Hu Liena's five fingers tightened.
The hilt rested against her palm, cool yet an uncanny fit--
That fit wasn't physical. The sword's Dao charm actively enveloped her Soul Power, layer by layer, fitting together without the slightest gap.
Coolness spread from her fingertips to her wrist, then her forearm, then her shoulder.
The gaping wound in her left shoulder stopped hurting.
The cut across her cheek from the trident's blade stopped hurting, too.
It wasn't healing. The Severing Thought Sword had stripped the very notion of "pain" from her Divine Soul.
The fear was gone, too.
The suffocating feeling of being crushed by Tang San's Soul Power, the despair of being driven to the brink by the Trident--all of it had vanished.
Hu Liena lowered her head and looked at the sword.
Her face was reflected in its clear surface.
It was smeared with dust and blood, most of her hair had come loose, and grit clung to her fox ears.
She looked utterly wretched.
But the eyes reflected in the blade shone with a terrifying light.
Hum--
The Severing Thought Sword trembled gently in her hand.
The tremor carried a simple message, without words or images: a pure, utter "waiting"--waiting for her command.
Where to go.
Who to slay.
Hu Liena raised her head.
The battlefield came into startlingly sharp focus. Most of the plaza lay in ruins, its stone tiles overturned, cracks and craters everywhere.
The Spirit Hall Soul Masters were scattered around the perimeter. Some clutched their wounds; others lay sprawled on the ground, unable to get up.
In midair, two figures were locked in combat.
Bibi Dong's Rakshasa Demon Scythe swept out, trailing dark purple corrosive power, but a rough, single arm caught it by force.
Tang Hao.
After detonating five Soul Rings, Tang Hao was covered in blood. His empty sleeve flapped in the night wind where his arm had been severed, while his only remaining arm swung the Clear Sky Hammer. Every blow landed with the muffled roar of thunder.
Bibi Dong was retreating.
Not by much--half a step, a single step at a time--but she was retreating.
Hu Liena's gaze didn't linger on Bibi Dong.
Her attention had been nailed to a single sight.
The right side of the plaza. Beneath the wall.
Xie Yue lay facedown in a pile of rubble. The armor on his left shoulder had been smashed to pieces, and the wound gaped open around stark white bone. Blood had stained the surrounding stone tiles dark red.
His mouth hung open. His breathing was shallow and rapid, and his chest barely rose.
Tang Hao had done it.
One palm strike.
Just one had shattered several of her brother's ribs, sent him flying dozens of feet as he spat blood, and embedded him in a stone pillar so deeply he couldn't pull himself free.
Hu Liena had seen it with her own eyes. Every detail was carved into her mind--
Xie Yue's figure cutting in from the flank, Tang Hao's backhand strike without even turning his head, the way Xie Yue's chest had caved in beneath the sweeping force of the blow, and the blood that had sprayed far from his mouth as he slid down the stone pillar.
Something hot surged up from her chest.
It wasn't Soul Power. It was rage.
Pure, unreasoning fury.
Hum, hum, hum--
The Severing Thought Sword began to tremble violently in her hand.
Its ringing rose from a low hum to a piercing shriek, cutting across half the plaza. Even the Spirit Hall Soul Masters in the distance instinctively covered their ears.
The sword's ringing wasn't a warning.
It was an answer.
The Severing Thought Sword felt the killing intent surging in its master's chest. Every inch of its blade heated rapidly, its Dao charm spreading from the guard toward the tip as the words "Severing Thought" blazed with dazzling white light.
Hu Liena didn't hesitate.
She didn't even think.
A thought.
Her hand opened.
The Severing Thought Sword flew from her grasp.
There was no throwing motion, no windup.
The instant it left her hand, the sword vanished--not because it was too fast for the eye to follow, but because it disappeared from space itself. In less than a breath, it reappeared three feet from Tang Hao's side.
Tang Hao's reaction was already fast enough.
