"Eat shit! Beichen Sword Sect's Profound Heaven Sword Method, Rebooted Edition: Rising-and-Falling Form, Golden Core-Enhanced Version!"
The masked boy in Daoist robes, dressed in black and holding an iron baton, leaped into the air in a single bound.
That was the very moment Shi Kai of E Shenyu first saw Qingyue of Ink Bamboo Mountain.
Shi Kai had been born on a lonely island in the Canglan Sea, spending his days among sandpipers, sea crocodiles, and flying fish. He was a boy who'd chased waves and split the surf beneath the sunset on golden beaches. The first time he left the island, he saw just how vast the world was—and what a young hero looked like.
In ordinary times, even if you were Foundation Established at sixteen and could refine blade aura in half a month, you were still just an uncut gem that attracted attention. And if you weren't pure of heart and halfway decent as a person, someone could blow your head off with a single punch at any moment.
A true young hero's debut, the kind that made his name known throughout the world, was to charge in with one great leap, bring his baton crashing down—and have a Golden Core expert leap in front of it just to get cut.
For many years afterward, Shi Kai would find himself recalling the opening of that sword duel, asking himself over and over:
Why had Puxiang abandoned his magic treasure and lunged to catch that disc?
"Die!"
Li Fan brought his iron baton down, striking Puxiang squarely on the exposed cervical vertebrae as he lunged to catch the disc.
The iron baton with the bulging eyes and white forehead, charged with Golden Core-level Sword Qi, came down with tremendous force. One blow broke Puxiang's neck and sent his