Mei Xu spun toward the workshop, her brow furrowing the instant she felt it.
"He just—" Her shock was cut short as several sword qi projectiles whistled toward her. With a sharp twist, she evaded them by a hair's breadth, forcing her focus back to the battlefield before she could dwell on the Wuji's disappearance..
Inside the coffin, the silence was suffocating. Lit only by the dim glow of the sigils, Wuji felt the silence press in on him, minute after minute, broken only by the muffled chaos of the battle outside and the ragged sound of his own breath.
With every second, his stomach tightened, his body paralyzed, not just by the fear of being found, but by the dread of a stray attack piercing his coffin.
Then, disaster struck.
A miniature sun spell detonated nearby. The blast rattled the coffin violently, and Wuji's heart hammered against his ribs. Before he could steady himself, a barrage of follow-up attacks rained down.
From within his coffin, he heard the elders' desperate shouts, threats hurled at Mei Xu and Wudi, their voices fraying into incoherence. The three elders realized they were at a disadvantage.
An instant later, one of the elders was hurled through the air like a ragdoll, smashed backward by a fireball directly into the workshop.
The explosion tore through the walls and shattered the remaining coffins. A wave of flame and raw sword qi swept through the ruins, devouring tools, wood, and memory alike.
In the heart of the inferno, the letter Wuji had written for the young woman the night before, every careful word, every unspoken feeling, curled into flames, then vanished into ash.
In the same breath, the two remaining elders lunged to shield their wounded comrade, who extinguished the raging flames with his qi. Anger twisted their faces, tinged with bitterness and helplessness.
Their eyes darted toward the horizon, toward the sect, hoping for reinforcements to crest the ridge.
Yet despite the mounting peril, their resolve did not waver. Retreat was unthinkable. For cultivators of the Righteous Sword Dao, to turn from an enemy was to turn from the Dao itself.
Their stances shifted, muscles coiling as they braced for a final, desperate stand. The injured elder fumbled for his spatial pouch, retrieved a tier-three qi-replenishing pill and a healing pill, and swallowed both in one ragged motion.
Mei Xu watched them with urgent dread, they were racing against the arrival of the sect, every heartbeat a risk. Wudi, beside her, mirrored her tension perfectly.
But where Mei Xu's desperation was real, Wudi's was a masterful fabrication. Though he appeared strained, nearly spent, over seventy percent of his qi reserves lay untouched. He had not yet called upon his natal treasure. So far, he had cast only a single spell: the Miniature Sun from his mid-rank Earth-grade cultivation canon.
"Brazen demonic pair!" one elder spat, his composure splintering into pure, boiling fury. "To ambush us within our own territory... HOW DARE YOU!"
Wudi did not bother with a reply. Words were a waste of breath, a tactic of the desperate. He saw their gambit for what it was, a pathetic barter for more seconds, a plea for time until the reinforcement arrived.
His response was action rather than entertaining them. With a fluid, practiced ease, Wudi's fingers wove into a sequence of hand seals, coolly drawing twenty percent of his untouched Qi reserves. The air before him shimmered with a sudden, violent heat.
"Fourth Form: Flame of Murabita."
The very qi in the vicinity was wrenched inward, converging violently on Wudi's fingertip. There, a bead of searing purple flame, no larger than a seed, bloomed into existence. With a dismissive flick, he released it.
The bead descended, and the air around it wavered, distorting into a haze of oppressive, shimmering heat.
Seeing it fall, the three elders moved as one. Their swords slid into their scabbards in a single, resonant shing. A final, silent glance passed between them, it was a nod of shared resolve.
Their hands rose in unison, weaving the intricate seals of their most desperate defensive art, a pinnacle technique from their Early stage Earth-rank cultivation canon that would demand every last drop of their qi.
"Thirteenth Form: Heaven's Fall Sword Guard—Sword deity Protection!"
A colossal avatar, nearly twenty meters tall, erupted into being behind them in a burst of radiant light. It gripped a massive spectral sword and drove the blade deep into the earth, erecting a towering barrier of solidified energy.
The tiny bead of flame struck the center of the sword.
For a fraction of a second, there was only a searing point of contact.
Then the world detonated.
A cataclysm of purple flame and concussive heat erupted outward. The shockwave tore through the clearing with a deafening roar, straining the very seams of the illusion array.
Mei Xu lunged to reinforce the array, but the force was absolute. The backlash hit her like a physical blow; blood sprayed from her lips as she was hurled backward, skidding across the ground.
Gritting her teeth against the pain, she forced herself up and vanished into the shimmering, fractured layers of the illusion array.
Whoosh!
A sword cut through the billowing smoke. Wudi, his focus split by Mei Xu's fall, reacted a heartbeat too late. He raised his hands, flooding them with fifty percent of his qi in a desperate parry.
He deflected the strike, but clumsily—the blade had been lacquered in poison. The sword qi grazed his skin, and with it, the toxin entered his meridians.
It was enough.
The three elders trembled where they stood, their legs unsteady, their qi utterly spent. But that final, desperate lunge had been lacquered in poison.
"Hah." Wudi's laugh was a shard of ice. "To think the dignified elders of the Heaven's Fall Sword Sect would stoop to poison."
Their faces darkened, but they offered no defense. Before death, dignity was a luxury, sometimes even the Dao itself could be abandoned.
"You believe a mere toxin can hinder me?" Wudi scoffed as he closed his eyes, attempting to surge his qi and purge the poison.
