The blade tip pierced through his knee, grinding his kneecap to pieces.
Yun Feiyang pitched forward violently, his forehead slamming into the Arena with a dull thud, yet he still clenched his teeth and uttered not a sound.
Barnes rose to his feet and walked behind him.
He raised that broken blade formed of flesh and blood, aiming its tip at the point where Yun Feiyang's cervical spine met his skull.
Then he lowered his head, bringing his mouth close to Yun Feiyang's ear, his voice suppressed to the barest whisper.
"What a pity. If you had truly unleashed the sixth sword, the one who would've died wouldn't have been you, but me."
"Ah, what a pity..."
The blade tip fell.
It plunged through the gap at the seventh cervical vertebra, passed through the medulla oblongata and brainstem, and protruded half an inch from before Yun Feiyang's brow.
His body abruptly went rigid for an instant. The joints of his fingers spasmed as they clawed desperately into the Arena floor, his nails scraping several white marks across the ground.
Then that taut strength gradually ebbed away, and the fingers gripping the floor loosened one by one.
At last, his entire body went limp against the ground as though every bone had been pulled from it, no longer showing the slightest movement.
His body was ruined.
His Primordial Spirit had been completely shattered.
Barnes pulled out the blade tip, leaving a bloody hole that pierced straight through Yun Feiyang's neck.
Dark-red blood gushed from it, soaking a large patch of ground beneath him.
His straw hat had long since been sliced away by the claw wind to who knew where, and his disheveled black hair covered half his face.
On the exposed half, the corner of his lips still bore that