In his over-limit state, after detonating five Soul Rings, his perception had reached a peak unlike any he'd known.
The instant the Severing Thought Sword appeared, he sensed it--to his right, a presence of extreme danger, ten times more terrifying than Bibi Dong's Rakshasa Demon Scythe.
The Clear Sky Hammer swept across.
Too late.
The clear blade drew a thin white line through the night, almost too fine to see.
There was no sound.
No burst of light.
Not even the whistling of air being torn apart.
The silence was eerie.
The white line passed through Tang Hao's right shoulder.
Then--
An arm fell from his shoulder.
Along with the Clear Sky Hammer.
The cut was impossibly clean. The cross-sections of bone, tendons, and muscle were so smooth that not a single drop of blood fell in the first breath after the severing.
The sword qi had sealed every blood vessel along the cut at once.
One breath.
Two breaths.
The seal broke.
Blood gushed from the stump, scorching and dark red, drawing a horrifying arc through the night sky before splashing onto the ground ten feet away.
"Argh--!"
Tang Hao let out a howl that sounded nothing like a human cry.
That arm had been his last support. His left arm was long gone, and now both were severed--a Titled Douluo, a peerless powerhouse of the Clear Sky Sect, reduced to a cripple with no arms.
Without its master's Soul Power to sustain it, the Clear Sky Hammer tumbled twice through the air before crashing into the rubble along with the severed arm.
The dull impact echoed across the plaza.
The hammer lay still. So did the arm.
Tang Hao's body fell from the air and slammed into the steps before the Pope Palace, sending rubble flying.
He knelt on the ground, his empty sleeves swaying in the night wind.
Blood still poured from the stumps, pulsing out in streams and running down the cracks in the steps, gathering into a thin, dark red rivulet.
The entire battlefield froze.
Chrysanthemum Douluo Yue Guan stood with his mouth agape, unable to close it for a long time.
Ghost Douluo had collapsed in the rubble, trembling all over like a leaf.
The Spirit Hall Soul Masters around the plaza stood frozen in place.
--Clear Sky Douluo Tang Hao.
The Clear Sky Sect's patriarch, once the greatest man under heaven, the most domineering of all Titled Douluo.
His right arm had been severed with a single sword strike.
A month and a half ago, the Spirit Hall Saintess had been only level sixty-nine. Now, with a sword she'd held for fewer than ten breaths, she had struck once.
Bibi Dong hovered in midair, the Rakshasa Demon Scythe hanging at her side.
She stared at Tang Hao's empty right sleeve for three breaths.
Then she turned, her gaze landing on the woman standing in the plaza with empty hands and six fox tails held straight up.
The Severing Thought Sword had already flown back to Hu Liena's side, hovering quietly above her right shoulder. Not a drop of blood stained its blade.
Clean.
Decisive.
Bibi Dong's throat bobbed.
Hu Liena stood amid rubble and bloodstains, her chest heaving.
The fury had poured out of her the instant she swung the sword. What rushed back in now was a slight, lingering numbness--not fear after the fact, but the emptiness of no longer holding the hilt.
She looked at Tang Hao's kneeling figure on the steps.
Both his arms were gone, and blood covered the ground.
Half a month ago, she had been level sixty-nine, forced to breathe carefully in the presence of an opponent at this level.
Now, a single thought was enough to make the Severing Thought Sword cut off his arm for her.
He had given her this.
The Primordial Spirit Bead, the Fate-Suppressing Cauldron, the Severing Thought Sword--three betrothal gifts, three transformations.
They had lifted a level-sixty-nine Soul Saint, inch by inch, to the point where she could inflict a mortal wound on a Titled Douluo.
Hu Liena's fox ears twitched.
There was no time to think.
Because Tang San had gone mad.
"Father--!"
A hoarse, throat-tearing roar exploded from the other end of the plaza.
Tang San plunged the Sea God Trident into the ground. Its golden shaft sank into the rubble, and he charged madly toward Tang Hao.
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