Blood Saber Peak, before the mountain gate.
The air was thick with a stench of blood so dense it made one retch. The entire peak was shrouded in an eerie blood-red mist that blocked out the daylight, making the place seem grim and deathly silent.
Lu Shaoyou stopped and looked up.
He could sense an invisible yet powerful force field, like a giant bowl turned upside down over the entire Blood Saber Peak.
This power was evil and vast. It came from the same source as the Blood River Spirit Sacrificing Array Xue Yutang had laid at Soul Severing Cliff, yet it was more solid, more powerful.
It seemed that, to welcome him, the Blood Saber Sect had emptied out its entire fortune.
He removed the Qi Mei Cudgel from his shoulder and casually planted it on the ground, producing a dull thud.
The sound was not loud, yet it seemed to contain a peculiar penetrating force, clearly spreading across the entire mountain peak.
"Xue Yutang."
Lu Shaoyou's voice was calm and indifferent, yet it exploded through the blood mist like rolling heavenly thunder.
"I'm here. Where are you?"
His voice echoed, while the mountain forest remained silent.
A moment later, the blood mist churned, and a figure emerged step by step from the shadows behind the mountain gate.
The newcomer wore a tight blood-red outfit and stood tall, but his face was twisted beyond human recognition.
His skin was a sickly grayish white, covered in blood-red veins like a spiderweb. His eyes were crimson as blood, devoid of even the slightest human emotion.
When he looked at Lu Shaoyou, there was nothing but endless resentment and madness in his gaze.
"Lu Shaoyou, you finally came. I have waited a very long time for this day!"
His voice was hoarse and shrill, like fingernails scraping across iron, making one's scalp prickle.
Lu Shaoyou frowned slightly as he looked at the neither-human-nor-ghostly figure before him.
"Li Mo?" Lu Shaoyou cautiously spoke a name.
"Ha... hahahaha!"
Li Mo let out a hoarse, piercing laugh, like the cry of a night owl, making one's scalp tingle. "Lu Shaoyou! You still recognize me! You actually still recognize me!"
He stared fixedly at Lu Shaoyou, his blood-red eyes filled with hatred carved into his very bones.
"It was all because of you! If not for you, I would still be the Young Master of Black Wind Village! My father would not have died! My family would not have been destroyed! And I would never have become this neither-human-nor-ghost thing I am now!"
"It was you! You destroyed everything I had!"
He roared himself hoarse, his voice filled with the mad frenzy of self-pity and resentment.
"I want you dead! You will pay with your life for my father! You will pay with your life for the more than three hundred brothers of Black Wind Village!"
Lu Shaoyou listened quietly, his expression not changing in the slightest.
Pay with his life?
Black Wind Village?
He recalled the honest, simple figure of his father, Lu Dahai. He recalled the villagers' despairing eyes. He recalled those girls who had been violated to death, their clothes unable to cover their bodies.
Lu Shaoyou's eyes instantly turned cold.
An icy, bone-piercing killing intent slowly rose from the depths of his heart.
"Finished?"
Lu Shaoyou asked mildly.
Before his words had even faded, he moved.
There was no needless chatter, no flashy technique.
The Qi Mei Cudgel in his hand tore through the air with a sharp shriek, becoming a bolt of black lightning as it smashed down at Li Mo's head.
Yet, facing this cudgel strike carrying the force of thunder, Li Mo revealed an eerie, savage grin.
He neither dodged nor evaded. He merely raised the blood-red token in his hand high above his head!
"Blood Shadow Array, rise!"
Buzz—!
A dull hum rang out, and the entire Blood Saber Peak trembled!
The blood mist enveloping the mountain instantly boiled, transforming into an enormous blood-red canopy.
Then, thirty-five blood shadows connected to Li Mo's aura shot skyward from every direction and merged into that blood-red canopy.
The next instant, a gigantic bloody hand formed entirely from pure baleful blood power reached out from the canopy, accurately grabbing the iron cudgel Lu Shaoyou had brought crashing down.
A deafening blast erupted, as though mountains had collapsed and the earth had split apart.
Violent shockwaves swept outward, shaving even the hard rocks on the ground down by a layer.
Lu Shaoyou felt a vast, viscous power travel through the cudgel. It had forcibly blocked this strike of his that had been certain to hit.
His arm went slightly numb.
After blocking his blow, that enormous bloody hand also shook violently, but it swiftly stabilized again.
"Hmm?"
For the first time, a trace of interest appeared in Lu Shaoyou's eyes.
To receive one of his cudgel strikes without dispersing—this array was somewhat interesting.
"Hahahaha!"
Seeing this, Li Mo laughed even more wildly. "Lu Shaoyou! It's useless! I now carry the power of the Blood Shadow Array, the combined strength of thirty-six Innate masters! You cannot kill me!"
"Today, the one who dies will be you!"
