CLANK!
A sudden, deafening clank exploded through the Central Courtyard, the sound of violently trembling metal crashing together as if struck by a thunderous force.
BOOM!
This cacophony was quickly followed by the earth-shaking crash of something immense—like a massive boulder shattering into a thousand shards.
The powerful impact reverberated with a tremor akin to an earthquake, the ground quivering underfoot. However, the true source of this chaotic upheaval was the absolute obliteration of the vast, temporary wooden sparring platform.
In the span of a single, cataclysmic instant, it had disintegrated into rubble. Debris hung suspended briefly in the air, wooden splinters raining down in slow arcs as the entire Central Courtyard was consumed by the swirling vortex of ruin.
SWOOSH!
The shockwave from the blast unleashed a gust of wind so violently powerful that it seemed to ripple through the very fabric of the Jianghu realm itself. Onlookers froze, eyes wide in stunned awe, their flowing robes and loose strands of hair stirred by the buffeting force.
For a breathless moment, the world surrounding this apocalyptic scene of devastation slowed to a crawl—mirrored in the unnerving, soulless stillness of a pair of crimson pupils.
At the epicenter of the chaos stood Ji Wuye, his blazing crimson eyes glinting like smoldering embers against the flickering blue holographic overlay swimming before his vision.
He alone was the source of that scorching gaze, unmoving at the heart of the destruction.
Whirling debris and jagged splinters swirled in a deadly vortex around his silhouette as the last remnants of the shattered platform crumbled underfoot, threatening to plunge him downward toward the marbled courtyard floor below.
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...
Ji Wuye's palms tingled with the lingering tremors of the nullified impact, his skin flushed from the exertion of defying Elder Xia's Sword Zone.
Yet he remained utterly unscathed and unmoving, a solitary pillar amid the storm of devastation surrounding him.
His flowing white hair whipped wildly in the residual shockwave, the flowing strands blending seamlessly with the chaos of swirling wooden shrapnel encircling him in a deadly vortex.
His narrowed eyes, glinting with an almost feral sharpness, shifted upward to trace the elevated Inner Courtyard where Elder Xia and the elite Inner Disciples should have been. Yet as the thick, choking clouds of powdery dust thickened and the whistling splinters of shattered wood filled the air, their forms were rendered utterly invisible.
Ji Wuye's lips curled upward into a faint, almost predatory smile that contrasted with the focused intensity burning in his eyes. His hands, already gripping the hilt of his sheathed jian, slowly pulled the blade free in the slowed flow of time surrounding him.
As the gleaming metal emerged from its scabbard, it became starkly apparent that this was not a standard jian at all. Instead, it was a much longer curved blade more akin to a saber - its impressive size nearly double that of the typical slender sword.
The hilt too transformed fluidly, elongating as the sleek, curved falchion was fully unsheathed.
"Huff," In this stretched breath between seconds, Ji Wuye hovered suspended mid-fall with no solid foothold beneath him, yet he raised the massive Cháng Dāo - a formidable single-edged sword - skyward in a sweeping arc. The controlled motion sent a whirling vortex of wooden shards and billowing dust clouds parting slowly in his wake.
In the next instant, his Qi - began flowing in an unstoppable torrent from all of his Dantians into the vast network of meridians crisscrossing his body. Like a parched creek bed abruptly flooded, the rushing tide of energy enveloped his entire form in a faint, ghostly blue aura of power.
THUMP!
THUMP!
At the same time, a rhythmic, weighty thumping resonated from Ji Wuye's Upper Dantian, seeming to reverberate in the courtyard remnants surrounding him. The throbbing came from the tiny sapling nestled within the roiling sea of Qi in that Upper Dantian - a delicate golden sprout bobbing amidst the coursing energies.
The sapling emanated and channeled a brownish, rich Earth Qi that merged and intermingled with the elemental flows already surging through his body. This newly blended Earth Qi was then purposefully guided down along his meridians and into the upraised Cháng Dāo.
A profound surge of vitality and raw power flooded through Ji Wuye's being, filling him with a rejuvenating rush of energy that made his burning crimson eyes widen further, the irises blazing like molten pools.
WOOSH!
Like a candle abruptly bursting into brilliant flames, the edge of the upraised Cháng Dāo - previously veiled in a faint bluish shimmer of Qi - now flared to life with crackling, earthy brown energy.
The rich Earth Qi wrapped around the lethal blade in undulating waves, the ethereal aura flickering and flaring like the ever-shifting shape of a roaring campfire brought vividly to life.
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Simultaneously, Ji Wuye's Qi surged outward once more from his Lower and Middle Dantian as he purposefully activated the skill Slash Breaker. The blazing Earth energies already enveloping the Cháng Dāo's razor edge began intermingling with faint, smoldering reddish tendrils of power, darkening the entire curved falchion to an intense, ominous maroon hue.
