Chapter 249: The Myriad Desolation Heavens-Obliterating Axe

Thick, choking clouds of dark grey ash hung over the fractured ruins of the Cloud Peak Sect. What had once been a majestic mountain sanctuary of white jade courtyards and soaring spirit pavilions was now a desolate graveyard of splintered timber, shattered pillars, and smoldering stone.

High above the wreckage, suspended effortlessly against the scorched sky, floated Liu Tong.

Fresh, dark crimson blood saturated his dark robes, matting his long hair and clinging to his jawline. Thick droplets fell rhythmically from the edge of his chin, splashing silently onto the cracked flagstones far below. His chest rose and fell in slow, measured beats, and across his gore-streaked face stretched a broad, manic grin that revealed teeth stained red with slaughter.

Down on the shattered plaza floor, two figures knelt amidst the carnage, their breaths coming in ragged, shallow gasps.

Xia Lu, Sect Leader of the Cloud Peak Sect, pressed one trembling hand against the stone, her emerald robes shredded and soaked in dirt and blood. Beside her knelt Huo Ling, Sect Leader of the Celestial Sword Sect, his fingers gripping the hilt of his broadsword so tightly that his knuckles turned chalk-white.

Behind the two sect masters huddled the battered remnants of their forces: four elders—three bearing the celestial sword emblems and one from Cloud Peak—alongside twenty trembling disciples, ten from each sect. Every single one of them was bruised, bleeding, and barely clinging to their spiritual foundations.

Xia Lu spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the stone, looking up into the sky with bloodshot, furious eyes.

"Liu Tong, you deranged beast!" Xia Lu screamed, her voice cracking with pure outrage. "We have told you ten times over—neither of our sects laid a single hand upon your vanguard! What madness possesses you to butcher your own allies over hollow delusions?!"

Huo Ling’s blade vibrated against the flagstones, the veins along his neck bulging with suppressed fury. "Has your madness devoured whatever sanity remained in your skull, Liu Tong?! You have leveled an entire sect to dust and butchered thousands of disciples from both of our sects based on nothing more than blind suspicion!"

Liu Tong’s smile did not waver, but the air around him warped violently. A noxious, suffocating aura of deep purple and blood-red qi detonated outward from his frame, flattening the surrounding smoke and crushing the earth beneath a sudden wave of killing intent.

"I will not utter this name a second time," Liu Tong said, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying rumble that vibrated through their marrow. "Where is that treasonous dog, Elder Xu Ren?!"

Huo Ling threw his head back, his voice tearing from his throat in sheer, desperate exasperation. "For the hundredth time, open your blind eyes! There is no Elder Xu Ren in the Celestial Sword Sect, nor in the Cloud Peak Sect! We have never harbored such a person!"

Liu Tong’s crimson pupils narrowed. With a slow, deliberate movement, he raised his massive, double-handed war-axe. Boiling arcs of crimson lightning crackled along the thick steel crescent, hissing against the humid air.

Xia Lu and Huo Ling’s faces drained of the last vestiges of color.

"All disciples! Elders!" Xia Lu screamed, pushing herself to her feet with her jade sword drawn. "Channel your spiritual energy! Strike together!"

The four surviving elders and twenty disciples roared through their terror, igniting the absolute remnants of their spiritual reserves. Streams of azure sword-light, burning flame spears, whistling wind arrows, and dense elemental qi surged upward in a torrential, synchronized barrage aimed straight at the floating figure.

Liu Tong’s sneer twisted into a savage, predatory snarl.

"Tiger Dragon Slash!"

Liu Tong brought the heavy war-axe down in a brutal, single-handed cleave.

A colossal crescent of compressed crimson lightning and blood qi erupted from the blade, tearing through the sky with a sound like ripping silk. The instant the crimson slash met the unified storm of spiritual arts, it did not merely collide—it utterly devoured them. Flying swords snapped into iron filings, flame spears evaporated into smoke, and the collective volley shattered like brittle glass in mid-air.

"Barrier!" Huo Ling roared in terror.

Huo Ling and Xia Lu threw their hands forward in unison, pouring their remaining spiritual qi into a dual-layered, shimmering barrier of cerulean and emerald light over the surviving disciples.

