But obstruct them for what purpose?
Until the heavy thunder from the sky reached them. Su Xuan, who had been teleporting ahead at high speed, suddenly stopped.
Both of them instinctively looked up.
The sky remained as dim as ever. The Burning Heaven Realm had no sunlight, only eerie ghostly flames and an ever-darkened firmament.
There were no thunderclouds, yet thunder was heard.
It was a barrier.
Someone had set up a barrier, separating Sang Dai and him into two isolated micro-worlds, which was why he couldn’t sense her presence at all.
Only the thunder just now told him that Sang Dai was still in the Burning Heaven Realm—at the source of the thunder.
Su Xuan’s heartbeat quickened. “She’s there.”
As soon as the words fell, before Liu Lixue could react, a suffocating aura whipped up a fierce wind, and the black shadow ahead vanished.
What replaced it…
Was the true form of a nine-tailed fox, as large as a small hill.
Its powerful limbs were thick and muscular, its fur dense and silvery white, and its nine tails were massive and terrifyingly majestic. Standing there, even with his head tilted back, Liu Lixue could barely see its face.
In a flash, the nine-tailed fox disappeared from where it stood.
Su Xuan only ever lost control and transformed into his true form during mating season. Normally, he always appeared in human form, and no one knew this secret. The nine-tailed fox’s true body was ferocious in battle, incredibly fast, and its flesh far tougher than its human form—several times over.
He truly was in a panic.
That group of people was doomed.
Liu Lixue let out a sigh of relief—finding Sang Dai was enough. That certain fox wouldn’t go on a rampage anymore.
He was just about to wipe the sweat from his forehead when a sharp shout came from behind. Liu Lixue leapt into the air, narrowly dodging the claws reaching for him.
As he turned his head, he came face to face with a green-gray face.
Liu Lixue: “…”
“Lord! Don’t leave me behind!”
This place was full of vengeful ghosts—he couldn’t defeat them!
Terrified, Liu Lixue turned and bolted.
—
The thunder rumbled for a long time.
When it finally ceased, an eerie silence fell over the surroundings.
The ghostly flames had been scattered by the heavenly thunder, and the already desolate Burning Heaven Realm became even more barren, with only the thick scent of blood lingering in the air.
Sang Dai leaned on the Zhiyu Sword. The sword’s tip was already broken, and the blade—barely held together by Su Xuan earlier—had once again shattered into several pieces.
The Tianyu Stone had grown even dimmer, with only a faint trace of spiritual energy remaining.
Enough to summon the heavenly thunder one last time.
Her entire body was covered in blood. Changmang had shielded her from too many fierce winds, and the previously flawless silken bindings on it were now riddled with tears. Its artifact spirit was curled up in her sea of consciousness, gasping for breath.
“Master, you’re going to die…”
Sang Dai lowered her gaze and murmured, “Changmang, I’m sorry.”
She had dragged Changmang into this.
Changmang struggled, wrapping itself once more around Sang Dai’s wrist, rubbing against her skin. “Changmang exists because of Master. The Lord truly cares for Master.”
After forming a bond, Sang Dai could finally hear Changmang’s voice clearly.
And Changmang could finally speak its thoughts.
Su Xuan.
Sang Dai gave a bitter smile. Upon discovering her absence, Su Xuan must have gone mad.
She seemed to owe him so much, always hitting him and never showing him a kind expression before.
Yet, in her lowest moments, the one who gave her everything without reservation was only Su Xuan.
“It’s me who owes him…”
But she wouldn’t have the chance to repay him.
Sang Dai lifted her gaze and, leaning on the broken sword, began to walk downward.
On the dry, dark ground lay more than a thousand people, their clothes tattered and their consciousness dazed.
Sang Dai withdrew her power. The heavenly thunder had not killed them; it had only broken the Ten Thousand Kill Formation.
The disciples who formed the array naturally suffered backlash. These younger disciples, whose cultivation levels were already low, would be bedridden for quite some time from the consequences of the array’s recoil.
