Crack!
A crisp sound rang out.
Though faint, when it reached the ears of the cultivators, it was no different from a thunderclap!
A hairline fracture appeared on the light barrier.
Fervor abruptly flared in everyone's eyes, and their attacks on the barrier grew frenzied.
More and more fractures spread, yet the sealing barrier remained stubborn.
Right then, Qin Sang's eyes narrowed sharply.
He noticed something.
Venerable Ye had suddenly ceased his attacks. Runes drifted over the surface of his body, and his aura fluctuated erratically. Meanwhile, Su Nü and the others began closing in toward the center.
The seal isn't even broken yet—is Venerable Ye about to make his move?
The moment that thought flashed across his mind, Qin Sang's chest tightened. He popped several spirit pills into his mouth, his hands rapidly forming incantation gestures.
The rest of the cultivators grew restless as well.
Around the barrier, bursts of wondrous light erupted one after another as everyone closed in around the seal, primed and ready to strike.
Crack, crack...
More and more fissures spiderwebbed across the sealing barrier.
Suddenly, a resonant metallic clang rang in everyone's ears.
The crowd shuddered in alarm.
Immediately after, a saber beam surged up from the ground, descending over the light barrier in the blink of an eye. Saber qi soared skyward, tearing through the black mist before splitting apart before countless terrified eyes.
The brilliant saber beam blazed with dazzling radiance, unleashing an endless torrent of saber qi.
Qin Sang's entire body went taut.
This strike came directly from Venerable Ye.
The instant the saber beam appeared, Qin Sang understood: everything Su Nü had said was true. It was confirmed—Venerable Ye had indeed smuggled himself in here.
Only a Nascent Soul Patriarch could unleash an attack this terrifying.
"Get lost!"
As the saber beam burst forth, a harsh roar followed.
It detonated like thunder right beside their ears, leaving the cultivators pale with shock.
The saber beam descended from above with thunderous momentum.
The cultivators closest to the light barrier bore the brunt of it. Blood Bat and Daoist Xiaoyun were among them, along with true disciples from several other factions.
They were the very pinnacle of Core Formation cultivators in the Canglang Sea, each determined to claim a bottle of the Soul-Washing Liquid. Had there not been an unexpectedly small amount of Soul-Washing Liquid—not enough to go around—every one of them would have been guaranteed a share.
Yet standing at the very front had instead given Venerable Ye the chance to wipe them out in a single sweep.
To catch the bandits, one had to capture the chieftain first. Once these few were crippled, the remaining cultivators would be leaderless, dissolving into scattered sand unable to mount a coordinated siege anytime soon, allowing him to withdraw at leisure.
This strike gave no warning. Every mind had been focused on the Soul-Washing Liquid, and the attack was so abrupt that no one could have anticipated a vicious dragon lurking among them!
At this moment, Blood Bat and the others were struck with sheer terror.
Locked under that terrible saber momentum, everyone stiffened, feeling as though they had plunged into a swamp.
Their hairs stood on end, their faces drained of color.
These people all had some measure of familiarity with one another and broadly knew what each was capable of. No matter how powerful someone was, there were limits.
"Nascent... Soul..."
Someone chattered through trembling teeth, squeezing the words out.
"Ah!"
Cries of rage and terror erupted.
This saber strike was terrifying enough to cleave them in two where they stood.
Blood Bat was beside himself with fury, his expression contorted, yet all he felt was a wave of helplessness.
He could not understand why such a monstrous opponent had appeared when the Trial Realm clearly restricted Nascent Soul cultivators. Yet whether this adversary was a Nascent Soul Patriarch or not, the sheer might of the saber beam was beyond doubt.
With his life on the line, who cared about the Soul-Washing Liquid?
Blood Bat only wanted to survive.
Yet the saber beam was fast as lightning. He only had time to desperately funnel his entire body's true essence into his inner armor.
Snap!
Before the inner armor could even fully deploy, it endured for merely an instant before shattering to pieces beneath the saber beam.
Even then, Blood Bat refused to wait for death. Unleashing some unknown secret technique, blood qi erupted from within him, and the phantom of a blood bat reappeared, flapping its wings as it surged up like a curtain of blood to engulf the saber beam.
Riiip!