A sound akin to a roaring hurricane gale, mixed with the faint, haunting howls of a prowling wolf, filled the slowed moment as the combined, cyclonic power of Jin Wuye's Sword Aura and the Slash Breaker skill manifested in visible, shimmering waves of force along the upraised Cháng Dāo's edge.
But...
'Not yet,' Ji Wuye thought to himself, his mind calculating through the motions even as his body seemed suspended in time.
In the next stretched instant, the edge of the Cháng Dāo's blade began transforming once more in response to his focused intentions.
image [https://i.ibb.co.com/5xrL4nd/Notif-1.webp]
Gripping the elongated hilt with both hands now, Ji Wuye channeled more of his physical strength into the upraised Cháng Dāo. The entire curved falchion began to violently vibrate, trembling with such incredible force that the veins in his temples bulged from the monumental strain.
RING!
RING!
His hands became rigid claws of tensed muscle and sinew, his fingers locked in a merciless grip around the hilt as the piercing sound of thrumming, vibrating metal filled the air - resonating outward from the blade in concentric waves of force.
The Cháng Dāo, now pulsing with the combined, formidable power of Sword Aura, Slash Breaker, and the Great Sword Resonance technique, was saturated with an aura of pure, hazardous energy.
The Qi poured forth in an unstoppable torrent from his Dantians draining rapidly to sustain these three monumental techniques simultaneously. As the cyclonic surge of power flooded into the Cháng Dāo, he lifted his head, his faint smile stretching into a wide, almost feral grin of exhilaration.
And then...
SWOOSH!
The downward slash finally began, unleashed in slow, almost ponderous motion yet brimming with aggressive, chaotic force and lethal intent. The Cháng Dāo's fiercely vibrating edge screamed with the straining sounds of metal pushed past its limits - a cacophony of creaks, groans and sonic fractures as the massive blade descended in a sweeping arc.
Until...
BOOM!
Time, which had stretched to an infinitesimal crawl mere moments before, abruptly snapped back to its normal, unrelenting flow. The ruined Central Courtyard exploded with kinetic force as the suspended wooden splinters and billowing clouds of dust, frozen until now, were violently split along a vertical line by an immense, invisible blade of pure energy.
A colossal shockwave of power erupted from the downswing of Ji Wuye's Cháng Dāo, the supercharged slash quite literally devouring and tearing through every object in its devastating path as it surged forward in an unstoppable torrent. Even the heavily overcast heavens above were cleaved apart, the dense clouds sheared open as if by a cosmic blade.
Elder Xia stood frozen on elevated ground before the descending marble stair, his body overtaken by an involuntary, full-body shudder as every hair on his skin prickled upright. His heart thundered wildly in his chest, the staccato rhythm echoing viscerally as his breath grew shallow and ragged in his lungs.
This was the sight that paralyzed him momentarily: a towering, near-apocalyptic sword slash of pure energy barreling directly toward him - effortlessly cleaving through the very heavens themselves along its destructive trajectory.
Even his perpetual frown had drained away, giving rise in that instant only to grim solemnity. Unknowingly, his hand had already unsheathed his own jian, the slender blade gripped tightly as his feet sank into a stable, defensive stance on the marble floor.
"My disciples...watch this move," Elder Xia suddenly declared, his wispy white hair fluttering in an updraft as an aura of controlled Qi erupted from his form before being purposefully drawn inward and condensed along the upraised edge of his blade.
WOOSH!
In the next heartbeat, like Ji Wuye before him, swirling tendrils of rich, brownish Earth Qi coalesced around Elder Xia's jian, the energy wrapping the blade in shimmering layers.
As more and more ambient Qi was absorbed and condensed from the surrounding environment, the visible Sword Aura manifested along the length of the slender jian steadily transformed.
What had once flared as an untempered blaze of brownish earth energies now refined itself into a sharper, silk-like form - thin streams of power sharpened to a sublime, potent edge.
A Sword Silk...
Yet compared to the onrushing, titanic blade of energy aimed squarely at him, this Sword Silk seemed a meager, fragile resistance at best.
"HAAA!" Elder Xia's shout was the only warning...
Elder Xia's eyes widened with grim determination, his furrowed brow and glaring gaze etched with an aura of unshakable resolve. As he let out a powerful, bellowing shout, his grip tightened on his jian's hilt with such ferocious might that the bulging blue veins beneath his weathered skin seemed on the verge of rupturing.
The refined, silk-like strands of the Sword Silk technique lashed out in a shimmering tempest along the jian's edge, the razor aura erupting in an almost sentient frenzy as it collided against the onrushing, monstrous wall of Ji Wuye's titanic sword slash.
