Yuan Nanlan brought his blade down in a single furious stroke — a slash born of pure rage, his fury blazing like fire, the edge of his blade blazing with it, making it an absolutely lethal cut.

In all his years of martial practice, the man before him was the first to stoke such a powerful killing intent within him, the first to provoke him to such extremity.

Not because this man had said anything offensive. Not because he had delivered any insult. But because from beginning to end, this man had never once deigned to look at him properly.

From childhood to now, when had Yuan Nanlan ever been so thoroughly beneath someone’s notice?

It seemed only the young martial uncle on the third floor could capture this man’s attention — and this man’s attitude had made it abundantly clear that only the young martial uncle on the third floor was his true adversary.

“Die!”

The furious slash came with a thunderous roar.

Li Chi only drew his gaze back from the third floor after that blade had already been unleashed.

The blade had already closed to just before him — and only in that moment did Li Chi react. His black iron saber came free from his back…

Since his fierce battles against the Black Warriors in the northern frontier, Li Chi had not used his black iron saber in a very long time.

After all, within the Central Plains, there were few men who warranted it, and few occasions that called for it.

*Clang!*

Li Chi’s saber struck late but arrived first, knocking Nanlan’s longsword aside mid-air. The instant the two blades collided, the tremendous force sent a bone-deep numbness jolting through Nanlan’s wrist.

“You dare?!”

Nanlan was forced back by Li Chi’s stroke, the fury in his eyes burning even hotter.

“My blade carries a thousand years of inherited power — how could you possibly withstand it?!”

Nanlan’s second slash fell, even more domineering than the first.

Perhaps because of its overwhelming force, Li Chi stepped aside rather than meeting it head-on. He shifted a pace outward. Where the blade passed, it carved a clean straight line through the air — the door panel behind Li Chi split apart at the sound.

“Not only does my blade carry a thousand years of inherited power, it is further empowered by the blessing of supremely noble bloodline — how could you possibly withstand it?!”

Nanlan’s third slash came for Li Chi again. His footwork was startlingly swift; the moment Li Chi evaded, Nanlan was already upon him, clinging to him like a shadow.

Up on the third floor, Yuan Jianli still stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching Nalan press the attack against the man in black.

These three slashes — they truly were extraordinarily imposing. Even Yuan Jianli, watching them, gave an involuntary slight nod, a measure of appreciation flickering in his gaze.

Among the Holy Blade Sect’s younger generation, the one with the most natural talent was perhaps the third — whose blade had already begun to transcend the mortal world, yet he had left without a trace.

The most arrogant was the fourth, Yuan Nanlan. His bloodline was pure, his methods ruthless, and the Sect Master was quite fond of him.

These three slashes allowed Yuan Jianli to see the potential of the younger generation — to see the Holy Blade Sect’s future.

Though compared to Yuan Jianli himself, the imposing aura of those three slashes fell far short, a man such as him was, after all, one of a kind.

His arrogance rested on this: looking back as far as he cared to, for the past three hundred years, no one had attained his heights.

As for the man in black evading the second slash — in Yuan Jianli’s view, it was a pity. Had the man in black taken that second slash head-on, he likely could not have withstood it.

But the third slash — its force was even heavier!

And into Yuan Jianli’s gaze crept a measure of genuine appreciation.

Yet in that very moment, he saw the man in black move.

Li Chi had deliberately not met the second slash. He simply wanted more time to observe the variations within Nanlan’s swordsmanship. The more he saw, the more certain he would be in the decisive battle to come — after all, Nanlan’s blade technique and the young martial uncle’s came from the same lineage.

After watching the second slash, Li Chi felt there was nothing more to be gained.

Not that the swordsmanship itself was no longer interesting — rather, Nanlan himself was no longer interesting. His blade had reached its ceiling, and watching further would serve no purpose.

So Li Chi’s saber rose to meet the attack — but not edge against edge.

In the instant Li Chi moved, Yuan Jianli’s eyes on the third floor suddenly went wide. He exhaled a low cry of alarm and vaulted from the third floor in a single leap.

