It was as if a canopy had descended. The sword light had gone from cold as frost to seeming capable of burning me to ashes. The feeling of walking across a single-plank bridge or balancing on a tightrope vanished in an instant. Looking around, there was no longer even an inch for me to pass through, which meant my opponent had unleashed a move without a weakness. There was no possibility of evasion. Unless I had a sword move capable of breaking it, I would be completely at his mercy, with not the slightest chance of counterattacking.
I knew this was the moment when ability and technique had to clash head-on. All his moves before this had merely tested the various ways I might respond, then buried mines everywhere I might appear, like laying out a minefield. In other words, he had read my sword moves and laid an absolutely sure-hit trap for me!
So no matter how I moved now, I would have to collide head-on with his Sword Qi. Injury was unavoidable. The difference was that if I moved according to the footwork I had used before, I would inevitably step on a mine and be blown to death. But if I avoided the mines and happened upon the gate of life, I would be able to seize a thread of survival within Illuminating Heaven!
Faced with a sword technique that offered no escape and hid danger everywhere, of course I could no longer use the Nine Strange Moves!
"Sword Technique Annihilation!" I drew a deep breath and, in an instant, unleashed the first annihilation aimed at the sword path from the Nine Annihilations of the Sword Dao. With a ringing sword cry, the sword-path dissection and annihilation covering no less than the range of Illuminating Heaven surged