Grandmaster

Qin Lian only wanted to wipe out the Canglang Sword Sect as soon as possible, cow the petty troublemakers, then return to secluded cultivation at home.

But the Canglang Sword Sect clearly had no intention of sitting still and waiting to die.

With their sect master Wu Meng gone, Ning Chuan immediately took command.

"Quick! Form the formation! Without the sword formation, every last one of us will die!"

Panic was unmistakable in his voice, but he also used threats, hoping to rouse everyone to fight back in the face of death.

Hearing him, Qin Lian turned his blade and lunged in for the kill.

With Swiftness active, his sword speed, footwork, and even the circulation of his True Qi and the activity of his nerves had all improved significantly.

Ning Chuan had only just called for everyone to assemble the formation when he saw a flash of clear light. A streak of sword light was already upon him.

"Qin Lian!"

He immediately unleashed his True Qi, striking three times in succession, seemingly weaving a net of swords before him.

But the next moment...

Qin Lian, who had just been charging straight at him, vanished.

At the very last instant before their clash, he had twisted aside and changed position.

His evasive movements were elusive and traceless, like those of a ghost.

Having poured all his strength into laying a sword net before him, Ning Chuan had no time to change his moves. He could practically only watch as Qin Lian flashed to his side, then...

Thrust his sword!

"No!"

The Azure Firmament Sword's edge, carrying an all-piercing sharpness, rapidly expanded in his vision until...

It filled his entire "field of vision"!

Whoosh!

After slaying the grand elder, Qin Lian turned again.

He continued toward another nearby True Qi Realm elder...

Hmm?

There was a familiar face nearby, too.

"Wu Li!"

Wu Li, an elder of the Canglang Sword Sect.

But compared with his high spirits during his visit a few days ago, the elder's face was now deathly pale.

His heart was filled with regret!

He regretted that they had listened to Zhou Tianji's enticements and targeted the Qin Family while "Qin Lian's" fate was still unknown.

Could they not have waited a little longer?

Had they known "Qin Lian" was safe and sound, they would never have dared come to his door to provoke him, even with ten times the courage.

In truth, he was not the only one who regretted it.

Looking at the Canglang Sword Sect elder, Qin Lian felt somewhat vexed as well.

Had he known, he should have given Elder Wu a thrust of his sword a few days ago.

Perhaps then he would not have needed to come up the mountain and wipe out the sect.

"To think I cultivated my character and tempered my disposition, intending to cultivate in peace and pursue the pinnacle of martial arts, unwilling to kill at the slightest provocation, only for these people to see it as weakness? Something one sword thrust could have settled has come to this..."

He shook his head. "Since things have come this far... I can only kill a few more, lest you keep coming to my door every few days to bully and humiliate me."

Turning his blade, he abandoned the other elder and charged toward Wu Li.

But those words...

Made Wu Li and the people beside him abruptly widen their eyes.

"You... you..."

"Come to the door to bully and humiliate Qin Wudi, the 'Sword Presses Taibai'?"

What sort of obscure turn of phrase was that?

Whoosh!

Sword light flashed.

Qin Lian was already upon Wu Li.

He was so fast that this True Qi Realm elder's eyes could barely follow his general movements.

That terrifying disparity threw his mind into turmoil.

When he sensed Qin Lian abruptly shift, he whipped his gaze around, trying to keep a firm grasp on his movements. But where he looked...

There was not even a trace of him.

Not good!

Realizing something was wrong, he turned his head again, only for an icy streak of sword light to pierce straight toward him.

Dodge?

There was no time!

Such a disparity left nothing in the depths of his heart but boundless despair.

What a fast sword...

The instant the sword light pierced his skull...

A somewhat absurd thought even surfaced in his mind.

The calamity that had befallen the Canglang Sword Sect seemed...

Truly not to be Qin Lian's fault.

They had brought it all upon themselves.

Had their Canglang Sword Sect not been blinded by greed and enticed into targeting the Qin Family, how could they have met today's fate?

Unfortunately...

He no longer had the chance to think it through.

