Spirit Ruin, Sword Coffin, Blind Swordsman

The explosion engulfed the void for a hundred li in every direction. Terrifying spatial fissures spread across a thousand li, grinding the barren land to dust.

The force hurled everyone tens of thousands of zhang back, blood spraying from their mouths as they tumbled away with no control at all.

Almost every cultivator was injured, and the Liang-tier experts, the Sha organization’s strongest, were all dead. The full brutality of the fighting was impossible to gauge from the outside.

Hong Zhi was drenched in blood, half her body gone. Yet, she gripped her saber in one hand and brought it crashing down on Sha’s neck.

Sha’s robes hung in tatters. Beneath his mask, his face was veiled in chaotic gray mist, and his eyes were fixed unblinkingly on Hong Zhi. His right hand clamped down on the blade’s edge, his eyes brimming with defiance and madness.

Half of Nangong Xuandu’s face was a mangled ruin, and Chan Kongzi knelt on one knee in the void, his fate unknown.

Both of You Ming’s legs had dissolved, corrupted by demonic qi. He was unconscious, deep within the void, barely breathing.

Everyone else was gravely wounded. Only Hong Zhi and Nangong Xuandu could still fight.

Without warning, the chaotic mist veiling Sha’s face dispersed, as though he could no longer sustain it. Beneath it was a face no one recognized—an unremarkable middle-aged man.

His eyes gleamed with madness. He gripped Hong Zhi’s saber and burst into hysterical laughter. “You think... you... can kill me?!”As Sha spoke, his eyes swept to Ye Feng, who was still hurtling through the air.

Li Guanqi forced down the blood surging up his throat, and his expression changed drastically. “Second Brother!”

The words had barely left his mouth when killing intent stirred in Hong Zhi’s eyes. Her blood-stained, deathly pale lips parted slightly. “I’ll personally send you on your way!”

Boom!

Saber light flashed. Sha’s head rolled, still wearing a bizarre smile, and his body dissolved into nothing.

A tiny point of light appeared. The next instant, an irresistible force pulled everything toward it.

Sha’s remnant soul, condensed until it looked solid, flashed once and burrowed into Ye Feng’s Ghost Arm.

The phantom of an ancient soul lamp rose out of Ye Feng’s arm. The next moment, the lamp dragged him into itself.

Ye Feng’s eyes went hollow. His gaze swept across the crowd as he spoke in a cold, unhurried voice. “As long as I am alive, none of you will ever sleep peacefully again.”

Hong Zhi gathered the last of her strength and brought her saber down on Ye Feng with everything she had. At the same time, Nangong Xuandu unleashed a colossal wave of sword qi, stretching hundreds of zhang.

Li Guanqi watched the sword light race toward Ye Feng at an impossible speed. “No!”

The soul lamp flickered faintly and vanished, dragging Ye Feng with it.

In that same instant, Li Guanqi’s head snapped up, his eyes locked on the fissure the soul lamp had left behind. “Song Zhi’ang!”

He had not been mistaken. He had seen a phantom of Song Zhi’ang, but her face and bearing had changed beyond all recognition.

An eerie black flower mark glimmered between her brows. Her phantom was utterly indifferent, her expression impossible to read. In her hand, a matching soul lamp burned with a sinister light.

Saber light and sword qi crisscrossed the sky, yet neither could stop Sha or Ye Feng. They vanished into the spatial fissure.

Rumble!

Boom!

The saber light and the sword qi carved two terrifying trenches across the earth, each nearly ten thousand zhang long.

Li Guanqi stood frozen, his fists clenched beneath his sleeves until his nails bit into his palms. Yet, he did not dare let the slightest hint of it show.

Because the last words Ye Feng had spoken while lucid still echoed in his ears. “Boss… If Sha is destined to become your greatest enemy… then let me fall into the abyss. Let me be the villain, cursed for ten thousand generations.”

Crack!

