At that moment, the Sword Qi throughout Ye Lin's body boiled out of control, forming countless tiny sword gleams as fine as ox hairs yet incomparably sharp around him. They whirled through the air, carving countless deep marks into the black boulder beneath him. Even the spring water flowing past was silently severed into finer threads.
Just as Ye Lin struggled with all his might to adapt to this utterly penetrating true intent, feeling his entire philosophy of the sword overturned and remolded, the third—and deepest, most terrifying—surge of intent slowly descended.
It had no concrete form, not even an action as clearly directed as Severance or Penetration.
It was more like a state, a result.
If Severance was the process, and Penetration the path, then this third intent was the end itself.
It was not the nothingness brought by destruction, but a more absolute absence.
Beneath the shroud of this intent, Ye Lin felt his thoughts, his consciousness, even his very existence slowly fading away.
He was not being killed, but erased.
Like using an eraser to wipe lines from paper—the lines vanished, while the paper remained.
Yet the fact and meaning of those lines having ever existed were erased along with them.
This intent acted upon an even more fundamental level. What it brought was not ruins after destruction, but a blankness in which nothing had ever existed.
Before it, any defense, any evasion, any thought of resistance seemed laughable and meaningless.
Because the moment the thought of resistance arose, that thought itself seemed to begin dissolving.
This was the ultimate sword beyond the concepts of victory and defeat, life and death—the final question and answer the sword path gave to existence when it reached its end.
"Hiss."
Ye Lin sucked in a sharp breath, and threads of