Chapter 352

Chapter 352

"Not right..."

Qin Ran quickly discovered a loophole. He knew that most of the Tian Ce Army had died from being devoured by the Extreme Demonic Willow's fluff. When the Extreme Demonic Willow devoured them, there would be no remnants of their souls.

Even if there were remnants of their souls, there should only be a few, not thousands.

At that moment, Li Shiyin descended from the sky, and suddenly everything became clear to him.

This was a living formation, controlled by someone from the outside.

The black-robed man manipulating the formation outside already knew that only Li Shiyin could effectively harm the airborne malevolent spirits.

(Note: Aside from Li Shiyin, Qin Ran and Chasing the Wind can also harm ghosts. However, Qin Ran is breaking the formation, and Chasing the Wind is inside Wuyi City.)

He needed to divert Li Shiyin's attention away from the sky!

...Even if he couldn't divert Li Shiyin, he could quickly turn Li Shiwen into his corpse puppet. Given Li Shiwen's strength, perhaps she could become his most powerful puppet.

Thinking of this, Qin Ran knew he had to wake Li Shiwen up.

Purple sword energy rained down, shattering the corpse puppets surrounding Li Shiwen into pieces. Li Shiyin landed and pulled Li Shiwen up from the ground, scolding her, "Li Shiwen, what are you doing?"

But Li Shiwen remained steadfast, not responding or even looking at her.

Seeing his condition, Li Shiyin seethed with anger and couldn't help but want to strike him.

Just as she was about to rush over, their master suddenly appeared.

"Leave him to me. You go deal with the malevolent spirits in the air," their master said to her.

She glanced at their master, who had a flaw on his body, hesitating. Then she looked at the other master in the distance, who had no flaw, and he nodded at her. Only then did she respond, "Alright!"

Until now, the person in this world she trusted the most was undoubtedly their master...the master without any flaws.

She turned around and flew into the air, continuing to destroy the ghosts and break the formation.

Qin Ran raised his hand and created a thin bubble film, enveloping himself and Li Shiwen within it. He sat next to Li Shiwen and said, "I always thought you were a very strong man."

Li Shiwen remained silent.

"But I never expected you to be a coward."

Li Shiwen glanced at him.

"Before the incident at the Hengduan Mountains, I advised you to leave, but you didn't. You said you wanted to protect the people at the Hengduan Mountains with the Tian Ce Army." Qin Ran's tone was calm. "...You led your hundred thousand Tian Ce Army to die in the Hengduan Mountains.

"Whose fault is that? It's your fault."

He continued, "Xuanqin received the news and the army withdrew from the Hengduan Mountains early. As a result, Xuanqin's army was intact while North Chu lost a hundred thousand elite cavalry. Xuanqin invaded North Chu and its cavalry ran rampant on North Chu's land. North Chu had no way to deal with it.

"Whose fault is that? It's your fault."

He took a deep breath. "The Tian Ce Army was annihilated by the demonic creature Shi Ji Mo L, and after you survived, instead of seeking revenge or rebuilding the Tian Ce Army, you wasted away in decadence, living aimlessly for three years.

"When Xuanqin invaded North Chu, you had no cavalry to counter their cavalry, and there were no cultivators to withstand their cultivators. You didn't think about how to deal with Xuanqin's cavalry or how to persuade the major sects in North Chu to help. You only wanted to seek death."

"You are not a man," Qin Ran concluded, shaking his head.

Li Shiwen looked up at Qin Ran, who was sitting cross-legged on the ground. He also sat on the ground, and when he looked up and sat upright, he was two sizes larger than Qin Ran.

But his size didn't make him imposing in the slightest.

Qin Ran gazed calmly at him and continued his mild verbal abuse, saying, "You may appear strong, but in reality, you are weak. You are even weaker than Shi Yin, and you are not as manly as Yu Chi Zhen."

Leaving aside Li Shi Yin for now, Yu Chi Zhen was delicate and weak, as if a gust of wind could knock him over. Li Shiwen's lips moved, wanting to offer some defense.

"I thought that after experiencing so much, you would have grown, become a great general, and left your name in history. But you haven't. You've been beaten down," Qin Ran sneered and asked Li Shiwen, "Tell me, what kind of man are you?"

Li Shiwen didn't want to answer such a boring question.

Qin Ran provided his own answer: "A man is someone who takes responsibility and carries the burden! Do you have responsibility and do you shoulder it?"

"What is responsibility? What is carrying the burden?"

