"Although I am not Ye Heng, I have promised you that I will go to Tianlong Snow Mountain to find the Sword Demon and complete the final duel!"

Upon hearing Chen Hao agree to the condition, Zhao Wuji's face lit up with excitement. However, the joy quickly vanished, replaced by a sullen sense of loss.

Because whether he won or lost today, he would miss the peak duel that had been unresolved for a millennium.

"I'm sorry, I have another awkward request," Zhao Wuji said, looking somewhat embarrassed as he addressed Chen Hao, "Of course, you can refuse it."

"Oh? What is it?" Chen Hao asked, surprised. Even if Zhao Wuji added another condition on top of the original two, he was certain he would agree. But Zhao Wuji did not say so, leading Chen Hao to guess that it probably had something to do with that era over a thousand years ago.

It was an era where one's word was their bond!

"If I lose to you again today, I hope that in the future you will inform me of the outcome of your duel with the Sword Demon," Zhao Wuji said.

"Why do you want to know the outcome so badly?" Chen Hao asked curiously.

Zhao Wuji smiled, shook his head, and sighed briefly, "One day you will understand, or perhaps you will never understand."

Chen Hao frowned, not understanding why Zhao Wuji would say something so cryptic.

"That depends on whether you truly are Ye Heng. If you are, you'll understand!" Zhao Wuji continued.

Chen Hao was at a loss for words, thinking that since he was not Ye Heng he would not understand, nor did he need to care why Zhao Wuji was so eager to know the outcome of the duel between Ye Heng and the Sword Demon. Thus, he nodded and agreed to Zhao Wuji's request.

"Then, I thank you!" Zhao Wuji said, bowing his hands in gratitude to Chen Hao. Then he took a letter from his bosom and handed it to Chen Hao.

After receiving the letter from Zhao Wuji, Chen Hao immediately opened it to find several characters smeared in vermilion blood—"On the south side of Qingyun Mountain there is a southeast-facing cliff, with a great Peng bird carved on it. Within the cliff lies a barrier, the place where Soul Corpses are refined and the Feipeng Sect is located. I earnestly request that you come to this place as soon as possible for an urgent matter. This letter shall serve as a token. Left by Yao Qingyuan."

After reading the letter, Chen Hao stuffed it back into the envelope and put it in his pocket, then asked Zhao Wuji, "Is this Yao Qingyuan the one who refined the Soul Corpses and provided you with the antidote?"

Zhao Wuji nodded.

"Can this person be trusted?" asked Chen Hao. He was somewhat suspicious, worried that it might be a trap set by Luo Pengfei.

Zhao Wuji shook his head and sighed, "To tell the truth, I don't know much about him. Ever since he possessed my ghost in a corpse to become a Soul Corpse, I have been constantly chained by him with a soul-locking chain, and I have never had any dealings with him before. However, from what I can tell, his words should be trustworthy. He could have sent more Poisonous Soul Corpses and Martial Soul Corpses to this place to deal with you, yet he did not do so."

After listening to Zhao Wuji, Chen Hao nodded thoughtfully.

After a pause, Chen Hao turned to look back at Ye Yuqiao, Xie Xiaofeng, and Tang Jing, who were busy rescuing the townspeople, then approached them and said, "I am going to fulfill the promise I made to Zhao Wuji. I'll leave the town to you three. If there's any emergency, Yuqiao, remember to inform me right away."

Ye Yuqiao, who was helping a child with Tang Jing to administer the antidote, suddenly looked up at Chen Hao with a slightly troubled expression.

Seeing that Ye Yuqiao was looking at him for a long time without speaking, Chen Hao, feeling puzzled, silently asked her, "Your Majesty the Queen, what's wrong?"

"I don't know!" Ye Yuqiao's slightly forlorn voice quickly resonated in Chen Hao's mind, "With the town in such chaos and you not being by my side all the time, I just feel a bit panicked inside."

Chen Hao smiled and reassured Ye Yuqiao, "Yuqiao, be good. I'll be back soon!"

"Mm, go and come back quickly!"

Thereafter, Chen Hao and Zhao Wuji used Qinggong to leap into the night sky and flew away from Anyang Town.

Half a minute later, the two arrived at a deserted bamboo forest outside of the town.

Unable to wait any longer, Zhao Wuji, who stood atop a slender bamboo, drew the sword in his hand. His entire body swayed with the bamboo beneath his feet in the wind. Yet, he was like a new segment of bamboo growing at the tip, entirely unaffected even when the bamboo slanted nearly parallel to the ground.

On the other side, standing on a sturdy old bamboo more than twenty meters away, Chen Hao was like an unyielding pine, while all the surrounding bamboos were toppling and swaying in the gusts of wind.

After the sound of the wind subsided.

"Ye Heng, draw your sword!" Zhao Wuji said to Chen Hao.

Chen Hao opened his eyes, a curve forming at the corner of his mouth as he sneered, "No need to draw a sword, I am the sword itself."

Zhao Wuji's brows furrowed, and in an instant, both his heart and the sword in his hands loosened a bit.

"The person before me is not Ye Heng," Zhao Wuji thought, "The real Ye Heng would never smile!"

"Make your move!" said Chen Hao to Zhao Wuji, still wearing a smile on his face.

In Zhao Wuji's eyes flashed a sharp light, and his heart was filled with an indescribable sense of loss.

"You seem quite confident!" Zhao Wuji said, looking down, his expression somewhat bitter.

"Hmm!" Chen Hao nodded.

Zhao Wuji sighed helplessly, then leaped to the ground.

"What's the matter?" Chen Hao asked, puzzled as he floated down from the old bamboo to face Zhao Wuji.

The man I am now is not who I was before," Zhao Wuji said wistfully, "The inner strength I have cultivated in this body is far less than half of what I had in my heyday, and though you're not as powerful as Ye Heng of the past, you are at least young and vigorous. I simply have no chance of winning!"

Chen Hao nodded in agreement with Zhao Wuji's words.

After a moment's thought, he said, "How about this, let's decide the outcome with one move. If you can withstand my move, you win. If you can't, you will have to die!"

Zhao Wuji's eyes widened in shock, and it took him a while to come back to his senses before he nodded in agreement.

"Here I come!" Chen Hao said with a light chuckle.

"Hmm!"

"Whoosh whoosh"—a piercing whistling sound arose, followed by a streak of sword light flashing across the bamboo forest.

All of a sudden, the whistling stopped, and Chen Hao was already behind Zhao Wuji.

"I've lost!" exclaimed Zhao Wuji. With that, the corpse he had possessed split in two and fell to the ground—Chen Hao had instantly turned into a sharp sword and passed through his Soul Corpse.

Subsequently, Chen Hao used the soul-capturing rope to pull Zhao Wuji's Yin Soul from the corpse.

"If you truly wish to see my duel with the Sword Demon, I can suck you into the Soul-collecting Bottle for now and release you when the duel occurs, what do you think?" Chen Hao asked Zhao Wuji.

Zhao Wuji's face lit up with surprise, and he excitedly said, "Are you serious?"

Chen Hao smiled and nodded. Just at that moment, he remembered how not long ago, he had trapped the female ghost from the ancient well in the mountain village inside the Soul-collecting Bottle. Immediately, his eyes shone brightly as he said excitedly, "It could be him, the heartless man who abandoned that female ghost all those years ago could be..."

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