Wind rushed across the central area of the Northern plains as Xing Zheng traveled through the air, appearing as an azure arc to those on the ground. Beneath his feet rested his Azure Water Sword glowing with that same colored light as it worked to propel him through the skies. Just moments ago he’d felt the pressure of a demonic cultivator from this direction, an incredibly strong one at that.

It had been years since he had felt such ominous and evil energy, just the feeling had sent Xing Zheng’s skin crawling. Although he wasn’t well trained in techniques regarding purse divine sense usage it had never been hard to detect the presence of someone who practiced the demonic arts. Their energy had a feeling about it, one that was cold and menacing with each different tradition having a slightly varying accompaniment.

In this instant, the echoes of fierce vital energy were held within, life force that had been extracted from its owner and was now shackled by force to unwillingly serve a new master. No form of sentience was left in those feral feelings, just savageness that looked to lash out and ravage through all living beings it touched. These negative echoes were a large reason demonic arts drove those who practiced them mad.

Cultivating itself was an act that defied the heavens where death waited just around the corner at each step. Demonic practitioners added on to this a war with themselves for the energy they forcibly took from others making their path all the more treacherous. Shaking his head Xing Zheng forced himself to stop musing about such things and focus on the moment.

He could feel that his divine sense wasn’t traveling as far as it normally would. Currently, it was limited to only around 5,000 km. In peak condition, Xing Zheng could manage double that so it was obvious the enemy both knew he was coming and had activated some sort of dampening array. It must have been quite expensive seeing as his divine sense couldn’t feel the boundary of the effect.

For the briefest moment hesitation bloomed in his mind. Obviously, this was a trap, one made specifically to kill whoever came to investigate. Even with his limited knowledge of the spirit cultivator community of the Twisted Territories, he knew that doing something like this without extensive planning was simply asking for death. There were one or two foundation establishment old monsters that called the northern plains home who would easily kill the offenders simply for being so brazen.

No, this scheme seemed far more meticulous to allow that to happen. It had taken the mysterious demonic cultivator three months to move even though Xing Zheng had been killing their pawns the entire time. Normally practitioners like this would only leave so many inheritances to mortals if they had some technique to extract the energy the ‘disciple’ would be able to gather.

A rather safe way of gathering Qi for cultivation, leave many in-name apprentices with the technique across a large area and then return to harvest them. This was also rather safe as the cultivator didn’t care how many of the mortals were killed by local factions or judgment executioners. They could simply collect the successful ones and then find someplace to enter seclusion to become more powerful.

However, these particular ‘disciples’ were restricted to this area. Normally this meant that the demonic cultivator was trying to make higher-quality harvests and would be protective of at least a few promising candidates. This hadn’t happened and no other reports came in of blood cultivators giving mortals inheritances in other areas of the lesser region.

Putting all of this together there was only one conclusion, someone was calling him out in particular. Xing Zheng was rather publicly known in the area as the Judgment Executioner the Lu clan preferred to employ. Take into account that and this lesser region was a border area where such a position was normally left unfilled and there was no longer any question of who the target was.

With a long sigh, he pushed away the idea of retreating. Every second that these demonic bastards stayed here was a threat to the entire Northern plains area, perhaps even the entire lesser region. Xing Zheng had seen how the allure of demonic arts could cause greed to appear in the hearts of good men, seen it in the ruins of the state of Renhu. Among the smoldering ruins of those he passed his Dao to, he had seen the result of letting these beasts go wild.

He may be part of the neutral path, one who practiced their Dao and respected that those in the world had their own path. However, this was at his front door and Xing Zheng had no intention of letting rabid dogs run rampant here.

A booming sound shook the earth as an arc of azure light scythed through the sky before landing in an endless barren plain. All around the stench of death and dust filled one's nose as the earth was scared with small shallow craters and tiny ravines as if large swords cleaved through the earth all around. The once vibrant grass that grew here had withered and only dried husks of it remained, blowing gently with the wind.

