Chapter 301 - The Wooden Blade and the Closing Net

Chapter 301: Chapter 301 - The Wooden Blade and the Closing Net

At Lu Canghai’s words, the expressions of the righteous experts changed.

The dark discs resting on the demons’ laps were escape artifacts.

That possibility alone was enough to erase what little hesitation remained.

They had already forced eight Void-Shattering demonic cultivators into Radiant Sky Sect’s suppression field, crippled their ability to circulate Qi, broken through several of their prepared methods, and even neutralized the Formation-Eating Nail they had brought specifically to destroy formations.

If these people still managed to escape after all of that, nobody present would forget it for a very long time.

What bothered the Zhuge Clan expert even more was how long it had taken them to notice.

He stared at the patterns slowly brightening across the discs.

The formation’s disturbance had been so faint that even several Void-Shattering cultivators had overlooked it until Su Bai pointed it out.

Whatever those discs were, they were not ordinary escape treasures.

Li Xuanzong understood the situation just as quickly.

His gaze passed over the seated demons before settling on the others guarding them.

The bells continued ringing softly, causing spiritual sense to slide away whenever anyone attempted to lock onto their bodies. Several more talismans had already appeared between the standing cultivators’ fingers.

They were still buying time.

Li Xuanzong finally stopped allowing them to do so.

The aura around him changed.

Only a portion of what he had been holding back slipped free, yet the effect was enough to make every Void-Shattering cultivator nearby turn toward him.

The space surrounding Li Xuanzong trembled.

The four visiting experts stared.

They had fought beside him around the Great Fissure before. They had seen him repel enemies, control battlefields, and kill when killing became necessary.

None of them remembered seeing him release an aura like this.

The expert from Myriad Swords Sect slowly tightened his grip around his sword.

Even Jian Wushuang’s eyes changed.

A strange pressure spread across the battlefield.

Su Bai felt it from within the sect.

His body remained outside the direct focus of the aura, yet he still felt something inside him respond. Tiny metallic traces throughout his flesh and blood seemed to stir beneath his skin, as though they were being faintly pulled toward the man standing above the mountains.

The reaction was subtle.

For the suppressed demonic cultivators, it was anything but subtle.

Several shuddered.

Their Qi was already struggling beneath the formation. The instinctive spatial protection surrounding their bodies had weakened, and the bells could only distort targeting rather than restore their strength.

Now Li Xuanzong’s presence was pressing against the battlefield itself.

One of the demons looked toward Shen Youran.

Another glanced at the sea of clouds beneath Lu Canghai.

Finally, they looked back at Li Xuanzong.

Their earlier confidence vanished.

Someone cursed under his breath.

They had crossed into Radiant Sky Sect expecting a wounded righteous faction scrambling to protect itself.

Instead, they had walked into a gathering of people they would have preferred to encounter separately.

And now Li Xuanzong was finally showing what happened when he stopped treating the battle like something that needed to be carefully managed.

"Faster!" one of the demons shouted. "Feed the discs more!"

The seated cultivators reacted immediately.

Several coughed blood essence directly onto the dark formation plates resting across their laps.

The discs absorbed it.

Their rotation accelerated.

Thin distortions appeared in the surrounding air as the formation lines brightened, twisting the already suppressed space around them.

The standing demons moved at the same time.

Dozens of Nascent Soul-level talismans scattered from their hands.

This time they did not concentrate them toward Radiant Sky Sect.

They threw them everywhere.

Some shot toward the righteous experts. Others descended toward the mountains, while several curved toward the outer edges of the suppression formation.

The intention was obvious.

They were creating noise.

They wanted everyone to divide their attention long enough for the escape formations to finish activating.

Lu Canghai sighed.

The pale sea of clouds surrounding him expanded.

Wherever the talismans went, the mist followed.

Explosions began appearing inside the clouds as one talisman after another activated, yet very little of that power escaped.

Lu Canghai stroked his beard while watching the demons.

"You really do enjoy wasting things."

Nobody answered him.

Li Xuanzong had already moved. A wooden blade appeared in his hand.

Su Bai stared at it.

There was nothing impressive about the weapon. It looked almost plain.

Compared with the ancient weapons Su Bai had seen inside Fallen-Star Sanctuary, it looked closer to something a mortal craftsman might carve for practice.

The four visiting Void-Shattering cultivators reacted very differently.

The Glass-Lotus woman narrowed her eyes.

The Zhuge Clan expert stopped watching the discs altogether.

Jian Wushuang looked at the wooden blade for several breaths before quietly moving farther away from Li Xuanzong’s line of attack.

Su Bai noticed that.

Apparently, the wooden blade was not as harmless as it looked.

Li Xuanzong raised it.

