One Leaf, One World

Lin Feng felt a torrent of razor-sharp energy rush wildly into his body through the hands gripping the sword hilt.

In an instant, it merged into his limbs, bones, flesh, and blood.

At the same time, Lin Feng's eyes went wide, his face the picture of someone who had seen a ghost.

Because he watched helplessly as the Xuanyuan Divine Sword before him simply vanished into thin air!

Then the altar vanished, the plaza vanished, and the entire space disappeared...

Everything, dreamlike and illusory, vanished from before his eyes out of nowhere.

At that moment, Lin Feng was completely dumbfounded.

What the hell was this?

Just then, he felt an irresistible, mysterious force pull him directly into another world.

Before Lin Feng could come back to his senses, an unbelievable sight appeared before him.

It was a world filled with all sorts of scenes.

On one side was bloody slaughter, corpses strewn everywhere, like hell on earth.

On the other side, people lived and worked in peace and contentment. Their faces brimmed with joy; men farmed while women wove, presenting a scene of flourishing prosperity.

Yet this world felt so real, while Lin Feng was like a bystander, watching everything from a god's-eye view.

For a moment, he was utterly confused.

What did this mean?

Could this be the ultimate trial of the Xuanyuan Divine Sword?

Wasn't this a little too childish? Was it just making him watch a movie?

"What do you feel?" Just then, an abrupt voice rang out.

"Ah?!" Lin Feng jumped in fright, his heart lurching as he looked around, only to find no one there.

Could he be hearing things?

"I asked you what you felt. Didn't you hear me?" The cold voice rang out again.

"Y-you... who are you?" Lin Feng asked, his heart pounding wildly.

"I am the sword spirit of the Xuanyuan Divine Sword. If I had not permitted it, did you think a lowly being like you could have arrived here without hindrance?" There was a trace of pride in the icy voice.

Lin Feng: "..."

No wonder Emperor Xuanyuan had deliberately gone easy on him. It turned out to be the Xuanyuan Divine Sword's sword spirit's intention...

The Xuanyuan Sword Spirit said, "Answer my question. What do you feel about the scenes before you?"

"I hate cruel slaughter, and I yearn for an age of peace and prosperity."

Lin Feng spoke the thoughts in his heart directly. Then his expression hardened, and his tone shifted.

"But for the sake of the latter, I do not mind wielding slaughter!"

The Xuanyuan Sword Spirit said, "Very good. Time is pressing, so there is no need for the remaining trials. Consider yourself to have passed the test of the heart. Go receive the true Xuanyuan Divine Sword!"

Lin Feng: "..."

As he stood there dazed, humanity in that battlefield of corpses and seas of blood slew every demon and monster, returned in triumph, and received the praise of the masses. A scene of peace and prosperity unfolded.

Just then.

This world began to twist. The sun, moon, stars, mountains, rivers, grass, trees, and all else rapidly fused together.

A moment later, the entire world transformed into a palm-sized golden sphere and shot toward him with a whoosh.

Lin Feng's vision blurred. A sudden stabbing pain struck his Baihui acupoint, followed by boundless energy raging through his body. Excruciating pain spread through every nerve ending, like ten thousand blades scraping his bones.

"Aah—"

The agony was so unbearable that he could not help crying out.

Just then.

An overwhelming, tyrannical pressure descended without warning.

Like crashing waves, it surged in from all directions, crushing down with the force of mountains and seas.

At that moment, the boundless energy within his body also grew even more turbulent and violent.

With both assaulting him from within and without, Lin Feng instantly understood what it meant for life to be worse than death.

Inside his body, his meridians burst apart, and his flesh and cells ruptured.

Outside, that overwhelming pressure was no mere ornament either. It bore down on him almost tangibly, making his bones crackle as his skin split and flesh tore.

The horrifying pain passed through his skin, meridians, bones, muscles, blood vessels... and finally reached the reflex zones of his brain's central nervous system. Lin Feng felt as if even his nerve endings were trembling.

As time passed, both the boundless energy within him and the overwhelming pressure outside grew increasingly powerful.

But Lin Feng did not give up. His teeth ground together with sharp cracks as he used every ounce of strength in his body to endure desperately.

Yet the harder he forced himself to hold on, the stronger the pressure inside and outside his body became, and the more intense his suffering grew.

Soon, Lin Feng's bones cracked, blood dyed his robe red, and he could no longer endure.

Just then, he seemed to remember something, and a gleam lit up in his eyes.

He abandoned all resistance at once, simply opening his mind completely and allowing the pressure within and without to batter his body without end.

Brave and Fearless!

Benevolent and Invincible!

At that moment, he gained a deeper understanding.

Lin Feng immersed all his consciousness within his mind, sensing everything around him through his body.

He was like an old monk in meditation, calm and composed. At this moment, all pain seemed unable to affect him any longer.

At that moment, he suddenly discovered that the energy inside and outside his body was no longer a force of attack, but a component of this world.

And he, too, was a component of this world.

The two could coexist completely.

As time flowed on.

Lin Feng's sensations changed once more. At the beginning, his body had been like a small boat, rising, falling, and rolling beneath the impact of the surging energy and pressure.

But now, he could clearly feel that the rolling amid those fluctuations had slowed. It moved in accordance with the frequency of the energy's impacts, taking on a certain rhythm.

It was as though he had completely merged into them. No matter how they struck, his body could move along with them.

Under such circumstances, the boundless energy and overwhelming pressure could no longer harm him in any way, because he was now like a drifting duckweed, changing as they changed.

At the same time, if anyone had been present, they would certainly have seen that his blood-soaked body was now giving off a faint golden radiance.

However, Lin Feng's consciousness was already wholly immersed in this world of energy, completely unaware of the condition of his body's surface.

Meanwhile, within Xuanyuan Tomb.

Emperor Xuanyuan appeared out of thin air, floating in midair. A faint smile hung on his face as he looked at Lin Feng, who stood as still as a clay statue or wooden carving while gripping the Xuanyuan Divine Sword, and nodded slightly.

Just then, a faint golden light suddenly lit up around Lin Feng.

Emperor Xuanyuan was instantly shocked. "Th-this is impossible!"

"At the beginning of the fusion, what the Xuanyuan Divine Sword releases is Heaven and Earth Power. This little fellow is merely at the Cultivation Disciple level—how could he possibly fuse with it?"

"With me here, nothing is impossible."

As the words fell, a woman in white stepped out of the void.

She glanced at the meditating Lin Feng, then turned to Emperor Xuanyuan with a faint smile. "Your ten-thousand-year wish will be fulfilled before long."

"What do you mean?" Emperor Xuanyuan looked at the woman in white in confusion.

"Take a look at what that is first." With that, the woman in white pointed at the space above Lin Feng's head...