Douluo Continent: My name is Yang Jian, and I achieved sainthood through my physical body

She was a blue-haired girl, slender and tall, about sixteen or seventeen years old, wearing a light blue outfit.

The clothes were torn in several places, and some of the tears had faint bloodstains seeping through the edges, spreading a dark color onto the light-colored fabric.

Her hair was a little messy, and the hair tie that held her up was nowhere to be seen. Her long, sky-blue hair was draped over her shoulders.

Stray hairs clung to his face, damp with sweat and some unknown liquid, glistening in the afternoon sunlight.

But those eyes remained clear, with an unyielding light in their pupils, as if something was burning inside them, refusing to go out.

The flame, though small, is steadfast, like a candle that stands tall in the wind.

Her hands were still in the state of being possessed by her martial spirit, with a layer of light blue light covering her arms, like a thin layer of ice armor, shimmering faintly in the sunlight.

Fine wisps of cold air condensed into white icy mist at the edge of my palm, slowly swirling around my fingertips.

Her breathing was rapid, her chest heaving violently, each inhalation accompanied by a noticeable pulling sensation, and each exhalation releasing white vapor from between her lips and teeth.

But her lips were pressed tightly together, like a taut line, and she didn't let out a single weak groan.

Even though her legs were a little weak and her knees were slightly bent, she still stood up straight.

Yang Jian glanced at her casually and recognized her.

Shui Bing'er, the girl from Tianshui Academy whom I met in Fengxue City, has the martial soul of Ice Phoenix. She has good talent and her personality is not unpleasant.

Back then, she followed her teacher Li Liu and her younger sister Shui Yue'er to hunt for spirit rings on the outskirts of the far north. She wore a light blue dress and her eyes were slightly curved when she spoke, a stark contrast to her current disheveled yet stubborn appearance.

He didn't know why she was here alone, but he didn't think much of it. His gaze lingered on her face for a moment before moving away.

Following closely behind, a withered old man climbed up from the edge of the cliff.

The old man was thin and hunched over, his body bent like an old tree bent by the wind, the curve of his spine as if it had never straightened up after being bent by the years.

He wore a drab old robe, the cuffs and hem frayed, with several patches of varying shades and rough, messy stitches.

His face was covered with deep and shallow wrinkles, crisscrossing as if it had been repeatedly carved by a chisel. Each line was embedded with indelible dirt, making his face look like a rock slab that had been polished by wind and sand for too long.

His eyes were small, like two flattened black beans, with a murky, cold light shining through them. When his gaze moved, it was as if he was searching for something to grasp, both cunning and greedy.

There was an unsettling curve to his lips, a half-smile that wasn't quite a smile.

Her lips were thin, and when she parted them slightly, they revealed a set of uneven, yellow teeth.

He held a black broadsword in his hand, its blade thick and heavy, its surface dull and dull, like a charred iron plate.

The blade gleamed with a dull, cold light, and there were several notches of varying depths on the back of the blade, clearly indicating that it was a weapon that had been used for many years.

His soul power fluctuations were very real, around level 30, and the soul rings under his feet were light-colored and ordinary.

Judging from his movements and gait, he doesn't seem like a novice who has just broken through. Instead, he seems to have been immersed in this level for a long time. Every move is so familiar that it's almost smooth. His movements are clean and neat, without wasting any extra energy.

Chapter 223 Reencounter with Shui Bing'er

The withered old man stepped firmly onto the grassy cliff top, grinned, revealing his yellow teeth, and his laughter was dry and hoarse: "Little girl, you run pretty fast."

He twirled the black knife in his hand, the blade tracing a dim arc in the sunlight: "But you think you can shake me off by climbing a cliff? That's laughable. I've chased hundreds, if not thousands, of people, and I've never seen anyone escape from me. Don't you know that I, Old Ghost, have never taken back what I've said?"

