OSI Chapter 31 – Shadowless Whip Technique

Enjoy!

ED: The glossary is up for those of you who are unsure of certain abilities. It’s in its infant stage and quite some stuff might be missing. If you have any queries do ask away either in the comments or the chatbox!
P.S It has spoilers if you’d not read early chapters.

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Xu Liao dashed past a few houses with his eyes shining with anticipation. Once he found himself in the middle of the village, he started to slow down his pace.

The village square wasn’t small, roughly able to hold at least a thousand people. Xu Liao guessed that this square was used for gatherings in the past. Now that the village is devoid of life, when the night wind blew, it felt even more desolated.

From his position, Xu Liao spotted a stone mill in the middle of the square; and beside the stone mill was the chest that Xu Liao was looking for. This particular chest was different from the previous two chests however – its sides were lined with silver ornate carvings instead of bronze. The patterns on the sides were more detailed as well. Xu Liao could then deduce that this chest was more valuable than the previous two.

“There must be something good in this silver chest! Maybe there are some skill books or priceless treasures!”

Xu Liao didn’t think for another second and walked excitedly towards the chest. Suddenly, when he was about a few steps away, the ground burst forth from below and a dark shadow from within dragged him onto the floor. Xu Liao was horrified at the sudden appearance of this shadow and tried to grab the daggers in his backpack. But due to his body being dragged around, he couldn’t reach them.

“Oh shit! What exactly is this creature? Why can’t I see it?” Xu Liao shouted in shock as he fumbled for the dagger.

At this moment, Xu Liao put his hellish training under Sun Bo Fang to use. He had fought with various demons and gained a lot of experience, thus he quickly came out with another idea. Giving up the notion of using the daggers, instead, he activated the Heavenly Demon Purgatory and surrounded himself with dark demonic energy to escape from the grip of the shadow. He then pressed his hands onto the ground and slipped out back onto the surface.

Almost instantly, Xu Liao activated the Jasper Seven Stars Mantis Demon and slashed several blade waves into the ground where the shadow was previously. Then he made a flying kick as he repelled another shadow attacking him from a different direction.

At this point of time, Xu Liao had already gotten a clear view of what was attacking him. Apparently, what grabbed Xu Liao into the ground was actually a creepy huge tree nearby.

The branches of the tree were all drooping to the ground, slithering on the ground as if it was a thousand snakes. The broken tree branch that Xu Liao slashed previously had been twisting and squirming on the ground. Their survivability was terrifyingly strong.

The huge tree seemed enraged due to Xu Liao’s counter attack as it launched its nearby branches at Xu Liao, forming a huge net.

Xu Liao side-stepped easily and flew out of the huge tree’s attack range. After all, the huge tree is unable to change location, so if the enemy went out of its attacking radius, even how hard it tried it wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Although it seemed rather easy to deal with the tree, Xu Liao didn’t relax at all. The two previous chests made him drop is guard for a moment.

At the corner of his eye, Xu Liao noticed that the chest was within the attacking radius of the tree. As long he intended to loot the chest, he would need to somehow kill this huge tree.

Despite having killed dozens of demonic beasts, he hadn’t met any of this kind yet. This tree was huge in size and had no obvious weaknesses. Xu Liao circled around the radius while observing before finally coming up with an idea.

He searched for a bunch of tree branches and dead leaves nearby, then activating his demonic Qi to ignite a flame. For every set of branches and dead leaves that was burned – he them threw at the huge tree. The tree didn’t seem to have enough intelligence to realize that the situation was growing dangerous for it, hence its tree branches that were burning merely randomly retreated back into the main trunk.

Xu Liao threw more than ten sets of burning branches and leaves in total; and finally one of the branches caught fire.

Somehow the tree seemed to have a certain type of oil within its body, and once one of its branches touched the layer of oil, it started spreading like wildfire.

As if reacting to the fire, the branches started flailing around, but instead of extinguishing the fire, that action caused it spread even faster!

After all, the tree lacked intelligence. All it could do is let out a silent howl and flap the countless of tree branches in agony, which in turn made the fire rage on further. Suddenly, it started to struggle to escape by scraping out its remaining tree branches one by one.

But how could Xu Liao allow it to escape?

Xu Liao was watching from a distance. Wherever the tree wanted to escape to by flinging its branches, Xu Liao would block it. He released his blade waves to force it to stay in its original location. This continued on for a few breaths of time before the tree finally succumbed as it turned into a large bonfire.

It wasn’t until the whole tree had been immobilized could then Xu Liao relax slightly. He let out a deep breath as he walked past the burnt tree to retrieve the silver chest. Unknowing to him, when he walked near to the burnt tree, the trunk suddenly exploded!

Xu Liao flew back a few steps in shock as he activated the Heavenly Demon Purgatory Skill, enveloping his body in dark demonic energy. However, while Xu Liao poised for battle, the tree didn’t make any other signs of action. Xu Liao approached it cautiously and peered into the tree trunk. Within the trunk was something glowing in a bright green light.

Xu Liao’s face showed signs of glee as he casually summoned a dark golden lance to fling the object towards him. Surprisingly, it was a scroll that was bathed in a green light!

When Xu Liao touched the scroll out of curiosity, a line of letters formed in the air right in front of Xu Liao!

– – Would you like to learn the Shadowless Whip Technique?

Xu Liao was stunned speechless for a second before shouting: “Yes!”

The green glow slowly left the scroll and entered into Xu Liao’s body. Suddenly, within his mind appeared countless of weird runes, and all these runes slowly merged into a light green seed that was planted into his spirit world.

Xu Liao then opened his palm slightly as he controlled his demonic Qi. He found out that it was slightly smoother and easier to manipulate! Following the Shadowless Whip Technique instructions, he tried to change the form of his demonic Qi. It twisted and turned around each other until it formed silk-like threads that appeared on his palm. The silk-like threads then extended itself towards the sky.

It was as if the Shadowless Whip Technique was fated to be with compatible with Xu Liao’s demonic Qi. The Jasper Seven Stars Mantis didn’t even need to intervene with the transformation!  One strand shot upwards for about a hundred meters before slowing down. Xu Liao found that this was currently his maximum limit.

Xu Liao then grasped one end of the strand and formed a whip with it. By manipulating the demonic Qi, he could extend and move the whip as he pleased. The flexibility and the dexterity was even comparable to swinging his arm! With one whip, the tree that had turned into charcoal was smashed into countless of ashes and caused Xu Liao to fan the ashes away with his other hand before opening the silver chest.

The silver chest detected his presence and automatically opened just like the previous bronze chests.

With two hands on the edge of the chest, Xu Liao excitedly peeked and found that the loot was many times more valuable than the bronze chests! Just as he expected! It contained ten times more triangular coins and oval shaped ancient mirror. On the frame of the mirror, it had a slot which made it look special.

When Xu Liao saw how much triangular coins he obtained he was naturally in the best of moods. He casually grasped and acknowledged the notification from his demon identification card. This time it was 2100 credits! If he added up all the money he had gotten so far in his life it wouldn’t even hold a candle to how much money he has right now! Even to many adults, tens of thousands of RMB is also considered a huge amount.

 Translated by Gary. Edited by Jason