Mastering the Sword

Trading life for life was not a method; it was the goal. This was the foundation of Yu Ci's swordplay, honed day after day, year after year. If he could somehow avoid dying, how could he fail to unleash a sword technique where eye, hand, heart, and courage melted seamlessly into one?

Daoist Yan did not understand this, but he was truly and utterly flustered. The sword light arrived, and the chilling wind blowing against his face made him nearly close his eyes right then and there.

"Get lost!"

A roar erupted. Driven to a frenzy by his fury, Daoist Yan unleashed a killing blow. He violently shook the Nine Yang Talisman Sword in his hand, and a spark shot out, immediately swelling rapidly. The firelight surged within it, reaching an extreme state of instability.

Seeing this, Yu Ci did not hesitate in the slightest, instantly pulling back and retreating. He had barely backed away ten feet when crimson light scorched his eyes, and a searing wave of fire swept across. The air expanded abruptly, and amidst a booming explosion, he was flung far away, crashing straight into a large tree and halting his momentum. The surging wave of fire pressed in right after, and caring nothing for his image, he scrambled and crawled behind the large tree, curling up as tightly as he could to barely withstand it.

Before long, an acre's worth of the mountain forest battlefield had turned into a sea of fire, thick smoke rising in all directions and heatwaves assaulting people, and this area was still expanding.

Daoist Yan's breathing appeared slightly erratic. As the mountain wind and heatwaves blew past, the hair bun on his head suddenly came undone, his hair falling loose and making him look thoroughly disheveled. He stared at the tree, which had been burned half-charred, his eyes blood-red.

Just a hair's breadth...

Had he not unleashed the fire talisman in time to deflect the sword momentum, the Seven Star Talisman Sword likely would have pierced straight through his forehead. By then, everything—the Shrimp Whisker Grass, the Chunyang Sword, everything—would have been over. Even having escaped it just now, with his hair bun picked apart, it was a supreme humiliation. Daoist Yan was almost ready to burst from the anger blazing in his heart.

He came from an extraordinary background. Although his family fortunes had declined, leaving him unable to restore the glory of his ancestors, he was still a Spirit cultivator, a victor standing upon the path to longevity. How could he allow a mere junior to push him to such a state?

Right at that moment, Yu Ci poked his head out from behind the large tree, locking gazes with him directly. Daoist Yan suddenly discovered that within Yu Ci's pitch-black pupils, a cluster of fire was actually burning as well—not hatred, fear, or other miscellaneous thoughts, but a delight in the midst of it all, an unceasing pursuit of new thrills, or perhaps the intoxication of deep wine from which one could not extricate oneself.

He gave a violent start, feeling a chill crawl straight from his tailbone up to the crown of his head, suppressing even the raging fire in his heart by half. A single thought flashed through his mind:

A scourge. In the future, he will surely be a scourge!

Finish him with that move!

The killing intent in Daoist Yan's heart surged accordingly, but instead of stepping forward, he performed a strange movement.

With his hair still hanging loose, he pulled his sword back before his chest, his eyes even half-closing. As he adjusted his breathing, the sword body slowly lowered into a horizontal position.

Yu Ci panted behind the tree. The recent round of sword-fighting had nearly drained all his strength; his true qi was on the verge of exhaustion, and his injuries were not light. Yet his state was astonishingly good. Ever since he was thirteen, he had been accustomed to wandering on the brink of life and death, and such experiences had not worn away his courage—instead, they made his spirit grow increasingly elated.

Ever since entering the Bright Aperture Upper Stage, he had not encountered such a Life and Death Line situation in a long time. He even felt a sense of nostalgia. The moment it stopped, he felt unsatisfied, as if a wondrous power were welling up to replace his consumed true qi, pounding against his heart and urging him to rush out once more to battle Daoist Yan for three hundred rounds.

Therefore, he poked his head out from behind the tree to look, and through the distorted heatwaves, he happened to witness the entire process of Daoist Yan closing his eyes and positioning his sword.

At this moment, the two of them were nearly thirty feet apart, which logically speaking was a relatively safe distance. Yet when that sharp blade pointed toward his head, for no reason at all, his heart suddenly began to pound wildly—just like that moment by the campfire before Daoist Yan swung his sword earlier. Only this time, without the stimulus of any smell, relying entirely on a vague intuition, he threw himself down along the direction his body was leaning. Simultaneously, out of sheer instinct, he crossed the Seven Star Talisman Sword before his chest.

