The Desolate Fallen Sword You've Inherited That Person's Legacy

Then...

Something impossible happened.

The thunderbolt that should have pierced the earth without hesitation, stopping just a hundred zhang above the ground, came to a halt—without warning.

Like a movie paused mid-frame.

Abrupt and uncanny.

Liu Yishou hovered in midair, the lightning on his silver blade still poised to erupt, his cruel grin not yet fully spread across his face, frozen in place.

"What—"

He instinctively tried to channel his spiritual power, only to find that the thunderbolt had completely slipped from his control.

It wasn't stillness.

It was hair-raising—the violent thunderbolt he himself had forged, strong enough to level mountains, was... trembling.

Like a lamb caught in the gaze of a predator, paralyzed in place by instinct.

Then—

Crack—

Fine fissures spread across the surface of the thunderbolt. What should have been pure energy twisted and coiled violently, as if alive.

Arcs of electricity burst chaotically, emitting sharp, whimpering screeches that pierced through the wind and snow, stabbing into eardrums.

Liu Yishou's pupils shrank.

He saw the "front" of the thunderbolt—the part meant to strike the ground—begin to recoil!

No, it was... fleeing!

Like a startled herd, the thick lightning writhed madly, struggling to break free from some invisible restraint, reversing its course and hurtling back toward the heavy thunderclouds in the sky!

It was running away!

Fleeing from where Su Ji stood!

"Impossible!" Liu Yishou roared hoarsely, his grip on the silver blade whitening his knuckles from sheer force. "My 'Shackle Lightning Blade Intent' is perfected—one bolt can slay a Nascent Soul at its peak! How could a mere Golden Core—"

Before he could finish.

The thunderbolt had already fully retreated from the battlefield, plunging into the thunderclouds.

It sank into the clouds like a drop of water merging into the ocean, leaving not even a ripple.

And the thunderclouds began to contract.

They were trying to flee this place.

For a moment, Liu Yishou's mind fell into a daze.

In seven hundred years of cultivation, he had risen from a mortal to a Void Refining grandmaster, endured countless battles, witnessed all manner of bizarre techniques and forbidden arts—yet he had never seen anything like this—

A thunderbolt afraid of a person?

Unheard of!

...

But on the ground—

The strangeness was only beginning.

"Crackle..."

A faint, almost inaudible sound emerged from the scorched earth beneath Su Ji's feet.

It was a strange noise.

Liu Yishou looked down sharply.

He saw a drop of black "water."

It had seeped slowly from the soil about three cun in front of Su Ji's shoe.

The black was dense and unresolvable, unreflective, motionless—not so much a liquid as a compressed mass of "darkness."

It lay silently on the charred ground, out of place with everything around it.

Then—

A second drop, a third drop...

More and more black liquid seeped from the soil, drawn to one another, pooling slowly beneath Su Ji's feet into a shallow puddle no bigger than a chi across.

The puddle's surface was perfectly still, yet it gave the illusion of unfathomable depth.

And then—

"Whoosh—"

A flame, without any warning, kindled silently from that black puddle.

The flame was small, no taller than a thumb, but its color was absolute black.

Blacker than ink, darker than night.

It burned quietly, without the usual flicker or sway of fire.

Strangest of all, Liu Yishou felt no heat from the flame—not even a trace of spiritual energy leaking from it.

It was as if it didn't exist in this world.

But the moment that dark lotus ignited—

Boom!!!

The earth under Su Ji's feet came alive!

Centered on that black puddle, jagged cracks spread like awakened serpents in every direction! Where the cracks passed, the charred soil turned instantly to dust, and deeper layers surged upward—not earth, but rolling, blazing black flames!

The fire erupted from underground, engulfing a hundred zhang in all directions in an instant!

The flames burned in silence, no crackling, no waves of heat.

The wind and snow near the sea of fire vanished instantly—not melted, but erased, as if they had never existed.

In just a few breaths, this stretch of the world became a hopeless inferno.

And Su Ji stood at the center of that inferno.

The black flames licked at his robes, coiled around his body, yet did not harm him in the slightest.

He bathed in the fire, his dark hair moving without wind, and deep within his once-calm eyes, a glimmer of light flickered past.

"Since you want my technique..."

Su Ji's voice sounded softly across the silent sea of fire.

"Then... let me show you."

Liu Yishou's mind was still reeling from the impossible reversal of the thunderbolt, now further shocked by the black flame inferno. For a moment, he was dazed.

He stared blankly at the black sea of fire below, at the figure bathing in the flames.

Golden Core...

