At this moment, no one stood between Qian Chen and his target any longer, and he walked straight up to Hong Sihai.
In the end, Qian Chen had refined the Black Gold Baleful Hook, wielding this unorthodox flying sword in his grip like a divine weapon.
A single day ago, Qian Chen had known nothing of the Martial Dao, nor of the clash of mind and will during a mystical duel. The only person he had ever killed was an evil cultivator from Mount Mei, struck down with a sneak attack from the Dragon Sparrow Ring.
Over the course of the previous day, Qian Chen had traded wits with Mist-Riding Lord at a tea stall, calculated every possibility, and cleanly dispatched him.
During the night raid of the Twelve Yuan Chen, when facing the extraordinarily savage Gladiatorial God-Lord, he had seized a fleeting opportunity to poison him to death...
Before the main gate of Four Seas Hall, confronting the heaven-shaking fury of the Wind God's Howl, Qian Chen had first slain every ghost riding the gale. Then, in his mystical duel against the Tiger-Devouring Lord, he had finally relied on his own will, tactical agility, and swordsmanship to cut down his foe in the barest split second of their clash...
Before Five Lakes Hall, faced with Medicine-Pounding Lord's longing for death, he had sent her on her way with his blade...
In the mourning hall, through deductive wit, he had driven Sun-Chasing Lord into a corner before even striking a blow...
At this moment, the killing intent tempered within Qian Chen's heart finally erupted. Previously, Qian Chen had possessed Daoist bearing, understood life and death, and remained clear-minded and perceptive, holding fast to a vibrant, innocent heart. When confronted with varied vexations and emotions, he had gradually been able to let them fade, settling his mind. Yet there remained emotions he could neither forget nor bear to cast aside.
Those myriad entangling vexations, woven like threads into a web, were things that denied him true freedom.
The affairs of the world, every encounter, the countless impurities of the mortal dust—all settled upon his mind, leaving marks across the mirror-smooth surface of Qian Chen's mental lake. He could neither laugh them off nor turn away, just as he could not simply walk away from this world.
How was he to face this mortal dust, these ten thousand vexations?
This was a question Qian Chen had to answer. Who in the mortal realm could ever be free of trouble? Even the Taishang Dao Ancestor, carefree as a cowherd in his youth, must have known endless love, hatred, and sorrow once he entered the Dao.
Qian Chen did not know whether he could forever "wade through the mortal dust with an unyielding heart," but at this moment, he knew his answer.
A single sword, nothing more: as I see it, so I strike.
There existed a kind of sword art that could sever all hesitation, doubt, loss, sorrow, grief, and vexation dwelling in the heart. When such unyielding killing intent manifested outwardly, it could slice through countless karmic ties and mortal entanglements with a single stroke.
All karma and endless vexations arose from men, and by men they could be swept away.
This intent was none other than to kill!
A flash of sword light surged from the Black Gold Baleful Hook like an overturning dragon, bearing peerless resolve and lethal malice that transcended all restraint. The simplest form of sword intent was nothing less than having a blade in hand and acknowledging no law, harboring no misgivings or hesitation—only the will to kill the foe. In this moment, Qian Chen discarded all calculations and every hesitation. Evidence, identities—none of it was needed, none of it mattered. A single strike would decide life and death.
This was the true threshold of the Dao of the Sword.
A sword cultivator of Shaoqing, blade in hand, dared to slay anyone.
As the sword light slashed through the air between them, a sudden streak of cold light flared into the void. Its chilling aura swept over the room like frost and snow, the light cleaving brightness from shadow like a beacon piercing the dark, or the Taiji boundary line separating yin and yang. The unique curvature of the hooked flying sword meant this strike lacked the rigid, straight trajectory of common blades, gaining instead a fluid grace where softness and hardness merged.
Seeing this strike, Hong Sihai felt a sudden pang of helplessness.
Yet no trace of fear rose in his heart. When it came to combat and life-and-death struggle, his experience surpassed Qian Chen's ten- or hundredfold. He had long since reached the realm where a single punch was delivered free of thought or consciousness, driven solely by the intent to put his opponent to death. Whatever transformations Qian Chen was undergoing, Hong Sihai had weathered them long ago.
With a calm, steady gaze, Hong Sihai coated his left fist in astral qi, drew his right fist back to his chest, and threw a punch forward.
Unyielding and formidable, the sheer force of pure astral qi pulverized everything it touched.
Whenever one encountered fancy techniques one did not know how to counter, the vast majority could be answered simply by smashing through with punch after punch. An unwavering, unadorned fist crushed all superficial sword light. Had Qian Chen lacked that sliver of sword intent aimed straight at the essence of things, the blade light of his Black Gold Baleful Hook—only preliminarily refined of its restrictions—would have been shattered long ago.
Yet even with most of its radiance broken, that faint trace of sword light continued to shift. Against all odds, it wheeled about at a marvelous angle, carving through the astral qi on Hong Sihai's fist. At that moment, Hong Sihai's right fist smashed forward as well. Sword light and astral fist qi clashed and parted in an instant.
It was Qian Chen who voluntarily withdrew his sword light, having sensed that the astral qi on Hong Sihai's right fist was distinctly stronger than that of his left.
A faint bloodline appeared on Hong Sihai's left fist. In that brief exchange, Qian Chen's sword light had broken through the astral qi and grazed his skin. Had the transition between his two fists been even a fraction slower, Qian Chen would have lopped off at least three of his fingers.
With both fists thrust forward, Hong Sihai's figure seemed to shrink and recede in Qian Chen's eyes, while his fists swelled endlessly until they stood like towering mountains, consuming his entire vision.
