The spectator stands were already in an uproar.
Some shook their heads and sighed, some sneered and jeered, and some could not bear to watch, but more were simply waiting to see Xu Changqing knock Chu Yunfei off the platform with a single sword strike.
At the edge of the training grounds, in the spot closest to the platform, Yan Guining narrowed her eyes, her thoughts unknown.
In the VIP seats, Situ Shuang'er finally stopped looking elsewhere.
Her eyes reflected that blood-soaked figure who refused to retreat. His gray robes had been stained dark red with blood, his seven wounds were a shocking sight, and he looked as though he might collapse at any moment, yet he would not fall.
Like an old tree whose branches and leaves had been shattered by a storm, yet whose roots clung stubbornly to the soil.
Situ Shuang'er's lips trembled slightly. Suddenly, she recalled a scene from long ago, when Chu Yunfei had yet to become a cripple and was still the most dazzling genius of the Azure Mystic Sect's inner sect.
Once, she had watched him train beside the training grounds. He had practiced a single sword move for an entire day, and when the hilt rubbed his hand bloody, he wrapped it in cloth and kept practicing.
She had asked him if it hurt.
He had smiled and said, "I'm used to it."
Back then, she had not understood what "used to it" meant.
Now, she seemed to understand a little.
"Hmph." Situ Shuang'er looked away, her voice so soft that only she could hear it. "You have no idea when to stop courting death."
But inside her sleeves, her fingers clenched even tighter.
On the platform.
Xu Changqing watched Chu Yunfei, who was still standing, and a trace of impatience flashed through his eyes.
"You won't shed tears until you see the coffin."
He held nothing back now.
The final move of the Flowing Cloud Sword Technique took shape in his hands.
"Clouds Part and Heaven Opens."
Silvery-white spiritual power rapidly gathered along his blade. Light swallowed the entire sword, transforming it into a silvery-white rainbow more than ten feet long.
All the spiritual power of the Fifth Level of Spirit Martial poured into it without reserve. Layer upon layer of cloud patterns emerged across the sword light-the essence of the Flowing Cloud Sword Technique, passed down for centuries, taking clouds as its form and heaven as its momentum.
The might of that single strike made the platform hum and tremble, tearing a piercing shriek through the air.
The protective runes on the platform flashed madly under its pressure, nearly on the verge of collapse.
This strike was meant to end the battle.
The silvery-white rainbow cleaved toward Chu Yunfei, bearing the power to crush everything.
The entire crowd drew a sharp breath.
Zhao Baimei leaned forward slightly, a brilliant gleam flaring in his cloudy old eyes.
The figure in a bamboo hat beside him also raised their head, revealing a pair of exceptionally bright eyes beneath the hat's shadow.
Chu Yunfei had nowhere left to retreat.
His heels touched the edge of the platform. One more step back would take him off it.
The silvery-white rainbow rapidly expanded in his eyes, the breath of death rushing straight at him.
He could not withstand this strike.
With the spiritual power of the Ninth Level of Qi Condensation, meeting the all-out final move of someone at the Fifth Level of Spirit Martial head-on could have only one outcome: being torn to pieces.
But Chu Yunfei neither dodged nor retreated, nor did he concede.
He stood there.
Within his body, inside his dantian.
At that moment, the spiritual power produced by the Boundless Creation Scripture was like boiling magma, crashing wildly through his twelve primary meridians and eight extraordinary meridians.
He had squeezed his Ninth Level of Qi Condensation spiritual power to its limit during this battle. Every meridian had been filled to its breaking point and groaned beneath the burden.
But it was not enough.
He was still one step short.
Short of crossing the chasm-like barrier between the Qi Condensation Realm and the Spirit Martial Realm.
That barrier stood before him like an invisible wall. No matter how he battered it, it did not budge.
Death drew near.
The silvery-white rainbow was already before him. Less than a single breath remained.
At this moment between life and death.
Xiaoxiao Dragon's voice rang out in Chu Yunfei's sea of consciousness.
"Kid, take the gamble."
Chu Yunfei knew what she meant.
He closed his eyes.
It had never been a question of skill, nor of how he circulated his spiritual power.
Breaking through from the Qi Condensation Realm to the Spirit Martial Realm-the will to win that demanded destruction before renewal.
Ten thousand years of cultivation experience from his previous life flooded his mind at that moment.
He had seen far too many people shrink back in fear on the verge of a breakthrough, ultimately dying trapped within their bottlenecks.
A true breakthrough had never been a matter of water naturally finding its channel, but of finding life only after entering the jaws of death.
So he had intended to use Xu Changqing from the very beginning.
To use Xu Changqing's arrogance as he toyed with him like a cat with a mouse, to use the pressure of each punch and sword strike driving him into a desperate corner, to use the lethal blow carried by this earth-grade sword technique's final move as that last hammer strike.
The hammer strike that would shatter the barrier.
Every new wound, every humiliation of being driven back, every mouthful of blood he spat out-all were prices he had deliberately paid.
He used his body's limits to hone his will, and the approach of death to catalyze his breakthrough.
This was a scheme in which he had calculated not only against his opponent, but against himself.
Vast, surging spiritual power made one final impact within his dantian.
That impact was no longer the orderly circulation from before. It was the furious roar of a flood dragon trapped to its utmost limit, the final blow of a towering torrent against a dam.
