A Scroll of Infinite Glory

bite!!!!!

The white flute thrust out explosively, with the force of thunder. Although Guan Luoyang blocked it with his sword, he was knocked back half a step.

The purple Taoist robe swung wildly, relentlessly pursuing Guan Luoyang. A white shadow, over two feet long, flashed, leaving afterimages between the wide, swirling sleeves, striking Guan Luoyang's head, neck, ribs, abdomen, groin, and other vital points.

Guan Luoyang shifted his steps backward, stomping down rapidly, his heavy shoes making the thick floorboards creak. In his hand, he flipped and slashed with his long sword, using various parts of the blade to intercept the white bone flute within his limited movement.

He made full use of the rear half of the long sword, the area near the guard, the blade's hilt, the back of the blade, and the handle—areas that ordinary swordsmen rarely utilize.

As they retreated from inside the room to outside, their weapons clashed, the clanging of metal against metal echoing continuously, only to be drowned out by an even stranger shriek.

That white bone flute had been refined by evil magic for many years, and its toughness was no less than that of finely tempered steel.

Once it's swung, the air hitting the holes in the flute produces a series of sharp, piercing sounds.

Even if the sound is not a complete melody played by a human, it carries a hint of evil magic, lingering in the ears of others and stimulating their hearts.

Before the last note of the previous one had faded, the next one rushed in, one after another, in disjointed order, like noisy insects chirping incessantly next to your ear, making you irritable, angry, and almost nauseous.

Guan Luoyang endured the sound, and the moment his back foot stepped out of the threshold, he deflected the flute's thrust with his right hand while holding the knife, and suddenly opened his five fingers wide, slamming them horizontally against the door frame.

One side of the door frame was smashed by his palm, creating a huge gap. Broken wood and fragments of the wooden wall, propelled by the force of his palm, shot towards the purple-robed Taoist.

These things were fast, and if they hit an ordinary person, they would definitely cause redness and swelling everywhere, but they were not enough to have any obvious effect on the purple-robed Taoist. He ignored them completely and kept his posture unchanged as he prepared to stab again.

However, after Guan Luoyang slammed his left palm down, he flipped his wrist and tore off the upper half of the door frame.

The walls of this inn were also made of wood, which was fixed with iron nails and paste during construction. This grab and tear had a wide impact, tearing off a piece of wood that was more than half the size of a person's body, and slamming it down on the purple-robed Taoist.

The purple-robed Taoist had no choice but to meet the attack halfway through. He changed his move, raised his wrist, stepped into a bow stance, and flicked his shoulder upwards. As the white bone flute pierced through the wooden wall ruins, a drilling and overturning force spread out.

Before the wooden wall could hit the purple-robed Taoist on the head, it disintegrated along the cracks left from when it was pieced together.

As splinters of wood and iron nails flew everywhere, Guan Luoyang wielded his long sword with sweeping, powerful strokes, slashing down with incredible speed.

The purple-robed Taoist swayed his waist and took a step backward, twisting and dodging, his retreating trajectory resembling the Big Dipper.

Just as he dodged Guan Luoyang's vertical slash, he followed up with two attacks: a diagonal sweep and a straight slash.

"The Seven Star Step, with stable hips and a flexible waist, is it Mantis Boxing?"

Guan Luoyang had a general understanding of the world. Although this world had more magic, the characteristics of various martial arts and fist techniques were quite similar to those of the world of Lei Gong and the instructor.

This person clearly uses the Mantis Boxing style. Although he is holding a flute, he uses swordsmanship, and his movements are incredibly skillful.

Only someone whose kung fu has been honed to the bone could dodge so skillfully that Guan Luoyang's three powerful strikes didn't even touch the hem of his clothes.

However, the purple-robed Taoist used the Seven Star Steps backward to flash to the depths of the room, next to the collapsed bed. As his fluttering clothes fell, a sticky bloodstain flowed down his palm onto the white bone flute.

Guan Luoyang, with his sharp eyes, noticed at a glance that a patch of skin on the right palm of the purple-robed Taoist had been rubbed off by the end of the flute and was bleeding.

Just now, he prepared a thrust, then changed his move to block the wooden wall debris upwards, transforming a simple sprint into a drilling and flipping strike.

When practicing basic martial arts skills, a person assumes a horse stance, with both fists resting at their waist, palms facing upwards. During the process of punching forward from the waist, the fists rotate, and when the punch is thrown, the back of the fist is already facing upwards.

This is the most basic flip-over move.

Once you can train this change of force to be faster than blinking, you can call it "drilling and turning force".

If one has a weapon in hand, when using the drilling and turning force, a single thrust of the sword will create a hole, rupture blood vessels, and tear open flesh, causing damage several times greater than a simple thrust and pull.

