Divine Art! Thread Play! Road Cut Off! Divine Sword!

"What road?"

"The road ahead of martial arts!"

For the first time, the Red Dust Envoy's voice showed a flicker of emotion—a fervor bordering on devotion.

"With your talent, you will soon sense that unseen limitation. But the Sacred Cult is different. The Cult Master's strength rivals that of a Heavenly Being, and he knows the true secrets of martial arts. Only by joining us can you witness the true pinnacle of martial arts."

"Well? Are you willing to join our Sacred Cult?"

Zhang Chu fell silent for a moment.

From what the other man had said, he vaguely sensed that once martial arts reached a certain stage, there seemed to be some inexplicable restriction, some "necessary condition" that was missing.

Was this phenomenon called the road ahead being cut off?

Still, what the hell did that have to do with him?

He was a man of Fate with a system by his side. What did some damn restriction have to do with him?

"Sorry, I'm not interested in you people."

"Ah, what a pity. You will regret this." The Red Dust Envoy let out a long sigh, his voice carrying genuine regret.

Before his words had faded, a sudden change erupted!

The Red Dust Envoy's figure abruptly blurred. In the next instant, he appeared directly ten meters in front of Zhang Chu!

A pale hand stretched out from beneath the gray robe, its palm gathering an eerie vortex as it struck toward Zhang Chu's chest!

This palm strike was incredibly fast. Before its palm wind even arrived, one could already feel a cold, gloomy, resentful aura.

Even more terrifyingly, the strike contained some kind of spiritual attack. All manner of negative emotions surged forth like a tidal wave.

"Only this much?" Zhang Chu suddenly frowned. This strike looked powerful, yet it was exceedingly weak.

At the same time, he thrust out his palm!

There was nothing fancy about this palm strike, merely a simple straight slap, yet as it flew out, Gang wind howled around it.

Fist and palm collided! There was no earth-shaking boom, only a dull pfft.

The Red Dust Envoy's body flew backward like a rag doll, crashing heavily onto the ground thirty meters away.

His mask shattered, revealing the utterly ordinary face of a middle-aged man. He no longer moved.

"Dead?"

"Just like that?"

Everyone was stunned, staring at the Red Dust Envoy's corpse on the ground with faces full of disbelief.

That was a Red Dust Envoy under the Demonic Cult's Dao Master of Emotion, a peerless expert—yet Zhang Chu had killed him with one palm strike?

"Hm?" Zhang Chu's brows furrowed tightly.

He had indeed struck the other man with his palm, and he had indeed felt the man's heart meridians shatter.

But it had been too easy. How could a Red Dust Envoy who had made him feel he was an expert possibly be so weak?

More importantly, his merit had not increased!

Just then, Tu Xiong's expression changed drastically. He shouted sharply, "Not good! Daoist Priest, be careful! The Dao Master of Emotion's supreme art is the most bizarre of all. The one who died was not the real Red Dust Envoy!"

Almost at the exact moment Tu Xiong finished speaking—

The abnormality arose again!

At the outskirts of Sword Forging Manor, another gray figure slowly emerged from the shadows.

The same gray robe, the same scarlet mask, even the same walking posture.

"Fine palm art!" the newly appeared Red Dust Envoy said. His voice remained hollow, like a ghostly specter from hell.

"If that palm strike had landed solidly, even an expert at the late True Gang Realm would have been seriously wounded. This body only possessed the strength of the middle True Gang Realm, so you destroyed it."

The new Red Dust Envoy lowered his head to look at the dead one, his voice carrying a trace of regret.

Zhang Chu's pupils contracted slightly.

He saw it clearly.

At first, he had not noticed.

Countless threads as thin as hair were connected to the dead Red Dust Envoy's body. Those threads were nearly transparent and could barely be seen only from certain angles.

They extended outward from the Red Dust Envoy's body, their other ends disappearing into the void, connected to some unknown place.

Even stranger, as the Red Dust Envoy moved, those threads trembled faintly as well.

As though they were controlling a marionette!

"You can actually turn Gang Qi into threads and control a person's flesh like a puppet. The one I killed just now was merely a puppet you secretly controlled with Gang Qi threads?"

"Hahaha, little friend, you do have a discerning eye."

The new Red Dust Envoy laughed. "This is a pared-down divine art passed down by the Dao Master of Emotion, called Thread Play."

"With my own Gang Qi, I condense red threads to control living things, dead things, and puppets beneath heaven and earth. The puppets are linked to my aura and move like extensions of my limbs. They cannot be killed clean."

Zhang Chu could not help but feel astonished.

It reminded him of Yuan Hui.

What that man had learned had also been a pared-down supreme art.

"Another pared-down version. The Flesh Dao Master's supreme art, the Six Storehouse Scripture of Devouring Heaven, Consuming Earth, Sea of Blood, was already bizarre beyond measure in its pared-down form. By devouring the inner force and Gang Qi of others, it could grant immunity to all damage for a short time."

