The three elders huddled at the crater's edge and peered into the abyss they had created. Below, there was only darkness and the heavy, lingering hum of fading Sword Intent mixed with the oppressive artistic concept of the Heavy Sword, so thick it distorted the very air.
A whisper broke the silence before their spiritual senses could react. From the darkness, a needle of light flashed—faster than thought—and in the span of a dying breath, pierced both elders' skulls in one blurred, merciless strike.
The third elder recoiled, shock and fury twisting his face as he brought his sword up as a shield, but the needle, as if spent of energy, flickered and fell harmlessly to the ground.
"First Brother! Third Brother!" he screamed, the words tearing from his throat as he watched their bodies collapse with dull, final thuds.
He dropped to his knees beside them, his own sword cast aside. His hands trembled above their lifeless bodies, his gaze fixed on the tiny bleeding holes in their foreheads.
His tear-reddened eyes snapped toward the surviving disciples, a handful of figures standing petrified within the rivers of blood and scattered remains of the villagers. His voice pierced their shaken minds through a spiritual transmission, raw and unsteady.
"Take the others. Alert the sect. Tell them the demonic faction has begun its attack…" His mental voice faltered, thick with grief. "And that the Three Sword Brothers… have fallen defending the sect."
Though his voice was grief-stricken, it held a hint of coldness that left no room for argument, causing Yun Li to hesitate for a heartbeat.
His mouth opened to protest—to say the elder was still alive, that their sacrifice was too great, that they should retreat together, that his brothers wouldn't want him to forsake his life so foolishly.
But it was useless. The elder's eyes were already dead to the world; from the tone of his voice alone, he had already chosen his end. With no other choice, Yun Li gathered the remaining disciples and fled, retreating at full speed toward the sect, even abandoning the heavy testing pillars.
The elder's gaze lingered on the disciples' retreating backs until they were swallowed by the forest. Then he straightened, grasped his sword with trembling hands, and walked to the edge of the pit.
From the depths of the pit, he heard the sound of Wudi's ragged coughing echoing upward. "It should have been me, brothers," his voice rasped as his eyes fixed on their lifeless bodies.
"But do not worry. Your killer will not outlive you for long. I will drag him into hell myself."
With a guttural roar, he began to burn the final years of his lifespan. A violent, desperate surge of power erupted from his core, propelling him to the peak of the Core Formation realm as he leapt into the pit.
At the bottom of the crater, Wudi struggled to his feet, every movement a battle against his own body as he coughed out dark, poisonous blood. A crooked, bitter smile formed on his blood-stained lips as he surveyed the darkness around him, while his mind remained alert as he knew he only killed two of the three old crooks.
His gaze landed on Mei Xu's body lying several meters away. Her breathing was so shallow she appeared dead, but the glow from her array plate hovering above her, injecting her with faint qi, showed him she was at least still clinging to life.
"Tsk... useless wench," he muttered, his voice thin. "And here I thought she might actually be of use. If I'd known it would end like this, I never would have promised that lunatic swordsman the Blood Revival Pills."
His hands shook as he fumbled with his spatial pouch. He withdrew a handful of healing pills and shoved them into his mouth, trying to ease the ravaging poison of the sword Qi.
"Who would have guessed the so-called 'ingredients' would fight bac—"
Whoosh!
Before the sentence could leave his lips, his right hand—still clutching the remaining pills—was severed cleanly at the wrist. His blood sprayed across the dark earth like a fountain.
Wudi recoiled instinctively, his mind screaming at his qi to circulate. But his meridians remained bound like iron chains, the poison still holding its grip, leaving him unable to circulate his Qi even an inch.
He looked up, his eyes widening at the sight of the Third Elder hovering above him, face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage. He looked less like a cultivator now and more like a vengeful ghost.
Sensing this might be the most dangerous moment of his life, Wudi did not hesitate. He reached for a final jade pendant—a treasure bestowed by his master, containing the concentrated fist strike of a Late Golden core refining cultivator.
He crushed it with a frantic snarl. In the next instant, a massive fist of condensed, shimmering qi manifested in the air. It slammed into the elder with the force of a falling mountain, driving him straight into the pit's rocky wall.
His body struck the wall with a sickening crack before crashing back to the floor in a final, motionless heap.
"Damn! Too many losses," Wudi mumbled as he pulled a flying sword from his spatial pouch, bent down, and retrieved the blood-stained pills from his severed hand.
He swallowed them without hesitation, then stored the severed limb away into his spatial pouch for later reattachment. He sat cross-legged on the blood-stained ground.
With great effort and the aid of the medicinal energy, he suppressed the poison for several minutes. Only now, after five more minutes, was he barely able to circulate qi again, the poison subdued but still lingering in his system.
His strength had also dropped sharply, to no higher than the peak of Foundation Establishment, but it was enough to run away. Slowly, he rose to his feet, poured qi into the flying sword, and mounted it.
