Chapter 42: The Xisha River

A band of burly, fierce-looking bandits stood frozen where they were. In their minds, the pale, delicate youth before them should have been frightened into stupidity by a single roar, yet he had uttered such arrogant words—a blow to everything they thought they knew.

The bandit leader, snapping out of his daze as the sword-wielding youth charged with unyielding momentum, hefted his nine-ringed broadsword and unleashed a masterful martial arts technique: the Furious Blade Slash. The blade, shrouded in dark golden energy, became indestructible, crashing down like an enraged, golden wall with overwhelming force.

Qingxi, utterly unafraid, raised his sword and performed the "Sword Qi Soaring in the Sky." The sword qi, as thin as a cicada’s wings, looked fragile, yet possessed terrifying penetration; in a flash, it cleaved the nine-ringed broadsword in two.

The instant his weapon broke, the shockwave tore the webbing between the bandit leader’s thumb and forefinger. Staring at the blade flying from his grip, his scalp tingled with disbelief. This weapon, a lower-grade spiritual artifact he’d used for over ten years, had just been destroyed that easily?

“I’ll take your life!” the bandit leader roared, beside himself with fury. He shifted his stance, palms glowing dark gold as he launched a palm technique intended to crush Qingxi.

But Qingxi, pressing the attack, had already anticipated this. With the Seven-Star Step, he dodged aside, then circled behind the bandit leader with another footwork technique, Wave-Treading Step, and unleashed a perfected Vajra Fist.

Qingxi's cultivation had reached the thirtieth level; such a punch would overwhelm even a practitioner at the peak of the Qi Refinement stage. The bandit leader, only at the twenty-third level, stood no chance.

A muffled thud resounded. The bandit leader collapsed, and Qingxi swiftly bound him with his perfected Spiritual Silk Array, rendering him helpless for the time being.

Though the clash seemed drawn out, it had all taken less than three seconds.

The remaining bandits were stunned. Although their leader wasn’t the most notorious figure in these parts, he still had a cultivation of twenty-three levels in Qi Refinement, and yet a mere youth had felled him so easily?

“You useless cowards, hurry up and save me!” the bandit leader bellowed. The others snapped to attention, shouted to bolster their courage, and charged in, blades flashing.

Seeing that they had all chosen close combat, Qingxi grinned.

A longsword stabbed toward him, but before it could come within three meters, it mysteriously veered and plunged into another bandit's waist.

“You damned traitor, how dare you stab me!” the wounded bandit howled, paying no heed to explanations as he turned on his supposed comrade.

The rest pressed their attack on Qingxi, but soon found their own fists, swords, and broadswords inexplicably turning against their allies.

After several exchanges, Qingxi still stood unscathed, while the bandits, battered and bleeding, stared at him as though he were a ghost.

“There’s something unnatural about this kid!”

“Run for it!”

The bandits scattered in all directions, abandoning their bound leader without a second thought.

“You heartless bastards! You’ll be the death of me!” the bandit leader fumed, his anger overwhelming him until he fainted dead away.

Qingxi had no intention of letting them escape. With a flick of his finger, the Spiritual Silk Array—now mastered—shot out, transforming into a giant net that ensnared the fleeing bandits.

Against Qingxi’s thirtieth-level Qi Refinement power, these ordinary bandits, barely at the teens in cultivation, were utterly powerless. No matter how they struggled, the spiritual silk wouldn’t break.

He released the array again, suspending the entire group from the trees. Amused, he searched them thoroughly for anything of value, smacked his lips, and remarked, “Trying to steal chickens and losing the rice—how does it feel?”

A timid bandit, face twisted in misery, pleaded, “Please, sir, have mercy and let us go. I have—”

“An elderly mother of seventy and a starving child of three months? Spare me the lies, I’ve heard them all before,” Qingxi interrupted.

The bandit, thick-skinned, insisted, “Sir, you really are a diviner. That is the truth.”

Qingxi spat, “Bandits like you live by the edge of a blade. You expect me to believe you have families to support?”

“Bandits?”

“We’re not bandits at all!”

“You’ve misunderstood us, sir!”

The others chimed in, some even shouting, “We were hired to delay a certain dashing young lord passing through, but we got the wrong person. Please, sir, you’re surely above such things, let us go…”

The man's voice dwindled as he met Qingxi’s half-smiling gaze, guilt overwhelming him.

“Go on, keep spinning your tales. I’m listening.” Qingxi settled onto a stone, pulled out a half-eaten sugarcane from his system’s storage, and took a bite.

A horse-faced bandit gave a bitter smile. “Sir, we are bandits, but we’ve never killed anyone. We only wanted to rob a little something.”

“But one of you just said you’d take my life,” Qingxi’s gaze grew cold, flickering toward the thousand-mile horse grazing nearby, a smirk playing at his lips.

“He said it, not us.”

All the bandits pointed at their leader, suspended in the center. Just revived, he heard this and promptly fainted again from rage.

Qingxi merely found it amusing. Shaking his head, he gathered up the scattered weapons, checked for anything he’d missed, then mounted his steed and rode off at a leisurely pace.

He hadn’t killed them, simply left them hanging in the trees, left to their own fate.

On horseback, Qingxi glanced at the spoils now stored in his system, feeling a twinge of regret. “No storage bracelets, but that’s to be expected. Ordinary bandits would never have treasures worth a thousand points… But these weapons aren’t bad.”

He drew out a broadsword. Though it wasn’t a genuine lower-grade spiritual artifact, years of use by cultivators had imbued it with spiritual energy.

After conversion, he gained five strands of metallic essence.

Applying the same process to every weapon, including the bandit leader’s broken nine-ringed broadsword, he acquired a total of fifty-three strands of metallic essence and eleven of water essence.

Not a large amount, but even the thinnest mosquito leg is still meat. Qingxi stored it all in his system without hesitation, discarded the now-spiritless scrap metal, and departed.

After spending the night at a small town’s inn, he set out at dawn on his thousand-mile horse, reaching his destination by late morning.

Xisha River.

Qingxi sat astride his mount, robes snapping in the wind. Gazing at the vast river, spanning more than ten miles across, he saw surging waves, white spray thrusting skyward.

Using the system’s spiritual sense, he scanned beneath the surface and discovered many fish lurking below, on the verge of evolving into true monsters—dangerous indeed.

Feeling a surge of inspiration, he couldn’t help but recite a poem aloud:

“Behold the Xisha River, so long and so wide!
Behold the clash of wave on wave, surging ever high!
Behold the fish beneath the surface, so plump and strong!”

The riverbank was broad, and the wind carried his voice far.

A hundred meters away, Qiu Yingying, dressed in black, heard his impromptu verse. Her expression remained calm, even as she casually brushed a lock of hair from her cheek—though she couldn’t quite quash the urge to rush over and wrestle him to the ground.