Another Clash

In a person's lifetime, at different ages, in different times, at different stages, they would meet different people.

Some would become friends to drink and sing with, sharing heart and soul, pledging life and death with a single word. That was the purest kind of friendship.

Others would become rivals locked in a clash of needle against needle, fighting once, then again, until one side was utterly crushed.

Xiang Yang had had far too many opponents from the past until now. Aside from losing to a man named Liu Cheng when his martial arts had still been weak in his earliest days, he had been invincible against those of the same level, victorious in every battle and unstoppable in every attack.

Today, however, the opponent he was to face was the strongest rival of the present age—Tang Wuyi, whose cultivation had reached completion and whose combat strength stood at its peak.

From the instant Xiang Yang and Tang Wuyi faced each other, their invisible confrontation had already begun. Eye met eye, each man's reflection mirrored in the other's pupils. Both were great saber wielders, and each could clearly sense the spiritual saber intent bursting from the other's gaze.

The two merely stood there without moving, straight as bamboo poles. Yet every expert present heard crisp, sonorous clangs of metal striking metal ring out through the void, again and again, as though thousands upon thousands of troops were locked in a desperate slaughter on a raging battlefield.

A dull, stifling atmosphere slowly spread outward from between them. Those whose cultivation had not reached the Xiantian realm felt as though a powerful hand had seized their hearts, squeezing and kneading them viciously until the pain became unbearable.

Their skin ached as though someone were slicing at them with knives. At first they