Chapter 584 - 355: Death

The sky within Haoran’s inner world hung in still, golden silence.

The fragrant scent of blooming spirit herbs and the gentle whisper of primeval trees did nothing to soften the brutal coldness permeating the air.

Down on the lush, emerald lawn, the Sword Emperor knelt in the dirt, his breath trembling in his chest like an old, worn-out bellows.

The celestial laws established by Haoran’s declaration weighed upon him like iron mountains.

His grand cultivation had been forcefully sheared away, crushed down until he was nothing more than an ordinary youth at the first stage of the Spirit Ascension realm.

He looked at the pristine, unblemished black and gold robes of the young master, at the golden hair catching the light like spun sunlight, and at those radiant golden eyes that looked down upon him not with hatred or fury, but with the flat, emotionless detachment of a master observing an ant beneath his heel.

He looked at Wei Zhingyi, who stood a few steps back, her silver tails recovered and flowing with gentle lunar light, watching his ruin in quiet, stony silence.

For a single heartbeat, the suffocating terror of mortality threatened to snap his spine.

The instinct to lower his brow, to press his forehead against the damp loam, and to beg for a scrap of mercy from this walking calamity clawed at the back of his throat.

But then, his sword heart.

His dao will never allow surrender!

"Surrender? Not a chance! I am...!" He slow rose up, "...THE SWORD EMPEROR!"

A hoarse, blood-soaked roar tore from the old master’s throat, shattering the quiet paradise!

His three thousand years of wandering, the millions of leagues of bloody trenches he had crossed, and the unyielding pride of a supreme who had carved his name into the firmament refused to let him crawl in the mud!

Even if his body was broken, even if his cultivation was chained to the earth, the core of his very soul was forged of cold iron!

SHING!

He did not possess an iron blade, nor did he have the spiritual qi to manifest grand celestial arts, but the sheer, unbridled intent forged through three millennia of slaughter burst from his chest!

A translucent, grey-iron blade of concentrated, jagged sword intent condensed directly into his remaining hand, humming with the savage, razor sharp fury of a cornered beast!

"DIE!" Disregarding his missing arm, disregarding his burning dantian, he lunged forward from the dirt, driving the blade upward in a vicious, blinding diagonal slash aimed straight at Haoran’s throat!

With a flick of his wrist, Haoran condensed his own will into a sleek, pitch-black blade of sharp intent, stepping forward to meet the incoming strike head-on.

Yet, sword intent was an art tempered by time, blood, and endless repetition.

Haoran was a peerless monster whose talent defied the cosmos, whose dual dragon physiques and Heavenly Sword Dao Bone placed him above all peers, but he definitely lacks the experience and understanding of a swordsman obsessed with sword for thousands of years.

In terms of pure, unadulterated sword comprehension, the old vagabond had bathed in the edge far longer than Haoran.

CRACK!

The grey blade struck with the weight of an ancient continent.

The pitch black sword intent in Haoran’s grip fractured like brittle glass, bursting into countless glittering dark sparks that scattered across the grass.

The kinetic shockwave bit into Haoran’s palm, forcing his boots to slide back three paces across the soft loam, carving shallow ruts into the verdant soil.

Sword Emperor grinned, "Surprised? Even if I’m weakened, my sword intent is not something you can just take."

A low, resonant sound left Haoran’s throat.

He lifted his right hand, his golden eyes observing the wisps of dark energy that were slowly crawling back together over his knuckles, gradually stitching the phantom hilt back into shape.

He then looked at the grey blade trembling in the Sword Emperor’s grip—it was rough, notched, and chipped, yet the intent binding it together was as stubborn as primeval granite.

Haoran sighed, "You know, under a different circumstance, I would like to only just clash with you using sword intent, it’s a good chance for me to learn. But..."

HUUUUUMMMMM.

The colossal white mobile floating fortress hovering in the golden firmament tilted its terraced battlements downward.

The giant gears ground against one another with a low, earth-shaking rumble that vibrated through the marrow of the old man’s bones.

