Burned Out

When a professional boxer faces an ordinary person, even if they take the fight seriously, it is never with the same intensity reserved for a fellow professional. The gulf between them is simply too vast. An ordinary person has never undergone impact-conditioning drills or received formal boxing training. Unless armed with a weapon, a boxer can knock them out with ease. The current situation was much the same. Quan Juehua was indeed taking Zhang Shou and the Killing Intent Archdemon seriously, but it was the relaxed seriousness of someone who held complete control. Yet now, he was injured. It is common knowledge that humans fear geese, fear cats, fear dogs, fear snakes, fear rats, and even fear cockroaches. However, all of that presupposes that the human has not yet been hurt. It is precisely out of a desire to avoid injury that one fears creatures weaker than oneself. Once blood is drawn, everything changes. Malevolent Blade—Myriad Forms Return to One! Quan Juehua raised the Malevolent Blade in his hand. Instantly sensing mortal danger, Zhang Shou and the Killing Intent Archdemon retreated frantically. In the next moment, they saw Quan Juehua unleash a sweeping horizontal slash. Have you ever looked through a kaleidoscope? At this moment, both Zhang Shou and the Killing Intent Archdemon beheld one. A single streak of blade energy swept outward, instantly multiplying into a sky teeming with razor-sharp arcs. Layer upon layer, chaotic yet strictly patterned, they left nowhere to flee, nowhere to hide. "Sacrifice!" Zhang Shou did not dodge, nor did he seek cover. Gripping the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber with his sole remaining hand, he surged forward instead of retreating, his entire body enshrouded in roaring flames as he plunged directly toward the blade energy. The Killing Intent Archdemon was even faster than Zhang Shou. Its instincts were base and crude; though its core nature was immensely powerful, it possessed no martial skill whatsoever. In a flash, it hurled a fist into the deluge of blade energy. For a moment, space and time seemed to freeze. The blade energy filling the sky abruptly converged, as though Quan Juehua had appeared right before the Killing Intent Archdemon, carving it apart with slash after relentless slash. Only after an untraceable number of cuts had landed did time resume its flow. Of course, this was not a true temporal halt, but rather a manifestation of profound artistic conception. The Killing Intent Archdemon hung frozen in the void. Its eyeballs twitched faintly, and fissures spread across its body with terrifying clarity. It opened its jaws to roar, but in the next second, its form abruptly collapsed, detonating into an eruption of pitch-black energy. "Quan Juehua, die!" Because the Killing Intent Archdemon had absorbed the brunt of the blade energy, the charging Zhang Shou immediately shifted his target. While all of Quan Juehua's strikes were falling upon the archdemon, Zhang Shou had already closed the distance to Quan Juehua, thrusting his saber forward with every ounce of his might. Facing this thrust, killing intent erupted from Quan Juehua. A mere ant had pranced before him for far too long. He had no desire to watch Zhang Shou flail any further. Malevolent Blade—Counterform! In an instant, Quan Juehua struck with speed that Zhang Shou could not possibly hope to parry. Gripping the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber, Zhang Shou deflected merely one thousand of the slashes; the remaining nine thousand were repelled entirely by the protective power of the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber itself. Yet right after those ten thousand strikes, Quan Juehua abruptly delivered a final blow. If his technique to slay the Killing Intent Archdemon had transformed a single slash into ten thousand, then this strike condensed ten thousand slashes back into one. Zhang Shou had no time to mount a defense. Even with the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber instinctively guarding him, he was sent flying by the slash, the radiance of the saber dimming noticeably. "Cough... cough..." Managing to halt his backward momentum with great difficulty, Zhang Shou coughed twice, vomiting a massive quantity of blood. He glanced down at the blood, his heart sinking. His lamp was nearly dry of oil. He was throwing up this much blood partly because Quan Juehua's assault was truly terrifying—even cushioned by the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber, that final strike had critically ruptured his heart vessels—and partly because he had pushed himself past his absolute limits. The blood he coughed up barely contained any energy left at all. A single drop of a Mighty One's blood held more energy than an entire world. Throughout this duel with Quan Juehua, every slash Zhang Shou made pushed his output to its ceiling. The expenditure was astronomical, to the point where even his own soul was burning; only by burning his soul could he muster enough mental focus to harness his power. 