Agony answered instead as a sharp, prickling fire erupted through his meridians. He doubled over, coughing blood so violently that Mei Xu froze mid-step.
"There's… sword qi in the poison," he rasped, disbelief flashing across his face.
He could have neutralized any common toxin of this grade with ease. But this was different. The poison had been engineered to paralyze qi circulation, similar to the one he had diffused earlier, but this poison had been fused with sharp sword Qi.
It was a lethal, sophisticated union, one he had not thought possible in his two hundred and fifty years.
"A masterful union," Wudi remarked, his voice strained with pain yet edged with a thread of genuine admiration. "To fuse sword qi with poison… the intelligence from this alone will elevate my standing in the sect."
He paused, watching their expressions twist from alarm into raw, murderous sharp intent.
"Good," he continued, his tone unsettlingly calm. "Since this has become a contest of toxins, it is time for mine to take the stage."
He took out a healing pill and swallowed it whole, seeking to suppress the corrosive sword qi in his meridians. As the pill vanished, a cold dread seeped into the three elders' hearts.
They had also consumed qi-replenishing pills, yet the energy they'd just recovered now felt sluggish, thick as mud, drowning in their own veins.
Worse, the ambient qi around them had gone unresponsive, severed from their perception as if they were plunged into a void with no shred of spiritual energy.
The realization struck them as one: he had laced the air with his own poison long ago. Their dread plummeted into a bottomless pit. Frantically, they reached for their life-saving treasures; precious tier-four pills obtained at staggering cost, but Mei Xu, still hidden into the illusion array, gave them no opening.
She struck, and Lances of fire spells and spears of water whistled through the air. Spell after spell rained down in a relentless, harrying barrage.
None of the attacks were meant to kill, their purpose was simpler, and crueler: to keep the elders in constant, desperate motion, denying them even a single heartbeat of stillness to swallow their pills.
For several agonizing breaths, Mei Xu's barrage held them at bay while Wudi focused inward, circulating the pill's medicinal essence through his poisoned meridians.
Suddenly, the eldest of the three lunged forward. He used his own body as a living shield, deliberately absorbing the brunt of Mei Xu's elemental strikes.
"First Brother!" the others cried in anguish.
"Now!" he roared, his gaze locked on Wudi, who was already beginning to weave another spell attack.
The remaining two did not hesitate. They gulped down their pills, but with the poison strangling their circulation, they recovered only a pathetic trickle of usable qi.
They exchanged one final, silent glance. Words were useless now as they understood the reality of their situation.
In a single, synchronized motion, they ignited their trump card: a forbidden art that burned the user's very lifespan to manifest a strike of pure, annihilating intent.
"Secret Art: Heaven's Sword Meteor!"
The space above the village groaned and tore open. From the jagged fissure, a colossal stone sword descended, wreathed in devastating artistic conceptual force, and hurtled toward Wudi like a falling star.
Wudi froze mid-weave. Mei Xu's face drained of all color.
"You reckless FOOLS!" he roared, instantly aborting his spell. He reached into his spatial pouch and took out a small, weathered jade amulet. It was a life-saving treasure unearthed from a secret realm fifty years prior. It had saved him twice before; only a single use remained.
The thought of wasting its final charge sent a sharp, visceral pang through his chest.
"Damn you! Damn all of you!" he bellowed as his fingers crushed the jade to powder. "If I live through this, I will hunt down every disciple, every companion, every soul you have ever cherished!"
Beneath the shadow of the descending sword meteor, the three elders laughed, a raw, broken sound.
If Wudi survived a strike forged from pure Sword Intent, a realm of power far surpassing mere sword qi and infused with artistic concept, it would mean they had sacrificed half their remaining lifespans for nothing.
Lifespans carved out over centuries on the brutal road to immortality.
A radiant, golden barrier bloomed around Wudi, shimmering with golden light.
Mei Xu's eyes widened with clear recognition. "A life-saving treasure imbued with artistic conceptual force…" she whispered, the words hollow with awe.
Without a second thought, she poured ninety percent of her remaining qi into the formation plate, straining the illusion array to its absolute limit. She didn't waste a breath cursing Wudi for shielding only himself.
This was the demonic path. When the heavens fell, you lived for yourself. You died for yourself. It was nothing like the righteous factions, with their luxury of shared martyrdom.
In the same heartbeat, the Heaven's Sword Meteor struck.
The impact drove both combatants into the earth, carving a scar fifty meters wide, it was a devastation that erased Wuji's three houses, splintering them into pieces.
Then, the colossal stone sword began to fracture. Its form disintegrated, dissolving into shimmering motes of spent intent, leaving behind a raw crater twenty meters deep and fifty across.
Buried beneath the churned earth, Wuji lay sealed within the Heaven Burial Coffin.
As he had expected, the coffin itself was unscathed; not a single crack marred its surface, not even the forbidden secret art. Only the violent, bone-rattling tremor of the impact reached him inside the dimly lit coffin.
Yet he remained curled in that place of pale darkness, cowering as silent tears carved paths through the wrinkles on his face. He knew, with a hollow and absolute certainty, that Wang Da was gone.
There was no chance, not a single hope, that a mortal could have survived an attack of that magnitude.
His jaw clenched until his teeth ached. His nails dug into his own palms until blood welled hot and slick, but deep down, he knew it was a futile, primal rage threatening to drive him insane.
But the reality of his situation was a cold, crushing weight on his chest. "I cannot avenge my son. Not today." The thought was a blade twisting in his gut. "But one day… one day, they will pay."