Thirty-six massive runic circles flared to life across the gardens’ perimeter, glowing with blinding crimson and solar gold, locking their burning apertures directly onto the kneeling swordsman with absolute, inescapable precision.

Haoran’s golden eyes narrowed into thin, freezing slits, the easy amusement draining from his face, replaced by a cold, merciless stillness.

"...Everyone has something or someone they don’t like getting hurt or broken. And you just happened to hurt mine."

His mind flashed to Qing’er, who lay wounded inside his shadow, her black silk soaked in blood, her tonfa blades shattered because this old relic had treated her like an insect beneath his boots.

"Go."

WHOOOOOOSH—CRACK!

A concentrated lance of celestial solar fire, barely as thick as a thumb but burning with the heat of an exploding star, shot down from the fortress!

It moved faster than thought!

The beam struck the Sword Emperor’s left shoulder with surgical, ruthless precision!

There was no sound of tearing muscle; the divine heat instantly vaporized flesh, bone, and sinew into thin air!

The grey sword intent blade he had just manifested dissolved into nothingness as the limb that held it ceased to exist, leaving only a blackened, smoking crater where his shoulder had been!

He roared in pain, but before he can recover, another beam descended and disintegrated his left leg!

"AAAAAAAGH!"

The old master threw his head back, his vocal cords tearing from the sheer, blistering agony!

But before his scream could echo across the valley, a second beam of blinding crimson light punched down from the sky!

HISSSS!

The beam sliced through his left hip, completely eradicating his thigh, knee, and calf in a cloud of vaporized ash!

He screamed in pain, collapsing heavily onto his side in the dirt, flopping like a butchered fish in a pool of scorched grass and his own boiling blood!

His right arm was gone, his left arm was gone, and his left leg had vanished!

He lay in the red mud, reduced to a limbless, writhing torso, weeping tears of pure agony, his remaining eye bulging as the smell of his own cooked flesh filled his nostrils!

And at that moment...

Crunch. Crunch.

Haoran’s boots stepped over the crushed grass, slow, rhythmic, and unhurried.

In his right palm, the black sword intent blade had fully reformed, humming with a dark, oily malice that swallowed the surrounding light.

The young man’s golden third eye was wide open, casting a pale, divine luminescence down onto the ruined creature at his feet.

"You had a proud sword," Haoran said softly, his voice devoid of anger, sounding like a physician speaking to a corpse on an operating slab. "Let us see if your soul is forged of the same iron."

Haoran did not swing for the neck, instead, he drove the tip of the dark blade slowly into the Sword Emperor’s right thigh, pinning his remaining limb to the dirt.

SKRRR.

The blade did not merely pierce meat, after all, he deliberately coated it in the lingering powers of Azathoth and the suffocating rule of his domain.

The dark intent seeped directly into the old man’s spiritual channels, acting like thousands of microscopic, barbed hooks that latched onto his ethereal soul.

Haoran twisted the blade half an inch.

"GAAAAAAAH!"

The Sword Emperor’s body arched violently off the ground, his spine bending like a drawn bow!

It was not physical pain—it was the agonizing horror of having his spiritual roots flayed open!

Haoran used the sword intent like a butcher’s knife, peeling the layers of the old man’s soul apart like the skin of a rotten fruit!

He severed the memories of his sword forms, burning them away into grey smoke.

He reached into his consciousness, shredding the connection between his mind and his sea of intent, making the old master feel every single thread of his three thousand year cultivation being ripped out by the roots, chewed up, and spat into the mud!

Tears of blood and yellowish fluid poured from the old man’s lone eye.

He bit his own tongue in half in a desperate attempt to choke on his blood, but the conceptual laws of Haoran’s world kept him conscious, forcing his mind to remain razor-sharp, unable to pass out, unable to go numb, and forced to endure every single millisecond of the flaying!

"A life for the harm," Haoran whispered coldly, stepping his boot directly onto the old man’s cheek, grinding his face into the bloody dirt. "A soul for her blood."

Haoran lifted his blade, his golden third eye blazing with catastrophic, soul destroying fire.

He drove Azathoth straight through the center of the Sword Emperor’s brow!

CRACK!

