The wind and snow cut like knives.
Between heaven and earth, only one color remained—white. Boundless white, icy white, lifeless white.
Snowflakes drifted down from the leaden sky, as if Heaven were scattering paper offerings across the world.
And now, upon this canvas of pure white, one shocking splash of red after another was blooming.
Wang Xian stood amid the wind and snow, his eyes blindfolded with black cloth, his robes fluttering.
No one saw how he had struck.
Or rather, they had seen it, but dared not believe their eyes.
In that flash of lightning—truly, in the blink of an eye, faster than an ordinary blink by a third—Wang Xian's figure suddenly twisted.
That was no evasion.
It was a counterattack.
A flash of swordlight burst forth!
The swordlight came so suddenly, so ferociously, that no one present even had time to feel danger. They only saw a sudden blaze before their eyes.
It was as if a bolt of lightning had split the blizzard and pierced straight into the depths of their eyes.
"BOOM—!"
Only then did the ear-splitting explosion arrive, crashing hard against everyone's eardrums.
They felt the ground trembling beneath their feet. The ice and snow cracked with a series of sharp snaps, fissures spreading in every direction like a spiderweb.
Wang Xian was no longer where he had stood.
He drifted down several zhang away. Not a trace of blood stained his robes, and not even a snowflake clung to him.
He simply stood there quietly, his right hand hanging naturally at his side, his sword angled toward the ground. A bead of blood slid slowly down its blade.
Drip.
The bead fell onto the snow and bloomed into a tiny red flower.
And where Wang Xian had just stood—in that patch of empty space—an