Nangong Wuhen floated lightly to the ground and stood ten zhang away, looking down from above at Chu Yunfei lying amid the rubble.
"An ant. Not worth a single blow."
"Run. Keep running."
"You're truly worthless. Hahaha."
Nangong Wuhen held his right hand slightly raised, palm down, his posture relaxed.
He was waiting.
Waiting to see what Chu Yunfei would do next.
Would he keep running, or kneel and beg for mercy?
Truthfully, either choice would have a negligible effect on the outcome.
But Nangong Wuhen wanted to see what this piece of trash, who had once sparked a trace of interest in him, would look like in despair.
Chu Yunfei lay facedown on the ground and spat out a mouthful of blood.
His chest burned with pain. That punch to his back had piled snow upon frost for his already grievously battered body.
He could feel his meridians trembling violently. Fine cracks had already appeared along several major meridians. If he took another attack of the same caliber, his meridians would probably truly shatter inch by inch.
But he did not resign himself to his fate.
Chu Yunfei's gaze swept toward the two swords embedded in the ground nearby.
The Giant Que Sword.
The Abyss-Devouring Sword.
The Giant Que Sword was a keepsake left by his father, something he had risked half his life to reclaim today.
And the Abyss-Devouring Sword...
A thought flashed through his mind.
Chu Yunfei abruptly rolled over and sprang up from the ground. Staggering two steps, he seized the Abyss-Devouring Sword's hilt with his right hand and also put the Giant Que Sword back into his storage ring.
Nangong Wuhen's gaze lingered on the Abyss-Devouring Sword for an instant before shifting away.
To his spiritual-power perception, that sword was utterly ordinary. It did not even qualify as an earth-grade weapon.
Not worth mentioning.
"You bastard, didn't you want a sword?"
"I'll give you something to grovel over!"
Nangong Wuhen's pupils contracted slightly, and the composed smile vanished from his face.
"You're courting death."
As his words fell, his spiritual power erupted like a mountain torrent.
Spiritual power at the late stage of the Heavenly Origin Realm poured out in an overwhelming surge, transforming into a tremendous, invisible force that descended from above.
That force had no definite form. It was not fist force, not palm wind, and certainly not Sword Qi.
It was nothing but the crushing pressure of pure spiritual power, like an invisible hand reaching down from the heavens and pinning Chu Yunfei viciously to the ground.
Chu Yunfei's knees could no longer hold.
The earth caved beneath him, and rubble scattered. His entire upper body was pressed into a hunch, his spine emitting teeth-grating creaks as though it might snap at any moment.
Nangong Wuhen's figure flashed, teleporting to within three feet of Chu Yunfei. He lowered his head and gazed coldly at the youth who had already been crushed into immobility.
"Hand over the Giant Que Sword, and I'll grant you a quick death."
Chu Yunfei slowly raised his head, a thin trail of black blood hanging from the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were smiling.
That smile caused a trace of unease to rise inexplicably in Nangong Wuhen's heart.
"Just where I wanted you."
Chu Yunfei's voice was very soft.
The next second, his left hand, gripping the Abyss-Devouring Sword, abruptly exerted force. Rather than slashing outward, he poured his remaining spiritual power deep into the blade.
The last thread of spiritual power in his dantian flowed along his meridians into the Abyss-Devouring Sword's hilt like an ignited fuse.
He was not attacking.
He was awakening it.
When he had obtained this sword blank at the Famous Sword Pavilion, all its Sword Qi and spirituality had been sealed by a mighty expert. Back then, he had only injected a little spiritual power, yet it had made the Abyss-Devouring Sword release a terrifying sword intent powerful enough to make every spirit sword in the building submit and wail.
And now, the instant his spiritual power entered it, the dark-gold patterns hidden deep within the metal's grain lit up once more along the Abyss-Devouring Sword's blade.
But this time, it was utterly different from what had happened at the Famous Sword Pavilion.
At the Famous Sword Pavilion, those patterns had spread slowly like a spiderweb, gentle and restrained.
Now, like enraged venomous snakes, those patterns burst across the blade at an inconceivably violent speed, blazing with dazzling dark-gold light.
"Humm!"
An extraordinarily deep hum erupted from the blade.
That hum was entirely different from the one at the Famous Sword Pavilion.
