"Cough, cough."
Wu Yan stood three yards in front of her.
More than half the primordial law patterns around him had shattered. Cracks spread across his skin from his neck to his waist, and fine, rainbow-colored fragments of law seeped from every one.
His face was almost translucent with pallor. Though he stood straight, his chest rose and fell far more sharply than normal.
He looked at Liu Qingran, kneeling on one knee. The warmth in his eyes had long since vanished, leaving only a cold, appraising gaze.
"Can you still stand?"
His voice carried a trace of hoarse mockery.
Liu Qingran did not answer.
She merely lowered her head, looked at the cracked white jade fan in her palm, and slowly closed her fingers.
The fracture running through the entire fan abruptly stopped spreading as she tightened her grip. A new golden sheen began to glow along its edges.
It was not the black and white of yin and yang, but a form of law she had never revealed to anyone.
She released the fan with her left hand, gripped its handle with her right, and held it across her chest.
Then her right hand began to squeeze.
She folded the fan inward, compressing it, closing it.
The broken ribs crackled in her palm as she crushed the white jade fan inch by inch, melting it down and forging it anew.
The fragments did not scatter. Wrapped in her power of law, they slowly fused into a new shape.
A short sword.
Its blade was jade from end to end, with streams of gold, black, and white law-light flowing through its translucent body.
It had no solid cutting edge. Instead, a layer of constantly vibrating air formed its blade, slicing hair-thin marks into the surrounding chains of law as