A sound like shattering crystal rang out from inside the old man’s skull!

Haoran’s spiritual power surged through the dark blade, wrapping around the Sword Emperor’s remnant soul like a crushing iron fist.

With a cold, brutal clench of his will, he did not merely extinguish the spark, but also shattered the soul into ten million microscopic fragments!

POP.

The spiritual core detonated into a cloud of dead, grey motes that were instantly swallowed by the soil of Haoran’s world, digested and absorbed by the leylines, ensuring that not a single speck of the Sword Emperor’s will remained, making it so that he will never reincarnate again.

Across the three realms and six paths, the existence named the Sword Emperor was thoroughly erased from the grand cycle of eternity.

Haoran pulled his blade back, the dark intent dissolving into his palm.

The emerald grass, the ancient spirit trees, and the floating marble fortress of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon faded away like morning mist.

The golden firmament pulled inward, dissolving back into the depths of Haoran’s dantian.

WHOOSH.

The cold, howling wind of the outside world rushed against their robes once more.

They stood upon the dark, jagged rocks of the desolate mountain basin, under the dim, bruised purple sky of the provincial star.

The broken craters, the scorched trenches, and the shattered boulders of the earlier battle surrounded them.

In the dirt at Haoran’s feet, there was only an empty, limbless pile of scorched brown cloth and ash, which was quickly scattered into the mountain gale, leaving not a trace behind.

Haoran turned his head, his golden eyes sweeping over the silver-haired woman who stood a few paces back.

Wei Zhingyi was breathing steadily now, the golden pill having fully repaired her broken meridians, stitched her flesh, and restored the brilliant luster of her nine silver tails.

Yet, as she looked at the young man before her, her fingers trembled slightly beneath her sleeves.

She had watched him tear a Supreme Emperor to pieces with cold, methodical cruelty, without breaking a single drop of sweat.

He turned towards Wei Zhingyi, "You owe me a lot of life saving favors today."

Wei Zhingyi looked solemn and nodded, "...Young master of the Shen Clan, I swear an oath here, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my pursuit of the dao, I will be at your beck and call."

Her voice was firm, carrying the solemn, inviolable weight of a Heavenly Saint’s vow.

For a thousand years, she had avoided entanglements with the grand clans, fiercely guarding her independence and the purity of her sect.

But tonight, this youth had saved her from the vile schemes of Ye Fan, cured her poisoned veins, pulled her out of the Sword Emperor’s execution domain, and avenged the humiliation she had suffered.

Such a debt of karma was heavier than the highest mountains.

Haoran smirked, "Very well."

He did not demand immediate servitude, nor did he press her for the jade relic she carried.

Having the master of the Immortal Coupling Palace bound to his name was a useful piece to place upon the board for the future.

Wei Zhingyi then took out a token from her storage space and handed it over to Haoran, "This token symbolizes my authority. Seeing it is like seeing me. As long as you have that, you can command the Immortal Coupling Palace. It is also an artifact that can contact me."

The token was carved from a single piece of warm, translucent moon-jade, shaped like a blooming nine-petaled lotus with nine fox tails wrapping around the edges.

It gave off a faint, soothing warmth, humming with a strand of her pure celestial soul-breath.

Haoran observed the jade over in his palm, feeling the smooth, intricate runes carved into the back, before casually tossing it into his spatial ring with a careless flick of his fingers.

Wei Zhingyi nodded at him, her expression respectful, yet eager to depart from this blood-soaked land, "Young master, if you have no more orders, I will be taking my leave. I have lots of matters to attend to."

Her sect had been left vulnerable during her long absence, and the injuries to her core, though suppressed by his high-grade medicine, still required decades of quiet, focused seclusion to fully mend.

Haoran waved his hand, telling her to go, and Wei Zhingyi vanished.

With a soft rustle of silk and a brief swirl of silver lunar light, her figure dissolved into the cool mountain wind, tearing through the upper clouds and disappearing toward the distant horizon.

Haoran stood alone upon the desolate peak, his black and gold robes fluttering against the night draft, his golden eyes gazing calmly toward the distant stars.