Space bent around the blade.

The distortion was different from the crude tearing the demonic cultivators had attempted earlier. Nothing cracked, and no spatial fissure appeared.

The surrounding space simply began folding toward the wooden edge.

A low sound rolled through the sky.

It resembled the groan of something enormous being dragged across a surface that should never have resisted it.

Li Xuanzong swung.

The blade itself never left his hand.

What crossed the battlefield was a narrow arc of blade aura wrapped in distorted space.

The demonic cultivators reacted immediately.

One of them crushed a black talisman.

Void-Shattering pressure erupted from it.

A dark red barrier expanded around the seated cultivators and those protecting them, its surface layered with dense defensive patterns.

The blade aura struck.

The entire barrier shook.

For a brief instant, it held.

Several demons smiled, but the smile lasted only until they noticed the blade aura had not disappeared.

It remained pressed against the barrier.

Worse, the pressure behind it was increasing.

The surrounding space continued folding into the attack, feeding momentum into the blade aura instead of allowing the collision to exhaust it.

The barrier groaned, and eventually, a crack appeared.

The demonic cultivators’ expressions changed.

Another crack followed.

"Move them!"

Two demons grabbed the cultivators controlling the escape discs and dragged them sideways.

One man remained directly in the path of the attack.

His eyes widened.

Before he could understand why nobody had pulled him along, one of his companions seized the back of his robe.

The demon looked relieved for half a heartbeat.

The hand pushed.

His expression twisted.

"You bastard!"

He was thrown directly toward the cracking barrier.

The other demonic cultivators did not look back.

The barrier shattered.

Li Xuanzong’s blade aura descended.

The sacrificed cultivator roared and forced every remaining strand of Qi he could circulate into his body.

His weakened spatial protection flared around him.

For a moment, it looked as though he might survive.

But then...

The blade aura touched him, and his body split apart before a single drop of blood could fall.

Space rippled around the wound and immediately folded inward, dragging flesh and bone into the distortion until the remains of his body vanished completely. Even his soul barely had time to emerge before the warped space closed around it as well.

A moment later, nothing remained where the demonic cultivator had been.

The battlefield fell silent.

Even the demonic cultivators who had sacrificed him stared at the empty space where he had been.

Su Bai finally understood why Jian Wushuang had moved away from the attack path.

Li Xuanzong had not simply cut the man apart.

He had removed everything the blade touched from the battlefield.

Body and soul alike.

One of the surviving demons looked toward the companion who had thrown the man forward.

There was no gratitude in his eyes, only calculation.

The man who had just sacrificed an ally noticed it.

He did not apologize.

Nobody asked him to.

They all understood what had happened.

One life had bought the others enough time to move the escape discs out of the attack’s direct path.

Under different circumstances, that might have been considered a successful trade.

The problem was that all of them had now seen how quickly one of their own could become the next trade.

Their formation of trust cracked far more deeply than the barrier had.

Li Xuanzong lowered the wooden blade.

His aura spread farther.

The surviving demons immediately tensed, expecting another attack.

Instead, the righteous experts noticed something unusual.

Li Xuanzong was not pressing his aura evenly across the battlefield.

He was shaping it.

The pressure thickened through some regions while deliberately thinning through others, leaving several narrow corridors around the suppressed cultivators.

The Zhuge Clan expert understood first.

His eyes brightened.

"He’s marking the attack paths."

The others immediately saw it.

Li Xuanzong had spent the entire battle observing the demons’ artifacts, their reactions, their movement habits, and the limits of Shen Youran’s suppression.

Now he was arranging the battlefield for everyone else.

The dense regions of his aura marked areas where unstable spatial forces, hidden talismans, or the demons’ remaining preparations made approaching dangerous.

The thinner corridors showed where an attack could enter cleanly.

He was guiding five other Void-Shattering cultivators without wasting a single word.

The Myriad Swords Sect expert stared for only a moment before raising his sword.

The Scorching Sun Valley cultivator’s flames surged around him.

The Glass-Lotus woman’s pale radiance spread across the air, while the Zhuge Clan expert began adjusting his position.

Jian Wushuang tightened his grip.

Beside Shen Youran, Lu Canghai watched everything and slowly shook his head.

"It looks like I’m not needed anymore."

Shen Youran did not look at him.

"Go make yourself useful somewhere else."

Lu Canghai coughed.

"You remain as warm as ever."

She ignored him.

Lu Canghai smiled faintly and stayed exactly where he was.

Neither of them looked away from the battlefield.

Li Xuanzong lifted the wooden blade once more.

The first demon had died.

The remaining seven finally understood that the battle had changed.

The righteous side was no longer trying to contain them.

They were going to kill them.