Chapter Eighty-Six: One Sword Breaks All Laws

The one called Nanluo had not changed, nor had his sword. Yet the force around him had undergone a earth-shattering transformation. Where once he had always seemed ethereal and elusive, he now stood like a mountain, solemn and incomparably weighty.

No one knew when, but Nanluo’s body had already appeared beyond the reach of Xing Tian’s twin axes. The moment his words fell, he brought his sword down from above in a single slash, using the blade as though it were an axe. Its momentum could not match the ferocity of Xing Tian’s axes, but it carried the profound, mountain-like weight of a vast and unyielding realm.

Xing Tian’s eyes widened, and he laughed aloud. “Good! Humans are all cowards, good only for running away. Hah...”

As he laughed, his feet moved through the void in a set of incomprehensible steps. With each step, the void seemed to tremble. With each step, the murderous aura unique to the witch tribe grew denser, until the winds of heaven and earth surged in wild upheaval, and boundless killing intent gathered behind Xing Tian into a dark cloud.

Spiritual energy roared madly. Xing Tian’s black robes flew apart, and his eyes flashed with light as though they could pierce the void. The two ferocious giant axes in his hands seemed made to cleave mountains and split the earth; each slight movement sent a sense of collapsing space shuddering through the void.

By then, Nanluo’s Green-Visage Sword had already fallen. Man and sword seemed to have become one, and to have merged as well with the great expanse of rosy clouds that had gathered behind him at some unknown point. The instant the Green-Visage Sword moved, it was like a river bursting its banks, like mountains and rivers crashing down, surging toward Xing Tian.

Die! Xing Tian roared, meeting Nanluo’s strike head-on.

The gale howled, spiritual energy ran wild, and a wave of force spread outward in a frenzy with Nanluo and Xing Tian at its center. Many with lesser cultivation were instantly hurled away. Even the Moon Demon Mirror hanging in the sky shook violently, sending ripples across its surface.

Though the witch tribe was few in number among all living beings under heaven and earth, each of its members was formidable. The ancestral witches lived scattered throughout the world rather than gathered together, yet even one of them was enough to dim heaven and earth. There were not many matters that truly compelled those ancestral witches to act; instead, it was the great witches of the witch tribe that left the deepest impression. Xing Tian and Hou Yi, in particular, stood at the very pinnacle among the great witches.

Usually, one or two great witches would accompany an ancestral witch, their strength at the very least above that of a mountain lord. Of course, someone like Xuan Ming had never taken on any great witch as a retainer.

“Nanluo can actually trade blows with Xing Tian and not be at a disadvantage. The title of the Heavenly Court’s foremost Star Lord is indeed well earned...”

More and more spectators gathered around the battlefield. By then, most of them had recognized Nanluo’s identity as the Heavenly Court’s Guardian Star Lord, and many also knew that he was human. They could not help but discuss it in hushed tones.

“When did humanity produce such a person? I’ve heard that there was a Fuxi whose depths could not be measured, but where did this Nanluo learn such techniques and divine powers, to be able to contend with the witch clan’s Xing Tian without falling behind at all?”

Suddenly, a streak of black light tore through the void and shot straight toward the Moon Demon Mirror suspended in the sky.

That black light was so swift it exceeded nearly everyone’s expectations. By the time they noticed it, it was already about to plunge into the mirror’s dim golden radiance.

Clang!

Nanluo had somehow appeared beneath the Moon Demon Mirror. His sword gleamed brilliantly in his hand, barely in time to block the black light.

Hou Yi’s arrows were famous throughout the primordial lands. How fast they truly were, no one could say clearly, and few dared claim they could definitely evade them. Yet Nanluo had just exchanged a blow with Xing Tian, and then blocked that arrow as well.

This made everyone once again speculate about Nanluo’s strength. In truth, they did not know that within the Moon Demon Mirror’s radiance, his power had inexplicably risen by a great margin. Otherwise, with only his escape techniques, surviving Hou Yi’s arrow would already have been no small feat, let alone catching up after it was loosed to intercept it.

Just moments earlier, when he saw Hou Yi actually shooting at the Moon Demon Mirror, his heart had tightened. Yet the instant he vanished and reappeared, he was astonished to discover that within the range covered by the mirror’s light, his movement technique had reached a terrifying level, allowing him to intercept the black arrow after it was already on its way.

Swoosh!

Hou Yi drew and loosed another arrow with seemingly no delay at all.

As soon as the first arrow left, the second followed close behind.

Nanluo steadied his mind and spirit. For Hou Yi, who had once nearly killed him, he had always remained deeply wary.

When he saw that first arrow, the only impression it gave was sharpness, the sort of sharpness that could pierce through everything. But before that first arrow had even fully flown, the second was already on its heels, and this one gave Nanluo a sense of inescapable oppression.

Yet what chilled him most was the third arrow. After the first two were released, that third arrow had already appeared once more in Hou Yi’s hand, but it had not been fired. Instead, it pointed from afar at Nanluo.

It made him feel a sudden terror, as though a venomous snake had coiled around his throat, its fangs already hovering at his windpipe.

It was precisely that third arrow, hanging there without release, that plunged Nanluo into an instant of extreme peril.

