The instant Mo Xiao Ran’s Golden Core turned a brilliant gold, a sword came from the east!
The clouds in the southeast had completely dispersed, and sunlight poured down with the washed-clean brilliance of new life. The sword was hidden within the light, yet the light seemed to hold a sword, and the sword seemed steeped in light.
Mo Xiao Ran summoned the pointed top of the iron tower, placing it directly in the sword’s path.
But the sword did not stop.
The same tower that Wang Yu, the White Tiger King, and Jin Yuan Xiu had needed three separate efforts to break now seemed made of paper. The sword pierced straight through it, soft and effortless.
Emerging through the hole, its radiance was undiminished. Its form was like a rainbow, its hue almost red, and its momentum that of a flood. In the blink of an eye, it reached Mo Xiao Ran’s face. Only then did the one controlling it finally arrive.
Mo Xiao Ran lifted a hand. The motion seemed slow, but he caught the sword’s tip with exquisite accuracy and dexterity.
From Scholar Mo of the No-Return Sect to the Grandmaster of the Puppet Path, Mo Xiao Ran had roamed the world for decades. Everyone wondered what his true trump card might be. His gold, silver, copper, and iron disciples believed it was his endlessly shifting false identities. Zheng Jiao Jiao and his fellow disciples thought it was the sinister way he manipulated people’s hearts. The righteous path believed it was his unpredictable Puppet Arts. But the things Mo Xiao Ran himself took the greatest pride in were what he had been born with.
His body. His soul.
As he caught the sword tip, he separated a portion of his soul and sent it to invade the Crimson Dragon King. The sword trembled as though a child had been seized by a villain. Before Mo Xiao Ran could do anything further, the cracks left by the lightning tribulation spread, and the blade shattered in all directions.
Pei Yuan Jin arrived just in time to catch the falling hilt.
“Waaah, waaah…”
A strange weeping sound rang inside his mind.
Pei Yuan Jin did not stop to think about it. He tucked the hilt into his sleeve, flipped his palm, and used true qi as a sword, condensing a spiritual blade in the air that closely resembled the Crimson Dragon King. Then he attacked Mo Xiao Ran again.
Another bolt of lightning struck, and Pei Yuan Jin waved his hand casually, scattering it in an instant!
Only now did Mo Xiao Ran’s expression truly change.
Throughout his life, no matter how ruthlessly or unscrupulously others thought he schemed, everything he pursued had been for rebirth and transformation, to cast off mortality and ascend as an immortal. All his preparations were complete. How could he allow the last favorable wind to be blocked?
Nobody truly knew the extent of Mo Xiao Ran’s cultivation. Zheng Jiao Jiao assumed the two of them were roughly equal, and Mo Xiao Ran had killed him with a trap without revealing his true strength. The White Tiger King naturally considered Mo Xiao Ran more powerful than himself, but martial combat was not the White Tiger King’s specialty. His cultivation realm was high, yet his killing power was limited, and Mo Xiao Ran had not needed his full strength to destroy him. Of all Mo Xiao Ran’s battles, perhaps the only two in which he had really displayed his skills were the encounter at Luo City against Shi Yi Ming, Jing Luo, and Pei Yuan Jin, and his battle against Wang Yu.
In the former battle, he had lost, but he had not been using his real body. He had escaped by shedding his skin and left Shi Yi Ming dead from the effort. In the latter, Wang Yu had fought desperately, yet Mo Xiao Ran won with apparent ease.
Strictly speaking, therefore, the height of his martial cultivation remained a mystery. Until today, nobody had ever forced him to fight with everything he possessed.
But now, Pei Yuan Jin was at another level altogether. Whatever else was true, his cultivation realm surpassed everyone before him.
The suppression of a higher realm.
For the first time in his life, Mo Xiao Ran felt the terror of being utterly overpowered by another person. Not even Cheng He Cheng at the height of his powers had ever put him under such pressure.
So this was the strength of Golden Core?
Outwardly Mo Xiao Ran remained composed, but deep inside him a fire blazed. His lifelong ambition was finally within reach. Once he removed this obstacle, who else could stop him?
Though he was held down by the difference in their cultivation for only an instant, Pei Yuan Jin’s sword used that opening to stab toward him.
The spiritual sword continued absorbing energy from the air as it moved, visibly growing in size. By the time it reached Mo Xiao Ran’s face, it was twice as large as before.
Mo Xiao Ran finally stopped holding back. Both his hands took on a faint golden sheen as he lunged to seize the blade. As his palms approached, spiritual energy began rapidly spilling from the sword, followed by its true qi. The blade shrank and shrank until it resembled little more than a slender twig.
Viewed through Spirit-Peering Arts, the spiritual energy around his hands could be seen fleeing in terror, as though encountering a monstrous flood or savage beast. Martial techniques throughout the world depended on absorbing spiritual energy, converting it into true qi, and strengthening the true essence.
Mo Xiao Ran did precisely the opposite. Using the Puppet Arts to control spiritual energy, he forced it away.
Since true qi, spiritual energy, and human soul power could be transformed into one another, this ability could deliver a fatal blow to martial artists, artifact practitioners, and even formation masters throughout the world.
But Pei Yuan Jin’s path was to advance through adversity, never retreating!
His expression did not change. The spiritual sword in his hand abruptly condensed again at tremendous speed, scraping past Mo Xiao Ran’s palm and continuing forward.
If spiritual energy wasn’t enough, he would use true qi! If Mo Xiao Ran pushed away the surrounding true qi and spiritual energy, Pei Yuan Jin would replenish the sword with his own. They would see which was faster: Mo Xiao Ran driving it away or Pei Yuan Jin drawing it together.
Only when the blade’s tip touched his throat did Mo Xiao Ran finally retreat.
