Two Lifetimes Sever a Single Lifetime

Just as everyone was still in a daze, the phantom that had slain Lei Wanjun turned into a stream of light once again, crossed half of the Mirror Lake, and condensed once more in front of Ye Xuan.

It struck.

There was no probing. The very first sword strike was at full power.

"Pfft!"

The sword qi slashed down heavily. The Sun-Slaying Sword in Ye Xuan's hand let out a sharp wail, its blade bending into a dangerous arc.

A tremendous force surged through the hilt into his arm, causing the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, his wrist, his elbow, and his shoulder blade to burst open one after another. His entire body was sent flying as if hit head-on by a mountain, shooting backward for thousands of feet before crashing heavily into the Mirror Lake.

A pillar of water shot into the sky.

A mouthful of blood sprayed out from beneath the surface, dyeing the deep blue lake water red.

"Master!" Ying'er cried out with a sob, stumbling as she tried to rush over, only to be forcefully bounced back by an invisible wall of qi.

She fell onto the lake's surface, scrambled back up, and desperately beat against the transparent barrier, her small fists pounding until they were bright red.

Water splashed explosively.

Ye Xuan burst out from the lake, his soaked white robes clinging tightly to his body, his dark hair plastered messily against his cheeks.

He stood on the lake's surface, supporting himself with his sword in one hand. After taking two deep breaths, he raised his arm and wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with his sleeve.

Then, he smiled.

"Cough, cough... As expected of myself."

He looked at the mountain-like phantom in the distance, a wicked and arrogant curve forming at the corner of his mouth. There was not a trace of fear in his eyes; instead, they grew brighter and brighter:

"So ruthless."

He rolled his nearly dislocated right shoulder, the bones cracking and popping.

"It seems that if I don't use my real power, I'll really be looked down upon by my past self."

He slowly closed his eyes.

His hands formed an ancient and obscure seal in front of his chest. This was not a hand seal from any current sect, but something far more ancient and primal.

A grayish-white mist diffused from his body. It did not seep from his pores, but rose directly from his shadow.

Within it lay an indescribable supreme truth—life and death, flourishing and withering, the rotation of all things, the cycle of karma, without beginning and without end.

Ye Xuan opened his eyes. The black in his pupils was gone, replaced by a swirling grayish-white.

"Six Paths of Reincarnation, open!"

Above the Mirror Lake, the winds and clouds changed color.

The originally dazzling river of stars was shattered by an invisible force. The starlight scattered and flew, then gathered, swirled, and solidified behind Ye Xuan.

A massive grayish-white vortex slowly took shape.

"What kind of cultivation method is that?!"

In the distance, Mo Qixing, who had been regulating his breathing, abruptly opened his eyes. His Mind's Eye was frantically sending out warnings, and his entire soul trembled uncontrollably. This was a reaction he had never experienced since he began cultivating the Mind's Eye.

"This is absolutely not a method from this realm!" His voice lost its usual calmness, becoming rushed and hoarse. "This aura... it's too ancient! Even older than the Sword Emperor's legacy! This... this is something from the primordial era!"

Pei Yuzhi's pupils contracted violently. The emotions suppressed by her Supreme Forgetfulness Dao almost burst their banks.

Tantai Jue forgot all the pain in his body and sat straight up, his amber slitted pupils filled with the reflection of that massive grayish-white disk.

As the Reincarnation Disk turned, an illusory figure slowly walked out from the grayish-white mist behind Ye Xuan.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

With every step, the figure became a fraction more solid.

White clothes surpassing snow, a long sword like a rainbow. Sword-shaped eyebrows slanting into the hairline, starry eyes harboring a sharp edge. The face was handsome and wildly arrogant, with a smile that looked down upon the world hanging on the corner of the mouth.

The face of that figure was shockingly identical to Ye Xuan's, and to the Sword Emperor's shadow opposite him.

This was one of Ye Xuan's past lives.

The Peerless Sword Emperor, Ye Wushuang.

"So... the legends are true."

Tantai Jue's eyes widened, his lips trembling as he muttered:

"Ye Xuan is Ye Wushuang... Ye Wushuang is Ye Xuan... Reincarnated to cultivate anew..."

He murmured to himself, the hairs all over his body standing on end.

Pei Yuzhi's body trembled slightly. Looking at that white-clothed phantom, looking at that face identical to the Sword Emperor's, the foundation of the Supreme Forgetfulness Dao in her heart actually showed a faint, barely perceptible loosening.

Mo Qixing did not speak. He simply lowered his head slowly, as if digesting an overly heavy truth.

Ye Xuan's aura skyrocketed.

The Dao fruit of his past life blessed his current body, and the sword intent of two lifetimes merged into one.

Now, he truly possessed the strength to contend against Ye Wushuang.

"Kill!"

Ye Xuan roared in fury, and the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword erupted with golden light. The white-clothed phantom behind him also raised its sword. The movements of the two were perfectly synchronized, one solid and one ethereal, following each other like shadows.

The phantom charged forward to meet him.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

This time, the intensity of the collision escalated to a whole new level.

Ye Xuan was no longer being suppressed one-sidedly. With every strike, the white-clothed phantom behind him provided its blessing, multiplying his sword intent by more than double.

The two crossed paths, collided, and separated over the lake. Every clash detonated a chaotic vortex of sword qi, completely evaporating the lake water within a radius of hundreds of feet.

Ye Xuan fought his way from the surface to the bottom of the lake, his blade cleaving through black rocks, sending debris flying.

The phantom fought its way from the lakebed up to the firmament, its sword qi tearing through the night sky, causing the stars to dim.

The two crashed into each other again in midair.

