Qingyangzi did not laugh.
His gaze lingered for a long moment on the back of the young man on the reef beach, a faint, imperceptible glint passing through the depths of his eyes.
Yet that improbable thought merely flickered across his mind for an instant.
The most pressing matter right now was to activate the formation.
A Second Rank martial artist courting death was not worth his distraction.
“Daoist Master, how are the preparations?”
Zhao Li withdrew his gaze, turning back toward the center of the formation.
Qingyangzi illuminated the final notch of the Black Iron Heaven-Measuring Ruler, and the entire ruler abruptly released a deep hum like the tolling of a great bell.
Every formation line of the hexagram array lit up simultaneously as a gold-red radiance spread in all directions along the markings, casting the entire floor of the pavilion into a glow reminiscent of a blazing furnace.
“The formation is set. We only await the two sword immortals to make their move.”
Qingyangzi stepped outside the array and gave Zhao Li a bow.
“Your Highness, please enter the formation.”
Zhao Li stepped into the very center of the hexagram array and sat cross-legged, resting his hands upon his knees before closing his eyes.
Ziwei imperial qi slowly manifested around him—a faint, gossamer halo of purple-gold light.
Three feet above his head, it condensed into an illusory canopy.
...
Upon the sea.
Before the echoes of Qi Tianchen’s words could even disperse, they were drowned out by a low chuckle.
Lü Beisheng was laughing.
His head was lowered, his shoulders trembling slightly.
The sword named “Sheiru” hung at his side, its tip dipping into the sea to ripple outward in an exceedingly fine, faint ring.
He laughed for a long time.
Then he raised his head, gripped the hilt with both hands, and slowly raised Sheiru above his head.
The cold glint upon the blade suddenly surged, illuminating the sea for several li around in a frigid, silvery white.
The aura around him changed completely in that very instant.
He was no longer the taciturn City Lord sitting before the window facing the Eastern Sea in Wangchao Pavilion.
He was a true Earthly Sword Immortal standing at the peak of the Way of the Sword.
Twenty years.
For twenty whole years, he had been trapped within Wangchao Pavilion.
Watching the tides day and night, watching the seabirds come and go, watching the ebb and flow of the waters.
Others thought he was merely daydreaming, squandering time away, assuming that the once-spirited Sword God had devolved into a taciturn, aloof living corpse.
Yet only his sworn brother, Lu Yang, who climbed Wangchao Pavilion every ten days to half a month carrying braised beef and cold tea, knew the truth.
Lü Beisheng was watching the sea, and he was contemplating the sword.
Every rise and fall of the Eastern Sea’s tides, every shift of the ocean breeze, every flap of a seabird’s wings had left its mark within his sword intent.
In the distance, Shen Xingzhi narrowed his eyes.
Feeling the overwhelming sword intent surging from across the water, the curve of his lips slowly curled upward.
In the very next instant...
The sea surface within a hundred zhang around Lü Beisheng simultaneously sank three chi!
It formed an enormous bowl-shaped depression!
The seawater around the rim of the depression was forcefully crushed downward by his sword intent!
Every drop of seawater reflected a gleam of sword light!
Hundreds of millions of sword lights swirled restlessly across the curved surface of the depression, dying the entire stretch of sea in a blinding silver-white.
The thousands atop the city walls were forced back almost simultaneously by that overwhelming sword intent.
Martial artists of lesser cultivation were pressed flat against the crenels of the city wall, even their breathing turning arduous.
Even Grandmaster-caliber figures like Qin Tiegu had to plant their wrought bronze staffs firmly into the ground and circulate their full cultivation to steady their footing.
“Is... is this the true might of an Earthly Sword Immortal?”
Qin Tiegu’s voice trembled.
He was a Second Rank Grandmaster, someone of note in the martial world.
Yet at this moment, he felt his meager cultivation was as minuscule as a grain of sand in a raging tempest before this sword intent.
Lü Beisheng slowly extended Sheiru forward in his grip.
The blade slid across the sea surface, drawing a thin line of water.
The waterline burst with a roar in the blade’s wake; every droplet was saturated with sword intent the moment it left the sword, transforming into hundreds of millions of sword qi as fine as ox hair, hovering all around him.
Their tips pointed uniformly at Shen Xingzhi a hundred zhang away.
“Senior Shen.”
Lü Beisheng’s voice was not loud, yet it rang clear as a sword’s hum, penetrating the howling sea wind and the roaring waves.
“This junior begs your pardon.”
Before his words had even settled, his figure vanished from where he stood.
And where he had originally stood...
The bowl-shaped depression abruptly collapsed as tens of thousands of tons of seawater collided inward, blasting a water column dozens of zhang high.
Yet in the very instant that water column soared into the sky, Lü Beisheng had already appeared right before Shen Xingzhi!
Sheiru slashed down!
There were no flourishes to this sword strike, no variations—it was simply the plainest, most direct, and purest vertical slash.
Yet as this slash descended, the sky split open.
Viewed from the city walls, the heavens above the Eastern Sea were truly cleaved with a fissure by this single stroke.
The fissure extended all the way from the sea surface past the cloud cover.
The sea of clouds on either side of the rift was torn aside by sword intent, rolling back to reveal a straight, azure heavenly scar that bordered on uncanny!
As for the trajectory of the blade itself, no one could capture it with the naked eye any longer.
People could only see a single beam of light.
A light more blinding than the midday sun erupted from Lü Beisheng’s hands, cleaving straight toward Shen Xingzhi.
And yet.
Shen Xingzhi did not retreat.
He drew his right hand from behind his back, brought his index and middle fingers together, and traced a light stroke before him.
He formed his fingers into a sword.
A burst of sword qi shot out from his fingertips.
That sword qi was merely three chi long and two fingers wide, thin as a cicada's wing.
Yet when that cicada-wing sword qi collided with Lü Beisheng’s world-cleaving sword strike, the entire Eastern Sea fell utterly silent.
Sound vanished.
It was not that there was no sound, but that the sound was so monumental it exceeded the limits of human perception.
Those on the city walls felt only a loud buzz in their ears, after which they could hear nothing at all.
They could only see a sphere of light burst open upon the sea.
A sphere of light hotter than the sun and more blinding than lightning.
The radiance radiated in all directions from the point of their collision.
Wherever it passed, seawater was instantaneously vaporized, exposing the reefs and silt of the seabed.
The reefs and silt were melted into magma by the scorching heat in the very next instant.
And in the instant after that, the magma was scattered by the blast of energy, turning into a deluge of fire rain across the sky.
Only then did the sound finally catch up to the pace of light.
Only now did everyone hear the delayed, cataclysmic boom.
“So this is... an Earthly Immortal...”
After that single strike, Lü Beisheng did not halt.
He had been trapped for twenty years.
For twenty years, he had sat upon that old chair every day, facing the Eastern Sea.
Honing his sword in his heart over and over again.
Having no natal sword, he took heaven and earth as his sword.
Having no opponents, he took his inner demons as his opponent.
Twenty years of loneliness, twenty years of suppression, twenty years of unwillingness...
All of it transformed at this moment into an earth-blanketing tempest of sword light.
Sheiru could no longer be clearly discerned in his hand.
People could only see one sword furrow after another blossoming across the sky.
Every sword furrow carried the power to destroy heaven and earth.
Yet Shen Xingzhi’s response remained nothing more than those two fingers.
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