But he was still too slow. The distance was simply too great.

Li Chi brought his saber out with the tip pointed down and the hilt angled up, using the hilt to intercept Nanlan’s third slash.

Li Chi’s hilt was also forged of black iron — the blade and hilt had been cast as one piece, and this saber’s predecessor had been a supreme treasure of the Zhou era.

With the hilt raised, Nanlan’s longsword fell squarely upon it — *clang!* Sparks flew in all directions!

Li Chi’s hilt had caught the blow. At this moment, his black iron saber was oriented with the hilt up, the spine facing himself, and the edge facing Nanlan.

In the same instant he intercepted the slash, Li Chi’s left hand pressed forward against the spine of the blade, and his black iron saber cleaved forward in a sweeping arc.

From tip-down to tip-up, the black iron saber traced a brilliant half-arc of light through the air.

Like a crescent moon descending into the mortal world.

The blade edge entered beneath Nanlan’s lower abdomen and exited through the crown of his head. The half-arc of light flashed once and was gone.

Nanlan’s body was cleaved apart. A heartbeat later, it toppled in two halves, left and right, to the ground.

Li Chi stepped back a pace. He looked at the two pieces of corpse on the ground and replied, his tone utterly flat:

“Your blade carries a thousand years of inherited power, and some supremely noble bloodline blessing as well… but does your blade carry the blood of a thousand enemies?”

Li Chi gazed at the remains with detached calm. “You do not. I do.”

*Your blade may be empowered by some ancient lineage and noble blood. My blade is empowered by the blood of the strongest enemies I have faced.*

*You inherited the power of a supreme bloodline. I… am the supreme bloodline.*

Setting aside all else — speak only of Li Chi’s battle against the Black Warriors in the northern frontier. In seven or eight months of continuous slaughter, how much enemy blood had his black iron saber drunk deep?

The two halves of the corpse lay on the ground. One of them twitched a few times in final involuntary spasm, which only made the scene more savagely grim.

Yuan Jianli descended from above in a flying leap. He too was looking at the remains on the ground, and faint traces of blood had already begun to thread through his eyes.

Nanlan had been a disciple his martial brother greatly favored. If the third could not be found and brought back, then with proper cultivation, Nanlan might have become the next Sect Master of the Holy Blade Sect.

Yuan Jianli’s gaze left Nanlan’s remains and settled on Li Chi’s face.

“You came here to kill?”

Yuan Jianli asked. His voice still carried no emotional fluctuation — because he was suppressing the fury that was on the verge of eruption.

Li Chi replied: “No. I came here to see you.”

Yuan Jianli bellowed: “Insolence!”

He stepped forward.

That single step carried him to Li Chi’s side — at a speed surpassing any enemy Li Chi had ever encountered.

By the time he arrived, Li Chi had only managed to raise his black iron saber and hold it vertically before him.

This was the instinct Li Chi had refined through countless life-and-death battles — his body’s reactions had reached a state of pure spontaneity. Throughout the entire realm, there were vanishingly few people with more such experience than him.

*Clang!*

Yuan Jianli’s right index and middle finger struck Li Chi’s black iron saber. The torrential force that erupted from those two fingers sent Li Chi sliding backward through the air.

Even with Li Chi’s famously immovable horse stance, he could not plant his feet. They scraped backward across the road surface, and the soles quickly registered a surge of heat.

Those two fingers had not merely forced Li Chi back — within his chest and abdomen, a rush of qi and blood roiled upward.

And yet Li Chi laughed. “The Holy Blade Sect? Nothing special.”

Yuan Jianli stepped forward again, driving a palm toward Li Chi’s heart. Li Chi gripped the hilt with his right hand and the blade tip with his left, holding the saber with both hands, its edge facing outward, and thrust to meet Yuan Jianli’s palm.

Yuan Jianli could naturally see that Li Chi’s saber was no ordinary weapon, and so when his palm was halfway there, he angled it upward — and brought it down from above instead…

*Slap!*

Yuan Jianli’s palm struck the flat of Li Chi’s saber. Li Chi immediately felt a tremendous force — almost impossible to resist — surge up his arms in an instant.