A massive intake of iron ended his consciousness.

On the battlefield, seeing that even Grand Elder Ning Chuan, likewise of the fifth rank, had failed to last more than a few exchanges against Qin Lian, while the sixth-rank elders were slaughtered like melons being sliced and vegetables being chopped, the stewards and disciples whose sword formations were still incomplete finally buckled. Their fighting spirit scattered, and they collapsed.

"This is definitely not the strength of Fourth-Rank True Astral!"

"In theory, three to five people working together can contend with someone one rank above them. But now, neither the sect master nor the grand elder had any room to fight back against 'Qin Lian'..."

"A grandmaster! A grandmaster! He's a grandmaster! A third-rank grandmaster who qualifies for the Heaven Ranking!"

"I told you, how could a fourth-rank martial artist kill a third-rank one? Qin Lian... his strength broke through long ago! He simply hasn't made the ranking yet, but he already has the substance of a grandmaster!"

They scattered in a panic.

Facing someone suspected to possess the power of a third-rank grandmaster, the remaining elders, stewards, and disciples, whose strongest were only of the sixth or seventh rank, scattered on the spot.

This could not even be called the strong bullying the weak.

It was blasting fish in a pond.

In the end...

Qin Lian spent an hour hacking his way from the south of Canglang Mountain to the north, then back from the north to the south.

Only when his eyes had gone dry did he pause to catch his breath.

"Sure enough, just as I suspected, human strength has its limits. There's simply no killing them all."

He shook the blood from the Azure Firmament Sword.

Then he looked at the corpses strewn every which way as far as he could see...

Over the past hour or so, if the Canglang Sword Sect experts who had died at his hands did not number a hundred, they numbered eighty.

But...

He had not achieved the feat of exterminating every ranked expert in the Canglang Sword Sect.

The real world was not a game.

Every one of these ranked experts was a living, breathing person.

Knowing they were outmatched, they naturally fled in all directions.

With only himself to rely on, catching up to them and killing them one by one was astonishingly difficult.

Fortunately...

He had cleared out everyone of the sixth rank and above.

Only one or two seventh-rank martial artists had survived.

The remaining eighth- and ninth-rank martial artists posed a limited threat.

"With my current strength, even if I faced Blood Demon Zuo Qiudao again, I wouldn't need to exhaust my vital energy and stake my life on the fight. With the wind-and-lightning speed granted by the Swiftness trait, I could put him to the sword."

Qin Lian reached this conclusion by comparing his strength with the original owner's battle against Zuo Qiudao.

As he was now...

He was stronger than "Qin Lian."

However, although he could kill Zuo Qiudao, the fourth rank was still only the fourth rank.

"I need to break through to the third rank as soon as possible."

Qin Lian replenished his True Qi. "The greatest difference between the third and fourth ranks is the ability to deploy True Astral Qi! True Astral Qi protecting the body, a Three-Foot Qi Wall, impervious to blades and spears, untouched by water and fire! With that, even facing thousands of troops and horses, forests of spears and rains of arrows, I could regard them as nothing out of the ordinary."

Why had the Great Shang Dynasty established the Grandmaster Heaven Ranking and granted all sorts of privileges to the grandmasters on it?

Precisely because, at that stage, ordinary armies were already useless against grandmasters.

To keep grandmasters settled, they naturally used every means possible to win them over.

Rumble!

Just then, a rumbling came from the distance.

Qin Lian listened intently and could faintly distinguish what sounded like a large body of mounted troops galloping.

"Cavalry? Could it be the Commandery Governor's Office? The Great Shang Imperial Clan shares the realm with the sects. Within the cultivation world formed by sect martial artists, internal grudges are settled internally. Does the Commandery Governor's Office's army intend to overstep its bounds?"

As he pondered, he leaped onto a height with a broad view.

Looking out...

He saw that over a hundred riders had reached the foot of the mountain.

Their leader was none other than Qin An.

After receiving his letter, the Qin Family's elite had set off immediately and traveled at full speed, finally arriving like the royal police, just when it was time to clean up.