The dust settled.
The blustering autumn wind swept up the falling leaves, covering the ravaged woodland beneath the moonlight.
A figure covered in wounds lay on the black earth, blood seeping from his body into the soil. Now and then, he gave a muffled cough as faint as a thread:
"Cough..."
Step, step...
Wearing sleeveless soft armor, Xie Jinhuan approached with his sword in hand, stopped seven paces away, and drew the Heavenly Gang Mace.
He said nothing. The Martial Dao had no dogma, no religious lineage, no promise of longevity. It sought nothing more than "the art of killing," and needed no words.
One horizontal, one vertical-that was the entirety of the Martial Dao.
Outside the ravaged battlefield, Nangong Ye stood in her veiled hat, steam rising from her sweat-soaked body. Having watched the two "half-demon" martial artists fight, she was filled with reflections.
The Cultivation Dao often regarded martial arts as a crude profession with a low threshold and no particular strengths, but martial artists who truly made it to the top were terrifyingly powerful.
They combined the Demon Path's explosive power, the Buddhist Sect's protection, the Daoist Sect's lightning swiftness, and the Witch Cult's scheming cunning, without the weaknesses of any of those four traditions.
Balanced inside and out, they sought not outstanding strengths, but the absence of weaknesses. They seemed like a solid boulder. Unless one could crush them through superior cultivation, there was simply no knowing how to fight them.
No wonder the finest martial artists regarded the other four traditions as-brainless mad dogs, immobile punching bags, flashy glass cannons, and loosely assembled rats that shattered at a touch.
If every martial artist had foundations as solid as Xie Jinhuan's, that would indeed be the truth.
Fortunately, the Martial Dao really was difficult to cultivate.