BOOM!

The residual crimson arc slammed violently into the barrier. The earth groaned as shockwaves ripped outward, tearing up thousand-pound stone slabs and pulverizing them into dust.

The barrier held for half a breath before fracturing into brilliant shards. The concussive blast hurled Huo Ling and Xia Lu violently backward. Both sect leaders crashed heavily onto their knees, hacking up violent fountains of fresh blood that splattered across the rubble.

Liu Tong’s boots landed on the shattered stone with a dull, heavy thud.

He walked forward with slow, unhurried strides, dragging the heavy iron blade of his axe across the rock. The screech of metal grinding against stone sent chills straight down the spines of the surviving cultivators.

"You grew greedy," Liu Tong spoke softly, his crimson eyes gleaming with cold malice. "You butchered every man in my Death Rider Army just to purchase cheap merit and prestige from the alliance. Do you possess even the slightest comprehension of the blood and bone it took to forge my riders?"

Huo Ling and Xia Lu exchanged trembling, terrified glances, the weight of his suffocating pressure pinning them to the earth.

Liu Tong took another step forward, his voice dropping into a dark, resonant rasp that seemed to freeze the very wind:

"I swear on the mandate of the Star Emperor... you all will beg for the sweet release of hell long before I grant it."

Liu Tong blurred.

He closed the distance in a fraction of an instant, his axe swinging in a vicious, diagonal arc meant to cleave Huo Ling in two.

Huo Ling’s survival instincts screamed. With lightning reflexes, he slapped his spatial pouch and pulled out an ancient, dark-iron shield. A radiant, six-pointed celestial star was deeply engraved into the center. Huo Ling slammed his palms against the back of the metal, funneling every drop of his blue spiritual qi into the star.

CLANG!

The crescent blade crashed against the star-shield with a deafening, metallic gong that shattered the surrounding eardrums. A concussive shockwave flattened the dust for thirty yards, and the stone beneath Huo Ling’s boots fractured into a spiderweb of deep trenches.

"Now, Xia Lu!" Huo Ling roared through gritted teeth, his forearms trembling under the crushing weight of the axe.

A flash of green light flickered behind Liu Tong. Xia Lu materialized in mid-air, her slender sword enveloped in swirling, razor-sharp gale qi.

"Emerald Aerial Shatter!"

She drove the glowing blade toward the base of Liu Tong’s neck with all the lethal momentum of a diving hawk.

Liu Tong didn’t even turn his head.

His left hand shot out like an iron vice, his bare, calloused fingers closing cleanly around the glowing, razor-sharp spiritual blade. The emerald qi hissed and sparked against his skin, failing to draw even a single drop of blood.

Liu Tong turned his head sideways, meeting Xia Lu’s wide, horrified eyes with a dead, mocking stare.

With a brutal twist of his torso, Liu Tong hurled Xia Lu by her own blade, tossing her through the air like a ragdoll. Her body skipped violently across the shattered flagstones before crashing into the crumbled foundation of an outer pavilion.

"Kill him!" the Celestial Sword elders roared.

Seizing the split second while Liu Tong’s left arm remained extended from throwing Xia Lu, all four elders and twenty disciples moved in absolute, synchronized desperation.

From the left, two Celestial Sword elders unsheathed their twin blades, the steel igniting with searing azure sword-rays that coiled into two roaring gale serpents. From the right, the Cloud Peak elder drove his iron spear forward, its tip spinning like a violent jade drill laced with whistling wind blades. Behind Liu Tong, ten disciples thrust their spirit daggers into the air, unleashing a rain of jagged ice spikes, while the remaining disciples channeled their dantian reserves directly into their fists, launching massive, glowing concussive qi beasts from the front.

Swords sliced, spears pierced, and elemental techniques detonated simultaneously from every blind angle, slamming dead-center into Liu Tong’s frame.

BOOM!

A torrential shockwave tore through the courtyard, blasting shattered jade and stone fragments fifty yards outward as a towering, churning cloud of dust and collided qi swallowed Liu Tong entirely.