Gold and white sword lights exploded at the point of impact, forming a visible spherical shockwave that rapidly expanded in all directions. The shockwave swept across the lake, whipping up thousand-foot-high monstrous waves from all the remaining water, and swept across the sky, blowing out the light of half the stars.

The three remaining heaven-chosen geniuses present had been completely reduced to mere spectators.

Pei Yuzhi sat cross-legged on a protruding rock, her flexible sword resting across her knees, looking up at the two streaks of light crisscrossing the sky.

Her expression remained cold, but the fingers gripping her sword hilt tightened unconsciously. It was an emotion she herself had not yet realized.

Tantai Jue sat in a pool of blood, forgetting his pain and forgetting to breathe, just staring fixedly at that battle.

A light blazed in his slitted pupils, even more intense than when he fought. It was a pure admiration, untainted by any jealousy.

"Is this... a true monster?" he murmured.

Mo Qixing remained silent. His Mind's Eye could no longer capture the movements of the two combatants.

However, Ye Xuan knew that this was still not enough.

After three hundred exchanges, the phantom's offensive had not weakened in the slightest. It knew no fatigue, its spiritual energy was endless, and every strike maintained peak power.

Meanwhile, Ye Xuan's spiritual energy was being rapidly consumed, and his face was growing paler by the second.

"A mere tie... I can't win like this!"

Ye Xuan gritted his teeth and parried another strike from the phantom.

The sword qi tore through his sleeve, leaving a wound so deep on his arm that the bone was visible. Blood splattered, but he didn't even furrow his brow.

He stared at the tireless phantom opposite him, a ruthless determination rising in his heart.

"Since the power of one lifetime is not enough..."

His gaze suddenly changed.

A trace of dangerous dark red light flashed through his originally bright and resolute pupils.

"Then I'll use two lifetimes!"

Ye Xuan's face instantly turned as pale as paper.

The Six Paths of Reincarnation Disk let out a muffled roar so profound that it made heaven and earth tremble.

The six rays of light on the disk's surface dimmed simultaneously for a moment, and then began to spin in reverse.

The Wheel of Reincarnation, which should have rotated clockwise, began to reverse. With every revolution, Ye Xuan's face grew a fraction paler, but his aura surged proportionally.

Second incarnation, emerge!

A monstrous demonic energy, as if the gates of hell had been thrown open, erupted violently from the center of the Wheel of Reincarnation.

The demonic energy was so dense it was almost tangible; pitch-black like ink, it devoured any light it touched and corroded the lake water upon contact.

Half the sky was instantly dyed pitch-black by this darkness, forming a stark and eerie contrast with the vast sword ki of the white-clad Sword Emperor on the other side.

Beside the fluttering white-clad phantom of Ye Wushuang, a second figure slowly condensed into shape.

Clad in pitch-black battle armor, the plates were engraved with twisted demonic runes.

Its eyes were blood-red with slit pupils, exuding a murderous aura that chilled the soul. In its hand, it grasped a demonic saber forged from countless white bones; the crimson blood groove on the blade looked like a mouth that could never be closed.

The moment this figure appeared, the temperature in the entire Mirror Lake space plummeted by over a dozen degrees.

One man. Three incarnations.

Immortal and demon, light and dark.

The white-clad Sword Emperor stood on the left, his vast sword ki soaring into the heavens.

The black-armored Demon Emperor stood on the right, his monstrous demonic might crushing the void. Ye Xuan himself stood in the middle, the golden radiance of his Flawless Dao Body barely harmonizing the two diametrically opposed forces.

Three auras clashed, blended, and resonated within him.

At this moment, Ye Xuan was like a god and a demon descending upon the world.

The Sword Emperor phantom opposite him also sensed this world-destroying threat.

For the first time, its movements hesitated. The longsword in its hand let out a sharp, defensive hum as if facing a great enemy, and the sword intent around it spontaneously condensed into a thick layer of defense.

Ye Xuan gripped the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword with both hands and raised it high above his head.

Behind him, the white-clad Sword Emperor and the black-armored Demon Emperor mirrored his exact movements, one raising a sword, the other a saber. The actions of the three figures were perfectly synchronized.

Three completely different powers, the Flawless Dao Body of this life, the Peerless Sword Intent of his previous life, and the Nether Demonic Might of the life before that, surged along their respective paths into the Sun-Slaying Divine Sword, converging at the very tip of the blade.

In Ye Xuan's eyes, golden, white, and black light bloomed simultaneously, weaving into a bizarre color no one had ever seen before.

He swung his sword.

Heaven and earth lost all color.

This was not a metaphor. They truly disappeared.

Starlight, sword light, demonic light, and the reflections on the water's surface all vanished in an instant. The entire Mirror Lake space plunged into absolute darkness.

Within this darkness, only one thing could be seen.

A single line.

A thin line interwoven with black and white extended from the tip of Ye Xuan's sword, tearing through the eternal silence.

It existed for but a fleeting moment.

Then, color returned. Light returned. Sound returned.

Everything returned.

Only one thing would never return.

Crack.

A crisp shattering sound echoed.

That incomparably tyrannical Sword Emperor phantom, which had brought despair to all the chosen geniuses, developed a crack starting from the center of its brow under the power of this single strike.

The crack was extremely fine, almost invisible at first.

Then it began to spread.

From the brow to the bridge of the nose, from the nose to the jaw, and from the jaw to the neck. It was like a flawless mirror developing its first fracture, followed by a swarm of countless others.

The phantom lowered its head and looked at the deepest crack across its chest.

Then it raised its head and looked at Ye Xuan.

Its lips moved. No sound came out, but Ye Xuan could read the shape of the mouth.

Very good.

Two words.

And then...

Bang!

The Sword Emperor phantom completely shattered.

It turned into a sky full of starlight rain.