However, during this process, the handle of the weapon will also rub against the skin of the palm. The stronger the force, the more intense the friction. It is normal for ordinary people to have their skin worn away and bleed.

But it's quite unusual that it would rub off the skin on a swordsman's palm.

To master such superb swordsmanship, one must spend years, enduring the scorching summer sun and the freezing winter snow, allowing each part of the body to adapt to the unique power generation methods of swordsmanship. Only then can one effortlessly and instinctively respond to various moves in battle.

During this process, the parts of the body's surface would naturally have developed calluses long ago.

How could the skin on my hand be worn off by my own sword hilt just because of a single change in sword technique?!

Moreover, this white bone flute is smoother than a typical sword hilt, and the purple-robed Taoist's hands are so fragile that they don't resemble those of a skilled swordsman at all.

When Guan Luoyang's gaze moved from the man's injured right hand to his face, the sense of incongruity became even stronger.

His face was flushed, his lips were slightly purple, and his nostrils were flared open, a sign of accelerated blood flow to his heart. The muscles in his face were twitching slightly in this state, but his eyes were sharp and alert, scanning Guan Luoyang for any possible weaknesses.

These eyes and face don't seem to belong to the same person, and this sword technique doesn't seem to be his either.

"Interesting. This guy is just a tool. The one controlling him is the real opponent in those moves I just made..."

………………

The jungle is deep and the hills are rolling.

In the spacious courtyard built against a low hill, there is a large area of ​​unpaved red clay ground, surrounded by a high wall of large gray-blue bricks.

Inside the high walls, in each of the eight directions, there is a long yellow banner about three meters high.

A woman with dark brown skin, whose chest and hips were only wrapped in brown cloth, stood in this open space, carrying a long sword.

Her hair was styled in a bun, secured with several slender wooden hairpins inserted into it, creating a seemingly chaotic yet orderly effect. The hairpins were the color of withered wood and had pointed ends.

His features were sharp and stern, and his forehead was full, but there was a scar along the corner of his forehead.

Beneath those tightly closed eyelids, the pupils were moving slightly, as if they could see something through the eyelids. The figure lowered slightly and let out a soft groan.

A gust of wind rose from the ground, fluttering the long banner. The woman took a quick step forward, thrusting her sword forward with a sudden thrust. The sword swung outward, its tip trembling as if a phoenix were nodding, and then plunged straight into the center.

………………

"Oh!"

The purple-robed Taoist gave a cold laugh, took a step forward, and thrust his white bone flute horizontally.

Guan Luoyang flicked his blade, aiming a stab at the purple-robed Taoist's throat from below.

The white bone flute swung outwards, deflecting the blade tip. The front of the flute trembled, and the mournful whistling softened, like a sobbing echo. The phoenix nodded and aimed straight for Guan Luoyang's chest, striking the center of his chest.

Guan Luoyang sidestepped and dodged, his footwork sweeping out in a large, full arc, circling behind the purple-robed Taoist, then turning and chasing after him with a slash.

The purple-robed Taoist missed his first thrust, but his body returned. He lowered his upper body, his hind knee almost touching the ground, and twisted his waist. The bone flute he was thrusting forward almost grazed the ground before thrusting upward from the ground.

The front end of the bone flute pierced the blade that Guan Luoyang was slashing at, six inches in front of the hilt, at the weakest point.

Willow Leaf Through the Forest Sword Technique, Backwards Thrust into the Moon!

Seventy or eighty years ago, Chen Yonghua recovered Jiaozhi, and people migrated south. In addition to those from southern Yunnan, some also entered Jiaozhi from Guangdong and Guangxi.

The lands of Jiaozhi and Nanyang are humid and warm all year round with long hours of sunshine. Although there are many mosquitoes and wild animals, there are also many edible plants and fruits, so the locals can easily fill their stomachs and naturally have less ambition.

But to the people who migrated south from China at that time, this place was full of business opportunities. With government encouragement and rewards for cultivation, sugarcane and melons, and convenient water transport, it naturally attracted many enterprising people to come here to make a living.

Many of the leaders in the migrating groups were boxers. After arriving in Jiaozhi, they passed down their boxing skills there. Among them were Shaolin disciples who were proficient in imitative boxing and gradually developed and created the Mantis Boxing lineage.

This style of boxing is characterized by its agile movements, solid footwork, and sturdy foundation, making it very suitable for developing skills in the environment and terrain of Southeast Asia. Even a small degree of mastery can greatly facilitate one's livelihood in the river valleys and jungles.

Therefore, although this boxing style has only been around for less than eighty years, it has already branched out into more than a dozen schools, and there are no fewer than fifty martial arts schools and styles in various places. Just considering the current generation, there are probably tens of thousands of young and middle-aged people who have practiced Mantis Boxing.

The more people practice martial arts, the more wisdom and energy they can invest, the more experience they accumulate, and the more fruitful the results will be.