Huo Ling raised his star-shield with both arms, his boots skidding back three paces as flying shrapnel and concussive shockwaves ricocheted off the heavy dark-iron surface with sharp, ringing chimes.

Lowering his posture behind the metallic barrier, Huo Ling peered intently through the settling grey smoke.

There was no sound of steel biting into bone. No spray of torn flesh.

Instead, the atmospheric qi suddenly froze. A violent, suffocating vortex began spinning inside the center of the cloud, greedily devouring the ambient spiritual energy, the lingering dust, and the very air itself into a tight, blackish-red singularity.

The hairs on Huo Ling’s neck stood on end. His blood ran ice-cold as his pupils contracted to needlepoints.

"Fall back!" Huo Ling screamed, veins bulging across his throat as he pushed his shield forward. "Clear the perimeter immediately—!"

The warning never reached their ears.

From the dead center of the dust, a razor-thin, horizontal ring of compressed crimson qi flashed into existence.

SHING!

The crimson crescent expanded outward in a frictionless, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree plane, whistling through the air at blinding speed. It passed effortlessly through reinforced ironwood spears, cleaved forged steel swords into two, and sheared cleanly through the throats of all twenty-four cultivators before they could even blink.

A split-second of eerie, frozen stillness gripped the courtyard.

Then, twenty-four heads tipped backward off their shoulders, tumbling into the dirt. Twenty-four fountains of crimson sprayed high into the falling ash as all twenty-four headless corpses stood locked in their striking postures for a heartbeat—before collapsing simultaneously onto the stone flags with a heavy, wet thud.

The thick dust slowly settled in the mountain wind.

Liu Tong stood in the exact center of the ring of corpses, his robes untouched, not a single scratch marking his skin. He lowered his axe, a broad, amused smirk playing on his lips.

"How long do you intend to hide Xu Ren?" Liu Tong asked smoothly, stepping over the decapitated body of an elder. "Is his worthless life truly precious enough to sacrifice your entire sects? Every disciple and elder you brought to this mountain is dead. If there is anyone left alive, it is only that dog."

From the rubble behind him, Xia Lu dragged herself to her feet, her mouth dripping crimson. She lunged forward with a desperate, wild horizontal slash of her sword.

Liu Tong ducked under the whistling blade with effortless precision. Without breaking his rhythm, he drove the heel of his palm straight into Xia Lu’s midsection.

CRACK.

The sound of shattering ribs echoed sharply. Xia Lu vomited a torrent of blood, her eyes rolling back as the concussive force sent her hurtling hundreds of feet through the air, tumbling far across the distant courtyard until she lay motionless among the broken rubble on the outer perimeter.

Huo Ling stood alone among the corpses of his sect, his voice trembling in a mixture of profound grief and boiling, helpless rage.

Huo Ling stood alone among the corpses of his fallen sect, blood leaking from the corners of his eyes as his entire body trembled with grief and fury.

"Open your eyes and look around you, Liu Tong!" Huo Ling roared, tears of blood leaking from the corners of his eyes as his blade trembled in his grip. "You are chasing a phantom born of your own paranoia! If you want our lives, take them! But the truth will never bend to your madness!"

In the blink of an eye, Liu Tong vanished from the spot.

He reappeared directly in front of Huo Ling’s face, his crimson eyes burning with killing hunger. Liu Tong cocked his right fist back and drove it forward like a siege ram.

BANG!

The iron fist struck the star-shield. Huo Ling grunted, his teeth grinding together as he channeled his spiritual reserves directly into the artifact’s core matrix.

"It is a spirit grade high-grade artifact!" Huo Ling bellowed, a desperate grin flashing across his bloody lips. "You cannot break it!"

Huo Ling slammed his palm onto the internal trigger rune. A violent wave of compressed kinetic force exploded outward from the shield’s star emblem, blasting Liu Tong backward.

Liu Tong’s boots tore two deep, smoking trenches through the stone as he skidded back fifty paces. A trickle of dark blood leaked from the corner of his lips.

He wiped the blood away with the back of his thumb, looking at the smear on his skin before throwing his head back in a chilling, unhinged laugh that echoed off the ruined peaks.

