As he spoke, light flared brightly from Wang Xian's fingertips.
He shouted coldly, "There are some things I can abandon! And there are some things I must protect!"
Before his voice had even faded, the light at his fingertip transformed into a thread of Sword Qi as fine as a strand of hair, yet condensed to the extreme.
This strand of Sword Qi had no overwhelming momentum, no dazzling radiance. It simply flew out silently in that instant.
It skimmed through the black-mist-filled void, pierced through the demonic aura surging from the fiendish bird, passed through its flailing talons, and pierced its shrieking iron beak—
As if passing through layer upon layer of silent water.
Then it lightly touched the fiendish bird between the brows.
Time seemed to freeze for an instant.
The fiendish bird's wingbeat halted, and the savage light in its eyes froze. A tiny hole, nearly impossible to see, appeared between its brows.
The next moment—
"Pfft."
Black-and-white Sword Qi emerged from the back of the fiendish bird's head, carrying out a thread of pure demonic essence.
The fiendish bird's enormous body began to disintegrate. Countless cracks spread from the tiny hole between its brows, radiating across its entire body like a spiderweb.
In the blink of an eye, it let out a silent wail. Its wings drooped helplessly, and its demonic aura collapsed into black mist that filled the sky.
At the center of the black lotus, the demonic eye trembled violently, while countless blood-vein-like cracks appeared in its sclera.
"Impossible!"
"You... what kind of sword intent is this... This isn't Sword Qi at all—"
The sun and moon in Wang Xian's eyes gradually subsided, returning to deep black pupils. He gazed at the collapsing fiendish bird, then looked toward the astonished demonic eye in the