“Release it!”

Yuan Jianli gave a light commanding shout.

With his self-confidence, he naturally believed this palm was sufficient to knock the longsaber from the man in black’s hands.

“You think you’re worthy?!”

Li Chi answered — and he bore it, stubbornly, through sheer force of will. Though his body was pressed downward somewhat and a wave of pain spread through both shoulders, his saber did not leave his hands.

The sensation was as if his torso were bound to a great tree, his arms lashed with rope, and each rope’s other end tied to a warhorse — and then both warhorses simultaneously surged forward at full gallop, the ropes snapping taut and wrenching both arms upward at once.

Anyone else — anyone at all — could not have endured the force of that palm and held on.

Li Chi drove his knee upward, striking the flat of the blade and levering it into motion, then used that momentum to cleave his black iron saber toward Yuan Jianli’s heart.

Yuan Jianli had not expected his opponent to still have the capacity to counter.

This stroke forced Yuan Jianli back. The cold edge of light on the saber was like lightning charged with glacial force, making it feel as though every pore on one’s body had snapped open at once.

As Yuan Jianli drifted backward, his long hair billowed — and this slash severed a lock of it as it floated before him.

“You dare!”

Yuan Jianli watched that lock of hair drifting slowly to the ground, his fury intensifying.

After landing, he glanced sideways. Just beside him lay the two pieces of corpse in a pool of blood, and next to the corpse was Nanlan’s longsword.

Yuan Jianli kicked out, catching the hilt squarely. The longsword shot forward like a bolt of lightning, straight toward Li Chi’s heart.

Li Chi raised his black iron saber upright before his chest. The tip of the longsword struck the black iron saber with a heavy crash.

Li Chi gritted his teeth, drove force through his feet, and held that impact firm — without yielding a single inch.

And yet…

Yuan Jianli flew forward — only half a breath behind the sword — and drove a palm down onto the hilt. The sword struck Li Chi’s black iron saber a second time.

Li Chi was nearly unable to hold. His arms went numb, and the saber was driven back — striking against his own chest.

Yuan Jianli gave Li Chi no chance to counter. He seized the hilt with one hand, raised the longsword, and brought it sweeping down toward the crown of Li Chi’s head.

From kicking the sword, to seizing and striking with it in a single motion — all of this had taken place in the span of a lightning flash, one seamless, continuous action.

In that same lightning flash, Li Chi braced both hands on his black iron saber and thrust it high. The longsword came down and struck his black iron saber once more.

*Clang!*

*Boom!*

With the stroke’s descent, the sleeves of Li Chi’s arms billowed outward from the shockwave. Both feet sank into the earth beneath him, buried up to the tops of his feet.

“You want to see my blade?!”

Yuan Jianli demanded furiously. He pulled the sword back, turned his body half a rotation, and swept the blade upward from below.

The tip carved a clean straight line across the road surface.

Li Chi pressed both hands on his saber and drove it downward, while his body surged upward — the motion of a diver launching off — angling his body directly into that rising slash.

The blade swept up; Li Chi descended into it…

*Clang!*

Li Chi’s body was sent flying backward. The force of that upward slash had struck him like a wall and thrown him back — a diver in mid-plunge, reversed.

Li Chi’s body flew high, and in mid-air he spun around. His black iron saber flew free from his grip — and to the hilt was attached a chain.

“You want to see it — then here!”

Seeing the black iron saber flying toward him, Yuan Jianli gripped the hilt with both hands, advanced his left leg, and brought a devastating slash down!

As the slash went out, his long robe billowed and snapped.

*Clang!* — The blow was perfectly precise, striking the very tip of Li Chi’s black iron saber, and drove it away.

The black iron saber did not spin or tumble at all. It flew back exactly as it had come — perfectly straight — the hilt end driving toward Li Chi.

Li Chi was still in mid-air. There was no room to evade.

—