Meanwhile, on the ground.
The thousand-foot Silver Dragon crashed to the earth. With his qi meridians severed by that slash, he could no longer maintain his half-demon body. In the blink of an eye, he reverted to his original form, becoming a stark-naked man.
Although his hands and feet were unharmed, a saber wound stretched from Xie Jinhuan's right flank almost to his spine, nearly cleaving through half his body. For a practitioner of the demon path, an injury like this could heal in an instant, so long as his blood qi had not run dry.
But the Demonic Blade Naxie was the most powerful evil implement in the world. Injuring flesh was secondary; its chief destructive power lay in corrupting the body and divine soul.
At that moment, the saber wound in Xie Jinhuan's flank was healing extremely slowly. Wisps of black qi visibly gathered around it without dispersing, while black threads appeared in his eyes. His consciousness sank into boundless demonic delusions, his every emotion and desire magnified without limit as scenes from his past flashed through his mind.
To fall into demonic madness meant having reason utterly blinded by obsession. That obsession might be power, money, fame, or lust, or it might be immortality, regret, or hatred. In the end, however, it all came down to desire.
A desire that could neither be satisfied nor relinquished became a knot in the heart. Once deeply rooted, that knot became a heart demon, until one was reduced entirely to a slave of desire. Xie Jinhuan had thought that if the Demon Saber corrupted his divine soul and magnified his obsessions without limit, he would become a lust-crazed demon, killing men, raping women, and screwing anyone he saw. Yet now, as the demonic nature invaded the depths of his divine