Severing Toward the Star Dou Forest... An Arm Severed...

Flender's expression changed drastically.

His battle instincts screamed madly in his mind,

Retreat!

Retreat now!

You'll die!

Yet he could not move,

That Sword Intent had already locked onto him,

No matter where he fled, it would strike first.

The youth before him still wore that lazy look,

Standing crookedly,

A trace of drunkenness lingering at the corners of his eyes,

Yet the thread-thin Sword Intent at his fingertips made every hair on Flender's body stand on end,

Numbing him from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

It was the same lethal threat he only felt when facing a Titled Douluo,

The icy sensation of Death pressing a scythe to his throat,

Yet this was not Soul Power suppression,

It had no weight,

No pressure,

It was so faint it was almost impossible to perceive,

Yet it was more terrifying than a Titled Douluo.

Flender clearly realized,

This sword was not cutting his body,

Not his Soul Power,

Not his defenses,

But the thread connecting his life to this world.

Fang Fan lightly drew his finger forward,

The movement was simple and casual,

Like drawing a horizontal line with a pen,

His wrist shifted slightly;

Or like brushing a speck of dust from a windowsill,

Light and effortless,

Completely unconcerned.

But in Flender's eyes,

As that arc traced out,

The world behind the youth suddenly darkened.

Not darkness in the physical sense,

The moon still hung in the sky,

The stars still glittered,

But an indescribable existence slowly emerged behind Fang Fan,

Not a Martial Soul Avatar,

Not a soul ring projection,

Vast and profound like the stars of the cosmos,

Condensing the weight of the entire starry sky into that wisp of Sword Intent.

Flender felt as tiny as dust,

While that sword was a hurricane capable of sweeping away the Milky Way.

An invisible Sword Intent burst forth,

Without a sound,

Heaven and earth seemed sucked into a vacuum,

The wind stopped,

The waves of wheat froze,

The moonlight stood still.

Then,

"Clang!"

The sword cry exploded,

Not the crisp ring of metal,

Not the shriek of sword qi,

But the primordial roar from when the universe first opened,

Ancient and desolate.

Wherever the sword cry passed,

The air rippled visibly,

The gravel on the official road silently turned to powder.

Flender's defenses were like paper,

The light shield formed from all his Soul Power shattered inch by inch the moment the Sword Intent arrived.

He clearly felt that Sword Intent sweep past his side,

Merely sweep past,

It did not strike him head-on,

But the residual force brushing his shoulder had already completely robbed him of his fighting strength.

"Pfft!"

An arm flew into the air,

His left arm was severed cleanly from the shoulder,

The cut was smooth as a mirror,

Blood did not gush out until the arm had flown several meters away,

Blooming into dark red flowers beneath the moonlight.

Flender stood frozen, his eyes wide,

His mouth slightly open, his pupils unfocused,

Like a soulless corpse.

He did not even feel pain; the Sword Intent was too domineering,

Even his pain nerves had been completely numbed.

That Sword Intent continued forward,

The clouds in the sky were cut in two,

The incision smooth and neat,

Moonlight poured through the gap in the clouds,

Like a fissure cleaved open by a giant axe of the gods,

Slashing toward the Star Dou Forest.

That was the direction Xiao Wu had fled.

Zhao Wuji was hurrying down the official road with Ma Hongjun and Li Yusong,

Ma Hongjun screamed with every step he took.

Suddenly, an invisible force swept past them,

Without sound or warning,

The hair on all three men stood on end. Their instinctive fear made them stop in unison and freeze in place.

Then they saw a deep sword scar silently appear in the ground,

Its cross-section was smooth as a mirror and bottomless, with soil and rock neatly rolled back.

A distant mountain,

A low mountain that had stood outside Suotuo City for many years,

Its summit still bearing an abandoned watchtower,

Was sliced through at the waist,

A clean crack opened through the center of the mountain,

Its upper half slowly slid down, crashing into the valley with a thunderous roar.

Ma Hongjun's mouth gaped wide enough to fit a fist,

He completely forgot the pain in his crotch,

His legs trembled violently,

Warm liquid ran down his pant legs.

Zhao Wuji's widened eyes reflected the mountain split in two,

His bald head gleamed with a pale bluish-white light.

Li Yusong sucked in two sharp breaths,

His thin chest rose and fell.

