"Junior Brother!"
Ning Xinyao rushed over at once.
She stuffed a mouthful of pills into Li Yang's mouth as he lay in the deep crater.
"Immortal Master..."
Maid Xiao Feng's heart ached at the sight of Li Yang covered in blood.
She liked this immortal master very much.
Unlike the others, he never acted high and mighty, and he would patiently chat with her.
But what drew her most was the force of his character, which made people trust him without even realizing it.
Li Yang caught his breath.
"Senior Sister, did you really just come to watch?"
Ning Xinyao spread her hands. "You're trying to kill my Household Ancestor Ning. Surely you don't expect me to help?"
That retort left Li Yang speechless.
"Forget it. Only two left. If I give it everything, I might still kill them!"
Li Yang rose to his feet again.
The Spirit Sword in his hand was nearly ruined.
His spiritual power was almost exhausted, and his injuries were severe.
Still, the mouthful of pills had restored a little of his strength.
Just then.
Maid Xiao Feng could not help tugging at Li Yang's bloodstained sleeve, her face full of distress:
"Immortal Master, why not let it go?"
Li Yang glanced sideways at her, raising an eyebrow. "What? Don't want your young mistress to die?"
Xiao Feng shook her head. "She colluded with bad people. She deserves to die. But I don't want you to get yourself killed over someone as selfish as her. It isn't worth it!"
Li Yang rubbed her head.
"You're a mortal, yet you worry even more than I do. Follow my senior sister from now on. If you step onto the path of cultivation, don't be selfish like your young mistress, but don't be extreme like me, either.
Live a good life."
Xiao Feng reminded him of his younger sister in his previous life. The village tyrant's son had violated her, and even reporting it to the police had been useless, because his uncle held a senior position in the county police department.
After her attempts to seek justice came to nothing, she had finally thrown herself into a river.
So Li Yang's greatest regret from his previous life was that he had not sent the village tyrant's uncle and his family to their graves as well.
He watched the savage golden dragon charge at him again without the slightest fear.
In his eyes, the golden dragon and the others were the umbrellas sheltering those evil forces. They deserved death all the more!
Without them, how could those villains have acted with such impunity?
Clang!
He rode his sword into the air once more to meet it.
"A mere demon beast! I'll slaughter you!"
Xiao Feng stared blankly at that tiny figure battling the thousand-foot demon dragon, then lowered her gaze to the blood on her palm.
She seemed to have fallen into a strange bewilderment.
Something deeper was influencing her thoughts.
She asked, "Immortal Mistress, why does he insist on doing it when he knows it can't be done?"
The voice in which she asked this question was somewhat different from Xiao Feng's usual voice.
Ning Xinyao shuddered.
She recalled the voice of her Grand-Grandaunt expounding the Dao back at the Ning Lineage.
The two voices overlapped.
Clearly, her Grand-Grandaunt had reached a crucial moment in Mortal Transfiguration!
Ning Xinyao dared not answer carelessly.
She racked her brains, trying to find the right words.
Yet none of the countless answers she considered satisfied her.
Everyone understood lofty principles, but would those truly be the right answer for Li Yang?
Ning Xinyao watched that frenzied figure. He was clearly only at the great perfection of Qi Refining, yet he had cut down a host of Foundation Establishment prodigies. Even dragging his battered body into battle, he could still trade blows with a prodigy of the Pureblood True Dragon Clan.
That extreme way of fighting, wielding his very life as a sword, was something she could not understand despite being a Sword Cultivator herself.
"Doing it even though he knows it can't be done..." Ning Xinyao simply discarded all her own insights and tried to interpret Li Yang's actions through intuition alone.
"As I see it, at first, I heard this from the evil fiends he killed: your immortal master killed purely for the sake of killing.
And that was indeed true. His methods are too extreme, no different from those of Demon Cultivators. He's even more crazed than they are, just as he is now.
But is that really all there is to it?"
Ning Xinyao shook her head.
She could not see through this junior brother of hers, nor was she qualified to.
"The evil fiends said he was a madman who used slaying demons and defending the Dao as a pretext to satisfy his twisted lust for killing.
But in my eyes, in yours, and in the eyes of everyone beneath heaven who suffers at the hands of evil, someone like him can be called a chivalrous hero!
He follows his heart, unbound by formalities.
