Hearing this, Shen Xingzhi and Gu Yiyou exchanged a smile.
In that single smile lay over thirty years of master-and-servant camaraderie between them.
It held the unspoken understanding forged over drawing and presenting the sword countless times, the shared years traveling across rivers and mountains, and the wordless trust and entrustment of this very moment.
Gu Yiyou turned around to face Li Kunlun.
Taking a deep breath, he held the sword horizontally in front of him, gripping the scabbard with his left hand and the hilt with his right.
His hand holding the sword was still trembling slightly.
For over thirty years, he was finally going to draw the sword for his master one last time in the most complete, perfect manner.
“Master.”
Gu Yiyou’s voice was low and solemn.
“Your old servant shall draw the sword for you.”
As his words fell, Gu Yiyou unsheathed the sword!
The blade scraped against the scabbard with an exceedingly faint, delicate whisper.
The sound was not loud, yet like the first trembling vibration of a plucked zither string, it reverberated softly across the thirty-six peaks of the Canglan Sect.
Immediately after, the entire world began to quake.
The snow clinging to the thirty-six peaks of the Canglan Sect rustled and tumbled down in an instant!
Countless fine fissures burst open across the iron-gray cliff faces that had stood firm for ten thousand years!
The moment the blade fully cleared its scabbard, a surge of jade-green sword light shot skyward!
The brilliance of that sword light was many times greater than when Gu Yiyou had unleashed his sword intent alone moments ago!
Gu Yiyou held the sword up with both hands, turned around, and respectfully presented it to Shen Xingzhi.
His movement was exceptionally slow, steady, and solemn.
Every single detail was meticulous.
This was something he had done for over thirty years; it was carved into his very bones and etched into his flesh and blood.
Shen Xingzhi reached out his right hand, wrapping his fingers around the hilt.
The moment he touched the hilt, the aura surrounding him transformed abruptly.
He was no longer the gentle, elegant young gentleman without a trace of leaking sword intent, but rather a peerless divine sword that had just been unsheathed!
The sword intent surging from within him was as vast as a boundless starry sky.
Wherever that sword intent passed...
The blade intent domain Li Kunlun had spread out melted away inch by inch, like snow under blazing sunlight!
Li Kunlun’s expression finally shifted.
Before this sword intent, a long-lost sensation welled up within him.
It was the feeling he used to have when facing seniors far stronger than himself back before he had stepped into the Earthly Immortal Realm.
Yet today, he was the third-ranked Earthly Immortal under heaven, the ultimate pinnacle of Grand Shuo’s martial dao, standing at the summit of blade techniques above hundreds of millions of people.
Yet at this moment, before Shen Xingzhi’s sword intent, he actually felt a trace of fear!
However, Li Kunlun was Li Kunlun after all.
In an instant, he suppressed the shock in his heart, raised his pitch-black long blade high above his head, and drew the qi of heaven and earth within a hundred zhang surrounding him into the blade like a hundred rivers returning to the sea.
The thin silver line on the pitch-black blade suddenly surged, turning into a tens-of-zhang-long silver blade aura.
The space around the blade aura was torn into countless fine black rifts—a phenomenon that appeared only when the laws of heaven and earth were severed to the extreme by blade intent.
“Good!”
Li Kunlun bellowed, his voice shaking the wilderness.
“Allow me, Li, to experience firsthand just how lofty this strike from master and servant truly is!”
Shen Xingzhi slowly raised his sword. His movement was exceedingly slow, as though a weight of ten thousand jun pressed down upon the blade.
Yet the moment the sword's point swept overhead, the entire sky turned dark.
Then, he simply delivered a gentle slash.
There was no earth-shattering explosion, no world-destroying shockwave; even the sword light was merely an extremely faint, thread-thin line.
That line of sword light flew out from the tip, as fine as a strand of spider silk severed by the wind.
Yet when that thread of sword light swept across the void, Li Kunlun’s tens-of-zhang-long silver blade aura shattered inch by inch like paper.
The pitch-black blade let out a wail, and the silver-white glare on its body dimmed instantly.
Li Kunlun’s pupils shrank violently as he poured his life’s cultivation into the blade, attempting to block this seemingly light-as-a-feather thread of sword light.
Yet that sword light penetrated his layers of blade intent defense, pierced through the protective aura he had painstakingly cultivated for decades, tore through his dark martial attire woven from meteoric iron thread, and slashed straight into his chest!
