The black-robed man's facial muscles twitched. The water blades gathered the resentment at the bottom of the blood pool; any martial artist of the same stage who touched them would have their Qi and blood scattered.
Yet the young man before him had severed them through an explosive burst of physical strength.
The black-robed man growled, curled his fingers into claws, and slammed them against a boulder, using the force to launch his shriveled body into the air.
In midair, he pulled out a deathly white leg bone covered in barbs. Dark red spiritual power poured into it wildly, and dense blood-colored runes lit up across its surface.
Bloody light exploded through the cavern, and a gigantic, two-meter-tall white bone shield stood across the battlefield.
The barbs on its surface glimmered with a ghostly green, poisonous light. Thick blood and filth trickled through the gaps between the bones as the pressure of the Mortal Realm Sixth Stage spread alongside the stench of corpses.
The black-robed man hid behind the massive shield, forming hand seals.
The intelligence was completely rotten.
The Liu Family actually sent someone like this here. Were they trying to rebel?
Faced with the threat of Su Yu, the black-robed man chose to hold his ground. As long as he could stall for half a quarter-hour, the killing weapon in the blood pool would finish its tempering.
Then this brat would become the finest furnace and nourishment.
The pressure released by the bone shield compressed the surrounding air.
Su Yu stood where he was, his black-and-gold saber pointing diagonally at the ground.
The Prison-Suppressing Demon-Subduing Art circulated rapidly within him. Fine vibrations rang through his bones as the sand table in his mind ran through possibilities at speed.
Break through the shield by force?
With fifth-stage cultivation and a perfected Gale Saber Technique, it would take at least thirty strikes to shatter it.
The monster in the blood would never give him that much time.
A one-hit kill was the best solution for a decisive kill.
A translucent system panel appeared.
[Host: Su Yu] [Current Slaughter Points: 130] [Spend 100 Slaughter Points to extrapolate Gale Saber Technique (Mortal)]
Allocate the points.
A hundred Slaughter Points were spent.
A mechanical voice thundered deep within his mind.
[Gale Saber Technique advanced to: Subtlety] [Ultimate killing move comprehended: Wind Falls Silent, Leaving No Trace]
An intense torrent of heat slammed into his brain. The muscle memory of swinging a saber tens of millions of times was instantly etched into his marrow.
Su Yu locked all ten fingers around the hilt. Veins bulged along the backs of his forearms, his flesh stretched taut to its limit.
He raised his foot and stamped down hard. The bluestone slab exploded into powder, and his figure abruptly vanished from the spot.
A single stride brought him less than half a foot from the white bone shield.
Gale Saber Technique-Wind Falls Silent, Leaving No Trace.
The black-and-gold saber swept diagonally upward. No dazzling light spilled out; the air within three feet of him was instantly sucked away by the ultimate exertion of force.
A tiny pressure differential formed on the spot, and the black-robed man suddenly felt his surroundings tighten.
The oxygen in his lungs was ripped from his body by an invisible, immense force. Extreme suffocation surged to the crown of his head.
The saber's light drew a thin, dark line across his vision.
No wind.
No sound.
The blade swept across the shield's surface, and a straight black fissure appeared down the center of the indestructible bone shield.
The crack spread upward. Only then did a crisp cracking sound belatedly ring out, and the shield split in two.
The severed surfaces were smooth as mirrors.
The backlash from the shield's destruction erupted, and a muffled thunderclap boomed within the black-robed man's chest.
"Pfft!"
Black blood mixed with fragments of organs sprayed three feet out. His gaunt body slammed heavily into the rock wall behind him.
Cracks spread across a broad stretch of rock.
Broken stones clattered down.
At the distant passage entrance.
Tang Shan's back was pressed firmly against the cold stone wall. His Adam's apple bobbed, but he made no sound.
One strike.
One utterly silent strike.
It had cleaved straight through a sixth-stage defensive bone shield.
"An ultimate killing move?!"
His Adam's apple shifted slightly as he slowly uttered those words.
