The red sword was already right in front of him, and he just managed to raise his spear to block it, but his movement was too slow, and a five or six centimeter deep gash appeared between his eyebrows, and he collapsed to the ground.
Xi Heng moved without hesitation, and after killing one group, he ran to another, with fresh blood gushing out one after another.
These soldiers, who were just getting started, fell to the ground one after another. Although the men with guns had practiced some moves, they were easier to kill under Xi Heng's sword.
With just a glance, she could easily figure out the move that the first person was going to use. She only needed to respond to it deliberately and make it look like the other person was stretching out his head for her to chop off.
The spearmen were difficult to hit, as none of them were truly proficient in the moves. Xi Heng could dodge a stab simply by twisting her body. Even if a spear was swept at her, the force from the spear could not move her at all. In a crowd, this several-meter-long spear would be blocked by friendly forces.
The sword and shield warriors around her came closer and helped her relieve the pressure from the bows, crossbows and spears.
The sword blade swept out a circle of blood again, the gun barrels broke, and the sword and shield man fell to the ground.
In this brief moment of peace, Xi Heng took the Blood Spirit Stone out of his purse, chanted a spell quickly and drew it across the back of his hand.
She spread out her five fingers, aimed at the crossbowman more than ten meters behind her and shouted, "Fire!"
A mass of white bones like a tree canopy stretched out from his fingertips. Xi Heng used twice as much spiritual energy this time, and the terrifying skeleton canopy grew much larger.
The bones first blocked a round of crossbow fire and thrown spears, and then suddenly exploded.
Xi Heng pushed his left arm again, and hundreds of fragments of different sizes exploded and shot away.
A dozen archers standing in a group groaned and fell to the ground.
"Monster, witchcraft! Monster! She is a monster!"
This shout came from someone in the enemy army.
As soon as the sound was heard, the entire surrounding army immediately became confused and panicked, and the fighting spirit instantly dissipated.
It would be fine if they were asked to kill people, but if the enemy was a monster with strange and terrifying moves, and no one knew whether it could be killed or not, their fighting spirit would immediately disappear.
Xi Heng seemed not to have heard it. He turned around and started killing the stunned executioners around him.
……
Warm blood splashed on his face, and Xi Heng felt the smell of blood around him getting stronger and stronger. He didn't know how many times he had swung the sword, nor did he know how many people he had killed.
But when I came to my senses, the ground was covered with corpses of various shapes and hideous heads.
The snow was no longer as white as before, and the blood had seeped through the thick snow, leaving it full of holes.
"Huh..." She let out a breath, moved her feet and looked around, but she didn't see any soldiers who had the courage to attack her.
Most of the rebels and miscellaneous soldiers had fled, leaving countless corpses on the ground.
Wherever Xi Heng's bloodshot gaze turned, the soldiers on that side would increase their fleeing speed.
Before long, there were no more outsiders around. Apart from the corpses on the ground, there were only her and Senior Sister Hong Miao left.
Xi Heng randomly found a corpse to wipe the blood off the sword, then put it back into the sheath.
Senior Sister Hong Miao, who had just restrained and killed many archers, slowly approached her.
Looking at the ground covered with hideous and terrifying heads, even she, a warrior who practiced the Bloodline Sword, found it difficult to adapt.
Hong Miao looked up at Xi Heng and couldn't say a word.
Xi Heng, now wearing a black robe and with long hair, was covered in blood. Although the blade of the sword had been wiped clean, the scabbard was also covered in blood.
The blood-stained hair froze, and her face was stained with blood, but not a single drop was her own.
There was an indescribable scarlet in his pupils, and the strong murderous intent had not diminished in the slightest until this moment.
When Hong Miao saw her junior sister staring at her, her heart skipped a beat. She subconsciously placed her right hand on the sheath, fearing that her junior sister had been possessed by the devil and would target her as well.
Xi Heng licked the blood from his lips, and when he saw that it was his senior sister, his murderous intent faded a little.
"Thank you, Senior Sister."
Just now, Senior Sister Hong Miao tied up a lot of archers for her, otherwise she might have been hit by one or two arrows.
Hong Miao's face was gloomy and she didn't say much.
"I need another favor from you, Senior Sister - please help me gather all the corpses together." Xi Heng pointed.
