The instant the sword's shriek rang out, a figure appeared where Chu Mu had been standing.
Within that hundred-foot stretch, space itself was slashed into nothingness, replaced by utterly terrifying slaughter sword intent that formed a scarlet passage.
It was Li Yang!
He had just unleashed Stunning Sword Strike, intending to kill Chu Mu in an instant.
But Chu Mu had evaded it with his precognition.
The sword in his hand was not the Qianyang Core Sword. That was already a thing of the past.
Li Yang stood where he was, sword in hand. He seemed no different from an ordinary cultivator, yet the light around him twisted.
Wherever his gaze fell, space itself seemed to be slashed by invisible sword intent.
Though he wore black robes, anyone who closed their eyes to sense him would have perceived a sun compressed to its absolute limit.
Blazing, condensed, utterly yang and unyielding.
Like most cultivators who had just formed their Nascent Souls, his transformation followed the principle of "heaven and earth overturned within, not a ripple stirred without."
With eyes closed, one would not perceive Li Yang as a person, but as a sword.
A divine sword tempered and reborn through nirvana in the blazing sun, capable of cutting through anything, as though it could cleave heaven and earth apart with a single stroke.
There was no golden core in his dantian, nor a nascent soul, nor even a sword.
Yet every strand of spiritual power within it carried the Sword Dao essence of Star-Severing Moon-Splitting, filling his entire body.
Once, Li Yang's dantian had been a sword-nurturing field. Now, his entire being had become "a sword."
The Sword Pellet was gone from his purple mansion as well, leaving it peaceful and serene.
Only at the center of his sea of