"Whew, whew, whew~"
Ni Lue panted harshly, half-kneeling on the ground as blood continuously dripped from the corner of his mouth.
In the royal palace hall, the gleaming marble floor had already been stained with blood. Beads of blood bounced and slowly rolled, turning into trickling streams that spread through every corner of the hall.
Where the blood was thickest, the once-unrivaled King of the Great Fall lay motionless on the ground. A longsword was lodged in his chest, its blade crystalline and thin as a cicada's wing. It was the Emperor's Sword.
"Urgh..."
At the side, Ni Lue suddenly spat out a mouthful of blood. It was slightly black in color and mixed with countless fragments of internal organs. Then he slowly rose, exposing a massive bloody hole in his chest. Amid the mangled flesh, stark white bones could faintly be seen.
The blood in this wound seemed to have long since run dry, but it had also drained Ni Lue of his strength. He rose slowly and with great difficulty. Even after finally standing, he could barely remain upright, his entire body shaking as though a gust of wind could blow him over.
He first looked at his right arm. This arm had previously been severed by a single stroke of the Emperor's Sword, yet it had now been replaced by a metal arm. The limb reflected the light, giving off a cold, hard sensation. Its surface was smooth, without a trace of dust or blood. Had Ni Lue not said so, no one would have imagined what a brutal battle this arm had just endured, having been hacked and slashed hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. Without this arm, Ni Lue would already have been separated from head to body.
As for the longsword that had fiercely