Fight on Sight

Within the deep pit, rubble tumbled down.

Lei Dong struggled to his feet, hair disheveled, arms hanging limp at his sides. The arrogant disdain that had once dominated his face was utterly gone, replaced by the most extreme terror and madness.

"You... who the hell are you? I am the chief disciple of the Ten Thousand Thunder Immortal Sect! If you kill me, my sect's ancestor will rip out your soul and tear you into a thousand pieces!"

Lei Dong was afraid—utterly, completely afraid.

Without a moment's hesitation, he burned his lifeblood essence. A blinding crimson arc of lightning erupted from his body as he unleashed his ultimate escape art, desperate to flee this hellhole.

"Think you can run?"

From midair, Ye Xuan appeared like a shadow. His slender fingers closed slowly around the hilt of the Sun-Severing Divine Sword at his waist.

The blade left its sheath by one inch.

Just one inch!

A flash of dark-gold, peerless sword light, radiating the overbearing aura of tearing heaven and earth asunder and severing the great Dao itself, suddenly illuminated the entire gloom-shrouded canyon.

The sword intent was so fierce that even the onlookers hiding in the shadows hundreds of feet away felt a stabbing pain slice through their brows as if cut by a blade—those of weaker cultivation even bled from both eyes!

"Heaven and Earth Heartless Oblivion Slash!"

Ye Xuan's gaze was as cold as a frozen deep sea. A gray sword-thread, condensed to the absolute limit, seemed to transcend the laws of space itself, ignoring the lightning-fast speed of the blood-red thunder escape art.

"Shiiing!"

In that single whisper, the thunder's roar between heaven and earth came to an abrupt halt.

Midair above the canyon, the surging blood-red lightning froze in an instant.

Lei Dong's body stiffened in place, his face of shock and despair etched forever.

The next heartbeat, his head flew high into the air! Hot blood sprayed like a fountain from the headless neck, staining the dark-red rock walls even more eerily.

In less than three exchanges.

A peerless genius renowned across the Central Province, a peak Void Refinement cultivator, didn't even earn the right to flee—beheaded on the spot!

Thud.

The headless corpse crashed to the ground. Ye Xuan, his pristine white and platinum dark-patterned cloud boots stepping lightly beside the body, wore an expressionless face.

He extended his hand expressionlessly, and the Heaven-Swallowing Demon Art once again formed a black vortex, devouring the remnants of Lei Dong's Myriad Calamity Thunder Spirit Body essence entirely. He casually pocketed the storage ring engraved with a lightning totem as well.

All of this done, he slowly turned around.

His black hair drifted gently in the breeze. White robes as pure as snow, not a single drop of blood upon them. His deep, indifferent eyes—devoid of any trace of human emotion—swept slowly across the shadowed flanks of the canyon.

Just one glance, casually given.

Thump!

In the darkness, an old monster of Nascent Soul late-stage collapsed to his knees, his legs giving out underneath him, trembling like a leaf in a gale.

"Monster... he's a monster!"

"Run! Don't look into his eyes! Don't look!"

This absolute, contemptuous pressure that viewed all living things as mere ants utterly shattered the mental defenses of these so-called geniuses and rogue cultivators.

Dozens of figures, their courage blasted to pieces, abandoned any pretense of hiding as they scrambled, crawled, and unleashed all manner of escape arts. Like madmen, they fled from this canyon—named the Valley of Death-Breaking, Soul-Severing.

They feared that if that demon so much as glanced at them again, they would end up just like Lei Dong.

After this battle.

Ye Xuan's name spread like wildfire, terrorizing the outer reaches of the Burial Heaven Abyss with incredible speed.

Everyone was spreading word that a white-robed powerhouse had appeared in the abyss.

He acted without restraint or taboo, his strength unknowable and bottomless. Anyone who dared stand in his way—no matter their background or cultivation—was beheaded with a single sword strike, dead without a corpse to bury!

Ye Xuan paid no heed to the pathetic wretches scrambling away. He walked over to the herb of Nine Deaths, Return of Life, uprooted it whole, and stored it away.

"Ying'er, let's go." Ye Xuan said flatly.

"Yes, husband!" Ying'er followed close at his heels.

The deeper they ventured, the denser the desolate killing aura became. It even condensed into ashen drizzle, pattering down and corroding the earth.

The mountain rocks and soil all around were painted a chilling, blood-like red—soaked through by the blood of ancient gods and demons over countless eons.

Just as Ye Xuan led Ying'er into a vast, blood-red wasteland, he stopped in his tracks.

The wind howled, whipping up scarlet sand and dust.

Directly ahead, several hundred feet away, the killing aura between heaven and earth was forcibly forced apart by some extraordinarily violent power, creating a pocket of absolute vacuum.

There, standing where there had been no one moments before, stood a figure.

He was a burly youth clad in dark-gold battle armor, wielding a pitch-black halberd.

He had no retinue like the other geniuses, no flashy spirit-glow guarding his body.

He stood like an ancient statue of a war god left behind by legends—solitary, heavy, rooted into the blood-stained earth.

His face was rugged as carved rock, eyes burning like twin blazing suns. The aura exuding from every inch of him was suffocatingly destructive.

This was a supreme genius who had already reached Void Refinement late-stage—nay, one foot already on the threshold of Fusion stage!

His dark-gold armor was scarred with cuts and gouges from blades and axes, and between the plates dripped still-fresh dark-red beast blood and human blood alike.

It was clear that before facing Ye Xuan, this youth had already hewn a true path of blood through mountains of corpses and seas of gore.

They met head-on in the narrow path!

There was no domineering barking like Lei Dong's. No exchanging of names. No probing each other's depths. Not even a hint of killing intent locking on.

In the depths of this ancient secret realm, to encounter the living—and one radiating equally lethal danger—meant only one thing: a deathmatch, to walk the Dao.

Their gazes pierced through the flying blood-sand, meeting in that instant.

"KILL!"

A roar like primordial thunder erupted from deep within the armored youth's chest!

He stomped the ground hard with both feet—BOOM—and the earth, hard as iron though it was, collapsed instantly, splitting open thousands of fissures dozens of yards wide.

His entire body became a black streak of lightning that tore space itself apart. Both hands gripping the black halberd, he drove the weapon straight at Ye Xuan's face, carrying catastrophic force enough to sink an entire continent.

There were no flashy divine abilities or visionary phenomena. Only pure, ultimate violence—fusing flesh, spiritual power, and the law of destruction into a single uncompromising strike.

Where the halberd passed, the void collapsed inch by inch, crumbling into chaotic black holes.

Facing this overwhelming, mountain-toppling blow, enough to drive ordinary Void Refinement late-stage old monsters to despair, the abyss-deep pools of Ye Xuan's eyes finally rippled—barely perceptibly.

That was the excitement of a hunter spotting worthy prey. The response of one who honors strength.

He did not step back. Did not raise a shield. Did not summon the Heaven-Swallowing Demon Art again.

He simply released Ying'er's hand, and with his right hand, his fingers came to rest on the hilt of the Sun-Severing Divine Sword.