stonecrandall Chapter 1147 Who is the last sparrow!
Chapter 1147 Who is the last sparrow!
Yan Xiaoyi held back. He flicked his wrists across the bowstring, and seven arrows were nocked simultaneously—his signature move, "Seven Stars in a Row." The seven arrows fired at once sealed off all of Uesugi Tiger's escape routes. Even more terrifying was that the trajectory of each arrow changed constantly in the air, as if it were alive.
Uesugi Tora let out a wild laugh, neither dodging nor avoiding, his Breaking Formation Halberd dancing in front of him like a ball of black light.
"Ding ding ding ding ding ding—"
Seven crisp sounds rang out like raindrops pattering on banana leaves. As the halberd flashed, all seven fine iron arrows were shattered! But this was the moment Yan Xiaoyi wanted—the instant when Shangshan Hu's old strength was exhausted and his new strength had not yet arisen, the eighth arrow had already silently arrived.
The arrow was slow, so slow that its trajectory could be seen with the naked eye. But for the first time, Uesugi Tora's expression changed.
Because what's attached to the arrow isn't true energy, but rather—artistic conception!
The will of the Archer God: to lock the soul and fix the spirit!
Uesugi Tora found himself unable to move. Not truly frozen in place, but rather the arrow seemed to have predicted every possible dodge, ensuring that no matter which direction he moved, he would be pierced through the heart. This was Yan Xiaoyi's Soul-Locking Arrow, honed over thirty years of arduous training; every arrow that struck drew blood.
At the critical moment of life and death, Uesugi Tora roared, and his true energy erupted. He didn't dodge or evade, but threw his halberd to meet the arrows head-on!
"boom--!!!"
The moment the arrows clashed, the resulting shockwave snapped all the trees within a ten-zhang radius in half. The campfire was completely extinguished, and in the moonlight, only two figures could be seen flying backward.
When Uesugi Tora landed, he staggered back seven steps, each step leaving a deep crater in the ground, until he finally knelt on one knee, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. His right shoulder armor was shattered, and a deep wound exposing bone was gushing blood—though he had avoided a fatal blow, he had ultimately been injured by the arrow's energy.
Yan Xiaoyi fared even worse. He crashed into two large trees before stopping. The bowstring of his iron-boned bow was broken, and a halberd mark ran from his left shoulder to his right abdomen. If he hadn't turned to the side at the last moment to deflect the force, the halberd would have cleaved him in two.
Both sides suffer!
But the battle is not over yet.
Just as the two ninth-rank experts were catching their breath, the sound of orderly footsteps suddenly came from the forest.
“Tread, tap, tap…”
It wasn't the sound of horses' hooves, but the sound of human feet on the ground. But what was strange was that the footsteps were too synchronized, so synchronized that it sounded like countless clones of the same person stepping in unison.
Everyone—including the seriously injured Fan Xian, the recuperating Shang Shanhu and Yan Xiaoyi, and even Shangguan Haitang who had been watching from the sidelines—looked around at the same time.
Then, their expressions changed.
Suddenly, figures appeared in the woods.
One, two, ten, a hundred... densely packed, at least two hundred in number. All of them were dressed in black, their faces covered with black cloths, revealing only pairs of cold eyes. They emerged from the shadows of the trees, as if they had always been one with the darkness, only now revealing themselves to the world.
Even more terrifying was their formation—a perfect circular encirclement that trapped everyone in the center. Each person was spaced three steps apart, staggered in front and behind, allowing them to support each other without hindering their attacks. This kind of formation was not something that ordinary江湖 (jianghu, a term referring to the martial arts world) people could possess; only an elite army trained for years could achieve it.
What's most alarming are the two burly men leading the way on either side.
On the left stood a man over eight feet tall, clad in heavy black armor, carrying a massive sword as wide as a door panel. He stood there like an iron tower, emanating an almost tangible aura of malevolence—the kind only someone who had crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood would possess. His true energy fluctuated like the tides, clearly indicating he was at the ninth rank!
The man on the right was slightly shorter but more wiry. He wore a set of dark red light armor and held a halberd that gleamed with a ghostly blue light. His aura wasn't as imposing as the general on the left, but it was far more dangerous—like a venomous snake poised to strike. His internal energy fluctuations were slightly weaker, but still at the peak of the eighth rank.
"Black Riders?" Fan Xian's first thought was that Chen Pingping had sent people. But he immediately dismissed that idea—although the Black Riders of the Overwatch Council were also dressed in black, their armor and weaponry were different from those of the people before him. Moreover, the Black Riders did not wear masks.
"Who goes there?!" Uesugi Tora struggled to his feet, his halberd held horizontally in front of him. His Northern Qi cavalry quickly assembled, though only forty men remained, they still formed a defensive circle with their spears pointing outwards.
Yan Xiaoyi also struggled to his feet, picked up half of the bow from the ground, and stared at the two generals with a sinister look in his eyes.
The red-armored general on the right suddenly laughed. His laughter was hoarse and unpleasant, like the scraping of metal: "Uesugi Tiger, Yan Xiaoyi, Fan Xian—hehe, this forest is really lively tonight. The three great figures have gathered together, which saves us a lot of trouble."
The black-armored general on the left slowly raised his greatsword, his voice like muffled thunder: "Hand over Xiao En and Fan Xian, and the others may live."
"Arrogant!" Uesugi Torata laughed in fury. "You think you can defeat these two hundred ragtag soldiers?"
"A grunt?" The leading red-armored man sneered coldly, then simply raised his hand.
"kill!!!"
Two hundred men in black roared in unison. Their voices coalesced into a sonic wave, causing dust to fall from the rocks. Even more terrifying, with this roar, both men simultaneously released their true energy—though each was only around the fifth rank, the combined true energy of the two hundred men formed a faint yet powerful aura in the air!
"A combined military formation attack..." Haitang Duoduo finally spoke, her voice heavy with seriousness, "This is a battle formation used only by regular armies. Which faction do you belong to?"
Fan Xian stood on a hillside a short distance away, with the Holy Maiden of Northern Qi, Haitang Duoduo, not far away. Both of them had solemn expressions, their gazes fixed on the black military formation that had suddenly appeared in the center of the valley.
Two hundred people.
This number echoed repeatedly in Fan Xian's mind. It was no secret that the Southern Qing and Northern Qi trained martial artists to serve as elite troops for the front lines, but even if the royal families of both countries devoted all their efforts, there were only one or two thousand who could reach this level. Each of these martial artists required a huge amount of resources and a long period of training, and they were truly national treasures that were not easily shown to others in ordinary times.
But this suddenly appearing force actually consisted of two hundred such martial artists!
They stood in formation, their aura as deep as the ocean. Although they wore no uniform armor, each only simple leather armor, their very presence exuded an imposing aura—a pressure formed by the overflowing of their true energy.
Haitang Duoduo asked in a low voice, "Fan Xian, have you ever seen such a spectacle?"
Fan Xian shook his head, his brows furrowed. His gaze swept over the two generals at the front of the black army formation—one wielding a nearly six-foot-long black iron greatsword, riding a black horse, his figure as imposing as a mountain; the other holding a halberd, its blade gleaming coldly in the morning light, riding a magnificent crimson warhorse.
What alarmed Fan Xian even more was that the two hundred martial artists shared the same aura, clearly indicating that they were practicing the same technique. Furthermore, their internal energy circulation had an unnatural, violent quality, as if it had been forcibly activated by an external force.