Time hurried by like a white colt flashing past a crack, and four years passed in the blink of an eye.
Across the vast sea more than a hundred thousand li east of Earth Pass Island lay the outskirts of a Yellow Grade island, within Cold Mountain Temple's Cold Mountain Archipelago.
The night was deep, like an immense black curtain pressing heavily between sea and sky.
Duan Tianya, a white-robed sword cultivator who had just entered the Foundation Establishment Late Stage, stood straight as a pine, his hands rapidly forming magic formulas as the howling sea wind stirred the hair at his temples.
Had he not been slaughtering people at that moment, anyone who saw him would have called him the very image of a peerless sword immortal.
Behind Duan Tianya, a High-Grade Spirit Sword flashed with a keen, cold light, piercing the night like lightning and pinning a Foundation Establishment Early Stage "Blackwood Island remnant" firmly to a coral reef with unerring precision.
The three afterimages produced by Sword-Light Splitting still flickered faintly in the air, yet before they had fully faded, they shot toward the next target like meteors chasing the moon.
"Seven Forms of the Illusory Sword-Light-Splitting!"
Duan Tianya gave a low cry and flicked his sword fingers.
In an instant, five brilliant rays of sword light split from the spirit sword, transforming in the blink of an eye into five spirit serpents linked head to tail, chasing one another!
With a sharp whistle as they cleaved the air, they lunged straight at Ji Cangming, the traitor of the Condensed Jade Sect.
Ji Cangming likewise possessed Foundation Establishment Late Stage cultivation and had long since reached minor achievement. At the sight, his pupils abruptly contracted, and he inwardly lamented:
*Though this brat's cultivation falls slightly short of