She now deeply regretted bringing her junior brother to this place, so empty and deserted-gambling still offered plenty of chances to stop, but often, life and death hung on a single misplaced step.
She had not been very old when she learned this truth, yet it had already been too late.
But Xi Tianji's outstretched hand still stopped.
"They failed to stop him?" Jiang Yitong straightened, raising his sword with an icy tone.
Xi Tianji likewise held down the pearl and leveled his sword. Both men looked toward the cave entrance.
Guan Qianyan did not know what had happened. The boy beside her also craned his neck, trembling as he looked over. Their true qi had already dispersed, and certain distant sounds could no longer reach their ears.
But soon that tremendous noise crashed into their ordinary eyes and ears. Within the mist-shrouded tunnel, a piercing whistle raced closer from afar, filling their ears in an instant. The mist across the entire peak surged and shuddered.
Its speed made hearts and lungs abruptly clench. On the cliff terrace, Jiang Yitong's pupils contracted. He shifted his stance and held his sword across him. Guan Qianyan had never seen this former Sword Champion fight with all his strength, but the sword strike before her now proved everything.
All the mist and cold grass on the terrace were pressed flat in an instant. The man leveled his longsword, compressing his Eighth Growth true qi into an impenetrable golden wall before him.
The next moment, that screaming thing shot out of the cave. The shriek of air compressed throughout the long tunnel burst free, its explosive howl sweeping across the entire terrace in an instant.
Amid the stabbing pain in their eardrums, a sword silhouette blazing with cloudlike qi pierced everything Jiang Yitong had