other 'Fellow Daoist' is quite a hassle. I am Liang Yan. May I ask your name, Miss?"
"I am Li Xiran!"
"Ah, Miss Li. Since we have met through combat today, let us consider ourselves friends. What do you say?" Moved by her sincerity, he truly felt the desire to befriend her.
"Of course!" Li Xiran nodded. Then, remembering something, she asked, "Brother Liang mentioned a backup plan earlier. Was that why you let that man in white go?"
Liang Yan smiled. "Correct. I left a small trace of spiritual energy on him. As long as he isn't too far away, I can sense him. We only need to follow the trail to find their main camp."