He took a step toward Shui Bing'er, his boots slamming into the grass with a dull thud: "Come back with me obediently, and don't let me get rough with you. With your looks, you'd be a good blood slave. I guarantee you'll live longer than you do now. My cave may not be big, but it's more than enough to support a little girl like you. A hot meal every day, and I'll make sure you're plump and healthy."

Shui Bing'er took a half step back, her heel landing on the gravel at the edge of the grass, which rolled and made a soft sound.

Her body tensed slightly, like a string stretched to its limit.

Her gaze never left the withered old man, her voice cold and resolute.

His breathing hadn't completely calmed down, but his tone showed no sign of backing down: "Dream on."

The icy blue light in her hand condensed even more intensely, slowly rotating in her palm, spreading outwards with a chilling aura, and a thin layer of white frost formed on the edges of a few blades of grass at her feet.

The white frost was slowly spreading outwards, expanding further with each breath than the previous one, leaving a small circle of frost-white marks on the ground.

The withered old man's smile deepened, a smile that seemed to be watching a bird trapped in a cage that refused to accept its fate, finding it more and more amusing the more it fluttered about.

He took a step closer to Shui Bing'er, then another, carrying a black broadsword.

Each step was slow yet steady, as if enjoying the process, the tip of the knife leaving a shallow mark on the grass.

“You little girl have quite the backbone, I like that.” He spoke slowly, as if chatting with an old friend, but the words sent chills down one’s spine. “But backbone can’t last a lifetime. Wait until you’re starving for three days and three nights, and chained for three days and three nights, then see how much backbone you have left. I’ve seen people with much harder backbone than you, and they still ended up crying and begging me to let them go.”

As Shui Bing'er retreated, she quickly scanned her surroundings, looking for a breakthrough or a piece of terrain she could use.

Her gaze swept across the open meadow, the scattered rocks, and the undulating waves of grass in the distance, and then she saw Yang Jian.

Her pupils contracted slightly.

It wasn't the joy of seeing an acquaintance, but the tension and worry of a passerby seeing another innocent passerby caught in danger.

The young man in white was sitting on a flat rock at the edge of the cliff, his legs dangling in the air, his hands supporting him behind him, his posture as casual as if he were drinking tea and watching the clouds in his own backyard.

He was turning his head to look in their direction, his gaze as calm as a bottomless well, without the slightest hint of panic, like a spectator watching a play—except that this spectator was sitting right in the center of the stage, with no way to avoid it.

Shui Bing'er's heart tightened.

She cannot let her own problems affect others.

She called out urgently to Yang Jian, "You have to leave! It's dangerous here! You need to get out of here right now!"

The voice was clearly urgent, sounding crisp and urgent in the wind at the top of the cliff, as if afraid of being blown away by the wind.

She also had to keep an eye on the withered old man's movements, so her urging sounded particularly forceful, as if she wanted to smash every word into Yang Jian's ears so that he would immediately understand how serious the situation was.

The withered old man turned his head in the direction of Shui Bing'er's voice and saw Yang Jian.

His cloudy little eyes suddenly brightened, like a small patch of a dusty oil lamp being suddenly polished.

His mouth stretched even wider, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, making him look like a wild beast that had just discovered an unexpected windfall.

He turned his foot and swayed, and in the next instant, the black broadsword was already at Yang Jian's neck.

The blade was less than an inch from Yang Jian's skin. Yang Jian could even feel the slight coolness emanating from the edge of the blade, as well as a faint metallic smell, like a knife that hadn't been washed in a long time, carrying various unidentifiable scents.

The withered old man's voice came very close to my ear, tinged with twisted pleasure: "Little girl, you see, now you can't disobey. If you dare to move, this kid's head will have to say goodbye to his shoulder."

He lightly patted Yang Jian's shoulder with the back of his knife, his movements flippant and casual: "So? Are you going to come over here obediently, or should I slash this kid's face first to show you? Look at this kid's delicate skin, it would be such a waste to slash him. This knife of mine isn't any good, it's quite dull, it'll definitely hurt if I slash him."

Yang Jian neither spoke nor moved.