But he has a line he will not cross, and standards by which he judges.
What should be done, who should be killed, what decision should be made at what moment.
He has a set of standards for all of it, and acts on them efficiently and correctly."
Ning Xinyao took out her Spirit Sword, revealing a helpless, bitter smile.
"We're all Sword Cultivators, but compared to him, we merely cultivate swords. He's more like a sword cultivating a man!
Doing it even though he knows it can't be done...
Just like his sword, he would rather break than bend!
He doesn't ask whether he can, only whether he should.
Your young mistress deserves to be cut down, so his sword must leave its sheath.
Even if it breaks, he accepts that."
At this answer, the faint image of a Phoenix appeared within Xiao Feng's eyes, its beak raised in a long cry.
"Immortal Mistress... do you think I can cultivate? If I do, could I become worthy of following behind him?
Not for anything else. I only want to experience things alongside him, and enjoy this world in the most straightforward way."
In that instant.
The words "force of character" took tangible form.
But sometimes.
Reality was cruel.
Li Yang had fought for so long that he was utterly exhausted.
The golden dragon, however, was still at its peak.
Boom!
Li Yang was slammed into a mountain.
His Spirit Sword finally succumbed to the strain, snapping in two and losing all its spirituality.
"If our cultivation were equal, I admit I would be inferior to you." The golden dragon's voice rumbled like muffled thunder. "But you'll never live to catch up to me. I never imagined a day would come when I would be so desperate to snuff out a prodigy.
No!
You are worthy of standing among the unrivaled!"
Elsewhere.
Gu Zang held Bai Nishang's hand, a relaxed smile on his face.
"In the flick of a finger, all my rivals were wiped out. I really must thank this Sword Cultivator, or they would all have wanted to fall in love with you."
Bai Nishang nestled against Gu Zang, gazing at this man whose handsome looks seemed beyond mortal reach, her heart brimming with contentment.
Who could have imagined that she, a woman with no talent for cultivation, would win the affection of such a celebrated cultivation prodigy?
"Once this Sword Cultivator is dead, I don't mind doing this golden dragon a favor. After that..." Gu Zang teased Bai Nishang's chin with a finger.
"Mmm..." Bai Nishang let out a soft murmur. "Then we'll consummate our marriage and begin a brand-new life of cultivation!"
Women were always quick to indulge in fantasies.
Before anything had even begun, she was already imagining their happy future.
"He has a companion, another Sword Cultivator. I wonder which sect she belongs to." Gu Zang looked over.
Ning Xinyao deployed a pill furnace, turning it upside down to shelter Li Yang and herself beneath it.
Then she took out a precious bottle of Life Nectar and poured it into Li Yang's mouth.
His flesh was torn open all over, and one arm hung by only a thin strip of flesh and skin.
His worst wound had nearly ripped his entire dantian apart.
An ordinary cultivator would already have passed out, or even died outright.
Yet Li Yang's killing intent remained terrifying. His eyes stayed fixed on the golden dragon, as though he would not breathe his last until he had killed it.
"Junior Brother, I have an Eight-Pattern Foundation Establishment Pill here. Why not try breaking through to Foundation Establishment? Otherwise, I'll have to die with you." Ning Xinyao took out a jade bottle.
In the cultivation world, there were many stories of cultivators who broke through at the last moment and turned the tables when faced with certain doom.
Without the slightest hesitation, Li Yang swallowed the Eight-Pattern Foundation Establishment Pill.
He immediately sat cross-legged.
Ning Xinyao swiftly took out a Spirit-Gathering Array and a mountain of spirit stones, as though she had prepared them long ago.
She even produced a jade slip.
"Junior Brother, I also have a cultivation art called the Blood Sea Asura Sword Art. It seems quite suited to you."
Li Yang accepted it with an odd expression.
The moment he pressed it to his brow, his heart jolted.
Slay life to protect life; sever karma, not men!
While the blood sea endures, the asura shall not die!
Li Yang immediately began comprehending it.
He discovered that this cultivation art might as well have been tailor-made for him.
It merged his killing intent into his dantian, imbuing every thread of spiritual power with killing intent.
It condensed a blood sea from the aura of slaughter, using the white bones within that sea as a foundation to forge the Asura Platform!
"Master... sorry for putting you to so much painstaking trouble."
Before you continue