Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

“Red Lotus Sword, Sword Draw!”

Li Guanqi forced his two most powerful sword techniques together into one.

The left sleeve of his robe burst apart, and his tensed arm erupted in a spray of blood mist. The Red Lotus Sword slid from its sheath, and a clear, resounding sword cry mingled with the roar of thunder and echoed through the sky.

Everyone saw the sheath in Li Guanqi’s hand erupt with dazzling purple-red light, brilliant as the sun breaking over the horizon.

Crack!

Crack crack crack!

Fine spiderweb cracks spread across the ice sculptures. Nearly every assassin was on the verge of breaking out of the ice.

The void trembled. The fire barrier of the four heavenly fires rippled violently, like a calm lake struck by a boulder.

Li Guanqi took the opportunity to send Meng Wanshu beyond the reach of his sword intent.

Then, without warning, all phenomena in the heavens and earth vanished in an instant. Even the sword light dimmed abruptly. The sudden change sent a violent jolt through everyone’s hearts.Ye Feng and the others’ eyes widened. Gu Li murmured, “He’s sheathed his sword…”

Goosebumps rose across Cao Yan and the others’ skin. That razor-sharp sword intent seemed to prick at their flesh, making their hearts pound.

Whoosh!

Li Guanqi vanished. When he reappeared, he was already a thousand zhang away. A faint streak of sword light flashed past, but no one had even seen him move.

Without warning, every frozen assassin shattered along with the ice encasing them, breaking into shards no larger than a fingernail. Not a single trace of blood remained. In that single instant, Li Guanqi had struck at least a hundred times.

Each strike pushed his strength to its absolute limit, and he fully unleashed all three abilities of his sword spirit void. One breath. One hundred strikes. Twelve lives. Twelve Wang-tier assassins.

Pfft!

Li Guanqi spat out a mouthful of blood, and his aura plummeted by more than thirty percent.

A few other assassins had barely escaped, and only by leaving limbs behind.

Meng Wanshu’s heart pounded as she stared at the scene. She had never imagined that Li Guanqi could compress his power so completely into the blade of his sword.

Previously, he had always fought by meeting his enemies head-on with the strength of his sword light. Such clashes came down to whose sword intent was stronger, whose vital force ran deeper, and how much power a sword technique’s grade could unleash.

But just now, Li Guanqi seemed to have awoken to something. He had forced all of his power down into the blade itself, unleashing an incredibly terrifying strike.

Meng Wanshu was not the only one who understood. Gu Li had seen it more clearly than anyone. With his powerful divine consciousness, he had watched six or seven of the stronger assassins break out of the ice the very instant Li Guanqi struck.

Yet, they still could not withstand the force. Enhanced by Destruction and Blade Breaker, the longsword shattered their weapons without the slightest resistance and sliced their bodies open.

Gu Li swallowed hard, staring at the flame spirit seal flickering between Li Guanqi’s brows. His shock went beyond anything he could put into words. Gu Li knew perfectly well that Li Guanqi could wield only seventy percent of his peak strength right now, not even eighty.

And yet Li Guanqi seemed to have attained enlightenment. He had broken through, attained spirit comprehension, and now learned to sheathe his blade and restrain his power so that not a fraction went to waste with each strike. His combat strength had risen by an entire level.

Li Guanqi shattered tens of thousands of spirit stones and devoured them in one go, then followed up with several pills. A little color finally returned to his bloodless face.

Peng Luo suddenly appeared on his shoulder, took what Li Guanqi handed him, and stuffed it straight into his mouth.

Peng Luo could not have grinned any wider. The stronger Li Guanqi grew, the happier he was.

“Whew!”

Li Guanqi let out a loud, clear whistle. Nine Heavens whipped his head around, shattered space itself, and appeared beneath Li Guanqi’s feet in an instant.

Standing in the air with his white robe fluttering wildly, Li Guanqi looked coldly at the remaining red-robed assassins.

He licked his cracked lips and murmured, “Kill!”

Boom!

Nine Heavens lashed its tail and charged directly toward the few remaining Wang-tier assassins.

A red-robed cultivator stood no more than a hundred zhang off. A cold gleam flickered in Li Guanqi’s eyes. His vital force roared, and he vanished from sight in an instant with his sprint technique.

Terror filled the assassin’s eyes beneath his mask. He forced himself to calm down and slowly lowered his sleeves. Endless demonic qi poured forth, cascading like a waterfall as it spread across hundreds of zhang in an instant. As the demonic qi churned, countless indistinct runes began to glow within it.

Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes as he raced forward.

An aged voice rose slowly. “Nine Hells Heavenly Great Array! Hahahaha, Li Guanqi, die!”

Array lights flickered. The winds and clouds changed color, and the void for eight hundred zhang around them turned into a pitch-black abyss. The wails and howls of vengeful spirits seemed to rise from its depths, shaking the soul and mind of everyone who heard them.

Li Guanqi seemed to sense something, and the corners of his lips curled. The next moment, Gu Li vanished from where he stood. He had swapped places with Li Guanqi and entered the array in his stead.

He raised a hand, and the power of thousands upon thousands of talismans surged outward to form a spatial domain barely a zhang in radius around him.

The golden barrier, barely a cun thick, had a surface densely packed with continuously shimmering talisman runes. The barrier trembled on the verge of collapse under the grinding weight of the great array, yet not a trace of panic showed on Gu Li’s face.

Boom!

The old man went still for a moment. Li Guanqi had appeared behind him.

Shaken as he was, the man reacted with startling speed. Without turning around, his hands moved slightly beneath his broad sleeves, and the array patterns underfoot surged up like a living thing and hurled themselves at Li Guanqi.

Li Guanqi had not expected him to react so fast. He raised his sword, tore open the pitch-black demonic tide, and shot through it. His body blurred with speed. He reached the old man and unleashed a barrage of slashes. A torrent of sword light erupted and swallowed the old man whole.

Black demonic qi sprayed in every direction. Li Guanqi broke through the old man’s defenses in barely a breath.

But the old man proved deeply versed in the Dao of arrays. He threw out several array trays in quick succession to hold Li Guanqi off. These arrays weren’t especially strong defensively, but they repaired themselves with astonishing speed, so breaking through them quickly cost Li Guanqi some effort.

Li Guanqi’s eyes sharpened, and he roared, “Xi Yunhuai! We’ve got work for you!”

Whoosh!

An elder appeared in a flash, riding a streak of silver light. The old man winked at Li Guanqi.

The strange part was the enormous talisman brush in Xi Yunhuai’s hand. That brush was Ji Yuchuan’s Divine Piercer.

Could it be…

Even Li Guanqi was dumbfounded by the sight, his thoughts turning over and over. Gulp… Xi Yunhuai is Ji Yuchuan’s clone too?The Divine Piercer was never a talisman brush at all. It’s an array-inscribing brush!