Definitely just a Golden Core.

Scanning with his spiritual sense, the energy fluctuation was unmistakable—mid-stage Golden Core, and only just recently broken through to the mid-stage.

The "substance" of that Golden Core seemed somewhat unusual—denser than ordinary?

But Golden Core was still Golden Core.

Void Refining versus mid-stage Golden Core—a difference of two and a half major realms!

A chasm between levels of existence itself!

After the initial shock, fear receded like a tide, and reason regained dominance.

He had simply been intimidated by that unheard-of trick just now!

Yes!

It must be some rare illusion technique, or a borrowed forbidden artifact or talisman!

The Illusory Frontier Sect was best at these cheap tricks!

His master had warned him before the mission that Su Ji might still hold some hidden aces.

Understanding this, Liu Yishou's suspended heart settled back into place.

Even more, a humiliating sense of being toyed with surged through him—him, a Void Refining grandmaster, stunned by a mere Golden Core! If word of this got out, how could he, Liu Yishou, still hold his head up in the Azure Wasteland Realm?

"Clumsy theatrics!"

Liu Yishou roared, his voice shaking the wilderness.

His hand gripped the silver blade once more, his Void Refining-stage immense spiritual power gushing from his dantian, pouring through his meridians into the blade.

Bright lightning patterns flared across the silver blade's surface. The air around the blade began to distort, emitting a low hum.

"Let me see how many tricks you, a mere Golden Core, can still pull!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Liu Yishou activated his blade intent again.

This time, he held nothing back.

"Thunder Prison·A Thousand Calamities!"

He thrust the silver blade high above his head, its tip aimed at the sky.

The thunderclouds, which had begun to disperse, were summoned by an irresistible call and began to gather and swirl again!

Deep within the clouds, countless lightning serpents slithered wildly. The rumble of thunder drew nearer and nearer, finally turning into an unending roar!

One bolt after another fell from the clouds, but not at Su Ji—they all poured into the silver blade in Liu Yishou's hand!

The blade began to expand and stretch!

Ten zhang, fifty zhang, a hundred zhang!

In merely the span of three breaths, a colossal blade, fully one hundred zhang in length and formed entirely from violent thunder, stretched across heaven and earth!

Lightning churned across the blade’s surface, and the mere pressure it emitted caused the space around him to tremble.

This was Liu Yishou’s true killing move.

Drawing upon the power of heavenly tribulation lightning at his Transcending Void cultivation level, he infused it into the blade. With a single slash, mountains could shatter and rivers could be severed.

A strike like this—let alone a Golden Core cultivator—even an opponent of the same Transcending Void rank would be forced to avoid its edge!

A savage grin crept back onto Liu Yishou’s face.

He could already envision the scene of Su Ji being obliterated into ash beneath this blow.

But at that very moment,

he heard a forbidden name.

"Fallwaste Sword."

Hummmm—

The silver blade in Liu Yishou’s hand began to tremble violently, without any warning.

This was not the vibration caused by the strain of enormous power, but rather… a quiver of terror.

An instinctive, uncontrollable fear!

The lightning on the blade’s surface became chaotic. The once solid, hundred-zhang thunder blade began to blur and dissolve at its edges.

Bolts of wild electricity burst outward, leaving scorched traces in the air.

Liu Yishou struggled desperately to stabilize the blade’s momentum.

But the silver blade’s trembling grew fiercer, and it even let out a mournful shriek—the cry of a weapon that had gained sentience, a lament deep from its soul when facing an existence it could never contend with.

His fully charged strike, under this sudden upheaval, lost all meaning.

The hundred-zhang thunder blade collapsed and dissipated before his eyes, scattering back into a mass of lightning and retreating into the clouds.

He stared blankly at everything before him, his mind a complete void.

All he could hear was the continuous hum of the silver blade.

No.

There was another sound.

It came from the depths of memory—a conversation from when his master had made him a true disciple of the Emotion-Severing Saber Sect after he broke through to the Nascent Soul stage:

"Yishou, now that you have entered our saber sect, you must know that in this Canghuang Realm, we saber cultivators have one archenemy."

"The feud between sabers and swords has persisted for hundreds of thousands of years without conclusion. Our saber sect has produced three Immortal Venerables, and the sword cultivators likewise have two Immortal Venerables to uphold their fortune—victory and defeat were always both sides’ due."

"But… one hundred thousand years ago, there was an exception."

"That man used a sword."

"After him, saber cultivators of the world never held their heads as high again…"

A young Liu Yishou had asked at the time, puzzled: "Master, who was that man? He could make all saber cultivators bow their heads?"