'I can probably only swing ten more times! 'Rather than unleashing ten useless strikes, why not...' Zhang Shou wiped his mouth with his forearm and slowly lifted his head, 'looking' toward Quan Juehua. The Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber could consume anything as fuel to erupt with earth-shattering might. The rapid depletion of Zhang Shou's reserves was undeniably intertwined with the saber. Yet Zhang Shou did not blame the weapon. Instead, he felt that it was his own weakness holding back the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber's true potential. "Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber, burn! Burn away everything I have, and sever this old dog!" Zhang Shou exhaled a long breath. Without glancing back at Quan Juehua, he slowly raised his head toward the myriad realms above. Perhaps because Quan Juehua had destroyed his eyes, he could now see and perceive even more. "Hm?" Quan Juehua frowned, suspicion creeping back into his mind. He could distinctly sense Zhang Shou's aura surging. If Zhang Shou had previously appeared like a monkey brandishing a blade, he was now undergoing rapid evolution—from a monkey to an ape, from an ape to a hominid, and finally into a human being standing on equal footing with him. 'He still has a trump card?' Quan Juehua narrowed his eyes, staring at the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber in Zhang Shou's grasp. In that moment, he became serious to the extreme. Countless distinct rule forces surged across his body like yarns of different colors, knitting together into a magnificent garment. Each rule complemented the others, and every single one had been cultivated to a profound degree. At this moment, he seemed cloaked in a feathered robe of cosmic law, radiating an unfathomable depth of power. Zhang Shou, by contrast, was far simpler. He had been reduced entirely to an empty husk. All of his power had been channeled into fuel for the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber, and wisps of golden flame rippled across its blade. These flames did not resemble fire so much as flowing water, gliding gently along the edge. Their hue shifted unpredictably—from gold to red, then to purple, green, blue... "Quan Juehua, this strike... shall be called 'Absolute Blade—Sever Jue'!" Zhang Shou spoke in a measured voice as he faced Quan Juehua, whose features had grown blurred beneath the terrifying shroud of law. Quan Juehua merely let out a derisive snort. In the next instant, he swung his Malevolent Blade like a madman. Within a fraction of a second, the entire expanse was saturated by his blade energy, packing the branch of the Tree Universe so densely that not a single gap remained. "Pretentious posturing! If you have the guts, bring it on!" Quan Juehua did not stop, roaring at the top of his lungs even as he unleashed slash after slash. In the next second, a jarring thread of red suddenly emerged within the blade energy he had cast forth. The crimson rapidly expanded, tearing open a fissure. "Quan Juehua, DIE!" Zhang Shou shot out from the breach, the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber blazing with wild fury. The strike came with incomprehensible speed. In Quan Juehua's pupils, the crimson blade light expanded rapidly until it completely consumed his vision. He had no time to flee, nor anywhere to escape. Instinct forged from ancient, boundless experience made him unleash a full-throated roar and swing his blade in an all-out counterstrike. In an instant, the two blades slammed together. In the very next second, Quan Juehua felt himself burning. Even the feathered robe woven from cosmic laws could not withstand this searing, ultimate strike. Every cell seemed to combust; even his soul felt as though it were being scorched to ash. "Aaaaargh!" Quan Juehua let out a shriek of agony, his hands trembling violently, yet he remained powerless to halt the onslaught of the Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber. Yet just as he was on the verge of total collapse, the crushing pressure abruptly lifted. The Grand Blaze Sky-Burning Saber, which had blazed with blinding brilliance, suddenly turned completely dim. "..." Zhang Shou stared silently at Quan Juehua before him. Then, what little remained of his body crumbled into ash, bit by bit. He had burned away completely.