Before he even touched the ground, his palm suddenly grew hot, as if the Seven Star Talisman Sword had blocked something. But immediately following that, a pain struck his heart, and he involuntarily spat a mouthful of fresh blood. Swept by the corner of his eye, this blood-forged talisman sword—which had just gone toe-to-toe with the Nine Yang Talisman Sword without falling behind—was now broken in two, the flying sword-tip bursting with a bang in mid-air to transform into a pale red mist of blood.

Only then did a long, piercing hiss drill into his ears, resembling a red-hot branding iron plunged into ice water. Distinguishing neither cold nor heat, the only thing that could be distinguished was that outward-radiating sharpness, fierce enough to pierce through all obstacles and impossible to withstand.

What kind of method is this? It looks like catalyzed Sword Qi, but its power is greater by more than ten times?

Carrying this confusion, Yu Ci crashed onto the ground. At this moment, a strong odor finally penetrated his senses—the smell of scorched air, and even more so, the aura of death.

His sensory reaction, an attribute he always took pride in, was slower by a full breath of time. Had he not been driven by intuition, he would likely have been pierced right through by that formless Sword Qi, dead beyond all saving!

Yu Ci forced himself to raise his head and look. Daoist Yan's state at the moment was extremely bizarre. Although he had succeeded in his strike on the first attempt, he still maintained that sword-holding posture. The crimson sword body did not radiate blinding light as before, appearing much more restrained, and the sword-tip drooped slightly downward, still locking onto his head.

Of course Yu Ci wanted to dodge away from where the sword-tip pointed, but the lingering vibrations within his visceral organs had not yet faded, and he could not move at all for the moment. Exerting every ounce of his strength, he only managed to shift his body a mere few inches to the side, while in the distance, the Nine Yang Talisman Sword similarly adjusted its angle.

At that exact moment, he saw Daoist Yan's eyes. Those saucer-like eyes possessed not a shred of conscious light; the pupils were merely dilated unconsciously, hollow and ash-gray, as if he had lost his soul. Yet Yu Ci distinctly felt that Daoist Yan was still staring at him, casting a beam of "light" upon him through some incomprehensible method.

The sensation was so vivid that even inside the blazing inferno of the firefield, the tactile feel of that "light" and its scorching heat far surpassed the surrounding heatwaves, feeling like an iron needle burned cherry-red, piercing straight through his marrow.

I'm going to be killed by him!

Intuition and reason declared this in unison. Yet at this very moment, Yu Ci's sensations were exceedingly strange. His chest felt as though a ladle of boiling oil had been poured over it, scalding him with a painful heat, but that was certainly not the taste of fear.

This burning pain served no other purpose than to force his eyes wide open, compelling him to carve out a path of survival from this abruptly descending dead end.

Yu Ci stared at Daoist Yan. He could be certain that this person was inevitably about to unleash a killing blow identical to the previous one, except that the interval before and after was undeniably a bit too long, and his power-gathering posture was full of flaws. If he still had the strength to charge right now, he would have rushed forward without the slightest hesitation to chop off that vicious brute's dog-head. But right now, his rate of physical recovery clearly could not keep pace with the opponent's speed of gathering power.

The two were thirty feet apart. In Yu Ci's hand was only a broken half of the Seven Star Talisman Sword; even if his arms were ten times longer, he could not reach the enemy's person. Yet to that formless Sword Qi, distance was completely no obstacle.

This was an inextricable knot. However, he wanted to live. Therefore, all problems boiled down to a single sentence: before Daoist Yan could unleash his Sword Qi, he would slaughter him first!

When it came to matters of life and death, everything simply became simple instead. What he excelled at most was precisely this kind of choice!

He knew not how he exerted his strength, but the broken half of the Seven Star Talisman Sword flew out of his hand!

At that very moment, he saw the sharp tip of the Nine Yang Talisman Sword's blade glow with a nearly dazzling brilliance.

Yu Ci did not ponder what consequence would follow if the formless Sword Qi struck, nor did he consider the lethality of throwing a broken sword without any aim. At this moment, every line of thought in his mind snapped. Only a single, utterly ungrounded thought remained in his head:

That Daoist ahead—slaughter him!