Chapter 24 — The Divine Sword

In midair, Liu Xueqi's bright eyes shone like stars, the edges of her black robes flying and fluttering in the great wind, her bearing peerless and soul-stirring. Her lips seemed to murmur an incantation, her cold face utterly without expression. Under her gaze, the crowd saw the sword floating in midair—the one scattering ten thousand fathoms of blue light—suddenly give a great roar, like a savage beast bellowing, the sound shaking the four wilds. In an instant the blue light blazed forth, and the immortal sword burst out as though splitting the heavens, a mad dragon surging from the abyss. Every wisp of cloud mist within a radius of some ten-odd zhang was in a moment driven into scattering—gone without a trace.

There, amid ten thousand beams of blue light, in the deepest place where the blue was like the sky at the horizon's edge, the immortal sword came flying as though from the ends of the sky, streaking toward Fang with a force unmatched in that moment.

Fang's face was grave, sweat streaming down his forehead—plainly shaken by the immense power of Liu Xueqi's blue immortal sword. In a single instant, the sword had reached him.

"Ka, ka, ka!"

Before the dumbstruck eyes of several hundred Qingyun disciples, the three walls of ice Fang had formed were like so much bean curd; the blue immortal sword drove through them as though they were nothing, smashing them to fragments.

Fang was greatly alarmed. With his strength, he was not incapable of congealing more ice walls for defense, but he had judged three sufficient. He had not expected Liu Xueqi's cultivation to run so deep, nor that blue immortal sword to be so fearsome beyond all expectation. In an instant it was upon him.

At this moment of life and death, Fang barely steadied his mind. His silver-white immortal sword glowed, guarding his front, and he raised a white shield of light. A moment later, Liu Xueqi's blue immortal sword slammed head-on into that white shield.

"Hong!"

The boom came like a mad thunderclap from the heavens, rumbling forth, and a vast invisible shockwave, centered on the two immortal swords, spread rapidly outward. Every Qingyun disciple standing below felt the gale strike their faces, and their whole bodies were driven back a step against their will; the entire ring of onlookers widened by a full circle at once.

Every face changed; all were shaken by the mighty power of these immortal artifacts, such as they had never seen before.

When that moment of astonishment had passed, every eye returned to the platform. Liu Xueqi had at some point already landed on the stage, and the immortal sword, sheath and all, had flown back into her hand. The blue light and the white light gradually dispersed, but everyone noticed that Fang's face was the color of dead ash.

Fang slowly raised his head and pointed at Liu Xueqi, his voice hoarse for some unknowable reason: "You—"

The crowd was startled and uncertain, not knowing what had happened, when suddenly a strange change occurred. The silver-white immortal sword that had been hovering before Fang since moments ago abruptly gave several muffled sounds along its blade; then, under the gaze of countless eyes, a crack appeared in the blade and rapidly widened. A moment later, the immortal sword gave a single agonized sound, and with a "dong" it broke in two and fell to the platform.

On the stage and below it, all was silence. Everyone held their breath.

What an immortal sword, cultivated over long years, means to one who cultivates the Way—not a soul above the sea of clouds was ignorant of it.

"Wa"—on the platform, Fang spat out a mouthful of blood. His hand clutched his chest, his face contorted in pain, and he could hold on no longer; he collapsed to the ground and fainted.