At the Famous Sword Pavilion, the hum had sounded like a sleeper's faint murmur. Now, it resembled the roar of a primordial savage beast that had been bound by chains for endless ages within an eternal abyss, unleashed the instant its chains snapped.
The seal cracked open.
Not completely-only a tiny, insignificant fissure.
But the power surging through that fissure was already terrifying enough.
An unimaginably vast sword intent gushed from the Abyss-Devouring Sword like a volcanic eruption, like an overwhelming tsunami, sweeping outward in every direction with Chu Yunfei at its center.
That sword intent was black as ink and deep as an abyss, carrying an eternally unchanging presence of destruction, as though it could devour heaven and earth themselves until nothing remained.
Nangong Wuhen's expression changed drastically in that instant, his pupils contracting sharply. For the first time, genuine shock and fear appeared in those eyes that had always been so calm they were almost icy.
Because he had caught the scent of death within that sword intent.
It was a genuine threat of death.
Not one Chu Yunfei posed to him, but one brought by the Sword Qi sealed within the Abyss-Devouring Sword.
The level of that power had already far exceeded the bounds of the Heavenly Origin Realm.
"What's going on?"
Nangong Wuhen gave a low shout, his body instinctively retreating. At that moment, the instincts of the Heavenly Sword Sect's Holy Son screamed warnings, telling him he had to leave, had to leave immediately.
But the Sword Qi came too fast.
"Holy Light Shield!"
Nangong Wuhen shouted and formed hand seals. A shield condensed from intense white light abruptly took shape before him. It was a closely guarded secret of the Heavenly Sword Sect, its supreme defensive art specifically intended to withstand lethal attacks.
The white shield's surface was densely engraved with formation patterns, each containing spiritual power at the peak of the Heavenly Origin Realm.
At the same time, a jade pendant hanging against Nangong Wuhen's chest activated on its own, releasing a second layer of protection.
That jade pendant was a life-saving treasure of the Nangong Lineage. Sealed within it was a strike from a Divine Sea Realm expert, enough to block the vast majority of lethal attacks in this world.
The two layers of defense formed one over the other before him.
The Sword Qi struck the Holy Light Shield.
Boom.
The first layer of defense shattered instantly, like a cicada's wing meeting thunder.
Boom.
The Divine Sea Realm protection released by the jade pendant held for one breath, then broke apart with a crisp cracking sound.
The Divine Sea Realm spiritual power sealed within it was ground to dust by that ten-thousand-year-old Sword Qi.
The remaining Sword Qi pierced every defense and slammed heavily into Nangong Wuhen.
Pfft.
Nangong Wuhen spewed a great mouthful of blood, his body flying backward like a kite with its string cut.
He tumbled through the air more than ten times and smashed through three large trees before barely steadying himself, dropping to one knee on the ground.
His chest hurt as though raging flames were consuming him, and his internal organs felt as if someone had forcefully kneaded them. That life-saving jade pendant, passed down through generations, had already shattered into powder, which sifted out of his robes.
Without the jade pendant, he would have died on the spot.
How could a mere Heavenly Origin Realm cultivator withstand Sword Qi sealed for ten thousand years?
Sword intent soared into the sky, its aftershocks rippling outward.
Within a radius of several hundred zhang, trees were severed at the waist and rocks cleaved into fragments. A fissure several feet deep remained in the ground, as though an invisible giant sword had carved a scar into the earth itself.
But Chu Yunfei had paid a devastating price as well.
Although releasing the ten-thousand-year-old Sword Qi did not require his own spiritual power to drive it, the recoil from its eruption was all too real.
That force hurled his body from where he stood, sending him fluttering like a fallen leaf in a gale, flying dozens of zhang backward.
Behind him was a cliff.
Broken Remnant Cliff.
One of the Cangwu Mountain Range's infamous death zones.
Its walls were sheer as a knife cut, its depths unfathomable, and a thick layer of purplish-black poisonous mist shrouded the space below all year round.
Rumor had it that the poisonous mist arose from a ten-thousand-year-old poison source deep within the mountain range. Even experts at the peak of the Heavenly Origin Realm would find it difficult to emerge unscathed if they fell into it.
Chu Yunfei's body passed over the cliff's edge and vanished into that purplish-black mist.
The Giant Que Sword's blue-black light flashed once within the mist, then disappeared completely.