"And now, the Dao Master of Emotion's supreme art, the Mountain Weeps Earth Laments Red Dust Thread Slash—its pared-down Thread Play can actually create countless duplicates like crafting puppets. The Demonic Cult's martial arts really are evil to the extreme!"

"Cannot be killed clean? Zhang does not believe it."

As his words fell, Zhang Chu raised his hand and struck out with his palm.

This palm strike was faster and more powerful than the previous one, carrying around thirty percent of his strength.

It smashed fiercely into the other man's chest!

Boom!

With a deafening blast, the Red Dust Envoy's body instantly burst apart, turning into red mist that scattered into nothingness.

Only a single red Gang Qi thread flashed through the air before Zhang Chu's True Gang shredded it apart.

But this was only the beginning!

One Red Dust Envoy after another suddenly sprang out from all around.

Each time they appeared, the red mist in their palms transformed into countless scarlet streamers that swept toward Zhang Chu like a canopy covering the sky, sealing off all his Escape Routes.

Without even looking, Zhang Chu's palm wind transformed into an impenetrable wall of wind. Every time a palm landed upon a puppet, one puppet became a cloud of blood mist.

Yet these puppets seemed impossible to kill clean.

The moment one was killed here, another would spring out over there. Scarlet Gang Qi threads interwove in midair into a dense net, so tightly packed that it was difficult to discern with the naked eye.

At this sight, the gathered heroes all turned pale with terror.

They knew Zhang Chu's strength was extraordinary.

But they had never imagined it would be extraordinary to such a degree!

Those red figures might have been puppets, but they were still genuine True Gang Realm experts. Every single one was a grandmaster!

Yet none of those experts who rushed forward one after another could withstand a single palm strike from Zhang Chu. They died in an instant!

"Too... too terrifying..."

Lei Potian swallowed hard.

"With Daoist Priest Zhang's strength, even if he claimed to be invincible beneath True Gang, few would dare deny it!"

"Can this still count as a Human Ranking prodigy? Even martial arts grandmasters at the absolute peak of the top ten on the Earth Ranking would be no more than this, would they?"

Long Tu and the others stood to one side, exchanging glances. They wanted to step forward to help, yet there was simply no way to intervene.

The Red Dust Envoy puppets' attacks were incomparably wicked. With their strength, a moment of carelessness would get them killed.

Going up to help would only create trouble.

Rumble!!...

Just then, a thunderous explosion rang out ahead!

A powerful torrent of air erupted, sweeping in all directions in an instant. Apart from Deng Wuzong and Tu Xiong, the two True Gang Grandmasters, everyone else staggered backward.

Those Jianghu martial artists farther away with weaker cultivation were even thrown to the ground and blown several meters away.

The fire cauldron at Sword Forging Manor, which had burned for decades, was blasted apart with a bang!

Only after the smoke and dust dispersed did everyone see clearly.

In the vast plaza of Sword Forging Manor, an enormous pit three meters deep had been blasted open by an immense force.

The Red Dust Envoy lay in the deep pit.

His entire body had turned into a mangled mass of blood and flesh.

Zhang Chu leaped into the air and landed at the edge of the pit. He rolled his neck, a satisfied expression appearing on his face.

"That was truly satisfying. Where's the next one?"

Ever since he had made his name, he had basically killed his opponents with a single palm strike. Never had he fought as satisfyingly as he had today.

The other side was like a swarm of fearless locusts—impossible to kill clean, impossible to finish off—and it made him feel utterly exhilarated.

But the moment he said this—

The entire scene became so silent that a needle dropping could be heard!

Looking at Zhang Chu ahead, completely uninjured and wearing a thoroughly satisfied expression, everyone's eyelids twitched uncontrollably.

What kind of monster was this?

These were the Twelve Red Dust Envoys beneath the Dao Master of Emotion! Who in the Jianghu did not turn pale at their mere mention? Yet he had not killed enough and wanted them to keep sending puppet duplicates!

And judging by Zhang Chu's bearing, the terrifying aura of frigid flame around him surged endlessly, as though he never knew fatigue!

"There are no more. This is the last one..." At that moment, a weak voice sounded from within the deep pit.

Perhaps because the sight before them was too shocking and the surroundings too quiet, the voice was exceptionally clear.

Zhang Chu crouched down and looked at the mangled thing in the pit. Curious, he asked, "Oh? You're not dead yet?"

"Soon, soon. I'll die any moment now..." the mangled Red Dust Envoy said with a sigh.

"The puppets I brought this time were all at the True Gang Realm. I thought I could easily take away the sword embryo, but I did not expect to encounter you. In today's battle, you won."

"Young man, we will meet again..."

After saying that, the mangled thing in the pit began to rot rapidly, like a corpse that had been dead for many years.

A wisp of red thread floated out from the corpse and instantly shot northward, moving too quickly for anyone to stop.

Zhang Chu watched the red thread vanish into the distance, just about to attempt to track it when shouts suddenly came from behind him.

"Manor Lord, something's wrong!"

"The Divine Sword... the Divine Sword is gone!"