Standing in the center of that area, at the bottom of a shallow bowl-shaped crater that spanned 100 km in all directions, a gruff middle-aged-looking man stood imperiously. He wore a black robe and had short wavy hair of crimson streaked with white. The man was built stocky, with a large frame that seemed to loom over those around him and he stood over three meters tall.

His hands rested atop a large saber that came up to the top of his chest and the blade was plunged into the ground in front of him. As the arc landed at the edge of the crater this man looked up with crimson light glowing in his eyes. From the landing azure light, a middle-aged man with the frame of a scholar was revealed.

His azure robes billowed in the wind as a wide-brimmed bamboo hat was tipped over his face, hiding the man’s expression. As he landed that man raised his hand with a speed that made the dirt that had been kicked up in the landing seem frozen in the air in comparison. A ripple seemed to spread out from him as a glowing sword appeared in the bamboo-wearing man’s hand.

**I give you this one chance, demon. Surrender now and swear to do good while serving me for the rest of your days. It will be hard however, the deeds done in my service will scrub away the evil you’ve wrought in life. Choose carefully, for this is the last time I’ll ask.** Xing Zheng’s voice seemed to ripple in the mind of all living beings who had divine sense.

He had only used this way of speaking a few times however, it seemed appropriate when speaking with someone of similar strength. For his part, the man in the black robes seemed to be unbothered by his unfamiliar usage of the method and replied quickly.

**So quick, not even going to ask who I am? It doesn’t matter I suppose. After all, dead men have little need to know who killed them.** The man’s tone carried arrogance as well as amusement **As a courtesy, however, I’ll let your soul rest easy. Today, I Sha Mu, came to collect the blood debt of my brother's life.**

Immediately as the last ripple of divine sense appeared a set of crimson wings materialized on Sha Mu’s back as six sabers shot out of the ground in a large circle around Xing Zheng with a speed that seemed quick even to his eyes. Each of those weapons looked identical to the weapon in the blood cultivator’s hands and shone with a deep crimson light. In the same instant sizzling sounds could be heard on the ground as dozens of centipedes with black blood dripping from their fangs sprang up slightly behind the sabers.

At the same distance directly behind Xing Zheng, opposite the position of Sha Mu, another black-robed man rose out of the ground. He had a pale face that would make others think he was perpetually ill along with shoulder-length brown hair. Black smoke seemed to twist around him like a mist and his eyes looked like portals to an endless void that dripped black blood down his face.

To Xing Zheng’s right, a man with green robes seemed to emerge with a spear around three meters long. That spear glowed with silvery yellow light and several arcs of force containing that energy were already arcing through the air as he burrowed out of the ground. Finally to his left came a whistling sound from the wind as crescents of blood-red energy formed a semi-dome-like encloser rapidly approaching from that direction.

Each line in that dome was formed by a slash of one of the two daggers held in the hand of the young man diving from high in the sky at Xing Zheng. He too had a pair of blood-colored wings, though they seemed smaller and more streamlined for speed than Sha Mu’s. The daggers in his hands each shone with crimson and a secondary color as well. His right-hand weapon contained a deep orange inside the crimson while blue flashed within the depths of the blade in his left hand.

Lastly, his eyes shone with verdant green while his blonde hair flowed to the small of his back. Within the dome of slashes, each color was present, obviously representing that the technique was more than a simple hail of effect manipulation attacks. In all, Xing Zheng was rather impressed by the ambush, after all, he had only noticed three of them on the initial approach.

**Is that so? I see, then let it all fade away with the rain.** Xing Zheng sighed internally as his divine sense spread out the message and his left hand formed a seal.

From all directions, he was assaulted as black blood centipedes, crimson crescents, saber phantoms, and thrusting lances of force containing that weird silvery yellow light. As the weight of the heavens seemed to bear down on him, that single seal caused the earth all around Xing Zheng to explode. Rays of light seemed to shoot out of the ground as nine swords appeared around him in sets of three.