There was no time to think further. The first arrow had already arrived. Its crushing, all-destroying, razor-edged force made Nanluo want to dodge at once, but the Moon Demon Mirror stood directly behind him. He did not know whether it could remain unharmed under that arrow. More importantly, it was precisely because of the Moon Demon Mirror that his abilities had been greatly enhanced, allowing him to fight Xing Tian under Hou Yi’s threat and still hold the upper hand.

Especially now, Hou Yi had already formed a kind of momentum. Standing there, he seemed fused with that mountain, while the entire expanse of space appeared to be enveloped beneath the arrows in his hand.

These impressions had arisen in Nanluo’s mind the moment Hou Yi loosed the first arrow, and by the time the third was drawn, they had already settled.

He sent the Green-Visage Sword from his hand. The sword transformed into a hazy white light, drawing a long streak across the sky as it met the first arrow.

At that very moment, Hou Yi released the third arrow. This arrow differed from the first two. The first arrow was all sharpness; the second, all oppressive force. Both shot forward in straight lines.

But the third arrow spun through the air, stirring the spiritual energy of heaven and earth into a spiraling wind that swept toward Nanluo.

Nanluo’s heart tightened. The Green-Visage Sword quivered in the void, and in an instant its speed doubled and then some, seeming to become a ghostly streak of light.

At the instant it made contact with the first arrow, the Green-Visage Sword seemed to cleave dozens of times, yet to outsiders it would appear as though it had struck only once. That single strike nearly sent Nanluo’s heart leaping into his throat.

Barely having blocked the first arrow, the second was already upon him. The one sword strike just now had nearly exhausted his spirit, but this arrow left him no time to think; he could only gather all the essence, energy, and spirit in his heart into the sword.

Suddenly, Nanluo felt as though he had gained another pair of eyes, though not truly eyes, but a sense of perception. It was like observing heaven and earth through the Moon Demon Mirror, yet this newly added perception flowed through the Green-Visage Sword.

It was a feeling as intimate as flesh and blood. For the Moon Demon Mirror, it was a merging of spirit, an unfathomable, profound sensation. But for the Green-Visage Sword, it was a real, tangible union of blood and flesh, as though an extra arm had suddenly appeared, or as though his own soul had abruptly entered the sword. Controlling the Green-Visage Sword in that moment felt like controlling his own body.

That sensation of human and sword as one appeared once more. The last time it had surfaced was under the annihilating stillness of Hou Yi’s third arrow, though this time it was far clearer than before.

Clang, clang, clang...

The Green-Visage Sword blossomed into wisps of cloud and rosy haze in the void. With every tremor, it seemed to vanish once in space, yet also as though it had never moved at all.

Even that incomparably solemn and heavy second arrow was forcibly hacked back.

By now Nanluo had closed his eyes, yet every person and object within this space covered by the Moon Demon Mirror appeared in flawless detail within his mind.

The onlookers were all utterly aghast, not because they saw Nanluo close his eyes, but because at that moment the Green-Visage Sword seemed to have transformed into countless swords, or into a field of white light, like a peacock spreading its tail, like a gigantic plum blossom blooming in the void.

Hou Yi’s third arrow, drawn forth with the power of heaven and earth, seemed not to be aimed at Nanluo at all, and yet also seemed impossible to evade no matter where Nanluo fled. It was even harder to resist.

That arrow had a name: Wind Chaos.

Many in the primordial lands knew it. It was a famed arrow, one of Hou Yi’s true signature techniques. If the first two arrows could still be considered merely a kind of archery skill, then this one was already one of Hou Yi’s divine powers. A skill that had become instinctive, seamless, and ingrained to the marrow could be called a divine power.

Clang, clang...

No one could clearly see Hou Yi’s arrows, and no one could clearly see Nanluo’s sword. In their eyes there was only a field of white light, and the wind-torn cloud mass soaring upward from the mountain peak where Hou Yi stood.

When sight failed, some with divine abilities such as heavenly vision could only catch a fleeting trace. More still tried to seize it with their spiritual sense, only to be horrified as they discovered that the moment their spiritual sense drew near, it lost all control. Either it was scattered apart by the vortex-like cloud mass, or it was cut apart by the sword light. A soul-piercing killing intent seeped through their spiritual sense and stabbed into their hearts, leaving those with weaker cultivation and lesser spiritual power with blood and qi churning violently.

The sound of arrows and sword striking suddenly ceased. Yet the air in the sky still roiled, the spiritual energy remained in turmoil, and had not yet settled when Hou Yi abruptly said, “Take my second arrow, Shatter the Void.”

Shatter the Void was the second arrow in Hou Yi’s archery art, named for the meaning that wherever the arrow passed, the void itself would split apart.

At that moment, Hou Yi finally seemed to regard Nanluo as a true opponent. He drew his bow and nocked an arrow, white robes like snow, as though he had already fused with the great mountain beneath his feet.

Borrowing the power of heaven and earth was the most common method used by cultivators in battle. The witch tribe, naturally, had its own distinctive means of drawing upon that power. Hou Yi had long since mastered its essence. The mountain on which he stood was steep and precipitous, perfectly matching his bearing, and so this arrow would surely shake the heavens and split the void.