His master had been silent for a long time before slowly uttering three words: "Immortal Venerable Fallen Dragon."

And the name of that sword—

"And his sword: Fallwaste."

"You should know that our saber sect once had an extremely glorious history. If you go through the ancient texts, it shouldn’t be hard to find."

"Unfortunately… that battle."

"The saber sect mobilized its entire strength. The supreme elder of the time—an ancient great being who had stepped into the Immortal Venerable realm for ten thousand years—personally led three Immortal Kings, twelve True Immortals, and half the sect’s elite to the Imperial Court Mountain."

"For the sole purpose of killing one man."

The result of that battle was not recorded in the ancient texts.

But since then, the supreme elder of the Emotion-Severing Saber Sect had perished, with his domain extinguished.

The sect’s fortune was more than halved, never to recover even to this day.

Yet a mere fragment of description remained, left behind by a witness to that battle:

"When that sword was drawn…"

"…every saber cultivator, regardless of cultivation level or state of mind, upon sensing that sword’s intent, would instinctively… lose the will to fight back."

"It was not oppression, nor intimidation."

"It was a terror… etched deep in their bloodline."

…

The snowstorm grew fiercer.

The silver blade in Liu Yishou’s hand trembled more and more violently, and fine cracks even began to appear on its surface.

He remembered…

Legend had it that one hundred thousand years ago, there was a youth who had cultivated for only a thousand years. He came alone, bearing a single sword.

Step by step, he ascended.

He climbed the Imperial Court Mountain on foot—the very symbol of supreme authority.

When the disciples guarding the mountain tried to stop him, he merely shook his head, and they were involuntarily forced to yield a path.

When the Immortal King guarding the mountain gate opposed him, he drew his sword once more—the Immortal King’s divine form collapsed, and his primordial spirit fled.

This finally alarmed the Celestial Emperor, who sat high atop the clouds, overlooking the world.

That battle raged for a full hundred days.

It was fought to the point where the Imperial Court Mountain—the so-called impenetrable fortress—had its gates collapse, its halls crumble, its spiritual veins sever, and rivers of blood flowed.

In the end, the Celestial Emperor was wounded and forced to retreat!

To save his own life, that emperor, disregarding all dignity, summoned the entire foundation of Imperial Court Mountain, activated the mountain’s grand protective formation, gathered tens of thousands of cultivators, and attacked in a united swarm!

Nor was that young man alone.

He raised his hand, and the void behind him split open—a hundred cultivators of the Immortal level walked forth as his followers!

Some were heroes he had convinced, some were scattered cultivators who had once received his generosity, and some were Daxia cultivators who claimed to be of the same clan.

On that day, for that one man, they willingly stood against the strongest force in all the heavens.

In that battle, the highest echelons of the Canghuang Realm suffered near-total decimation.

Sixteen Immortal Venerables fell in combat, fifty-seven Immortal Kings perished, and as for True Immortals—mere cannon fodder in comparison—their numbers were beyond count.

And afterward…

Came the betrayal that the Celestial Emperor nowadays least wished to be spoken of.

The world only knew that the prodigy who had once risen against the Celestial Emperor eventually fell.

The sword that had once crushed the pride of every saber cultivator under heaven, along with that man’s death, had utterly lost its inheritance.

For a hundred thousand years, countless sword cultivators sought to rediscover and restore that legendary sword technique, but none succeeded.

The name "Fallwaste Sword" gradually became myth, legend… and for saber cultivators, a wound none wished to mention.

Yet who could have thought—

A hundred thousand years later,

out here in the remote Chaotic Star Sea, on this insignificant Mount Kongxuan that was nearly about to be destroyed,

someone could once again witness that glorious spectacle…

"Fallwaste Sword?! You inherited that man’s legacy?!"

Liu Yishou screamed in terror.

Faced with Liu Yishou’s utter loss of composure, Su Ji appeared weary.

He even raised his hand, stuck his little finger into his ear, and indifferently dug at it.

"I told you, saves me having to weigh the measure."

His eyes landed on Liu Yishou’s face, terrifyingly calm.

"Tonight."

"You die here."

He said this very softly, without the least murderous intent—it was as if he were stating the most ordinary fact.

Yet, that one light remark sent all the blood in Liu Yishou’s body freezing.

A chill surged from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head!

Liu Yishou fiercely recoiled a step, and under his feet, the void shook, producing a muffled bang.

Like a cat with its tail stepped on, he frantically shook his head, lips quivering:

"Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"