Daylight gradually dimmed. The howling, bitter wind swept along snowflakes as large as goose feathers, scattering the green mist drifting through Sword River.
His black-and-yellow Daoist robe billowing in the wind, Lü Yan hovered above the battle-scarred rift, his brows tightly furrowed.
After receiving his senior brother's message, Lü Yan had rushed to Lizhou. Not knowing Xie Jinhuan's exact location, he had been circling through the sky in search of him. Only when he noticed a disturbance in heaven and earth near Baihua County did he hurry over.
But he truly had not expected that Xie Jinhuan was indeed fighting here, much less that the scene would be so horrific.
As the familiar green poisonous mist dispersed, the shattered frozen river and the saber and sword marks below came into view.
Beneath the hundred-zhang cliff face, spiderweb-like cracks spread everywhere, with a crater in their midst.
An elderly man with graying hair lay inside the crater, covered in blood. His chest was stained crimson, his lower body twisted and bent, and his face had caved in over an inch, leaving his original features unrecognizable. Only his eyes, like a lamp running out of oil, retained a trace of consciousness.
Lü Yan did not recognize him, but from the sword marks, he still deduced that this was the master of the Li Mountain Sword Lodge.
Li Huaichuan being killed in Sword River was no less shocking than Lü Yan dying on Five-Spirit Mountain. Moreover, the attacker was a Southern Dynasty cultivator. Any Northern Zhou cultivator who saw this would have been filled with indignation, let alone Lü Yan, who was already seething.
Lü Yan first surveyed dozens of li around him from high in the sky. After confirming there was no fleeing figure, he descended a little and asked:
"What happened?"