At dusk, the setting sun cast streaks of orange-red radiance across the ochre earth.
Smack.
"Whew... whew..."
Before the sun set, Ling Shuang had finished turning over her own patch of dry field ahead of everyone else.
She tossed her hoe aside and collapsed straight onto the ground, gasping for breath.
"Mm, you did a decent job. Not bad."
Venerable Daohé stepped forward, glanced over the field Ling Shuang had turned, and nodded in satisfaction. "When you go to Heavenly Sword Mountain, that old peak will probably lose another three feet."
For a sword cultivator, this assessment was practically the highest praise possible. After all, the last person who had shaved three feet off Heavenly Sword Mountain had now become a Great Sword Immortal renowned throughout the entire Central Region.
"Thank you... for your guidance, Venerable. I'm exhausted, so I won't be getting up..."
Ling Shuang lay at the edge of the field and symbolically pressed her hands together in salute.
"Hahaha!"
Venerable Daohé grinned and waved a hand. "Rest well. I'll go take a look at that boy Yang."
He came to Yang Yuanhong's side. His gaze swept over the field, which was already more than half turned over, before falling upon that figure whose movements had begun to stiffen. He remained silent.
Under the sunset, Yang Yuanhong's plot of land shone a far more vivid crimson than the other fields, with clusters of black light occasionally flickering across it.
For the ground was stained not only by the sunset's glow, but also by the blood constantly flowing from his body and the scales falling from his altered form.
From the time he had turned over one-third of the field, Yang Yuanhong's fleshly body had already begun to crack under the crushing pressure from both within and without.
As