He didn't even turn his head to look at the knife beside his neck; his face remained turned towards the distant sky, as if he were looking at a cloud that was changing shape, or as if he wasn't looking at anything at all.

He sat quietly, his body relaxed, his breathing steady, his heartbeat calm, like someone waiting for someone who happened to catch a gust of wind that blew past him and left without leaving a trace.

He felt neither fear nor anger, nor even the slightest emotional fluctuation, as if the knife were merely an insignificant background element in his field of vision.

Shui Bing'er's body suddenly stiffened.

She stood a few steps away, her hands still glowing with an icy blue light, but dared not take another step forward or unleash any attack.

Her gaze shifted back and forth between Yang Jian and the withered old man, her knuckles turning slightly white from the force, the light in her palms flickering, and her lips pressed into a bloodless line.

She was making an extremely difficult choice.

The icy blue light in her palm pulsed, yearning to be released, but she dared not.

She feared that any small movement would cause the knife to leave an irreversible mark on Yang Jian's neck, and that her impulsiveness would kill an innocent person.

She hesitated for a few moments.

In a few breaths, the wind blew from the edge of the cliff, stirring her loose hair and the hem of her clothes, and also stirring the dust that had accumulated on the blade of the withered old man's black knife.

Yang Jian sighed softly at that moment.

The sigh was shallow and short, like the last bit of patience used up in today's quota, like seeing a stone blocking your way on the road and kicking it away because you're too lazy to go around it.

He raised his right hand, clenched it into a fist, and thrust it towards the withered old man's chest.

The withered old man didn't even realize how the fist had moved.

His attention was still on Shui Bing'er, still enjoying the hesitant and struggling expression on her face, still savoring the feeling of controlling someone else's fate, and the blade still maintained that relaxed posture.

The next instant, a huge and brute force slammed into his chest.

The power came suddenly and swiftly, like an unseen beast abruptly awakening from its slumber.

His body flew backward like a stone thrown off a cliff.

It flew over the grassy cliff edge, over the rocky edge, over the white mist, and then plummeted straight down.

Throughout the entire ordeal, he only managed to utter a short, terrified cry.

The exclamation echoed twice in the abyss before being swallowed by the wind, like a stone falling into deep water, making a splash and then falling silent.

The black broadsword slipped from his grasp the instant he released it, bouncing twice on the grassy edge of the cliff with a tinkling sound before coming to a stop.

The glint of light on the blade flashed briefly in the sunlight before extinguishing completely, like a lamp that had been blown out.

Chapter 224 is it you?

Shui Bing'er stood there, completely dumbfounded.

Even breathing felt like it was being held down by an invisible force, and I was frozen in place for several breaths.

Her mouth was slightly open, unable to close.

The hands still retained their icy blue glow, but the light was gradually fading, as if they had lost the will to maintain it.

Her eyes were fixed on Yang Jian's right fist, which he had just retracted, as if she were trying to find a mark on the fist, a clue that could explain everything that had just happened.

But the fist looked very ordinary, long, clean, with distinct knuckles, just like anyone else's fist, without even a red mark on the back of the hand.

It took her several breaths to close her mouth, and several more breaths to slowly retract her martial spirit.

The icy blue light gradually faded from her hands and body, like receding tides, slowly retreating into the distance, and the lingering chill in the air also dissipated.

She walked towards Yang Jian, stopped a few steps away, clasped her hands together, and bowed slightly.

Her voice held sincere gratitude, tinged with lingering shock: "Thank you for saving me. My name is Shui Bing'er, from Tianshui Academy..."

She stopped abruptly halfway through her sentence.

His brows furrowed slightly, and his gaze lingered on Yang Jian's profile for several moments, as if searching for something in his memory.

Fragments of memory churned in my mind, each searching for a corresponding face.

The contours of that face, the shape of its eyebrows and eyes, the posture of sitting on the edge of the cliff watching the clouds, that air of indifference yet fearlessness, and the decisive and ruthless action just now…