Dragging her sword, Sang Dai walked over to Sang Wenzhou.
Sang Wenzhou was covered in blood. As the core of the Ten Thousand Kill Formation, most of the thunder Sang Dai summoned had struck him directly. However, as a Nascent Soul cultivator at full peak, Sang Wenzhou could not withstand the Nine Heavens Profound Thunder summoned with Guixu spiritual energy. Nearly all his meridians had been severed, and his Golden Core was faintly shattered. The scene was eerily familiar.
His expression was one of terror, but even more so of hatred.
“Unfilial daughter, you want to kill me? I am your father!”
Sang Dai’s face was expressionless. “No, you are not.”
“Sang Dai! You cannot kill me! I am the Sect Master of the Sword Sect!”
“Sang Dai, Sang Dai!”
“You cannot kill me!!!”
Sang Dai acted as though she did not hear him. Amid Sang Wenzhou’s terrified curses and pleas for mercy, she raised her sword.
“As Sect Master, you should have devoted yourself to teaching disciples and protecting the sect. Yet you extracted the spiritual roots of cultivators and offered them as sacrifices to the Guixu Immortal Realm. Disloyal and unjust, unworthy of being a Sect Master—you deserve to die.”
She was decisive. When it came to killing, she never wasted words, nor did she listen to pleas or curses.
If someone deserved to die, they would die.
The broken sword descended mercilessly, piercing through the body of the man before her.
“You were wrong,” Sang Dai said.
“Sect Master!”
“Sang Wenzhou!”
Sang Dai was too decisive, giving Sang Wenzhou no chance to retaliate. Facing his utterly terrified gaze, she shattered his dantian without hesitation.
Sang Wenzhou’s eyes gradually lost focus. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but the blood clogging his throat made it impossible for him to utter a word. He could only spit blood.
In the end, he moved no more.
Sang Dai withdrew her sword with a reverse grip and turned to look at the powerless figures lying on the ground.
“There are eleven elders in the Sword Sect. All were involved in this matter. Not one of them can escape.”
“Today, three elders are here in the Burning Heaven Realm. As for the other eight, I trust that others will carry out justice and right the wrongs for the slain cultivators.”
Sang Dai activated the Tianyu Stone again, and thunder roared once more. The Sword Sect elders panicked and tried to flee.
“No, no!”
“Help! Sang Dai, you can’t! Help!”
But no one could save them. Everyone present was paralyzed by the backlash from the shattered Ten Thousand Kill Formation.
Under the oppressive force of the heavenly thunder, the power of the Guixu realm pinned them to the ground, rendering them immobile. Moments later, the tribulation lightning struck with pinpoint precision. Four bolts of thunder rained down, reducing the already-dead Sang Wenzhou and the remaining three elders to ashes.
In an instant, they vanished like smoke.
It was utterly terrifying.
Too quiet. Everyone held their breath, their chests tight with fear.
These elders were cultivators at the Golden Core and Nascent Soul stages, yet they had no chance to fight back against Sang Dai. Even the Ten Thousand Kill Formation had been broken.
Witnessing the massacre before them, the crowd was both panicked and outraged.
An elder of the Nine Cauldron Sect roared in anger: “Outrageous! The matter of disciple sacrifices has yet to be judged by the Immortal Alliance—there is no evidence! How dare you kill!”
Sang Dai retorted, “My alleged treason has yet to be confirmed, only rumors from their mouths. Why did you not hesitate to set up the Ten Thousand Kill Formation to kill me?”
“You—!”
A steward of the Spirit Inscription Sect, supporting himself with a trembling blade, struggled to stand, coughing up large mouthfuls of blood. “Sang Dai! That man was your father, and those were the elders of the Sword Sect!”
Sang Dai replied calmly, “Those cultivators who were killed also had fathers, families. They were living beings.”
“Absurd! Absolutely absurd! The Immortal Alliance will never forgive you!”
Sang Dai did not respond.
In truth, she was in terrible pain.
