A Blind Swordsman's Sword Coffin

Without Ding Gengyang, the Ding family was nothing but a pile of scattered sand.

The only cultivator left was an elder who had barely reached the early Illusory Refinement Realm. His hair and beard were entirely white, and he didn’t even try to fight Li Guanqi and Xiao Chen. Seeing them approaching, he tried every way to escape.

Even though the dead were his own descendants, his terror left no room for grief. He crushed one teleportation talisman after another, but none of them worked...

Li Guanqi’s cold voice reached the elder’s ears. “Planning to run?”

Whoosh!

The elder’s body exploded into a cloud of blood mist. The surge of power broke free from Li Guanqi’s spatial seal, sending him hurtling backward over a thousand zhang.

But Li Guanqi teleported, already upon him again.

“It’s not my fault! This has nothing to do with me!”

Li Guanqi laughed coldly. How could something of this magnitude be unrelated to him? The elder’s erratic gaze darted left and right, betraying his panic.

Li Guanqi raised his hand and sent a barrage of sword lights at the elder.

“Heavenly Destruction Technique, Crouching Demon!”

The fierce sword light made the elder feel as if his heart would leap out of his chest. Fear gripped him, turning his hands and feet to ice.

In a panic, he unleashed an Earth-tier sword sutra, retreating while sending out several earth-colored sword lights. But against Li Guanqi, the heavy strikes crumbled like paper.

Desperate, the elder grabbed a middle-aged woman. Before she could react, terrifying vital force poured into her, sending her internal spirit spiraling out of control.

“Ahhh! Ancestor, what are you doing?!”

Her body swelled, and a terrifying aura spread through the void.

Bang!

Her primordial soul exploded. The immense power swept the heavens and earth, yet failed to stop the incoming sword light.

The onlookers were horrified, especially the elder members of the Ding family.

“What is he doing...”

“Mad... the ancestor has gone mad...”

The elder’s eyes were filled with madness. Using his tremendous power, he dragged the surrounding cultivators in front of him.

Before they could react, he struck their dantians with a palm, grabbed them, and threw them into Li Guanqi’s sword light.

“Ahhh! Ding Kui! You’ll get what you deserve!”

“Great Grandfather... What are you doing?! I don’t want to die! You old geezer, you deserve to die!”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

More explosions rang out, the terrifying self-detonations sending the Spirit Qi of Heaven and Earth into chaos. Yet even these explosions could not tear through Li Guanqi’s spatial seal.

The elder swallowed pills and, summoning every last bit of strength, unleashed over ten mysterious sword lights.

Boom!

The sword lights shattered. The elder gasped, struggling to catch his breath.

Before he could recover, Li Guanqi appeared behind him and bound him in place with lightning chains.

Terrifying lightning sealed a hundred-zhang radius, transforming it into Li Guanqi’s sword domain.

Inside the domain, lightning raged endlessly, paralyzing the elder’s meridians and locking his spirit in place. The icy touch at his neck left his face ashen.

As Li Guanqi’s blade cut into his flesh and sank into his neck, his cold voice echoed behind him. “To do something like that... you really are a beast...”

Splat!

A massive head shot high into the air. Li Guanqi glanced at the primordial soul still within the elder’s body. His terrifying divine consciousness enveloped it, and purple-black lightning pierced straight through the elder’s body.

Under the assault of countless lightning bolts, the elder’s corpse was reduced to a pile of charred flesh in the blink of an eye.

Inside a cave room thousands of li away, an elder in Daoist robes was suddenly enveloped by endless lightning. His three hun and seven po began to dissipate. His eyes widened, and he seemed unable to accept reality.

“I... I... actually died... Hahaha! I am no longer myself! Hahaha! I am not me! The Dao is emptiness, emptiness is the Dao... Who would have thought... that after a lifetime of pursuing the Dao, only at death do I truly become myself.”

His mournful, self-mocking laughter faded, and his three hun and seven po dissolved into nothingness.

In another sect, a man deep in conversation with a female disciple stiffened. His body was mysteriously enveloped by endless lightning...

Scenes like this occurred elsewhere as well. Li Guanqi had no intention of leaving loose ends.

He had done the same for the previous targets, tracking down and killing all their Illusory Refinement Realm clones before moving on. At the Illusory Refinement Realm, the three hun and seven po remained bound to the original body even when split; if the original died, the clones died with it.

In some cases, though, an opponent might have special methods to transfer their consciousness entirely into a clone upon death, just as Li Guanqi himself had done.

The barrier surrounding the family’s domain dissolved, and Li Guanqi flung the elder’s severed head behind him. It split into seven.

With a surge of divine consciousness, he surged forward again, sword in hand. Now that there were more Illusory Refinement Realm experts blocking him, the battle became a one-sided massacre.

In the time it took half an incense stick to burn, the Ding family’s territory became a wasteland of shattered walls and collapsed buildings, its former glory gone. A once-prominent family in the Divine Treasure Territory had been massacred, leaving their numbers nearly halved.

The thick stench of blood was nauseating. The air was tinted red with gore, and blood flowed down the mountainside, turning the streams at the base a deep red.

Piles of broken corpses formed miniature hills. The surviving Ding disciples stared at the two blood-soaked figures in sheer terror.

The two stood atop the mound of bodies like vengeful demons, eyes coldly scanning the onlookers. Everyone trembled, heads bowed, kneeling and kowtowing in desperate prayer that they would be spared.

Even Xiao Chen stood frozen, staring at the mountains of corpses beneath him. He could hardly believe that he had killed so many people.

Then Li Guanqi spoke slowly, his voice carrying across the plaza. “From now on, the Ding family is to leave the Central Territory.”

With that, he raised his hand and drew the Ding family’s three spirit veins from the mountain. The veins, each over a hundred zhang long, floated in midair before a lightning fissure tore open the void and swallowed them whole. A sweep of divine consciousness opened the Ding family’s treasury as well, plundering everything inside.

A young man’s eyes glinted with resentment as he stared at the two, perhaps seeing them as demons.

Xiao Chen noticed his gaze and opened his mouth to speak. Before he could, a sword light of condensed lightning pierced the boy’s head.

Dozens of lightning swords condensed. Li Guanqi flicked his fingers, and dozens more corpses fell among the crowd.

The vast plaza fell into a dead silence, so profound that not even a breath could be heard.

Everyone knelt with their heads pressed against the blood-stained ground. Their pupils trembled, faces pale as paper, lips quivering. Their limbs felt as if filled with lead, unable to move.

Li Guanqi’s calm voice slowly echoed across the plaza. “Who else wants revenge?”

No one spoke.

Li Guanqi raised his hand, traced a teleportation array with his brush, and stepped into it. Xiao Chen followed closely behind.

As the silver light vanished, a few men glared at the spot where they had disappeared, eyes full of resentment.

Another lightning sword shot from the void, cutting them down.