CRASH!
In slow, inexorable increments, the edge of Elder Xia's jian began to buckle and splinter under the colossal, unstoppable force bearing down upon it.
"YOOOU....INSOLENT BRAT!!"
The gossamer Sword Silk, too, was being gradually shredded and devoured by that same unrelenting power. Yet through it all, Elder Xia did not retreat a single step.
"HOW DARE YOU BRANDISH YOUR WEAPON AT YOUR ELDER—THE ONE WHO HAS RAISED YOU SINCE YOU WERE A CHILD!" Elder Xia shouted loudly, saliva flying as his words echoed through the courtyard.
The Qi flowing through his meridians surged powerfully, growing stronger and more turbulent as massive amounts of it poured out from his Dantians.
If he moved, if he faltered even slightly, the elite Inner Disciples behind him - still frozen in stunned immobility by the breakneck speed of this unfolding event - would face the full, cataclysmic brunt of this extinction-level attack without any protection.
Thus, he needed to withstand it, remaining unmoved from his position… resulting in…
His eyes grew bloodshot, reddened streaks of burst vessels weeping crimson tears down his cheeks as the immense pressure exerted on his body took its brutal toll. His skin tore apart in ragged slashes, revealing the raw, weeping flesh beneath, while his once pristine martial robes disintegrated into shredded remnants under the searing onslaught of energies clashing.
In that infinite moment, a blinding flash of light overtook Elder Xia's vision, filling his awareness with blazing whiteness.
"Ahhh..." His fading strength finally failed, his blood-soaked eyes rolling back as a guttural war cry tore from his gaping, bloodied mouth. His battered form crumpled, falling away...
Elder Xia's broken body seemed to hang suspended in midair, slowly toppling backward in weightless slow-motion as the titanic sword slash barreled inexorably onward - poised to cleave his broken form in two with its apocalyptic edge.
But then...
WOOSH!
Like a blessing from the heavens themselves, the colossal blade of energy abruptly winked out of existence mere cun from Elder Xia's defenseless form, vanishing in an instant as if it had never been. Yet his brutalized body was still hurled violently backward by the residual forces at play...
BOOM!
The thunderous aftermath of that impossible clash between titans rippled outward in a series of percussive shockwaves that shook Kunlun Mountain to its roots.
The sect's grand entrance gate - an ornately carved wooden paifang arch - cracked along its beams with an ominous, groaning fracture. The idyllic waterfall below erupted skyward in a suspended plume of glittering droplets before gravity reasserted its hold, causing the curtain of water to splash wildly outward in a rippling ring.
The Hall of Insight, nestled deep within the Inner Courtyard of the Kunlun Sect, trembled violently - its very foundations shaking as if gripped by an earthquake. The thunderous sounds of this upheaval prompted the council of Elders within to rush out in alarmed confusion.
Meanwhile, the thick clouds and ethereal mists that had perpetually blanketed Kunlun's lofty surroundings were blown away in that same cataclysmic instant, pushed back to unveil the mountain's towering peaks in a startling moment of unprecedented clarity.
...
At the center of this maelstrom stood the undisputed culprit - Ji Wuye himself. In the aftermath of his devastatingly powerful downward slash, both hands still gripping the elongated hilt of his Cháng Dāo...though the immense curved blade itself had been atomized into drifting motes of metallic dust.
A staggering amount of his Qi reserves had been utterly drained to unleash that extinction-level attack, yet his wells of power remained deep enough to potentially perform the same obliterating technique again if necessary.
His toned arms visibly trembled under the lingering strain of channeling and wielding such apocalyptic energies, the muscles quivering even as his fingers maintained their white-knuckled grip on the now useless hilt.
Despite this toll, a cocksure smirk crept its way across Ji Wuye's features, fueled by the intoxicating rush of excitement only a narrow brush with oblivion could provide. His burning crimson eyes, glinting with feral sharpness, did not linger on the disintegrated remnants of his sacrificed Cháng Dāo. Instead, his smoldering gaze scanned the surrounding scene of utter devastation.
This was Ji Wuye at full power—using everything at his disposal except Pressure Form Perfection Style, which would have doubled the destructive effects. But even without it, he thought, ‘This… is more than enough to teach that old bone a lesson.’
Laid before him was the marbled expanse of the Central Training Courtyard, now reduced to shattered ruins. A single, precise fracture had cleaved the polished stone into two perfectly sundered halves—like the work of a cosmic sledgehammer.
This fissure extended outward in a treacherously deep gouge, carving through the broad staircase that led up into the Inner Courtyard itself before finally arresting its catastrophic path at the very spot where the Elder Xia had made his last stand.