Golden light seeped from the wooden sword into the cracks in the ground, then slowly crept up along the edge of the stone platform, winding around Chen Wuya's fingertips. His palm trembled faintly, yet he exerted no further force, merely closing his eyes gently. That Misaligned Force that had permeated the entire battlefield had not dispersed. Instead, like a receding tide, it gathered back into his body, flowing in reverse through three thousand six hundred meridians. Every inch of true qi ran contrary to all reason, yet rebuilt itself amid collapse.
Blood Without Trace hovered in midair, the seals formed by his hands broken and incomplete. Blood dripped from his palms, tracing fine red threads through the air. He lowered his head to look at his trembling hands, then suddenly bared his teeth in a grin. His laughter was hoarse, like torn silk. The next instant, he plunged all ten fingers into his chest, ripping through flesh and tearing out a searing mass of crimson essence blood.
"Blood Sacrifice Reincarnation—!"
He roared, his voice no longer sounding human. That mass of essence blood exploded, becoming a towering tide of blood that swept up the remaining crimson mist and gathered into a rapidly spinning vortex overhead. Its center was deep as an abyss, the air around it twisting as though it would swallow the entire stone platform. This was the most forbidden move of the Blood Demon Art: using one's own vital essence as the catalyst to detonate all accumulated blood energy. Wherever it passed, all things burned.
Tuoba Lie stood at the cliff's edge, his pupils contracting sharply. He recognized this move. Back then, the Northern Desert Patriarch had used this very technique to burn thirty-six Central Plains masters to ash, only to be reduced to dust himself by the