"This Sword Intent is too terrifying,

Could something have happened to Flender?"

Li Yusong's voice was sharp and hoarse.

"Ah... terrifying! Hurry, let's go take a look!"

Zhao Wuji grabbed Ma Hongjun by the back of his collar and sprinted forward, ignoring the fat man's pig-slaughter squeals.

When they arrived at the scene,

They saw Flender sitting collapsed on the ground,

His left arm severed cleanly,

Blood still seeped steadily from the wound,

His glasses sat crookedly, one lens cracked,

His expression blank and his pupils unfocused.

Zhao Wuji casually tossed Ma Hongjun into a rice field and rushed in front of Flender.

"Boss Flender, are you all right?"

Li Yusong crouched down, pulled bandages from his clothes, and hurriedly began wrapping the wound.

Zhao Wuji raised his head and saw the three people opposite him,

His pupils contracted sharply. One hand covered the top of his head,

While the other reflexively covered his backside.

The white-robed youth leaned his head crookedly against the shoulder of the girl in black,

The girl was moving a white jade wine flask away from his lips,

The youth still had that lazy curve at the corners of his eyes,

As though the sword strike just now had nothing to do with him.

Li Yusong also froze. The expression on his thin face shifted from shock to realization, then to helpless regret.

"You... Boss Flender,

Weren't you here to find Fang Fan and the others?

How did you end up fighting them?"

Zhao Wuji stared wide-eyed.

"They're the three little monsters who left the academy!"

"Uh... ah... oh?"

Flender slowly came back to his senses, as though struck by lightning.

The two women and one man before him,

The proud, aloof girl in the black dress,

The noble and exquisite girl in the green dress,

And the white-robed youth reeking of alcohol as he leaned against the girl's shoulder.

Zhao Wuji had said,

Level twenty-eight Hell Spirit Cat Zhu Zhuqing,

Level twenty-six Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda Ning Rongrong,

Level fifty-three Seven-Colored Light Sword Fang Fan.

Two women and one man,

A busty beauty, a flat-chested girl, and a drunkard,

Weren't they precisely the "two beautiful girls" Ma Hongjun had mentioned, plus the youth he had completely ignored?

He lowered his head to look at his empty left shoulder,

Then looked at the youth across from him, casually drinking as though nothing had happened.

He had brought three teachers out of Shrek to retain three little monsters,

Before they had even met them, they had already offended them,

Ma Hongjun had been the one to harass her first,

then he had blindly stood up for Ma Hongjun,

and even made him kneel and apologize.

Now his arm was gone, and any chance of keeping them had vanished as well.

It was all Ma Hongjun's fault,

Of all people to harass, he had to harass the woman beside a peerless prodigy protected by a Peak Douluo!

Flender felt that the stupidest thing he had ever done in his life

was making "A Soul Master who doesn't cause trouble isn't a good Soul Master" the academy motto.

His students were each better than the last at causing trouble,

but if you caused trouble, you had to be able to win the fight.

Now they had provoked a monster who did not even regard Titled Douluo as worthy of notice,

the dean had lost an arm,

and Ma Hongjun had nearly ended his bloodline.

Ma Hongjun floundered in the field, muddy water pouring into his mouth as he choked and shouted,

"Dean! Avenge me!"

But no one paid him any attention.

Flender did not even look at him, Zhao Wuji pretended not to hear, and Li Yusong focused on bandaging the wound. The three had all chosen selective deafness.

Zhu Zhuqing stood beside Fang Fan, her chest heaving violently,

her deep eyes widened several times beyond their usual size,

her full breasts rose and fell as she drew in sharp breaths.

That sword strike just now had looked ordinary and casual,

yet it had split the clouds on the horizon in two,

cleaved the distant mountain in half,

and sent a Level 78 Soul Sage and his defenses flying, severing one of his arms.

She had known Fang Fan was strong ever since the wasteland, but only now did she realize that was merely the tip of the iceberg.

Her beautiful eyes remained fixed on the sword scar extending into the mountain.

Ning Rongrong also found it utterly unbelievable,

having grown up beside Grandpa Sword,

the Seven Killing Sword was domineering and fierce, a single strike capable of changing the color of heaven and earth,

yet even Grandpa Sword had never unleashed such a strike,

It was not a matter of power, but of the realm behind it.