The Willow Leaf Through the Forest Sword Technique is the most superior set of weapon techniques among these fruitful achievements.

He moved with his sword, like a willow leaf flitting through the forest, swaying and twisting as he pleased.

Looking back at the move "Thrusting the Moon," it represents the pinnacle of the entire Willow Leaf Through the Forest Sword Technique, a deadly weapon that decides life and death in an instant. The demands on the body's balance of strength and flexibility, and the coordination of eyesight, are all meticulously crafted.

If you're even slightly off, or if you don't turn around quickly enough, or if you don't pinpoint the opponent's weakest point, then that crouching down and looking back action is tantamount to sending yourself to your death.

Concentrate all your strength into one point and push upwards, striking precisely the weakest point of the opponent's weapon.

It was less of a thorn and more of a bump, a collision.

Think about how far the bright moon is from the human world, hanging in the sky.

This thrust must have the spirit to pierce the moon! That is, it must be delivered with ten percent of its strength, twelve percent of its ferocity and speed, to be considered to have mastered the essence of this move.

Even with Guan Luoyang's arm strength, he couldn't help but feel a numbness in his hand, and the entire blade shuddered with a "whoosh!" as it was thrown upwards, almost flying out of his hand.

The white bone flute pressed down, and the purple-robed Taoist maintained this height, his long arm outstretched, aiming for Guan Luoyang's lower abdomen.

The thrust was fast enough, and the timing was impeccable.

Guan Luoyang reacted even faster.

As his longsword was jolted upwards by the shock, a flash of insight struck him, and he vaguely guessed his opponent's next move.

So he instantly relaxed his body, and as the long sword was shaken up, he let his body be pulled upwards, and the tendons in his feet, ankles and heels worked together to propel his body up several inches.

Just then, the white bone flute pierced through his legs.

Guan Luoyang, while in mid-air, brought his thighs together, used his waist to generate power, spun around, and twisted his legs to snatch the white bone flute from the purple-robed Taoist, then flung it out and nailed it to the bottom of the window.

Using the momentum of his spin, he leaned forward, swung his left arm, and slapped the purple-robed Taoist on the side of the head.

With a snap, the purple-robed Taoist's head was knocked and twisted, drooping down. He could no longer maintain his crouching, half-kneeling posture and fell to the ground.

Guan Luoyang landed, and with a flick of the back of his blade, flipped the purple-robed Taoist over.

His head was twisted strangely, and his flushed face quickly turned ashen. Thick blood flowed from his nostrils and eyes, and he had stopped breathing.

Over there, Daoist Zhiyuan had already dealt with Wei Dinggong and rushed upstairs. What he saw was Guan Luoyang wielding the Demon-Slaying Blade, piercing the heart of the purple-robed Daoist.

This man is strange, but his head is severed, and he's pinned to the ground with a knife through his heart, so there's no fear that he might rise from the dead again.

"That...resolved?"

Master Zhiyuan was somewhat at a loss, and Qiushi, who had rushed back here, was even more surprised.

Guan Luoyang sighed and shook his head: "Although the fight was short, it was very dangerous. If I had reacted even slightly worse, I would be the one lying here."

Although this purple-robed Taoist died quickly, it doesn't mean he wasn't strong. Or rather, he was very strong because he could wield this sword technique while under control.

Guan Luoyang even felt that he was more dangerous than Grandmaster Yanglian. Perhaps because of the thrill he had just experienced, the azure bird energy in his body was more agitated, and he unconsciously became somewhat angry.

Qiu Shi looked around, breathed a sigh of relief, and said, "Is that all? Thank goodness. I thought the poisonous fire and the curses were from the Five Prefectures Water Bandits, and that the female tyrant had come in person."

Guan Luoyang was looking for something to distract himself and soothe Qingniao's spirits, so he casually asked, "Female Owl?"

Qiu Shi said, "Yes, I think I mentioned her to you before. She is skilled in both magic and martial arts, her swordsmanship is superb, and her methods of using black magic and refining medicine and poison are among the best in Jiaozhi."

"Back then, even when Uncle-Master Jiuhe and several other mages joined forces, they couldn't kill her. Instead, she dragged the remaining foes away and fled to the sea, which shows just how powerful she was."

Guan Luoyang frowned, pulled the knife from the purple-robed corpse, and said in a low voice, "Then perhaps I have already fought her."

………………

In the vast courtyard, eight banners were lowered simultaneously, creating an atmosphere as if still.

The woman opened her eyes, threw down her sword, passed through the courtyard gate and corridor, and entered the adjacent hall, where someone was waiting for news of her.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting." The woman took her seat in the main seat.

The amiable old man in the guest seat smiled, took off his hat, revealing a shaved head with only a small patch of hair left on the back of his head, braided into a thin plait that could pass through the hole of a copper coin.