As Li Shunchen's low, resolute chant drifted through the night wind, the shadow beneath him churned violently like a boiling deep sea.
Thick swathes of pitch-black darkness spread outward. Then a massive figure radiating savage, terrifying pressure slowly rose from the bottomless Shadow Abyss.
It was Mahoraga, the Divine General of the Divergent Sila, bound tightly and sealed in layers of eerie white cloth.
The moment it appeared, the surrounding air seemed to have been forcibly drained away, becoming suffocatingly heavy.
But Li Shunchen had gone to all this trouble to lay his inescapable trap for anything but giving this strongest shikigami a chance to display its divine might.
Almost within the very thousandth of a second that Mahoraga's enormous body first took shape in reality, an utterly ruthless glint flashed in Li Shunchen's eyes.
Without a single unnecessary movement, his right hand shot like lightning into the seething shadow beside him, and his fingers snapped shut.
With a clear ring that seemed capable of slicing through souls, the Soul Liberation Blade, a vicious weapon gleaming darkly, was already clutched firmly in his palm.
The instant he tightened his grip on its hilt, the cursed energy within Li Shunchen surged, flowing through an extraordinarily precise circuit into his legs and beneath his feet.
A cold, hauntingly beautiful crescent-shaped ring of light suddenly bloomed across the ground where he stood, driving out every speck of dust within several meters.
New Shadow Style: Iaido: Evening Moon.
Within this absolute domain constructed specifically for drawing his blade and killing instantly, Li Shunchen drew a deep breath and pushed the innate talent called "Extreme Overload Control" into full-power operation without reservation.
The muscles in his arms bulged instantly. Beneath his skin, capillaries burst under a terrifying force far beyond the limits of the human