Qin Ran's voice grew impassioned. "It's rectifying the mistakes you've made by yourself! It's bringing happiness to your wife as a husband, instead of dragging her through the flames of war. It's bringing happiness to your son as a father, instead of letting him only know his mother and not his father, living a life of cowardice. It's leading your troops to win the war, to survive on the battlefield, instead of seeking death here and letting them be devoured by countless demons!"

As he spoke, he pointed outside the bubble to the five hundred elite riders Li Shiwen led out of the city. Now, there were only a hundred or so left. They formed a circle amidst the horde of corpse demons, resisting them like rocks in the sea. But every second, someone was dragged away by the corpse demons and eaten.

As expected, there was another unexpected change... the man in the black robe was skilled in soul techniques!

Qin Ran was aware of this, but if he didn't break the formation, the hundreds of thousands of people, including civilians and soldiers, inside the formation would likely die.

He had no choice...

"Master!"

Li Shiyin called out, watching her master from the ground with great anxiety. She wanted to fly up and embrace him. However, she looked at her master and then at the face in the sky. She made a resolute decision and suddenly soared into the air on her flying sword, heading straight into the dark clouds.

She activated the remaining trace of her mana, enveloping herself with purple sword qi. She transformed into a massive sword, piercing through the black clouds.

"Shiyin!" Qin Ran shouted, but Li Shiyin's flying speed was incredibly fast, and she had already reached the mid-air.

He looked up and saw the intense battle in the sky. He gritted his teeth and decided to trust his foolish disciple. He no longer looked at the sky, but continued to outline the formation patterns.

Without the influence of the will of the man in the black robe, he rapidly outlined the patterns, pouring out his mana without considering the cost. Each pattern he created was controlled by his will, forming one basic formation after another. These formations composed of patterns surrounded him, densely packed, completely submerging him.

"Boom!"

At a certain moment, a loud explosion occurred.

The dark face in the sky dissipated, and Li Shiyin descended from the air...

Qin Ran shouted, "Activate!"

The densely packed white patterns around him suddenly dispersed, flying in all directions into the void.

With each dissipating white pattern in the void, the illusory nature of the formation increased.

The formation was complete, and Qin Ran paid no further attention to it. Within the world of white patterns, he flew over to catch Li Shiyin.

Li Shiyin's face was pale, heavily injured, and devoid of any mana.

She smiled weakly in Qin Ran's arms and asked softly, "Master, did he fail to defeat Shiyin? Is Shiyin powerful?"

"Shiyin is very powerful," Qin Ran nodded.

"Master, did you succeed?"

"Mm..."

Li Shiyin was in Qin Ran's embrace, looking out through his hair at the white patterns spreading in the sky, resembling white snowflakes. It reminded her of the white willow catkins from that time when she realized that Master also had feelings for her.

She asked, "Master, do you like Shiyin?"

"I do!"

"Master, shall we get married?"

"Alright."

Qin Ran landed on the ground, holding Li Shiyin. He had been in the air for too long, causing his legs to feel weak and nauseous, so he sat down with Li Shiyin in his arms.

The formation was broken, and the malevolent ghosts in the air and the corpse ghosts on the ground disappeared. Only a black-robed man not far away, holding a tattered Soul Banner, remained.

The black-robed man sat on the ground, head lowered, clearly heavily injured.

Li Shiwen approached Qin Ran with the remaining thirty or so soldiers and asked him while looking at the black-robed man in the distance, "What should we do?"

"What do you think?" Qin Ran replied, countering her with a question, "Should we spare him for the New Year?"

Li Shiwen raised her hand and aimed her gun at the black-robed man.

The bullet failed to pierce the black-robed man and was caught by Zhao Yaqing's protector, Aunt Mei.

Zhao Yaqing and Aunt Mei, accompanied by several disciples from the Cloud Heaven Sect, appeared beside the black-robed man and said to Qin Ran, "He is one of our Xuanqin's people. Whether he is guilty or not will be determined by our Xuanqin."

Qin Ran glanced at her without responding, then looked up at the sky and said, "Please trouble the two seniors."

Soon, a petal sword energy and a black malevolent sword energy crossed in the air, cleaving the black-robed man into four.

"You!" Zhao Yaqing clenched her teeth, glaring at Qin Ran.

After a while, she snorted coldly and picked up the "Soul Banner of Thousand Ghosts" belonging to the black-robed man. Turning around, she said to Qin Ran, "We'll see about this!"

After she finished speaking, Zhao Yaqing flew back to the Xuanqin military camp with the disciples of the Cloud Heaven Sect.

Qin Ran frowned as he watched Zhao Yaqing leave. "We'll see?" He had a feeling that there was more to Zhao Yaqing's words than met the eye.