This was no illusion, but a shift in perceived presence: the sheer presence of that pair of fists was expanding without limit.
It gave one the impression that no matter where the sword struck, it could not evade that pair of fists.
Spiritual sense and the Martial Dao were acutely attuned to shifts in qi. When Qian Chen felt that moving forward, backward, left, or right could not escape the reach of that punch, the fists naturally encompassed every direction, their presence omnipresent. If Qian Chen wished for his sword light to strike Hong Sihai's true body, he was forced to confront that pair of fists first.
Thus, the fists naturally grew colossal enough to obscure Hong Sihai's figure entirely.
This was a transformation of momentum, existing solely within spiritual sense and divine will.
Qian Chen's spiritual sense enveloped the surroundings, mapping out the entire Five Lakes Hall, every martial artist, and every table and bench. His rising and falling breath gradually harmonized with the long hook in his grasp; his internal breath seemed to become the hook's own respiration. At this moment, the bond of spiritual awareness between him and the long hook heightened without bound, and without his conscious realization, its restrictions deepened by several degrees.
In that split second, through the mystical unseen, his spiritual sense detected the boundless primordial qi of heaven and earth.
Qian Chen swung the hook along this delicate perception. Its gleaming arc resembled a venomous dragon thrashing beneath two mountainous fists. The mountains failed to suppress the dragon; instead, the beast surged upward with a horizontal sweep of the hooked blade, nearly severing the peaks.
Hong Sihai once more came within a hair of losing his fingers, forcing him to draw his fists slightly apart to create room for maneuvering his techniques.
Seizing this sliver of opportunity, Qian Chen's hooked light darted out from between the fists, threatening the vital points across Hong Sihai's chest and abdomen. Hong Sihai's fists shifted like two heavy doors, attempting to close over his chest and seal Qian Chen's shifting light inside.
Their qi intertwined, several blows traded in the blink of an eye.
Qian Chen did not unleash magical implements to stir the might of heaven and earth, nor did Hong Sihai channel the primordial qi of the world. Both harbored misgivings and refrained from fighting without restraint, yet this did not diminish the lethal danger or power in the least. If anything, it made the struggle far deadlier: without the buffer of heaven-and-earth primordial qi, every punch and every sword stroke was forged from life and essence.
A single misstep meant defeat and death.
After trading another sword strike and fist blow, Qian Chen and Hong Sihai separated the moment they made contact, abruptly opening distance and resuming their standoff. The transition between violent motion and stillness flowed like water, presenting an almost pleasing sight.
Their qi remained locked on one another, each tacitly waiting for an opening.
At present, the situation favored Hong Sihai. He possessed countless reinforcements, while Qian Chen stood alone with a solitary blade.
Amid this eerie standoff, the sound of gongs and drums suddenly rang out from the main dais of Five Lakes Hall: *dong-de-long-dong-qiang...*
The interior of the hall had fallen dead silent. Those who were not experts had long been incapacitated by Qian Chen's poison, while the true masters had felt nearly suffocated by the earth-shattering duel before them. Believing they would be slain in an instant if they dared step up, they had all but forgotten to breathe, let alone speak. Thus, Five Lakes Hall, boisterous only moments before, was now so quiet that a dropped pin would have echoed.
The sound of gongs and drums, which would normally have seemed ordinary, was startling enough to frighten someone out of their skin in this silence.
At the very least, a good number of grandmasters and great grandmasters felt a tight heaviness in their chests, as though they were on the verge of spitting blood—a direct result of the oppressive clash of qi between Qian Chen and Hong Sihai.
The duel between two peerless experts was nearly crushing the onlookers to death.
Three little monkeys slipped down from the rafters and scampered onto the platform of the main dais. Dressed in red and draped with ribbons, they were trained, domesticated creatures meant for performing monkey opera. At that moment, a bizarre feeling welled up within the guests below, who could do nothing but move their eyes.
Two peerless great grandmasters were locked in a duel of life and death, only to be interrupted by a monkey act.
The three little monkeys seemed wholly oblivious, hopping and skipping across the stage in accordance with their master's training. Suddenly, one of the monkeys donned a dragon mask and strutted across the dais, showing off the bronze-painted visage to the audience below. The dragon looked solemn and imposing, not at all comical.
The monkey wearing the dragon mask acted sneaky, ducking into a corner with its back turned to the crowd to remove the mask.
Meanwhile, the monkey wearing a rat mask scrambled up an adjacent pillar, hanging from the rafters to peek.
The dragon-headed monkey removed its mask, only to have its face seen by the rat monkey. Furious, the dragon-headed monkey screeched loudly, abruptly unleashed a brilliant martial fist technique, leaped up to the rafters, seized the rat monkey, and slammed it to the ground. The rat-masked monkey shrieked in agony, feigned a brief struggle, and then lolled its tongue out to play dead.
The dragon-headed monkey slipped into the shadows. Just then, the third monkey, sporting a red monkey mask, arrived at the scene. It screeched twice at the "dead" rat monkey, then suddenly pried open the right paw the rat monkey had kept tightly clenched as it fell from the rafters, revealing an exquisite concentric knot. The red-faced monkey held the knot high, displaying it for everyone present to see.
Everyone recognized this knot: it was the token crafted during the sworn brotherhood of the Four Absolutes, One Lord to signify an eternal bond of shared hearts—the Golden Orchid Sworn Brotherhood token.
And upon this particular Golden Orchid Sworn Brotherhood token, the knot was shaped like a fist.
As all the world knew, the Fist Absolute among the Four Absolutes was none other than the current Martial Alliance Leader, Hong Sihai of the Firmament Overlord Fist!
Chapter 33