Boom!
The barrier shattered.
Within his dantian, spiritual power of an entirely different level and quality erupted through the shattered barrier.
That spiritual power was like withered wood meeting spring, like a flood dragon entering the sea, like a volcano sealed for hundreds of millions of years bursting through the rock in an instant, releasing the power to burn everything to ashes.
Qi Condensation could gather; Spirit Martial could break.
The Spirit Martial Realm.
In a flash, Chu Yunfei's presence surged, crossing the chasm between the Qi Condensation Realm and the Spirit Martial Realm.
Everyone in the crowd who sensed that change turned to stone.
"Heavens."
"Impossible."
"He broke through! He broke through on the platform!"
"Ninth Level of Qi Condensation, Spirit Martial Realm-this... how is this possible?"
Several elders rose simultaneously from their seats, disbelief written all over their faces.
"He broke through to a new realm in battle?"
"He did it deliberately. From the very beginning, he was using Xu Changqing's attacks to catalyze his breakthrough. Every beating, every injury, was gathering momentum for that final assault on the barrier."
Zhou Huanzhang's face was as white as paper.
Zhao Baimei stroked his beard, his cloudy old eyes filled with admiration.
"What methods, what temperament, what courage. He wagered his own life, and a single miscalculation would have meant death. That spirit is exactly like his father's back then."
The figure wearing a bamboo hat beside him finally let out an exceedingly faint sigh.
The emotions contained in that sigh were extraordinarily complex.
In the VIP seats.
Nangong Wuhen abruptly sat upright. His narrowed eyes opened fully, a brilliant gleam shooting from his pupils.
"This fellow used Xu Changqing's hand to achieve his breakthrough. He really is ruthless with himself. A single miscalculation would have killed him."
The corners of his mouth slowly rose into a meaningful smile.
"Interesting. Truly interesting."
Situ Shuang'er's mind went blank.
The Spirit Martial Realm.
"The Chu Yunfei of old... is coming back," someone murmured in the crowd.
Those words were like a pebble dropped into a still lake, sending ripples through everyone's hearts.
On the platform.
Spirit Martial Realm spiritual power surged through Chu Yunfei's body.
Infused with Spirit Martial Realm spiritual power, the Abyss-Devouring Sword released a deafening dragon's cry. Dark-golden light spread from its blade, enveloping his entire body in layer upon layer.
The seven wounds on his body stopped bleeding under the wash of his newly advanced spiritual power. Though the wounds remained, the spiritual power sealed them like molten iron, so they no longer hampered his fighting strength.
Chu Yunfei opened his eyes.
His eyes were like lightning.
Dark-golden light burned deep within his pupils, utterly different from when he had been in the Qi Condensation Realm-richer, deeper, more dangerous.
The silvery-white rainbow had arrived.
The final move, Clouds Part and Heaven Opens, carried all of Xu Changqing's Fifth Level of Spirit Martial spiritual power and his determination to end the battle, tearing an enormous white curtain of light through the air before Chu Yunfei.
Chu Yunfei raised his sword.
The Abyss-Devouring Sword pointed at the sky.
Heaven-Severing Slash, at great perfection.
It was no longer the Heaven-Severing Slash of the Ninth Level of Qi Condensation.
Spirit Martial Realm spiritual power poured into the ancient sword like a blazing sun. Dark-golden sword light shot skyward from its tip, several times thicker than any of his previous strikes, like a true dark-golden flood dragon bursting from the waters of the abyss.
He slashed down.
The dark-golden flood dragon met the silvery-white rainbow.
Boom!
The instant the two sword lights collided head-on at the center of the platform, every protective rune in the training grounds shattered.
Gold and white light swallowed everything. All anyone could see was that ball of light, as blinding as the sun.
A storm of spiritual power swept in every direction. The shock wave knocked the front-row spectators to the ground, while several elders with lower cultivation raised their hands simultaneously to erect spiritual power barriers.
The explosions lasted five full breaths.
The light faded, and the smoke dispersed.
The platform had split.
From its center to its edge, an enormous fissure running across the entire surface had cleaved the dark-rock platform in two. The ground on either side of the fissure had shattered and collapsed, and broken stones tumbled down.
On one side of the fissure, Xu Changqing had retreated seven steps. His face was pale, the webbing between his thumb and forefinger had split, and the blade of the longsword in his hand was covered in cracks.
Several rents torn by sword light marked his white robes, with faint scorch marks visible along the torn edges.
He stood there, his pupils contracting slightly as he stared fixedly at the other side of the fissure.
On the other side of the fissure.
Chu Yunfei stood with his sword in hand.
He was drenched in blood, his gray robes tattered, but his back was straight as a spear. Dark-golden spiritual power slowly circulated around him, enveloping him like an invisible suit of armor.
The Abyss-Devouring Sword lay across his chest, the dark-golden light on its blade still pulsing slowly, like a heart that had just awakened.
He had not fallen.
He had withstood it.
Heaven-Severing Slash, unleashed at the Spirit Martial Realm, had met the final move of Clouds Part and Heaven Opens head-on.
Not only had he withstood it...
Xu Changqing had retreated seven steps.
He had not retreated a single step.
The entire crowd was deathly silent.
That silence was more deafening than any sound.