The Purple Emptiness True Person's gaze settled back on the beast.
Kwaak.
The Qilin's white hooves kicked off the mud.
The beast's massive body rushed toward the man in the black robe in a single, straight line.
The brilliance at the tip of its horn condensed once more, and its five-colored scales began to return to their original state.
The man stood his ground, his two swords of darkness crossed before his chest, not moving an inch.
However, the two black lines extending from the tips of his swords grew thicker, and the point where they intersected met the beast's advance head-on.
Kwadeuk!
Jjeo-eong—!
Kwadeudeuk!
The point of the horn and the tips of the swords clashed again and again.
One strike, two strikes, three strikes.
The beast's steps were pushed back a foot before it charged forward again, and a bundle of brilliance was sucked in beyond the black lines before condensing once more.
A section of the peak was sheared off at an angle yet again.
Kwadeudeudeudeuk—!
The Qilin's horn struck down at the man's front once more.
The black cross absorbed the blow into a single point, and the beast's massive body slid sideways, tearing through the mud.
Immediately, its pure white hooves kicked off the mud, and it returned.
Tugwa-aang—!
A cluster of its mane fanned out, covering the man's front in an instant.
The cross-shaped Black Sword Aura devoured the cluster, one strand at a time.
Azure light filled the spots where it had been swallowed, and the replenished azure light was sucked back into the center of the darkness.
Jjeo-eong—!
The horn and the sword tips clashed repeatedly.
In the midst of this continuing stalemate, the beast came to a sudden halt.
The Qilin planted its four feet deep into the mud and raised its head to the sky.
The giant horn on its head began to slowly rotate, parting the rain, and its five-colored scales shimmered all at once.
But this time, the light did not gather at the tip of its horn.
It spread out.
The five colors left the surface of the scales and slowly seeped into the rain-soaked area surrounding the beast's massive body.
Red and blue, green and yellow, and white, one by one, seeped into the mud at the bottom of the valley, into the grass on both cliffs, and into each and every falling raindrop.
With the beast at its center, the entire valley, spanning several li, was slowly being dyed in five colors.
The Purple Emptiness True Person's white eyebrows slowly rose.
"...This is."
The light wasn't being projected.
With the beast as the epicenter, the entire world in the vicinity was becoming the beast's domain.
The air, imbued with fire qi, grew suffocatingly hot.
The mud, steeped in water qi, became heavy as if to pull at one's ankles.
The wind, wrapped in wind qi, sliced at the skin.
The earth, settled with earth qi, pressed down, and the surrounding area, enveloped in metal qi, tightened its grip.
The Divine Domain of the Five Directions.
A power where the five energies did not pour from a single point, but became space itself.
Everything within the beast's divine domain was crushed and sent into a frenzy by those five energies.
There was nowhere to escape.
Not anywhere in this valley.
As one who had spent his life pondering the principles of the heavens, the Purple Emptiness True Person recognized it at once.
That spirit creature was no longer using martial arts.
It had torn off a corner of the world and was holding it in its own hands.
'Surely, he doesn't intend to take on even that?'
The man standing in the middle of it all still had his two swords of darkness crossed before his chest.
He hadn't retreated a single step.
In the midst of the five colors assailing him from all directions, the man slowly pushed the intersection of his crossed swords toward the center of the beast's divine domain.
Swaaaaaaaaaaaaa—
The five colors filling the valley began to be swept into that single point all at once.
The fire qi, the water qi, all the energies of wind, earth, and metal were sucked backward toward the single point at the tip of the man's swords.
The beast's divine domain was ceasing to be the beast's.
The torn-off corner of the world slipped from its creator's grasp, disappearing strand by strand somewhere beyond the black intersection.
The Purple Emptiness True Person's mouth fell slightly open.
Those five colors, the brilliance enveloping that massive body, all of that power.
His dantian, which had not been full for over a decade, swelled in an instant.
'If only I had a handful of that. A piece of that beast's flesh, a fragment of its horn...'
I must have it.
Beneath his white eyebrows, the old Taoist's greedy gaze was fixed on the beast's massive form, unable to look away.
The fingers wrapped around the purple sword at his waist trembled with desire.
Jjeo-eong—!
And at that moment, the black intersection reached a limit where it could swallow no more.
The five energies it had been sucking in stopped all at once, and from that very spot, they exploded in all directions.
It was the shock of having taken in the beast's entire divine domain.
The power that had been confined to a single point shattered that point and was released into the world.
Kwadeudeudeudeuk—!
Kwadeudeudeudeuk—!
A qi wave imbued with the colors of the five directions spread out across the valley.
Centered on where the beast stood, the two nearest peaks crumbled at an angle, and the ridge beyond them collapsed like a rotten tree trunk.
From the sheared-off places, earth and rock poured down to the valley floor.
One stream of that qi wave shot up diagonally toward the peak where the Purple Emptiness True Person stood.
The Purple Emptiness True Person's gaze was still fixed on the beast's massive form.
That horn.
Those scales.
That handful of brilliance.
Lost in the delusion of obtaining it, the old Taoist's eyes caught the five-colored qi wave hurtling toward his peak a beat too late.
"...Huh?"
The white eyebrows of the old man in the Purple Daoist Robe furrowed for the first time.
The purple sword at his side was still tied by its cord.
That hand, which had cut down countless members of the Unorthodox Factions north of the river with a single sword, had yet to even touch the hilt.
"Uh, uh...?!"
Seogeok.
The Purple Emptiness True Person's head fell from his shoulders and rolled in the rain.
