Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

Cizhi stood high in the sky with his hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at Li Guanqi with icy eyes. “Since you’re so eager to die, I’ll oblige you, ant!”

The wind howled, and thunder rolled across the heavens.

A glowing white figure clung to Xuan Lin, keeping him out of Cizhi’s grasp. Peng Luo had both hands locked desperately around Xuan Lin’s head, his body trembling faintly, his eyes full of terror. Still, he refused to let go. He kept his head down, not daring to meet the gaze of the figure above.

Cizhi’s gaze snapped to Peng Luo. His eyes flickered, and his brow furrowed as if he were trying to recall something.

Two full breaths passed. Then Cizhi’s eyes lit up, and he burst into wild laughter. “So it’s you! You little mutt. You really are hard to kill. The cross-realm storm swallowed you whole and you still didn’t die. You actually escaped all the way to the Human World. Tsk tsk. And no wonder. If you’d fled to the Spirit World instead, you would’ve been torn to pieces. Lucky you.”

As Cizhi’s voice echoed through the sky, Peng Luo trembled violently. His sheer terror had numbed his entire body, robbing him of all control. Though he clung to Xuan Lin, he couldn’t move an inch. His limbs felt as heavy as lead.

Li Guanqi could tell how terrified Peng Luo was. Peng Luo, usually so fearless, now had bloodshot eyes welling up with tears of fear. His pupils rapidly contracted and expanded, his head bowed low, his eyes filled with nothing but fear.

Li Guanqi clenched his teeth. He didn’t know what Peng Luo had been through, but he knew he had come from the Upper World. Still, he hadn’t expected Cizhi to actually recognize Peng Luo.

Every word out of Cizhi’s mouth dripped with mockery. From the sound of it, Peng Luo had very likely escaped from the Seven Treasures Pavilion itself.

Whoosh!Cizhi extended a single finger, and a thread of golden light shot toward Peng Luo.

A deathly chill crawled up Peng Luo’s spine, and an inexplicable aura of death closed in around him. He couldn’t even summon the courage to move his feet, and could only watch as the golden beam streaked toward him.

Roar!

Murderous fury flashed in Nine Heavens’ dragon eyes. With a sweep of his tail, he threw himself in front of Peng Luo, his massive form taking up a big chunk of the sky. He opened his jaws and unleashed a violent blast of lightning breath.

The lightning breath collided with the golden light with a deafening crash. It held for barely a single breath before it shattered. The golden beam punched clean through Nine Heavens’ body without losing any momentum.

The golden light loomed ever closer in Peng Luo’s vision. At the last moment, he suddenly went limp, then mustered every last ounce of strength and shoved Xuan Lin into Li Guanqi’s sword coffin space. He had chosen the sword coffin because he knew that no matter what happened, Cizhi could never break into its space.

A white-robed figure suddenly appeared before Peng Luo. Li Guanqi drew every ounce of his ferocious power inward and concentrated it along his blade. Killing intent blazed in his eyes as he swept his sword sideways in a vicious slash.

A purple-red sword light flashed across the sky. “Heavenly Destruction, Crouching Demon Slash!”

Boom!

The shockwave from the impact sent Li Guanqi and his companions flying more than a thousand zhang away.

Just before they were blasted away, Peng Luo, who had been drowning in terror the whole time, jerked his head up. He grabbed Guanqi’s collar with one hand as he glared up at Cizhi and screamed, “Han Cizhi! I’ll fuck your mother! Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Peng Luo strained his neck and roared with all his might, his entire face turning beet-red from the rush of blood.

Li Guanqi hurtled backward. The ground shook, three deep trenches formed across the ground, and every structure within three thousand zhang of the Qixian Tower collapsed into rubble.

Li Guanqi slowly climbed to his feet. The skin between his left thumb and forefinger had split open, and blood ran down the Red Lotus Sword before dripping from its tip.

“Hahaha! Now that’s more like you!”

Peng Luo grinned. Every leaf on his head stood straight up, and the purple markings across his skin blazed with dazzling light. He swelled to the height of a man, and not a trace of fear remained in his eyes.

Nine Heavens’ chest scales had shattered, revealing torn flesh beneath. Despite this, he launched himself into the air, circled around to Li Guanqi’s side, and hoisted him onto his back before surging upward.

Killing intent flickered in Li Guanqi’s gaze.

An ice-blue silhouette raised her sword and charged. Meng Wanshu unleashed every ounce of her power as fragments of inherited memories flashed through her mind.

An ice-blue gleam shot through Meng Wanshu’s eyes, and she cried out, “Chaotic Frost Realm, Phoenix Terrace Technique!”

Snowflakes drifted down between heaven and earth, and blue-white frost power spread through all of Qixia City in an instant. Thousands upon thousands of ice blossoms condensed around Meng Wanshu, and the void beneath her feet began to freeze solid.

A dense wave of demonic qi erupted, and the void tore open into a frost-lined fissure a full hundred zhang across.

Li Guanqi was stunned by the sight. Nine Heavens’ eyes trembled as well, clearly having caught something in that aura. But there was no time to stand around gaping. Nine Heavens whipped his tail and accelerated.

An enormous ice phoenix, more than a hundred zhang long, burst from the void. Deep-blue frost spread in its wake, freezing space itself until it cracked like shattered porcelain.

Nine Heavens roared and swiped his massive claws at Cizhi.

Cizhi’s gaze fell on Peng Luo and turned icy. His projection, shining with golden light, grew solid. A golden longsword materialized in his raised hand, and he looked down at Li Guanqi and Meng Wanshu with an amused expression.

Boom!

“Jade Terrace Technique, Gathering of the Eight Immortals!”

Cizhi’s gaze turned razor-sharp. He spread his arms wide, and his spirit sword shot toward Li Guanqi’s head.

His feet traced a series of unfathomable steps as he drifted over a thousand zhang downward, slowly opening his hands. All at once, a vast, boundless force surged outward.

Colorful lights flooded the sky, with a golden glow flashing in every direction. Yet, now that Cizhi’s projection had solidified, Li Guanqi realized it was nowhere near as powerful as he had imagined.

But this immortal art…

Eight immortal phantoms materialized above the blossoms as celestial light filled the heavens.

Nine Heavens unleashed the breath attack he’d been building up. At the same time, he swiped his dragon claws at the phantom and lashed out with his massive tail. In physical strength, the dragon race stood at the absolute pinnacle.

Cizhi watched the void shatter in Nine Heavens’ wake, and his eyes widened slightly. Even he hadn’t expected the Human World to harbor a true dragon.

Li Guanqi narrowed his eyes. That spirit sword was blindingly fast, so fast that he could only rely on instinct to take the blow head-on.