Mo Xiao Ran had always considered himself a once-in-a-generation martial genius and looked down on everyone. Even Pei Xiong Ji, who had assembled a devoted following through the force of his character and built the world’s largest martial organization, had never truly impressed him. Yet he couldn’t help feeling a trace of respect for Pei Yuan Jin’s martial path.
Still, who in this world was truly without fear?
Mo Xiao Ran knew he himself was not. And for that reason, he could not believe anyone else could be.
Fu Xi Yan and Jing Luo arrived just then. Fu Xi Yan caught sight of the Crimson Dragon King lying shattered on the ground as though it had been subjected to dismemberment by carriage, but before he could grieve, Pei Yuan Jin’s spiritual sword dissolved. He hurriedly tossed Fireworks in an Instant toward him.
“Catch!”
Pei Yuan Jin caught it easily, then turned his wrist and scattered another descending tribulation of blessing. Such a bolt was not very harmful to swords, and Fireworks in an Instant remained intact in his grip.
Mo Xiao Ran’s gaze darkened at the newcomers.
Fu Xi Yan and Jing Luo. One had inherited the Heaven-and-Earth Mirror, an extraordinary artifact that defied the heavens, while the other was an outstanding expert in artifact arts, second only to Shi Yi Ming. Either posed a greater threat to him than the White Tiger King had.
For the first time, he began to think of retreat.
“Be careful. He may try the same trick again,” Jing Luo warned, in a voice neither loud nor soft.
Fu Xi Yan remembered the battle at Luo City, when Mo Xiao Ran had escaped in soul form. Understanding immediately, he used Shattered Stars, Lingering Shadows to move behind Mo Xiao Ran, forming a stable triangle with Jing Luo and Yan Xie and enclosing both Mo Xiao Ran and Pei Yuan Jin.
Mo Xiao Ran knew there would be no peaceful resolution today. This might be the most dangerous trial of his life. Forward lay an entirely new world. Retreat meant death without even a place to be buried.
He steadied his mind and charged straight at Pei Yuan Jin.
Pei Yuan Jin rotated Fireworks in an Instant lightly and thrust forward. His martial path had never required elaborate, showy moves, only techniques that were simple, direct, and decisive.
This time, Mo Xiao Ran did not try to grab the blade. Instead, he tilted his body and allowed Fireworks in an Instant to slide past the side of his neck.
It was a tremendous risk. After all, the weapon in Pei Yuan Jin’s hand was a sword. A sword could not only pierce; it could also cut.
With Pei Yuan Jin’s skills, severing a neck would be no difficulty at all.
But by the time the blade touched Mo Xiao Ran’s shoulder, Mo Xiao Ran’s own hand had already reached the position of Pei Yuan Jin’s Golden Core.
True essence, Golden Core, and above them Nascent Soul were the most vital parts of a cultivator. Losing a hand or foot might be inconvenient, yet one could still become a great expert. Once one’s true essence or Golden Core shattered, however, one’s path of cultivation was truly severed.
And Pei Yuan Jin did not cultivate his soul in the manner of the No-Return Sect.
Even at a moment like this, Mo Xiao Ran found time to lift his eyes, apparently curious whether the Immortal Treasury Palace’s young master, who always charged unhesitatingly forward, could live up to that reputation.
Pei Yuan Jin… never disappointed his enemies.
He remained cold and impassive, as though the figure charging at him were a troublesome fly or a mosquito too insignificant to draw much blood. Without the slightest hesitation, he drove the blade smoothly across Mo Xiao Ran’s throat.
The sharp edge cut through flesh, and blood bloomed like a red flower.
Mo Xiao Ran’s pupils contracted, yet a faint smile remained on his face, made even more uncanny by the sudden spray of blood. His hand did not hesitate either. He mobilized every scrap of soul power within him and struck Pei Yuan Jin’s abdomen with his palm.
It was a final, desperate blow from someone on the very verge of Golden Core.
And he was using the soul power he cultivated better than anything else, a strike that could almost be said to contain the entire effort of his life. The immense repelling force in his palm threw Pei Yuan Jin’s Golden Core and meridians into turmoil, sending his true qi flowing backward.
Though Pei Yuan Jin had reached Golden Core, in that instant he was like an ordinary martial artist suffering qi deviation. His body first stiffened, then went numb and weak. The sword hilt almost slipped from his grasp.
But his will remained unshaken. The sword seemed fixed to his hand, and he summoned every ounce of strength to force the blade inch by inch toward the left.
To those watching, the movement looked slow, sluggish, even clumsy. They could not know that the latter half of the stroke depended not on martial strength or physical stamina, but entirely on willpower.
Fu Xi Yan was the first to realize something was wrong. Forgetting everything else, he used Object-Commanding Art to force Fireworks in an Instant down with all his might.
As one of the world’s three inauspicious swords, Fireworks in an Instant possessed not only a host of bloody legends but the most basic quality of any celebrated blade: sharpness.
Mo Xiao Ran’s indescribably handsome face froze in that uncanny half-smile, then fell away.
The soul within him suddenly spilled outward, but this was no ordinary dispersal at death. It split in an orderly, deliberate way into thousands upon thousands of fragments, like an unexpected burst of fireworks, swift and brilliant.
At last, Pei Yuan Jin could no longer endure the damage to his Golden Core. He dropped to one knee, braced himself against the sword, and spat out blood.
Fu Xi Yan’s heart ached for him, but he feared even more that Pei Yuan Jin’s desperate victory would come to nothing. He had to deal with the battlefield first.
As Mo Xiao Ran’s soul blew outward in every direction like dandelion seeds, Fu Xi Yan, Jing Luo, Jin Yuan Xiu, Yin Fei Yu, Duan Qian, and the others attacked together without a word of consultation, each employing their own techniques.