"Is that so?"
The corner of Lu Shaoyou's mouth lifted slightly, and the hand gripping the iron cudgel suddenly exerted force.
"Then let me see just how much you worthless rabble amount to when you huddle together!"
Golden Innate true qi erupted wildly from within his body like a volcanic eruption.
Twelve Dragon-Elephant Power poured into the Qi Mei Cudgel without restraint!
In an instant, the winds and clouds changed color, and the air seemed to resound with the roaring cries of dragons and elephants.
At that moment, the Qi Mei Cudgel in his hand seemed to become a pillar supporting the heavens, one said to be capable of suppressing Gods and Devils. Carrying unmatched dominance and might, it smashed down fiercely once again!
"Roar—!"
Facing this world-destroying strike, Li Mo's expression drastically changed as he frantically activated the great array.
The blood-red curtain covering the sky condensed into an even larger blood-red demonic phantom. The phantom let out a soundless roar, stretched out both arms, and crossed them before itself, trying to withstand this earth-shattering cudgel strike head-on.
Rumble—!
This collision was more than ten times fiercer than the last!
The entire Blood Saber Peak shook violently. Countless boulders rolled down from the cliffs, and dust filled the skies.
Crushed beneath the iron cudgel, the gigantic blood-red demonic phantom caved deeply inward. Fine cracks covered its entire body, as if it could collapse at any moment.
But in the next moment, countless streams of blood mist poured into it, and the blood-red demonic phantom recovered to normal at an astonishing speed.
"Hahaha!"
Li Mo watched this scene and laughed even more maniacally. "Lu Shaoyou! It's useless."
"This Blood Shadow Array does not merely combine the strength of the thirty-six members of my Blood Shadow Guard. It is also joined as one with the earth veins of the entire Blood Saber Peak."
"As long as Blood Saber Peak does not fall, the array will not break!"
"You, Lu Shaoyou, may be strong, but can you possibly be stronger than the power of heaven and earth?!"
Within the blood pool of the forbidden grounds.
Xue Yutang and Xue Yugang were watching the scene before the mountain gate through a water mirror.
When they saw the Blood Shadow Array forcibly withstand Lu Shaoyou's full-powered strike, both men revealed looks of wild delight.
"It worked! Brother, we succeeded!" Xue Yugang trembled all over with excitement. "This Blood Shadow Array really can trap him!"
A savage smile also appeared on Xue Yutang's shriveled face. "Trap him? No... we will wear him down here until he dies alive! No matter how deep his true qi is, there will come a time when his strength runs dry!"
"When that time comes, Lu Shaoyou will be nothing more than a lamb awaiting slaughter."
Before the mountain gate.
Lu Shaoyou slowly withdrew his iron cudgel.
He looked at the blood-red demonic phantom whose aura was linked to the mountain peak, then looked at the faintly trembling ground beneath his feet, deep in thought.
Brute force truly could not break it.
This array had connected all of its power to the mountain itself, forming a self-repeating, ever-living whole.
To break the array.
He would have to be capable of blasting apart the entire mountain with a single cudgel strike.
Wait...
Blast apart the mountain?
A thought flashed through his mind like lightning.
He recalled how, back at Black Tiger Hall, he had possessed merely two Dragon-Elephant Power, yet had blasted Black Tiger Hall into dust.
The power in that punch seemed to have been... more than mere brute force.
A cold curve slowly formed at the corner of his mouth.
A thought flashed through his heart.
"System, raise Dragon-Elephant Mountain Collapse Strike to the proficient level."
Ding! Consuming 20,000 points of Slaughter Value. Dragon-Elephant Mountain Collapse Strike has been raised to the proficient level!
In an instant, an enormous and profound martial insight surged into his mind like floodwaters bursting through a dike.
Countless mysteries regarding the transmission, vibration, resonance, and disintegration of force flowed through his heart.
He seemed to see an ancient dragon-elephant raise its forehoof and stamp lightly. There was no collapse of heaven or splitting of earth; instead, the towering mountains ahead, rising ten thousand fathoms high, silently turned into the finest dust.
That was not destruction, but... disintegration.
"So this is the true meaning of Dragon-Elephant Mountain Collapse Strike."
Seeing Lu Shaoyou withdraw his iron cudgel and stand silently in place, Li Mo assumed he had exhausted every trick in his bag. The smile on his face grew ever more smug and cruel.
"What is it, Lu Shaoyou?"
"Afraid? Despairing?"
"Now, kneel and kowtow three times for me. Then slit your own throat here, and I may consider leaving you an intact corpse!"
Lu Shaoyou slowly raised his head.
He glanced at Li Mo as though looking at an idiot.
Then.
Lu Shaoyou slowly raised his right fist.
There was no heaven-shaking aura, no golden radiance.
It was simply an utterly ordinary punch, lightly thrown toward the empty space before him.
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