The moment Shen Xingzhi’s voice fell, the five fingers of his right hand slowly closed.
He was not grasping a sword.
His hand was completely empty, yet the instant his fingers tightened, the entire surface of the Eastern Sea sank by one cun in unison!
Not just a single stretch of water, but every inch of the sea within sight!
From the base of Jinyang City's walls to the edge of the horizon, ten thousand qing of emerald waves were pressed down at the very same instant by an invisible force!
The seawater did not burst, nor did it boil; it simply sank in perfect unison!
It was as though a colossal hand covering heaven and earth had pressed the entire ocean down by a cun!
Shen Xingzhi tightened his empty fist once more.
There was still no sword in his hand, yet everyone saw that sword.
It was not a tangible sword that truly existed, but a phantom condensed from sword intent.
About four chi long and two fingers wide, the blade was entirely translucent, glistening with a faint golden sheen only along its edges.
The phantom sword trembled faintly in his grip, and each vibration caused the hearts of the spectators atop the city walls to skip a beat!
Looking at the phantom sword, Lü Beisheng's pupils constricted slightly.
He drew “Sheiru” up from the sea, the sword tip dragging a streak of water with it.
The water streak broke midair into dozens of round droplets, every single one reflecting that pale gold sword phantom.
He took a deep breath, and the seawater within a hundred zhang of him began to flow in reverse!
At that moment, ten thousand tons of seawater defied all natural laws, surging upward!
Behind him rose a wall of water several dozen zhang high!
The surface of the water wall was not mirror-smooth; rather, it was densely etched with crisscrossing sword marks!
Those were the traces he had carved stroke by stroke into the surface of the Eastern Sea with his sword intent over the past twenty years, day in and day out, watching the tides and contemplating the sword from Wangchao Pavilion!
Every single furrow was an epiphany born from his twenty years of loneliness!
Shen Xingzhi finally moved.
He did not swing the sword, but merely pushed the sword phantom in his right hand forward by half a cun.
With merely half a cun, the air within a hundred zhang before him was compressed by sword qi into a visible white mist, detonating in an ear-piercing sonic boom!
The shockwave of the sonic boom rippled outward in a ring in all directions!
Sweeping across the sea, it threw up a circular wave wall about a zhang high!
At that exact instant, Lü Beisheng also thrust his sword.
“Sheiru” traced a straight path in his hand.
No arc, no variation—just the simplest of straight thrusts.
Yet the speed of this thrust was pushed to the absolute extreme, so fast that the heat generated by friction between the blade and the air vaporized the sea along its path into a straight channel of white steam!
The channel stretched from where Lü Beisheng stood all the way to Shen Xingzhi, resembling a long white dragon spanning the sea!
The two sword intents collided in midair!
The point of impact lay dead center between them.
The instant they collided, a fist-sized black dot appeared there.
The dot was pitch-black like ink, its edges shimmering with a blinding halo of white light.
It was a rift in the void, revealed as space was torn open simultaneously by two entirely distinct sword intents!
The rift persisted for less than a breath before the laws of heaven and earth automatically sealed it shut.
Yet in that fleeting instant, everyone within several li felt as though their very souls were violently yanked.
Only then did the true explosion erupt!
Centered on the collision point, the sea was blown into a circular crater dozens of zhang in diameter!
At the bottom of the crater, the seabed of the Eastern Sea was laid bare.
Within three breaths, the silt and reefs upon the seabed were ground into powder by residual sword qi!
Immediately after, the seawater around the crater's rim was directly vaporized by the sword qi.
The billowing vapor condensed into dense white fog in the air, only to be torn to shreds by the ensuing shockwaves!
As the shockwave swept over the crowd watching from the city walls, the martial artists in the front row took a collective step back.
It was not that they wanted to retreat; their bodies were instinctively recoiling from that world-destroying pressure.
Qin Tiegu slammed his wrought bronze staff onto the ground, sinking the butt three cun into the blue stone bricks before barely steadying himself.
Shielded behind a martial artist in martial attire, A-Tong clamped his hands tightly over his ears, yet his eyes were wide and round, staring unblinkingly at the two clusters of light clashing fiercely upon the sea.
The two sword immortals held nothing back any longer.
The phantom sword intent in Shen Xingzhi's hand had now swelled to over a zhang in length, trailing arcs of golden light with every swing.
Wherever the golden light passed, the sea was cleaved into trenches several zhang deep; before the water on either side could rush back together, another arc of light sliced it open anew.
His sword stance was sweeping and majestic, each stroke seeming poised to cleave the entire Eastern Sea in two!
Lü Beisheng’s sword stance was the complete opposite.
“Sheiru” moved faster and faster in his hands, so swift that the blade completely vanished from sight, leaving behind only countless hair-thin silver sword marks weaving through the air.
These sword marks, dense as a spiderweb, converged on Shen Xingzhi from all directions. Every single strand was steeped in the totality of sword intent Lü Beisheng had accumulated across twenty lonely years.
Two starkly different sword intents violently clashed, tore, and consumed each other above the sea.
Every collision triggered new celestial anomalies.
Dark clouds churned in the sky, torn into rifts by sword qi, through which rays of sunlight shone down to cast dappled pillars of light upon the water.
The positions of those light pillars shifted constantly as rifts in the clouds were continuously torn open and sealed shut again.
Columns of water blasted into the heavens, massive whirlpools formed, and sometimes both erupted simultaneously across the sea.
The spectacle was chaotic to the absolute extreme.
The qi of heaven and earth had plunged entirely into frenzy at this moment.
Centered on the two sword immortals, the qi of heaven and earth for dozens of li around shook violently like a pond into which boulders had been hurled.
The vibrations grew increasingly rapid and violently wild.
Finally, at a certain critical threshold, the laws of heaven and earth began to shatter!
The shattering of the laws was not something visible to the naked eye.
No one could see what the shattering of the laws looked like, yet everyone felt it.
It was a sudden, chilling dread, as though something deeply buried in the very foundation of heaven and earth had snapped.
The air grew viscous, breathing turned labored, and every person felt the circulation of internal energy within their bodies suddenly hitch for half a beat.
Then it returned to normal, only to hitch once more.
This erratic rhythm drove many on the spot to sit cross-legged and circulate their cultivation, terrified that their internal energy would run amok and trigger qi deviation.
On the ninth floor of Wangchao Pavilion.
The golden-red radiance of the hexagram array had reached its peak brilliance.
The light flowing through the formation lines was no longer mere lines; rather, the entire array lines were ablaze.
Golden-red flames leapt up a cun high from the formation lines, illuminating the entire floor of the pavilion like the inside of a furnace.
Qingyangzi's Black Iron Heaven-Measuring Ruler hovered above the array's core, each marking upon its body trembling violently and emitting a dense, ringing clatter.
The ruler vibrated with such ferocity that a blur of afterimages enveloped it!
Zhao Li sat cross-legged at the formation's center, eyes shut tight and hands forming an incantation seal upon his knees.
The canopy condensed of Ziwei imperial qi above his head had expanded to three chi in diameter.
The nine golden dragons upon the canopy were several times clearer than before.
Every dragon scale was distinct down to the finest detail.
With mouths agape, the nine dragons poised to swallow and exhale the qi of heaven and earth.
The aura surrounding Zhao Li climbed steadily higher!
Under the influx of this heavenly and earthly qi, the bottleneck of his Mountain-Viewing Realm peak began to loosen.
Faintly, signs of an imminent breakthrough emerged!
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