551 Broken Sword

Alex felt a chill go down his spine. He looked at the sword on his right arm that had barely gone past the skin. The wound wasn't anywhere close to being worrisome. The poison, however…

"Tsk!" the old man said when he saw the cut. For some reason, his face was frowning with annoyance.

Alex hit the sword again to push it off his arm and immediately went on the offensive. He knew now that he was struck with the poison sword, he didn't have much longer.

So, even if it was the last thing he would do in this world, he would kill this man. A slash, a stab, a swing— Alex used whatever he could to make the old man stay on guard so that he couldn't leave his range of spiritual sense.

The old man was trying to hit him back, but Alex was just overwhelming him. He needed to find a moment to run away.

The chance came when Alex swung his sword right at his chest. The old man brought forth his sword to black the strike, however, he underestimated Alex's strength at this moment.

Alex had used every part of his strength, including his Qi into this strike and struck at the old man's chest. Their sword made a massive clang sound as the old man was hit in the chest.

Despite using his own sword to block, the force behind Alex had still managed to hit his chest. The old man used this momentum to leave Alex's range of senses, but the damage he took wasn't a tiny amount.

He coughed up visible blood onto the ground and had a hard time breathing for a moment. When he saw Alex coming towards him, he forgot about everything and ran away.

Alex saw the disorderly footprints in the sand and realized that the old man had ran away once again.

He started chasing after the old man, but his movement technique was not something he could hope to catch up to immediately. He needed to chase for a bit until the Qi in the area was more suppressed, and the old man's speed was slowed down.

Along the way, Alex kept checking his wound for it to turn purple and red veins to start. However, even after a while, nothing happened.

"What?" he thought. "Am I not poisoned?" he was sure that he was poisoned. After all the sword had poisoned his master and many of the beasts along the way.

'Could it be I am immune to the poison?' he thought. But that too felt impossible as his master who had a better constitution than him also had been poisoned.

Then the only possible answer was that… he hadn't been poisoned. 'Does the sword no longer have any poison on it… or,' his eyes shined with understanding.

The poison was just on the tip of the sword, not the sides. 'Was that why the old man frowned? Because he knew he didn't get me?' Alex thought.

The old man had always tried to stab him ever since he started fighting. Not a single time did he go for a swing until the last time when he managed to hit him.

"Now that I think about it, master's cut arm didn't have the purple area either, only the stab wound did," Alex thought. He was now fully sure that his assumption was accurate.

He ran for close to 3 hours before reaching the old man again.

"Goddammit! Stop following me. Because of you, I will be too late to get it," the old man cried out.

"The only thing you'll be getting is this sword through your head," Alex shouted at the old man. The old man went invisible once more and they started fighting.

Alex made sure to never get hit by the old man's sword tip and fought the best he could. However, the fight kept getting dragged out due to the old man running away once again.

Alex chased and fought for nearly the whole day and half of the night once more. The night wasn't as dark as he would wish it to be.

The light coming from the north made him believe there was a new sun in the northern horizon.

He reached the old man once again, however this time it was going to go differently. He had a plan to win.

The old man's fury was quite high at the moment. There was barely a day remaining before the treasure would go past its maturation point and lose its quality, and from his understanding, there was still about 3 hours' worth of journey left. But with Alex's interference, the time kept on increasing.

"Fine, I won't leave before I kill you then," the old man cried and started fighting again.

The two of them were already familiar with their fighting style, so the battle fell into a stalemate once more. Alex was doing fine at the start but as the Qi suppression kept on lifting, the old man got his strength back.

The old man was happy to see that his attacks were having an effect on Alex and kept hitting him with more. He also stopped relying on his sword and used ranged attacks to hurt Alex.

Fortunately, the increase in Qi meant Alex could too use his spiritual sense to a higher range and easily dodged the attacks. He ran towards where the attacks originated and found the old man flying in the air.

He closed his eyes and threw his sword at the old man. The old man was surprised at first and moved aside to dodge the word. However, just as the sword passed him, Alex appeared out of nowhere next to the sword and grabbed it with his only hand.

He then put out his other hand which was only up to the elbow. However, from the elbow emerged an illusory hand made with metal Qi.

He used that arm to hit the old man in the stomach. The old man felt the claw like hand try to rip his stomach and flew backwards. Alex fell to the ground and turned to look towards the old man's direction with a snarl on his face.

He let go of his metal Qi and the hand disappeared. When it did, the things that were in his hands fell to the ground. When the old man saw what Alex had, his eyes went wide.

"You!" he shouted when he saw his storage bags on the ground. Alex took the storage bag and kept it in his own robe before getting ready to fight once more.

Since his cultivation base had returned by quite a fair amount, he too could now fight just like the old man. Alex immediately went invisible and started flying.

His bone tempering realm cultivation base would surely struggle against the man's True disciple realm cultivation base, but Alex was sure he could do it.

The old man tried to run when he saw this, but Alex wouldn't let him. He kept bombarding the old man with all the attacks he could.

He sent slashes filled with Sword Intent to increase their effectiveness. Then, he got close and went into a sword fight.

The two sword clashed again and again. Slowly, both of their sword started showing signs of damage, but Alex didn't care. He kept hitting the man, the fury he had forgotten for the past few hours returning to him.

The old man blocked as well as he could, but the maniac like fighting Alex was putting up was barely giving him any chance to retaliate.

As the old man's strength increased, so did Alex's. Again and again, Alex hit the old man's sword, putting both their swords on the verge of destruction.

Finally, Alex swung one last time, as hard as he could, and shattered the old man's sword. The old man looked in fear when that happened.

He immediately let go his sword handle and used his hands to send a yang slash towards Alex. Alex blocked with his sword, but his sword was barely durable as well. When the slash hit his sword, the sword broke in two.

Alex watched as the top half of his sword flew right past him in slowed time. His eyes moved to look at it, and so did his left arm.

His Qi left his body at the last moment and caught the piece of metal, before pulling it back towards him and driving it down at the old man.

The sword entered the old man's abdomen, right around the area where he had stabbed his master. However, it wasn't deep enough.

Just then, Alex let go of his sword and used his golden fist to punch at the sword. The sword drove though the man's stomach and came out of the other side.

The old man gasped in horror as he felt his abdomen get stabbed. At the same time, he lost his ability to fly or remain invisible.

The old man fell to the sands below him. He tried to move, but Alex jumped on top of him with his sword in his hand. The old man spurt out some blood from his mouth from the strike.

He tried to send out an attack, but his body held no strength at all. He had lost all of his Qi.

"Wh-What's happening?" he shouted.

"I told you old man. You die today," Alex said. He looked at the panicked old man. He had for some reason lost his cultivation base.

Alex looked at where he had stabbed him in surprise. 'That's the place where all Qi goes to. Is it responsible for his cultivation base as well?' he thought as he saw blood pouring out from the old man's naval region.

The old man tried to scramble away, but but Alex's rage wouldn't let him. Alex pulled up his half broken sword to strike at him. In a last ditch effort, he moved his arms around on the ground to save himself.

Just as Alex was about to swing down on him, The old punched Alex using his right arm. Alex was faster than the old man and stabbed him through the abdomen again.

The old man's hand continued the punch, but Alex casually put out his left arm to stop it.

He had no hand of course, but he used his Qi to stop the old man's attack. However, at the same time, Alex felt something else prick his right leg.

When he turned around, he saw the old man's left arm next to his leg. The old man's hands opened to show a purple wound in it, next to which was a broken piece of the sword.

Suddenly, a bunch of notifications appeared in front of him. He was poisoned.