Li Guanqi ground his teeth until they cracked. He stood with his head bowed for what felt like an eternity. His face was obscured by his messy hair, but Cao Yan still saw two crystal-clear tears fall.

Everything went quiet.

Only the thousand-li stretch of void that still refused to close seemed to prove that any of it had happened.

Everyone had suffered grievous injuries. Even Li Guanqi had nearly exhausted his vital force, and his wounds had blackened and were oozing pus.

No one had been able to stop Sha’s final move. They had all pushed themselves to their absolute limits. The Liang-tier assassins had been the finest within their respective levels of the Mahayana Realm.

Only Sha escaped, with nothing but his soul intact. Every Chi, Mei, Wang, and Liang-tier assassin in the Sha Organization, along with every red-robed assassin, had been slaughtered. Aside from Sha himself, the Sha organization had effectively ceased to exist.

But everyone knew that as long as Sha was not dead, the organization could one day rise again from its ashes.

Hong Zhi fell from the sky, her strength spent, her eyes filled with a bitter refusal to accept what had happened.

Buzz!

The void tore open, and Xiang Huaizhi, drenched in blood, arrived at last. The moment he took in the scene, his heart lurched. Without even asking what had happened, he hurriedly took out medicinal pills and began treating everyone’s injuries.

Li Guanqi landed on a ruined mountaintop overlooking the battlefield, the Red Lotus Sword resting carelessly at his feet. He held a jug of strong liquor, gazing blankly at the scorched earth below.

No one disturbed him. The others silently cleaned up the battlefield. Li Guanqi simply drank mouthful after mouthful of burning liquor.

He had once wondered whether there was something wrong with Ye Feng’s Ghost Arm. It had never occurred to him that the Ghost Arm was the move Sha had been holding in reserve.

“I… should have realized sooner… The Sha organization opened the Dungeon Abyss, so why… why didn’t I realize that Second Brother’s arm had something to do with them? I thought that once it became the Spirit Pardon Ghost Arm, there would be no more trouble…”

Cao Yan stood a short distance behind him, listening to him mutter, but could find no words of comfort.

No one could have foreseen that Ye Feng’s Ghost Arm actually had two Abyssal Demons. They had remained concealed until today so they could become the final piece in Sha’s grand scheme.

Ye Feng’s last words echoed on and on through Li Guanqi’s mind like the voice of an inner demon.

He did not know what Ye Feng would become once this day was over. Would he become another Song Zhi’ang? Would he turn into a heretical cultivator who committed every evil imaginable and killed the innocent without a second thought?

He did not know… He did not know how the two of them would face each other if it came to that. Would they draw their swords against each other with reddened eyes? Or would they pretend they could neither see nor hear one another?

Li Guanqi clutched his head in agony, pounding it with all his strength. “AHHHHHHHHH! WHY?!”

Scene after scene flashed rapidly before his eyes. He recalled Ye Feng challenging him with a wager. He remembered the battle at the Purple Sun Pavilion. He even recalled Ye Feng carrying him through the mountains, standing alone against dozens of pursuing enemies without retreating a single step.

After they parted, Ye Feng had walked into the Dungeon Abyss alone just to catch up to him.

Li Guanqi recalled the youthful arrogance on Ye Feng’s face. Ye Feng had stood before those trying to execute him, sword in hand, facing the entire world for his sake.

But now, after hearing that Sha could never truly die and fearing that he would escape death once again, Ye Feng had willingly opened his heart and fused with the demonic spirit’s power.

Were Ye Feng’s scathing words painful to hear? No, Li Guanqi did not think so. He knew Ye Feng had never meant them.

Bloodshot veins spread across Li Guanqi’s white eyes as he slowly raised his gaze. His murderous intent had almost taken physical form. “Sha… One day, I will kill you with my own hands! Second Brother… wait for me. That day… isn’t far off. I only hope you won’t commit too many unforgivable sins before then.”