"I told you, you can't strike me."
Liu Beixuan slowly turned around and looked at Sword Fiend, who was less than a foot away.
He could clearly see the shock and unwillingness in Sword Fiend's blood-red pupils.
"Did you think I didn't know you had hidden a backup beneath the chains?"
With a flick of his fan, he sent Sword Fiend staggering back several steps. Then he leisurely fanned himself, looking utterly calm and composed.
"I deliberately let you get close. I just wanted to see what other tricks you had up your sleeve."
"And the result... that was it?"
Sword Fiend steadied himself. Another white scorch mark had appeared on his dark-golden flesh.
He silently looked at Liu Beixuan. The killing intent in those blood-red eyes remained thick, but beneath it now lay a trace of wariness.
The man in white before him appeared arrogant and overbearing, as though no one else existed in his eyes, yet every move he made had precisely countered Sword Fiend's killing techniques.
The Azure Nether Jade Pendant restrained his Myriad Spirits Baleful Qi, the transformations of the White Jade Mountains-and-Rivers Fan restrained his Sword Dao Law, and even his close-range assassination had been predicted in advance.
"You truly are the strongest opponent I have ever encountered."
Sword Fiend slowly spoke, his voice so low it sounded like an echo rising from the depths of the earth.
"But did you think this was all I could do?"
With that, he suddenly drove the Long Sword into his own chest.
Black blood surged forth, staining the entire blade red.
That blood contained Sword Fiend's most fundamental power—the entirety of the Killing Intent and cultivation he had accumulated over ten thousand years.
The Long Sword drank its master's blood, and the bloody runes on its blade