Nine Nether Dragon Emperor-Chapter 89: You look decent, I’ll leave your whole corpse!
Hmm?! Ning Xuan suddenly unleashed a sword strike. Behind him, several ancient trees, each so thick it would take multiple people to encircle them, were cleanly pierced through. Farther still, a giant boulder was also punctured.
Ning Xuan’s eyes narrowed. My strike missed! And there’s absolutely no one around.
"Interesting!" Ning Xuan laughed, his face alight with excitement.
His perception couldn’t be wrong; someone had been watching him from behind just moments ago. It was completely unexpected for his instant-kill strike to miss. However, this only filled him with the thrill of a hunter spotting its prey. In that instant, Ning Xuan’s gaze turned sharp as lightning, scanning his surroundings as he pushed his Six Senses to their absolute limit. At this level of awareness, he could clearly discern the buzzing of mosquitoes and the scurrying of ants hundreds of meters away. Yet, even so, he could not sense any human presence.
"Could it really have been my imagination?" Ning Xuan muttered with a wry laugh. He immediately relaxed his aura and continued forward, seemingly letting his guard down completely.
Still, no one attacked. The other party never struck. Despite this, Ning Xuan was one hundred percent certain that someone was there. Their ability to conceal themselves is flawless! A foe like this is a rare find.
Growing more excited, Ning Xuan remained secretly on alert. He suddenly feigned a misstep, his foot finding only empty air. For that one moment, his entire body was wide open and completely defenseless.
Still, no one attacked.
This continued until a King Level Element Beast suddenly appeared before him, at which point Ning Xuan fixed his gaze on it and his body tensed.
WHOOSH!
At that exact instant, the extremely faint sound of something slicing through the air echoed. Too fast! By the time Ning Xuan detected its presence, the attack was already upon his head. Simultaneously, however, a terrifying Sword Qi slashed out from behind his neck.
HUM!
Ning Xuan’s counter-strike failed to annihilate the enemy; his opponent had vanished once again.
"To strike once, miss, and immediately retreat! An assassin, and certainly one who ranks extremely high on the assassins’ list!" Ning Xuan mused aloud. "Now that you’ve made your move, do you think I’ll let you escape?"
As his voice fell, Ning Xuan vanished from the spot.
「Several miles away, in a dark spot beside a creek.」
"I’m sorry, I failed," a cold voice suddenly said.
"Failed?! Aren’t you the assassin ranked third on the assassins’ list? With skills like yours, how dare you claim to kill without a trace and never fail!" a woman’s voice rose. Although she deliberately kept her voice down, anyone could hear the raging fury in her words.
"I miscalculated..."
Before the assassin could finish, he vanished. The woman didn’t even see how he left. A sudden chill of horror seized her heart. Without a second thought, she turned to flee at top speed.
Then she stopped short.
On a large rock across the creek, someone was looking at her with a half-smile. It was Ning Xuan!
BANG!
Behind her, a corpse fell to the ground. Soon, the creek water in front of the woman was dyed red with blood.
"If I’m not mistaken, your surname must be Li, correct?"
The woman was none other than Li Simiao, daughter of the City Lord of Destiny City. Now that Ning Xuan had so easily exposed her identity, her fear paradoxically subsided. She even managed a slight smile. "Yes, it’s me. Young Master Ning Xuan, you’re even harder to kill than I imagined."
"This servant knows she was wrong," Li Simiao said, kneeling and bowing deeply in submission. "I beg you, Young Master Ning Xuan, please spare my life."
Ning Xuan stood high above, granting him a fine view of the valley below.
SQUELCH!
A sound erupted from behind Ning Xuan. Li Simiao looked up, her face turning ashen. Standing behind Ning Xuan was another person, the slender sword in his hand resembling an elongated sewing needle. Its sharp tip was at most an inch from the crown of Ning Xuan’s head, but that single inch had become an insurmountable chasm.
The attacker’s head had been pierced from the chin upward by another sword! This was the true third-ranked assassin.
Li Simiao couldn’t believe that even her feminine wiles had failed to distract Ning Xuan. The third-ranked assassin on the list could eliminate experts who had just stepped into the King Realm. But now, he had been slain by Ning Xuan!
A tremor shot through Li Simiao’s heart as her obsession with revenge shattered. In its place, only regret and fear remained.
"Young Master Ning, I’m sorry, I was wrong!" Li Simiao kowtowed frantically. She was talented enough to cultivate in the Star Moon Pavilion and had even caught the eye of Su Yue Zhuai; her aptitude and strength were undeniable. But facing Ning Xuan, she lacked even the courage to fight back. She kowtowed with such fervor that the ground seemed to tremble, and the surface of the stream before her rippled, its waters lapping against the rocks.
"Lift your head," Ning Xuan said, getting a little dizzy from the motion.
Li Simiao looked up, her tear-streaked face a picture of heartbreaking beauty that would move anyone to pity. She was a rare beauty indeed.
Ning Xuan spoke honestly, "You’re not bad-looking."
A glimmer of joy flickered in Li Simiao’s eyes.
"On account of that," Ning Xuan continued, "I’ll leave you with an intact corpse."
The smile on Li Simiao’s face froze. Ning Xuan vanished from the opposite bank. A moment later, a line of blood seeped from the center of her brow. She let out a bitter laugh and fell backward.
And just like that, a young woman with a bright future perished. Not only was her life extinguished, but she couldn’t even keep her final possessions. Ning Xuan unhesitatingly helped himself to her Storage Ring.
Noticing her body was still warm and wanting to prevent anyone from getting any... *bold* ideas, Ning Xuan performed a "good deed" and tossed her into a deep pool of water.
"No need to thank me," he said with a wave as he departed. "Just try not to run into me in your next life."
This time, Ning Xuan had something new to occupy him on his journey. Inside the nameless assassin’s Storage Ring was an interesting Body Technique Skill named Soundless Willow-Passing. The meaning was clear: one who mastered this technique could pass through ten thousand dangling willow branches without causing a single one to sway. This was undoubtedly the Body Technique Skill the assassin had used earlier.
For Body Technique Skills, Ning Xuan already had the Kunpeng Technique. In terms of sheer speed, nothing could surpass it. But for lightness, softness, and finesse, the Kunpeng Technique was no match for Soundless Willow-Passing. It seems even the Twelve Divine Veins aren’t absolutely perfect. I’ll have to be the one to make them so.
Ning Xuan murmured to himself as he began attempting to fuse the two techniques.
「A quarter of an hour later.」
Ning Xuan disappeared from where he stood. Not even a blade of wild grass around him stirred. It was as if Ning Xuan had never been there at all. When his body reappeared, he seemed to have been an eternal, silent part of the landscape.
"Not bad, not bad at all," Ning Xuan smiled with satisfaction.
He then shook his hand, and the sheepskin scroll—already worn thin from frequent use—instantly turned to powder! Luckily, the assassin was already dead and gone. Otherwise, seeing this would surely make him angry enough to rise from his grave, only to die a second time.
The only reason the assassin had carried the scroll on his person and reviewed it so frequently was that he had not yet fully mastered its essence. Ning Xuan, on the other hand, had gone from novice to master in just a quarter of an hour. Not only had he fully grasped it, but he had also perfectly fused it into his Kunpeng Technique!
This is my first truly perfect movement technique. It needs a name... I’ve got it! It shall be called the Kunpeng Breathless Technique! Kunpeng Breathless Technique! With this, my movement is unrivaled!