As everyone knew, mastery of martial arts was divided into beginner, minor accomplishment, major accomplishment, perfection, and subtlety. Under normal circumstances, reaching perfection allowed one to fully unleash a martial art's power.
Subtlety, beyond perfection, allowed one to comprehend an ultimate killing move whose power far surpassed the martial art's own grade.
But not everyone could cultivate a martial art to subtlety. It required not only talent, but extraordinary comprehension!
Behind the boulder.
The black-robed man struggled to turn over, his knees crashing into the mud. The black robe over his chest was completely soaked in blood.
"Don't attack!"
"I know the Liu Family's secrets!"
"Spare my life! I'll go back to the county town with you and testify!"
"The Liu Family colluded with the Demon God Cult to refine living people into a Blood Baleful Intent Demon Corpse!"
"Most of the people from Blackwater Village were sent here by them as sacrifices!"
The black-robed man spilled his bargaining chips like a barrage of cannon fire.
To stay alive, he sold out the financial backer behind him completely.
Su Yu advanced with his saber.
He crushed the bone dust littering the ground underfoot. Not a drop of blood stained the black-and-gold blade.
A witness?
A bargaining chip?
Pointless words. Once he returned to Nanhe County, as long as his saber was fast enough and his cultivation high enough...
He could just as cleanly cut off every head in the Liu Family and stack them into a victory mound.
Keeping a sixth-stage demonic cultist beside him meant risking a counterattack at any moment.
Only a dead villain was a good villain.
Su Yu did not stop. As his right arm turned, the icy blade traced a perfect half-moon.
"You..."
The black-robed man's features twisted.
Half a syllable lodged in his throat and would not come out. A smooth line of blood appeared across the middle of his neck, and his shriveled head shot skyward with a pillar of blood.
The headless corpse toppled backward into the murky mud and water.
[Killed a Mortal Realm Sixth Stage Demon God Cult member. Gained 60 Slaughter Points] [Current Slaughter Points: 90]
Su Yu flicked his wrist, shaking the beads of blood from his saber's tip.
But just then, a sudden change occurred.
The blood spraying from the black-robed man's severed neck did not fall to the ground. The formation at the bottom of the blood pool suddenly erupted with a terrifying suction.
The rain of blood filling the air was forcibly dragged off course, all of it pouring into the center of the pool, a hundred feet across.
Even the headless corpse on the ground rapidly shriveled within a few breaths.
The last of its heart's blood was forcibly wrung dry by the great formation.
The boiling blood pool instantly fell deathly still, not a single ripple disturbing its surface.
The next instant!
Clatter.
The fierce grinding of refined steel chains echoed through the cavern. The crimson, hairless monster's body rose and fell rhythmically.
Terrifying Sha Qi, far surpassing the black-robed man's, erupted from its body.
Boom!
A thick shock wave pushed aside the entire pool of blood, and the oppressive might of the Mortal Realm Sixth Stage swept across the cavern.
A tremendous sound like pounding war drums came from inside the demon corpse's chest.
Thump.
Thump.
The monster abruptly spread its thick arms outward. Refined steel chains as thick as thighs pulled taut, and cracks rapidly crawled across their surfaces.
Crack!
The chain on its left arm snapped on the spot. Half of it lashed heavily against the hard stone wall.
Sparks flew everywhere.
Loose stones showered down.
Tang Shan bit down hard on his lower lip, the taste of blood spreading wildly through his mouth.
The Qi and blood of a sixth-stage martial artist had forcibly filled the formation's final gap.
The high-level demon had fully awakened. An absolute death trap.
Su Yu held his saber in both hands, horizontally before his chest.
The Spiritual Qi of Suppressing Prisons and Subduing Demons swelled every blood vessel beneath his skin, and his body grew taller once more.
The falling blood splashed into a skyful of bloody mist. Within the dense red haze.
The Blood Baleful Intent Demon Corpse slowly turned its enormous head. Its dark red, pupil-less eyes locked firmly onto Su Yu as he stood with saber in hand.