Healing Wounds

In the snowy night, a tiny starlike flame flickered unsteadily within the ice cave, casting shifting light over Xiang Yang, who sat cross-legged on an ice bed. His tightly furrowed, gloomy face revealed traces of evil qi and savagery. Beads of sweat, each as large as soybeans, rolled down his face before being scorched into vapor by a wave of heat.

Xiang Yang was bare from the waist up. More than a dozen scorched marks like sparks covered his powerful muscles, while an aggressive Fire Energy rampaged through the Three Yang Hand Meridians within him, wreaking havoc like maggots clinging to bone, difficult to remove.

During the battle atop Snowfall Peak, he had wielded the Que Xie Blade and employed blade arts such as the Six Cold Pride Art and the Eight Methods in the Well in a world-shaking duel against Tang Wuyi's Blazing Fire Divine Blade.

That day, the two had fought fiercely for thirty-three exchanges. Ice and fire clashed needle against awl, neither yielding a single step. When bladesmen contended, their dominance and ferocity were thus revealed, stunning more than a hundred hidden experts watching from Little Merchant Mountain. It had been even more spectacular than Xiang Yang's slaying of Fan Zhuxuan—a true Heaven Shaking Earth Shattering battle.

Tang Wuyi had been the first to falter in the face of the immense expenditure required to reverse the heavens' phenomena. Seeing Xiang Yang's blade qi grow ever sharper, his battle intent raging madly without the slightest sign of retreat or weakness, he had withdrawn with Liao Hui.

Blood Spirit Child had originally been held back by Sun Tao and the others, merely going through the motions throughout the fight. Seeing the situation turn unfavorable, he had slipped away as well, returning empty-handed.

Even so, this battle could not be