Revealing One's True Colors

Hidden in the shadows, Gu Yang coldly watched this seemingly tragic slaughter.

His deep black eyes were like boning knives peeling back flesh, capturing with extreme precision the deliberately restrained power in Ye Chen's sword techniques.

This hypocrite clearly had a seventy percent chance of slaying the Sword Spirit.

Yet, after exchanging dozens of moves, his footsteps very covertly staggered.

It was a fatal opening that would only appear if one deliberately exposed a flaw.

The Sword Spirit had no consciousness, only the instinct to kill.

The giant sword formed from Netherworld Profound Ice, carrying the terrifying power to sever mountains, seized this opening with extreme precision. It bypassed Ye Chen and struck straight towards the defenseless Ye Shutong behind him!

"No—!"

Ye Chen let out an eye-splitting, hoarse roar.

His voice was filled with the ultimate sorrow and despair of someone willing to give up everything for his true love.

He didn't even have time to think. He directly abandoned all defenses, not even having enough time to raise his protective Qi.

Like a moth darting into a flame, he forcefully threw his physical body against that ice-blue sword light capable of splitting the earth.

Squelch!

The dull sound of a sharp blade slicing through flesh and blood clearly exploded by the side of the dead-silent freezing pool.

The massive ice sword pierced through Ye Chen's left chest without any resistance, pinning his entire body to the hard, frozen ground like a torn ragdoll.

Boiling hot blood sprayed out like raindrops.

Drip.

A few drops of piercing scarlet splashed onto Ye Shutong's pale, cold cheeks, trailing down her trembling chin to strike the skin of her slightly open collar.

Scalding hot, burning.

In that instant, Ye Shutong's mind went completely blank.

"Senior Brother—!!!"

An incredibly shrill scream tore from her throat.

She scrambled and crawled toward the white-robed man collapsed in the pool of blood.

Ye Chen's face was as pale as paper, his white robes thoroughly dyed red with blood. He struggled to raise a hand covered in mud and blood, gently and weakly stroking Ye Shutong's terrified and despairing face.

"Don't cry... Junior Sister... as long as you are safe... it is all worth it..."

Before he could utter the last word, he coughed up a large mouthful of blood mixed with organ fragments. His head dropped heavily, and his aura weakened to the absolute extreme with immaculate precision.

Ye Shutong completely broke down.

She tightly hugged Ye Chen's gradually cooling body, her tears like a breached dam, madly washing away the bloodstains on her face.

Extreme grief and guilt were like millions of ants gnawing at her heart.

"No... you can't die... I don't want you to die..."

A reckless madness and absolute resolve surfaced in her originally clear eyes.

The strange fluctuation hidden in the deepest parts of her meridians was finally completely activated.

The Seven-Aperture Exquisite Heart, an origin throb.

With trembling hands, she frantically untied the sash of her water-blue Daoist robe.

To save the Senior Brother she revered as a god, she was ready to strip away all her dignity and clothing in this world of ice and snow, sacrificing her purest foundation.

In the shadow of the dark red stone pillars.

Gu Yang quietly watched this scene.

How deeply moving.

Gu Yang's right hand reached out incredibly slowly from the wide cuff of his gray robe.

His large, well-defined hand bore faint, rough calluses.

A wisp of dark golden flame bloomed silently in the depths of his profound pupils.

"Go."

Accompanied by a very low, completely emotionless utterance.

That soybean-sized dark golden True Fire floated lightly into the piercingly cold wind.

Wherever the True Fire passed, even the ice shards in the void were silently vaporized.

Sizzle—

A very faint burning sound.

The Spirit-Locking Formation that Ye Chen had secretly set up around Ye Shutong to prevent her from escaping, with its indestructible formation lines, instantly melted like butter meeting heat the moment it touched the Great Sun True Fire, leaving a massive hole.

But the True Fire's target wasn't this trashy formation at all.

Riding the violent astral winds, it shot with extreme precision and cunning toward the center of the freezing pool, directly at the ice-blue soul fire dancing between the brows of the massive Sword Spirit!

That was the core of the Sword Spirit, and more importantly, the only remaining remnant soul of the Hidden Abyss Pavilion's founding elder!

The domineering, heaven-burning extreme heat of the Great Sun True Fire, which carried true damage to the soul, had not even touched it yet, but it already made that faint blue soul fire let out an incredibly mournful, silent wail.

Hidden in the muck at the bottom of the pool beneath the Netherworld Profound Ice.

Three originally dead-silent heartbeats violently resurrected at this moment!

"Insolent brat, how dare you!!!"

A roar mixed with extreme terror and fury shattered the ice surface of the entire Sunken Water Freezing Pool.

Rumble—!

Tens of meters of Netherworld Profound Ice exploded violently, and three ghost-like black figures, wrapped in a towering stench of rusty blood, broke through the water column with extreme savagery.

The three assassins of the Hidden Abyss Pavilion were completely frantic.

If the ancestral master's remnant soul was burned to ashes by that bizarre dark golden flame, they would be dead meat when they returned!

The three of them didn't care about hiding their auras anymore. Forming a triangular formation in mid-air, they instantly linked together.

Three Spirit-Severing Spikes exuding a foul, bloody miasma flew from their hands, turning into a viscous, blood-colored shield that firmly blocked the path between the wisp of Great Sun True Fire and the Sword Spirit's glabella.

Sizzle—!

The moment the dark golden True Fire collided with the bloody miasma shield, a large plume of pungent, foul-smelling white smoke soared into the sky.

The sudden change happened too fast.

So fast that Ye Chen, who was just preparing to receive his Junior Sister's dedication and had even adjusted his expression to the ultimate poignant beauty, experienced a very brief blank in his mind.

He abruptly opened his eyes, his originally paper-pale face filled with unbelievable horror.

What was going on?! Where did these three demonic cultivators come from?! And what the hell was that dark golden flame?!

The script he had meticulously planned for years was completely torn to shreds at this moment.

"You three demonic evildoers, cease your arrogance! I am of the Dao One Sect..."

Ye Chen instinctively wanted to maintain his compassionate, righteous facade, trying to stall for time with words and figure out the opponents' background.

However, in order to protect the remnant soul, the three Hidden Abyss Pavilion assassins were already seeing red.

"Noisy righteous dog, we'll slaughter you too!"

The leading black-robed elder shouted angrily and delivered a backhanded palm strike.

An extremely sinister black palm print, mixed with terrifying pressure, crashed down like Mount Tai, directly slamming toward the critically injured and dying Ye Chen lying on the ground.

At the same time, the half-step Core Formation Sword Spirit, whose sacrifice had been interrupted, also went completely berserk.

The ten-meter-long ice and snow giant sword let out a heaven-shaking sword cry and slashed fiercely toward this shallow beach!

Two absolutely irresistible lethal crises instantly locked onto Ye Chen.

That handsome, compassionate mask violently shattered at this moment, like dropped porcelain.

Revealing the extremely twisted, selfish, and utterly cold-blooded true face beneath.