"A scrap artifact..." Liu Tong laughed, his voice laced with venomous amusement. "You truly believe that worthless slab of metal can shield your frail soul from my judgment?"

Liu Tong gripped the hilt of his heavy war-axe with both hands.

ROOOOOAAAR!

A torrential pillar of deep violet and boiling crimson aura erupted from his body, shooting straight through the ash clouds and piercing the upper atmosphere. The air pressure around the mountain collapsed, forcing the surrounding rubble to grind into dust.

Behind Liu Tong, the dense spiritual energy congealed into the colossal, hundred-meter spectral phantom of a horned abyssal titan, towering over the ruins and mirroring his exact, murderous posture.

Liu Tong slowly raised the heavy war-axe high above his head with both hands.

The gravitational pull around the weapon began to warp. The ambient spiritual energy in a five-mile radius collapsed inward, forming a dense, black-and-red vortex at the crescent edge of the blade. Shattered boulders, broken pillars, and severed weapons lifted from the earth, floating toward the blade before disintegrating into microscopic powder the instant they drew near.

"Sun and moon collapse into the blood-soaked void..." Liu Tong chanted, his voice reverberating like ancient thunder.

The fabric of space directly along the blade’s edge began to fracture with sharp, audible cracks, like glass shattering under a hammer. Crimson lightning laced through the void fissures, dropping the temperature of the air into biting, desolate frost that carried the heavy, suffocating stench of scorched iron and ozone.

"Ten thousand worlds reduce to scattered ash—"

Huo Ling looked up at the apocalyptic titan phantom, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. His heart stopped beating. Every instinct within his soul screamed of absolute, unavoidable annihilation.

"Myriad Desolation Heavens-Obliterating Axe!"

With a guttural, earth-shaking roar, Liu Tong brought the axe crashing down in a brutal, straight vertical cleave.

The hundred-meter titan behind him mirrored the swing with apocalyptic force. Instead of a standard wind blade, the strike unleashed a massive, five-hundred-meter crescent of compressed, pitch-black void energy rimmed in boiling, blood-red light.

"Blue Sky Celestial Aegis!" Huo Ling screamed at the top of his lungs, his veins bursting along his neck as he poured every single drop of his spiritual energy, life force, and soul essence into the star-shield.

The shield expanded into a colossal, luminous barrier resembling an azure mountain fortress wall.

The void cleave collided with the shield.

For a split second, the world lost all sound.

Then—

CRACK... CRACK... SHATTER!

Spiderweb fractures tore across the high-grade spirit artifact. Huo Ling’s eyes widened in ultimate horror as the ancient metal star dissolved into thousands of screaming iron fragments.

The five-hundred-meter crescent of void energy passed cleanly through Huo Ling’s body.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The entire mountain peak detonated in a blinding cataclysm of light and heat. The ground vanished. Stone, jade, iron, and flesh were erased from existence on an atomic level.

Far across the outer perimeter, shielded by the collapsed foundation of a distant outer pavilion, Xia Lu opened her heavy, bruised eyelids.

She looked toward the center of the sect, her jaw trembling in paralyzed horror.

"Huo... Ling...?" she whispered, her voice barely a breath.

The towering dust and smoke slowly parted in the wind, revealing an apocalyptic sight.

The entire central sect compound, its grand halls, its ancestral palaces, and Huo Ling himself had completely ceased to exist. In their place was a colossal, bottomless abyss—a cataclysmic crater stretching five kilometers wide and plunging ten kilometers deep into the subterranean core of the mountain, its sheer rock walls glowing with molten heat and crackling with residual crimson lightning.

High above the center of the five-kilometer abyss, floating peacefully against the black smoke, was Liu Tong.

He lowered his axe, letting out a long, satisfied breath. A broad, jagged smile spread across his blood-stained face as he stared down at the bottomless void beneath his boots.

Slowly, his glowing crimson pupils shifted away from the abyss.

His gaze cut straight through the drifting smoke, locking directly onto the distant rubble where Xia Lu lay broken, bleeding, and paralyzed in sheer, unadulterated terror.

To Be Continued...