Star Rails Piercing the Sky, Dark Cicadas Vanishing (Part II)

Once the sword was released, Yu Ci felt as though he were in the center of a crystal-clear furnace. All manner of inner demons, negative emotions like the Six Desires Turbid Stream, poured into this space, all of them boiling away within the roaring flames. Refined and transmuted through this process, no matter what impurities or filth were present, they were stripped of their external properties and purified into a sharp, violent aura. Outwardly, the result was faint as smoke, seemingly existent yet not, and furthermore commanded by the sword intent, humming aloud.

Yet this was not a simple, one-time smelting and gathering. Instead, it was carried out continuously from start to finish—both before the sword-force was unleashed and after the sword was cast.

Taking the previous process as a cyclical model, it used the sword radiance "produced" just moments before as raw material, driving the smelting process onward again and again, infinitesimal yet infinitesimal, pure yet pure, seemingly without end.

Yu Ci did not know if this had an end, but since he was driving this sword intent, his mind and spirit naturally merged as one with this endless smelting. They set boundaries for it, yet it always hovered at the very edge of those limits—as long as he could master it, there was no harm. Yet such smelting was too astonishing, constantly threatening to break through his control, on the verge of breaking yet unbroken, walking a dangerous edge.

Under this state, the sharpness of the sword intent continuously increased, and Yu Ci's mastery limit constantly broke through, forming a situation of "endurance and fracture growing together." Yu Ci was right in the midst of it, holding onto a delicate and dangerous balance.

This balance was broken in an instant the moment he locked onto his target and