"...Do we still need to set up a human head to watch? It's not necessary." Hong Miao said in a dry voice.
"What view do you want to establish?" Xi Heng's mind is now quite simple.
He walked to the side, swung his sword and drew an arc on the ground, then pointed: "Anyway, Senior Sister, just help me pile it up, just pile it over here."
"Why...?"
"Sister, you'll understand soon." Xi Heng squatted down, grabbed a head and threw it over.
Then they carried the corpses one by one and stacked them on top of each other.
Hong Miao hesitated for a while, sighed softly, and decided to follow the other party's instructions. She picked up the broken bodies on the ground and threw them aside.
As she was busy, Hong Miao suddenly understood why Xi Heng was so skilled at dragging the corpse when he assassinated someone a few days ago.
She had done it many times before... like now.
Xi Heng encouraged everyone and cleared an area around him, then clapped his hands and stopped.
She found a place to grab a handful of clean snow and wiped her hands with it. She then found a corpse's neck and smeared blood on her palms, drawing strange, twisted, bright red lines on the snow that had been rolled over.
As strange tentacle-like blood lines surrounded the pile of corpses, Xi Heng, who had been busy for a while, continued to draw a bottle-shaped pattern in the center of the ritual.
She was already quite familiar with the process of drawing the formation, but this was the first time she had drawn such a large formation, and it took her a lot of time.
At one side, the breathless Senior Sister Hong Miao had piled up more than a hundred corpses and heads together, forming a strange pyramid of corpses.
After working hard for half an hour, she was too tired to move anymore even though she had the physique of a warrior.
The reason why I reluctantly finished it was because I was deeply curious. Why did my junior sister pile up corpses? What was the spell that was just drawn on the ground? Could it be that the sorcery that my junior sister used just now was related to this?
With questions lingering in her mind, Hong Miao watched Xi Heng take out a piece of red jade from his waist and place it on the mouth of the blood-patterned vase on the ground.
Then, the junior sister quickly whispered a long and strange spell that she didn't understand, and then bit her thumb on the palm of her hand, and a drop of blood dripped onto the crystal red jade.
The ruby suddenly emitted a red fluorescence, and the blood lines around it also lit up.
The bloodstains on the ground began to ripple spontaneously, and the tentacle-like lines near the pile of corpses extended rapidly and crawled towards the pile of corpses. The bloodstains like red silk ribbons seemed to bind the corpses tightly together.
Xi Heng clapped his hands, and the ground suddenly glowed red, making the snowy field seem to be connected to hell.
A horrifying scene then unfolded. The corpses on the pile became increasingly thinner, with their flesh and blood drying up and shrunken. In just a few seconds, a sturdy corpse became nothing more than skin and bones.
"Junior sister, this is..." Hong Miao stared in amazement. She had only heard of this kind of evil magic in some stories.
"This is a spell preserved in the imperial family of Great Zhao, called the Blood Sea Spell." Xi Heng explained, "It was obtained by your senior Zhao Qianqiu from a secret place in the north... It has something to do with our Bloodline Sword."
The red jade under Xi Heng's feet began to sparkle, the light became brighter and brighter, and the surface became brighter from dull and turbid. Silky lines appeared inside the clear and warm jade, which slowly expanded and contracted like the arteries in the human body.
The pile of corpses was being absorbed and shrunk. In just one or two minutes, the pyramid of corpses that was originally as tall as a thatched house was cut in half.
The volume of the pyramid also shrank rapidly, withering into a blue-gray color as if a video was accelerated.
From the outside to the inside, layer after layer of corpses dried up and changed color.
In the end, the entire pile of corpses became a horrifying landscape of skeletons.
Hong Miao had already stayed where she was, unable to speak.
She had seen similar skeletons before. During the hot summer, corpses were often hung on the city walls by the government. After being exposed to the sun for more than seven days, they would become similar to the skeletons before her.
But even she had never seen so many mummies, and none of the other mummies were as thoroughly dried as the pile in front of her.
And, all this happened in just a few minutes.
If she didn't know that it was caused by her junior sister, she would definitely believe it even if she was told that it was caused by evil spirits and demons.
There was a slight change in the way Hong Miao looked at Xi Heng.
Could it be that this junior sister of mine, whose behavior and attitude have always been a little strange, is really a monster?