“Pfft!”
Li Kunlun spat out a massive mouthful of blood and flew backward like a kite with a broken string, slamming heavily into the cliff face of the Canglan Sect's main peak.
The impact smashed a human-shaped crater several zhang deep into the cliff face. Loose rocks tumbled down, burying half his body beneath the rubble.
The pitch-black blade flew from his grip, flipped several times in the air, and lodged itself into a rock crevice dozens of zhang away.
One strike.
Just a single strike.
A deathly silence fell over heaven and earth.
The disciples of the Canglan Sect stared dumfounded as their Sect Master was blasted away in a single slash, their minds going completely blank.
Most of them had never seen Shen Xingzhi before, having only heard tales of this top Sword Immortal under heaven.
No matter how exaggerated the legends were, they paled in comparison to seeing it with their own eyes.
That was their Sect Master.
The number one figure in Grand Shuo, the third-ranked Earthly Immortal under heaven.
Defeated in a single sword strike just like that?
They simply could not bring themselves to believe the scene unfolding before their eyes.
Li Kunlun struggled to push himself up from the pile of rocks.
The sword wound on his chest extended from his right shoulder all the way to his left ribs, so deep that bone was visible, blood gushing forth like a spring.
Yet he did not care to stop the bleeding, merely staring intently at the figure whose green robe fluttered in the distance, stormy waves churning within his dark-gold eyes.
He could not believe that the gap between himself and this Sword Immortal Shen was truly this vast.
He was ranked third under heaven, while Lü Beisheng was ranked second.
The gap between the second-ranked and third-ranked under heaven could never possibly be this massive.
“You...”
Li Kunlun’s voice was raspy and laboured, each word forced out from deep within his chest.
“There is no way you lost to Lü Beisheng.
“A sword like this... no one under heaven could take it...”
Shen Xingzhi handed the long sword back to Gu Yiyou and placed his hands behind his back, his green robe fluttering in the northern wind.
Without another word, he led Gu Yiyou as they stepped through the void and departed.
The green robe and gray robe drifted farther and farther away beneath the daylight of Northern Shuo.
“Master.”
Gu Yiyou suddenly spoke up.
“Did you see that young man in Jinyang City? The one your old servant entrusted to deliver a message to you.”
“I did.”
A faint smile touched the corners of Shen Xingzhi’s mouth.
“The kid is not bad at all.
“To deliver your words to this old man, he held a battered spear and barged right into the center of the battlefield where Lü Beisheng and I were fighting.”
Gu Yiyou nodded. “That young man truly is an honest soul. How is he doing now?”
“Him?”
Shen Xingzhi’s smile deepened.
“Taking advantage of the fragments of the laws of heaven and earth shattered during my duel with Lü Beisheng...
“...within a brief quarter of an hour, he broke through two realms in a row from the Mountain-Viewing Realm, stepping straight into the mid stage of the Wind-Riding Realm.
“A spearmanship Grandmaster in the Wind-Riding Realm in his early twenties, breaking through in a single quarter-hour...
“If word of this gets out, I fear it will cause an even greater stir than my duel with Lü Beisheng.”
Gu Yiyou’s steps came to a sudden halt. His eyes widened, taking a long moment to snap back to reality.
“Wind-Riding Realm! Good! Good! Good! Your old servant knew he didn't judge him wrong!”
He then threw his head back and laughed aloud, his laughter echoing endlessly across the high heavens.
“Master.”
Gu Yiyou’s voice suddenly turned grave and formal.
“What are your plans for the future?”
Shen Xingzhi did not answer immediately.
He strode through the air, his green robe fluttering loudly in the wind as his gaze drifted into the far, far distance.
“Over these years, I have roamed the world and visited many places.
“The ends of the Eastern Sea, the desert of the Western Regions, the dense jungles of the Southern Wilds, the snow plains of the Northern Realm—I have walked through them all.”
He withdrew his gaze, turned to look at Gu Yiyou, and a gentle smile rose at the corners of his lips.
“There is only one place left that I have not visited. How about you accompany me there?”
Gu Yiyou followed Shen Xingzhi’s gaze.
There was nothing in that direction.
Only a vast, boundless horizon and an endless wilderness.
“What place?”
“The Demon Domain.”
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