The last trace of spiritual energy in the Tianyu Stone had been completely exhausted.
Her entire body throbbed with agony, her vision blurred—she couldn’t even clearly see who was speaking in front of her.
The Zhiyu Sword had broken again, and Changmang, sensing her imminent death, wailed helplessly in her sea of consciousness.
“Outrageous!”
“Traitor!”
“If you don’t kill us today, the Immortal Alliance will hunt you across the Four Realms when we return!”
Though they couldn’t move, they all cursed her, not just the elders from other sects but even the disciples of the Sword Sect—those junior brothers and sisters she had once fought so hard to protect.
Finally, Sang Dai could no longer hold on. Her legs gave out, and she drove the Zhiyu Sword into the ground to support herself, her body hunched slightly.
Her hair was a disheveled mess, and the hairpin Su Xuan had carefully prepared for her had been shattered by the heavenly thunder. She coughed softly, blood splattering from her lips like tiny red blossoms.
Drops of blood fell onto the muddy ground, blooming like crimson flowers, strange and unsettling.
The blood blurred her vision, and she remembered that torrential rain from years ago.
A ten-year-old Sang Dai knelt in the mud, watching Ying Heng’s back as he walked away without hesitation. He stepped over countless wounded bodies as rivers of blood flowed. The downpour washed away the bloodstains, leaving the small courtyard filthy and ruined.
The rain was icy cold, yet the Zhiyu Sword burned in her hands.
She stared at his figure through the rain, kneeling and crying as she pleaded with him: “Master, don’t go! Don’t abandon Dai Dai! Let’s go together and explain everything to the Immortal Alliance. You didn’t kill those people, and you didn’t destroy the spiritual vein!”
Once he left, there would be no turning back. Leaving the Sword Sect would mean being branded as a traitor to the Four Realms.
But Ying Heng only paused for a moment back then. Without looking back, he left the Sword Sect and abandoned Sang Dai.
So much time had passed—over a hundred years. Now, she finally understood Ying Heng.
When everyone believes you are guilty, the truth no longer matters.
Whether it was Ying Heng who destroyed the Guixu spiritual vein, or whether it was he who killed the people of the Cangwu Daoist Temple, none of it mattered. He had already been forsaken by the Sword Sect, branded as the sinner of the Four Realms, and his fate was sealed—death.
Sang Dai knelt on the ground, her throat blocked with blood, making it impossible to breathe. She coughed violently, unable to stop.
Her heart meridian was rapidly failing. Changmang cried in agony, but Sang Dai no longer had the strength to comfort it.
Forcing herself to use Guixu spiritual energy with a half-shattered Golden Core had come at a devastating cost.
Disordered footsteps echoed once again. This time, more people arrived.
They were elders and disciples from two other sects.
At the auction at Bairen Alley, five sects in total had come to the Immortal Realm, and now only three remained.
The elder from the Blade Sect, rushing to the scene, froze in shock at the carnage before him. Stammering, he asked, “What happened here?”
The elder from the Nine Cauldron Sect roared angrily, “Sang Dai of the Sword Sect slaughtered the Sword Sect’s Sect Master, Sang Wenzhou, as well as three other elders, and gravely injured the disciples!”
“Elder, save us! Senior Sister Sang wants to kill us!”
“Senior Sister? She is now a traitor to the Immortal Realm!”
Hearing the escalating accusations, Sang Dai raised her sleeve and wiped the blood from her chin.
The Blade Sect elder noticed the traces of lightning all over the ground.
“Sang Dai… Sang Dai possesses Heaven-grade lightning spiritual roots…”
Only someone with Heaven-grade spiritual roots could summon such powerful heavenly thunder.
And among all the Heaven-grade awakeners, Sang Dai was the only one with lightning spiritual roots.
“Sang Dai! How dare you do this!”
The Blade Sect elder drew his blade and swung it at her, the powerful blade light tearing through the void, carrying a killing intent that allowed no resistance. With just one strike, he could sever Sang Dai’s head.