Without a sound, the blood bat phantom was cleaved clean in half.
Blood Bat shuddered violently.
"Aaargh!"
Blood Bat's agonizing shriek made everyone's hearts skip a beat.
Blood showered from midair, seemingly mixed with shattered bone and minced flesh, and he tumbled away like a tattered rag. His final secret technique had succeeded; the blood bat phantom had bought him enough time to avoid dying on the spot, but he was gravely wounded, and the blood qi he had accumulated over many years was completely depleted.
Feeling the sheer might of the saber beam, Daoist Xiaoyun's expression turned grim.
Rather than meeting the attack head-on like Blood Bat, he swiftly retrieved a palm-sized wooden carving from his mustard seed bag.
The carving was exquisite, complete with arms and legs, but its face was entirely blank, devoid of features.
The moment he produced it, Daoist Xiaoyun forced out a drop of essence blood and struck it into the carving. The face of the carving squirmed, and features formed, looking remarkably like Daoist Xiaoyun himself.
Whoosh!
The saber beam fell.
Daoist Xiaoyun put up no resistance at all, allowing himself to be split in two from head to toe.
The next instant, a bizarre scene unfolded.
Daoist Xiaoyun's "corpse" vanished into thin air. A ripple disturbed the empty space beside it, and Daoist Xiaoyun reappeared out of nothingness, while the wooden carving in his hand bore an identical wound.
Though he appeared intact, his aura was faint, and his face was as pale as golden paper, drained of all blood. Evidently, using that wooden carving had exacted a heavy toll; his condition was hardly any better than Blood Bat's.
The others fared even worse than Blood Bat and Xiaoyun. Severed limbs flew through the air, their wounds gruesome, their lives hanging by a thread.
With a single strike, Venerable Ye had crippled Blood Bat and the rest, staining the secret cavern with blood!
One side had plotted for ages while the other was caught entirely unprepared, and the difference in their strength was vast. The outcome had been a foregone conclusion.
Seeing this, the cultivators on the outer perimeter scrambled backward in sheer terror.
"Out of respect for your sects, this old man will spare your miserable lives! Anyone who dares step forward can see how merciless I truly am!"
Venerable Ye snorted coldly and shifted his hand seals. The residual saber beam abruptly converged, striking violently against the sealing light barrier.
Boom!
The barrier, already covered in fissures, shattered on impact.
The seal was broken!
The Soul-Washing Liquid was within arm's reach, yet with the gruesome fates of Blood Bat and the others fresh in their minds, not a single person dared to move.
Under the watchful eyes of the crowd, Venerable Ye condensed an illusory giant hand and reached toward the raised platform. With a few crisp clinks, the four bottles of Soul-Washing Liquid were swept up whole and drawn back toward him.
Seeing that the cultivators had indeed been cowed and the Soul-Washing Liquid was about to fall into his grasp, a smile touched Venerable Ye's lips—only to freeze solid the very next moment!
Crack!
Deep inside the subterranean cavern, an earth-shattering thunderclap suddenly erupted, illuminating the space bright as day.
An aura of absolute fury descended!
Venerable Ye snapped his head up, his expression shifting drastically.
Not far away, Qin Sang stood with a composed gaze, his fingers formed into a thunder seal. Without the slightest hesitation, he unleashed the Thunder Command Art, aiming straight for Venerable Ye!
That earlier strike had startled Qin Sang as well.
There was indeed an immense chasm between Core Formation and Nascent Soul.
Had Venerable Ye's cultivation not been suppressed, Qin Sang would never have dared pluck the whiskers of this tiger. He would have had no choice but to watch helplessly as Venerable Ye took the Soul-Washing Liquid, and only then seek out an opportunity to trade with Su Nü.
From the moment Venerable Ye made his move, Qin Sang had kept his gaze locked on him, refusing to miss the slightest detail.
And just as Su Nü had said, once Venerable Ye unsealed his cultivation, he only possessed enough power for that single strike. The moment he unleashed that saber slash, strange ripples had stirred in the void, subjected to the suppression of the Trial Realm, causing his aura to plummet precipitously.
It was only that the other cultivators had been utterly cowed by the ferocious saber beam, and Venerable Ye had concealed his decline well, so none of them had seen through it in time.
Chapter 1041