The senior sister hesitated, but Xi Heng, who was doing his work, didn't think so much. He just looked at the glowing blood spirit stone on the ground and nodded.
"Sure enough, the spiritual energy in the flesh and blood can be directly supplied to the blood spirit stone for preservation..."
"I just don't know if there is a specific limit... At least it should be enough to store the spiritual energy of nearly two hundred rebel soldiers."
After carrying the Blood Spirit Stone with him for such a long time, Xi Heng already knew that the spiritual energy in the Blood Spirit Stone would also gradually dissipate, but the process was quite slow.
If the spiritual energy obtained from today's sacrifice is 200 units, then the spiritual energy naturally emitted by the spirit stone in the past six months is less than 2 units.
After a rough estimate, she watched the pile of corpses in front of her shrink to the limit, becoming skeletons wrapped in pieces of dry meat, and the bright red fluorescence on the surface of the entire blood-colored ritual gradually disappeared, and she realized that the spell had ended.
The girl stretched out her bloody right hand from her black robe, picked up the spirit stone and put it back on her waist.
"Let's go, senior sister," she said.
When I turned around, I saw that my senior sister was already standing there.
"Senior Sister Hong Miao?"
"..."
The cold wind blew across my cheeks, taking away the smell of blood and adding a bit of freshness to the air.
The thick black robe, the end of which was clotted with blood, was blown by the wind, making a whistling sound.
"Junior sister..." Hong Miao's eyes showed a rare trace of confusion: "Are you really not a monster?"
"No?" Xi Heng tilted his head.
She also knew that mortals might be frightened when they saw her using such evil magic.
I thought that my senior sister, who was a dark energy warrior and had killed many people, would not be scared...but now it seems that she was wrong.
"Sister, just think of this as a slightly peculiar martial art."
After Xi Heng finished his brief talk, he put the spirit stone back into the purse on his waist, turned around and left the courtyard which had become so strange that it seemed like hell.
It was not until she stepped out of the courtyard gate that Senior Sister Hong Miao behind her hesitantly took a step to follow her.
The city outside returned to its emptiness and silence, with only a series of chaotic or neat footprints left on the snow.
Xi Heng was humming a song, feeling happy.
Today we have confirmed that the Blood Spirit Stone can store spiritual energy. In the future, when we want to cast spells, we don’t have to find ways to kill people on the spot. This is actually a good thing.
I also got a book on Huajin Sword Technique. Although it was only a fragment, it could be of some help in the subsequent deduction of Hongxian Sword Technique.
Also, I took some white jade jewelry from the Liang family, which looks like it should be able to be exchanged for a few hundred taels of silver.
After that, I would return to the northern city and pawn it, so that I could buy a house and live there peacefully...
Once he had a stable place to live, Xi Heng planned to continue practicing martial arts and sword moves while looking for information on various methods of transforming energy and deducing the Red Line Sword Technique.
If one's sword spirit is insufficient, one can go to the borderland to kill people and practice sword skills. If one's physique is insufficient, one can find ways to increase it until one reaches the Yi Jin realm that can accommodate Hua Jin.
"The harvest this time is pretty good..."
Xi Heng took out a few pieces of fine jade from his purse and began to think about the future.
Hong Miao followed quietly behind him, looking at the figure in front of her covered in blood, a hint of worry in her eyes.
……
Chapter 60: Charming Candle Night
After that, the return journey was smooth sailing.
After the massacre just now, no one dared to stop them in Jianchang City, where there were only a few soldiers left.
No matter where they went, the rebel soldiers would stay away from them, for fear of being targeted and beheaded again.
Xi Heng used Qinggong to step back to the top of the city wall where he had stepped when entering the city.
Blowing in the cold wind, looking back, you can still see a touch of blood dotted in the snow all over the sky and the ground, like a bright petal falling in the ice and snow.
The senior sister was also standing beside Xi Heng's shoulder, also looking at the bloodstains in the distance, her expression was not so natural.
"Sister, are you worried about something?" the girl asked.
“……”Hong Miao stared at Xi Heng for a while and said nothing.
As they hurried on the way, Hong Miao's surprise was diluted by time, and the strange looks were temporarily put aside. She slowly exhaled.
Maybe she was overthinking it, Xi Heng had not fallen into the level of an evil demon.