A stream of blood shot up before being washed away by the downpour.
But it was not the five-colored qi wave that had cut down the old Taoist.
The qi wave had already dissipated halfway up the peak.
Parting the dissipating rain, the man in the black robe had appeared on the peak at some point.
"..."
It was the very same man who had been fighting the beast in the middle of the valley.
Using the momentum of the Qilin's attack, he had cut through the rain as a single point, closing a distance of several li in an instant, a feat the Purple Emptiness True Person had failed to see in the end.
His hand had not even touched his sword hilt; he had not even known what was approaching.
The man wasn't even looking at the old Taoist.
The hand holding the sword had just swung once.
It was a movement akin to carelessly crushing an annoying bug underfoot, nothing more.
And the man's gaze had already returned to the beast.
The head at his feet no longer registered in his eyes.
"In... sane."
Across the valley, on the opposite peak, the Heaven-Slicing Saber Emperor had, of course, witnessed the scene clearly.
He had thought the man was swept away by the qi wave.
But somehow, he had appeared on the Purple Emptiness True Person's peak.
The hand of the new Sect Leader of the Heaven-Slicing Saber Sect, the hand gripping the saber, trembled faintly for the first time.
"A god... a man... huh?"
Seogeok, bwing-geureureu-.
Just like the Purple Emptiness True Person, his unspoken ally, he didn't realize it happened.
His head was also cut off, his body flailing in the air amid the downpour.
Though his neck and body were separated, his nerves were still alive, so his detached head could take in the surrounding scenery as it spun.
In his spinning vision, the area below the peak flashed by once.
His sect's masters, who had been on a rampage just moments ago, were there.
The elites who had honed the sect's saber arts their entire lives.
They were men who could easily cut down any ordinary peak master.
Those elites were being shattered into pieces, fragmented.
Something crimson-black was cutting through their midst.
It had a human form.
But there was no weapon visible in its hands, and wherever its feet touched the mud, the grass withered and turned black.
With each swipe of its fingertips, two or three of his men, sabers in hand, were split at the waist and collapsed.
They didn't even have time to scream.
'Who... is that one?'
Just as his head tried to follow the scene, a corner of his fading consciousness belatedly grasped one thing.
The one who had just taken his head was not the black-robed man in the center of the valley.
That man was probably still by the Purple Emptiness True Person's corpse.
The one who had taken his head was that crimson-black shadow.
He couldn't even begin to guess how it had gotten behind him.
Tuk, de-gu-reu-reu.
The spinning head fell to the mud, bounced once, and then came to a stop.
And so, his vision was fixed in one direction.
He could no longer see the crimson-black shadow, nor his collapsing sect members.
Only the mud, being submerged in rainwater, and the peak in the distance were quietly reflected in his detached eyes.
The opposite peak, which had been filled with the Purple Ememptiness True Person and the rabble he had killed.
The man in the black robe was still there.
The man in the black robe, fending off the Qilin that had charged at him again.
But the man's gaze was not on the beast he was sending flying.
This way.
Towards me... ah, no.
It wasn't exactly this way.
It was somewhere beyond his head, lying in the mud.
The place where the crimson-black shadow that had taken his neck was rampaging.
With the valley between them, the two unidentified figures faced each other.
The two men, each with the head of a new sect leader of the Heaven-Slicing Saber Sect and a peak master of the Jianghu at their feet.
"I, I... I am..."
The Heaven-Slicing Saber Sect Leader felt his life slowly fading and tried to speak one last time.
Kwajak-.
"I know, I know. That you're all worthless bastards."
But in the end, he died without being able to leave behind even a single line of his name.
The Heaven-Slicing Saber Sect would now have to elect a new Sect Leader.
Tuk, tuk.
The fiend, lightly shaking the brain matter off his foot, glanced at the Qilin before quickly shifting his gaze to the opposite peak.
The priority between the prey to be hunted and the target to be eliminated had become all too clear.
The prey, struck by the target and now buried dozens of zhang deep in the mud.
The difference in superiority between the target and the prey was glaringly obvious.
"You look quite delicious."
A level completely incomparable to the insects he had just killed.
Although he was too far away to make out the facial features clearly, he could feel it.
An intensely indifferent aura, a detached gaze.
It wasn't something you had to see up close to know.
The kind of being that devours people it meets and annihilates sects it encounters.
It was certain that this was a being very similar to himself.
He stuck out his tongue, licked his lips, and grinned.
"A feast for me, the World-Ending Demonic Lord... Huh?!"
In the middle of his sentence, his instincts screamed a warning.
Danger!
Evade!
The distance from here to there was at least ten li.
A situation where there shouldn't have been any danger.
But this was his ultimate Qi sense, the one that had saved him in countless battles.
The World-Ending Demonic Lord hurriedly followed his senses' command, gathering a large amount of crimson-black demonic qi in both hands and crossing his arms above his head.
In that instant!
He understood why his senses had reacted that way.
Because the eyes so emotionless it was impossible to believe a human could possess them were looking down on him as they descended.
Simultaneously, the figure of the one who had killed the Purple Emptiness True Person and knocked back the Qilin from ten li away, and who had been looking this way, was scattering like a heat haze.
He had moved so fast that his afterimage was only now disappearing.
The moment he realized that.
Kwa-a-a-a-a-ang!
With a shock as if the entire world was collapsing on top of him, all his senses dulled.
A feast.
A 'dinner' where one invites a guest to eat together.
In this cruel Jianghu, until the dinner is over, you never know who is the guest and who is the meal.