With every breath, agony wracked him, but he endured it. Without looking back, not at the pit, nor at Mei Xu, who had just begun to awaken, he flew away.
Not even the Sevenfold Chalice Orchid herb was enough to keep him there a moment longer. He feared reinforcements more than anything else.
Moments later, Mei Xu slowly pushed herself upright. Pain lanced through her body. Most of her bones were shattered, and her qi was nearly exhausted. Within her meridians, the sword intent and artistic concept left behind by the forbidden secret art continued to ravage her insides.
She opened her spatial pouch, took out several healing pills, and swallowed them to stabilize herself.
But she knew the truth. Damage inflicted by artistic concept could only be alleviated by tier-five pills.
Her so-called partner, her greatest source of resources and her cash cow—Wudi—had abandoned her.
She cursed for a long while, but in the end, she forced herself into a meditative posture. Every movement was slow, heavy, and excruciating, as the traces of the heavy sword artistic concept remained within her body.
Still, she began circulating medicinal energy through her battered meridians. She knew the sect would arrive, if not within a day, then within hours, especially if they sent the supreme elders and just thinking of them made her heart thrum with dread.
But for now, she could only try to regain some of her strength and fly out of this pit, even the idea of leaping out was rendered impossible by her shattered bones.
An hour later, inside the coffin, Wuji finally forced his grief into a numb corner of his mind. The immediate reality of survival left no space for it. After a long stretch of utter silence from outside, he decided it was time to leave.
He pushed the coffin lid open a crack and sat up. Darkness and the low, hollow hum of wind through the pit greeted him.
"Where am I?" he muttered, climbing out slowly. He stood beside the coffin, and the moment his body cleared its edge, Mei Xu's eyes snapped open.
She had sensed him.
"What?" she whispered sharply, her senses razor-focused. "Someone's here?" Her spirit sense swept outward and immediately locked onto Wuji, moving through the darkness like a blind man.
"A mortal?" Her brows knitted in disbelief. "How is a mortal still alive?" Then she detected it, the faint, unmistakable aura of death qi clinging to him like a shroud. Realization dawned on her. "It's that old man who vanished," she murmured, her eyes narrowing with surprise.
"Interesting. A mortal who can evade detection…" A spark of calculation cut through the haze of her pain. "If I can learn how he does it… I might still have a chance to escape."
She reached into her spatial pouch and withdrew a small, cylindrical light source. She didn't truly need it, but caution was a habit that kept cultivators alive.
Even if her senses claimed he was mortal, the evidence before her suggested otherwise. With a thread of her replenished qi, she activated it.
Light bloomed in the abyssal dark.
Wuji froze mid-step, his eyes widening in shock at the sudden illumination. "Someone is here!"
Instantly, an invisible pressure settled over him. His mind raced, then cooled into a hard clarity. There was nowhere to run, he was trapped in a about twenty-meter-long pit, with no hope of outpacing a cultivator even if there were an exit.
Survival dictated his only move. "Senior," he said, bowing toward the source of the light.
"Come closer," Mei Xu's voice echoed from the glow, gentle yet layered with implicit threat. "I have questions for you."
Slowly, Wuji approached until he stood at the edge of the light's reach. "Senior, please ask," he said, bowing again. "I will answer everything. Just...spare my life."
Even as he begged, he did not kneel. And even as he spoke, his eyes searched subtly, straining to glimpse the lifespan numbers he knew must be tied to the voice, any scrap of information that might grant him an edge.
Mei Xu studied him in silence before finally speaking. "Old man," she said coldly. "Your presence here is... interesting." Her gaze studied him closely. "How can someone as weak and fragile as you still be alive?"
Hearing the question, Wuji felt as though there was nowhere left to hide. He slowly raised his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the woman's lifespan numbers, but he saw only the darkness and the glow, but he didn't give up that easily, his pupils darted around, searching the space before him, but still he saw no numbers.
Then, at the very edge of his vision, the numbers flickered. "She's standing beside me." The realization hit him like a blade as cold sweat poured down his spine. His body trembled as death, which he had tried so desperately to flee, pressed in on him.
One wrong word, and his head could be severed from his body. "If Senior asks," Wuji said, bowing with meticulous care toward the light, "then it is my humble duty to share."
"Then speak," she replied, her impatience a palpable force. "I am out of time."
"Senior, some time ago, I stumbled upon a coffin—"
"Are you deaf?" she cut in, her voice a whip-crack. "Be quick."
Wuji flinched, then gestured carefully toward the Heaven Burial Coffin. "It's that coffin, Senior."
His mind churned. "I hope this gamble works."
Mei Xu's focus shifted instantly. Her spirit sense swept over the coffin, probing it once, then again and again. She found nothing, no trace of qi, no hidden arrays, no spatial fluctuations, it was simply inert and mundane.
And that was the deepest strangeness of all. In the face of an attack that had turned stone to dust and flesh to mist, how could a simple wooden coffin remain utterly, perfectly intact?