"Die!!!"
Iron Hammer raised the broken half of the handle above his head and surged up from one knee.
The faint light gathering around the broken handle flared to its brightest in the final instant.
He swung it down with all his strength.
That swing held every year he had spent before the anvil.
The clear ring of iron beneath each blow of his hammer.
The instant when searing heat and bitter cold mingled as white smoke rose from each quenching.
And the warmth of his master's palm when that man, who had spent a lifetime teaching him in silence that smithing was cultivation, handed him this hammer for the last time.
"Nine Smithing Forms, Ninth Form: Return to the Void."
The broken handle collided with the pillar of flame at the center of the Arena.
In that instant, every crack accumulated over all the previous battles lit up across the Arena's barrier walls.
The cracks erupted from every part of the barrier at once, forming a dense web of fractures.
Every cultivator in the stands felt a violent tremor beneath their feet. Those below the Third Heaven Quasi-Saint Realm had to drive their protective laws with all their strength to stay upright.
Above the Arena, the chains of law snapped into countless fragments at the same instant, scattering in every direction.
The blow swept the Arena's entire structure of laws clean, leaving an absolute blank.
Yet the Arena itself remained indestructible.
When the light faded, the broken handle in Iron Hammer's hand had snapped in two.
Ash-gray remnants of law still drifted slowly from the break.
A streak of blue-white flame had pierced his chest. Where the wound emerged from his back, tiny flames burned along its edges.
Each flicker of flame widened the wound a little more.
He