Budding Sword Intent!

Pain! Pain to the utter extreme!! In barely a breath, Li Guanqi's face twisted into a grotesque grimace. Saliva dribbled uncontrollably from the corner of his mouth. Blue veins bulged across his forehead and neck, his skin flushed crimson. The agony of lightning tearing through his body was not like a heavenly tribulation that passed in a single strike. Moreover, the lightning of a heavenly tribulation brought blessing alongside disaster; if one could endure it, that power of lightning was a tremendous tonic capable of nourishing the body. Yet what Li Guanqi was experiencing now was pure destruction, as if it intended to tear his mortal flesh to shreds. The sheer torment brought by the rampaging lightning made his consciousness verge on detaching from his physical form. The old man's voice kept echoing in his ears. "Absorb my sword intent, quickly! What are you waiting for?!" "Keep going like this and you will die!!" The elder's voice sounded intensely anxious, as though he were deeply worried for him. Yet by now, Li Guanqi's consciousness had begun to blur. He could hardly make out what the old man was shouting. Nearby, Li Qingcheng was genuinely growing frantic. He could not fathom why this little brat, pushed to such a state, still refused to absorb his sword intent! He had expected Li Guanqi to absorb his sword intent right from the start. Yet now... Li Guanqi's entire body trembled faintly. The agony rendered him speechless; the moment he parted his lips, several bolts of lightning burrowed right into his mouth. The lightning tore open the corners of his mouth. As it rampaged within him, the torment could only be described as a misery worse than death. Bones shattering, soul splintering! Yet Li Guanqi knew all too well that he could not absorb the elder's sword intent. Setting aside whether the old man harbored ill intent, his own instincts violently repelled this sword intent to begin with! What should have been the thunderous power of paramount yang gave him a chilling sensation... *Wait! Chilling?!* A sudden shudder swept through his entire body! Jolting awake to the truth, he finally understood what was going on! Slowly lifting his head toward the elder, his voice laced with freezing cold, he forced out: "Old bastard... you... this is... *hiss*... yin lightning!!" Hearing this, the elder—whose expression had seemed so frantic a moment before—slowly stood upright. Curling his lip, he clasped his hands behind his back and said softly: "Heh. I didn't expect a little runt like you to have some discernment. "Still... what does it matter even if you've figured it out? "Hahahaha! As things stand, if you want to live, your only choice is to obediently absorb my sword intent!" Li Guanqi's heart sank. It was just as he had suspected. If this truly was yin lightning, then this old fossil's remnant soul was undoubtedly woven into his sword intent. The moment he failed to withstand the battering of the yin lightning and absorbed the sword intent, he would be reduced to nothing more than his puppet, completely at his mercy! The corners of Li Guanqi's mouth were torn. Blood splattered across his body, flesh peeled back in shreds, and ghastly white bone lay exposed to plain sight. In such a wretched state, it was no wonder the old man believed victory was already in his grasp. Right now, Li Guanqi's divine soul was separated from his physical body, so not even the sword spirit knew what was taking place in here. Even as he desperately cried out to the sword spirit, there was not the slightest response. Li Guanqi licked his cracked lips, his mouth filled with the coppery sweetness of blood. And under the elder's baffled gaze, he slowly closed his eyes. Li Qingcheng's brows knitted. The composure of the boy before him exceeded his imagination. Anyone else thrust into such circumstances would have panicked, for life and death hung by a single thread. Yet the youth before him did not show the faintest trace of panic despite his words and the dire peril. Li Guanqi's reasoning was actually very simple. Since the elder could only rely on this indirect method to achieve something akin to possession, it proved he currently possessed little true strength—at the very least, he could not strike directly to forcibly take over his body! In that case, a fierce resolve hardened within Li Guanqi! He had no choice but to take in the elder's sword intent to alleviate the torment of the yin lightning. However, he could never fully open his mind and make it his own. The instant he did, the elder would seize the opening to wrest away control of his body! Having had his scheme laid bare, Li Qingcheng dropped all pretense, his face contorting malevolently as he spat: "So what if you guessed it? "If we go down, we die together! If you don't want to die, you have to absorb it!!" With that, the old man raised his hand and abruptly unleashed an even more violent surge of lightning power! As the yin lightning rampaged, the sheer agony drove Li Guanqi to bite a whole chunk of flesh right off his own lip. Having made up his mind, Li Guanqi sealed his mind tight and actively let the sword intent wrap around him. Seeing this, the elder finally breathed a sigh of relief. The corners of his mouth curled into a smirk, and a sharp glint flashed in his cloudy eyes. "Heh. Everyone fears death. No one is an exception!" *Buzz—!* Waves of incomparably potent sword intent enveloped Li Guanqi completely, and the surrounding lightning power finally diminished by a large margin. Li Guanqi, utterly bloodless, kept his eyes shut tight as he cautiously sensed the elder's sword intent. Yet in merely an instant, he detected a chilling, bloodthirsty, and vile malice! Unfamiliar scenes abruptly flashed across his mind. In the visions, an aged figure wielding a longsword slaughtered sect disciples with abandon. Though countless elders and disciples of the sect rose to fight back, the old man's power was simply too overwhelming; he nearly butchered the entire sect down to the last person. And his sole purpose was to bolster his yin lightning, which required feeding on human blood! And the sect depicted in the visions was blatantly... the very place Li Guanqi stood right now! The scene shattered, replaced by several elders sacrificing the entirety of their power to seal that sword-wielding old monster beneath the main hall of the sect! Seeing this, Li Guanqi completely grasped the truth of the matter. What bloody inheritance?! Nor was the old man's sword intent anything of pure, unyielding yang—it was pure, icy killing intent! A slaughter sword intent born entirely out of massacre! Which also tied directly to his mastery of yin lightning. Having pieced it all together, Li Guanqi roared with resolute conviction in his heart: *A mere slaughter sword intent is beneath me, Li Guanqi!* *Boom!!* In an instant, the images in his mind shattered, replaced by a boundless mountain of corpses and a sea of blood! He stood amidst the mountain of corpses and sea of blood, the air reeking of nauseating decay and coppery gore. Beneath him lay countless bodies of men, women, the aged, and the young; severed, bloodied heads wriggled desperately, and gory hands reached up, clutching toward Li Guanqi! Li Guanqi looked around, an unintentional pang of pity and sorrow rising in his heart. Taking a deep breath, he slowly sat down cross-legged atop that sea of blood and mountain of corpses! In his mind, memories surfaced one after another: the first time he gripped a sword, the first time he flew upon a flying sword into the sky, the first time he practiced swordplay... The past flickered before him like a revolving lantern. Just then, a question inexplicably surfaced in his mind: What was the sword dao he upheld? The moment the question crossed his mind, Li Guanqi sank into deep contemplation. As he became lost in thought, the sea of blood beneath him gradually rose, submerging his ankles. Meanwhile, within the grand hall, the elder stared with burning eyes at Li Guanqi's figure; he could clearly sense that the boy had begun absorbing his sword intent!