On the surface of those swords, myriad azure specks seemed to swim as if a rainstorm was happening inside of a world that existed within those blades. Before the weapons even arrived his hands had already formed over 1,000 more seals which formed runes in the air. These runes landed on the swords and caused the azure specks to drift outward and enlarge, revealing that they were fully formed sword phantoms.

In the time it took for the demonic cultivators' techniques to arrive within 10km of Xing Zheng over 90,000 sword arrays had been formed by these phantoms. Each of them mirrored the physical blades, forming the same ‘Basic Three-Sword array’. At this point the enemy techniques were within 1km of him however, he remained calm.

With a final command, each of the physical swords was surrounded by 10,000 sword arrays and they formed spherical shapes. These dense spheres spread out so that they each covered a 1km sphere that rotated in a pattern to form a dense network around Xing Zheng as he rose into the air with his movement technique. Right before his techniques clashed with the enemies he let out a final seal that caused the swords at the core of the spheres to start attacking with maddening speed.

Within these swords spun so fast and in so many directions that they appeared as mini silver spheres within the sphere of phantom arrays. Each of those slashes sent out a phantom attack that was empowered or directed by the sphere of arrays. Sometimes they became brighter as an attack grew in strength and sometimes dimmer as they were split apart into multiple small attacks.

All of this sounded slow but it happened before the dirt that had been kicked up by Xing Zheng’s landing had even fallen a dozen centimeters. Many things became apparent as the techniques clashed, one was that the crimson dome of slashes from the young man in the sky was far more than physical attacks. His techniques containing orange energy were weak but exploded on contact releasing an orange nova that crackled in the air as it seemed to work its way into any techniques of the others caught in that explosion.

As it did so orange cracks appeared on those workings making them break to any subsequent attacks. On the other hand, the slashes containing blue seemed to coat his mental energy in a cold layer, causing it to move slower. This took concentration and slight amounts of time to remove, which reduced Xing Zheng’s attack speed. Finally, those green-tinged slashes moved with speed that blurred even before his eyes.

The youth also wielded them with extreme skill, actively controlling the slashes to turn and avoid full-strength counterattacks while running into those already weakened by the orange light. Meanwhile, the centipedes with the black blood were shooting streams of it in short bursts as they charged forward. This black blood would burn through phantoms like any Qi attack but also then collect to form more of the creatures before charging forward again.

These lesser insects took fewer blows to kill; however, it still added to the ever-increasing amount of attacks Xing Zheng had to deal with. In addition, the black blood was very dangerous. During this initial clash, only a single drop managed to land on his leg; however, it sent the energy within his body berserk as if it had become a wild beast.

No amount of mental energy seemed to contain it and the drop of black blood had caused a shallow bloody wound on his leg from the Qi erupting in a small explosion. After centuries of strengthening his body was tough and the contained power of that explosion could level a small village. As such this was a testament to the danger the centipedes presented. Alongside this, the pale man who accompanied them was constantly forming seals that rushed into the centipedes or formed formations in the air that either disrupted his Qi flow or empowered individual insects.

The man with the spear seemed to be the weakest as although his attacks had respectable piercing power they weren’t overwhelming in number or strength and as such the rain of sword phantoms drowned them out. That silvery yellow light seemed to linger in the air and erode the mental energy of attacks that crossed those paths but it seemed to be fading quickly. Of all the attackers, Sha Mu proved the greatest threat.

Before Xing Zheng had even lifted into the sky the towering man had coughed up a mouthful of blood mist and pressed a brilliant crimson clan seal to his weapon. The normally mundane implement shone so brilliantly with a red light that the world seemed to lose color except for that seal and Sha Mu’s wings. In an instant, the world seemed to warp around him and his six floating sabers before the air twisted again only 10 meters or so away from Xing Zheng.

As if by teleporting the man arrived before his phantom strikes and raised his saber with grace completely opposed to his hulking physique. With barely masked shock Xing Zheng managed to dodge backward while weaving a defensive screen of sword phantoms. In the process his bamboo hat was cut in two, revealing his bewildered expression. It was understandable that he was so confused as teleportation was something usually only possible when one reached the nascent soul stage!

Of course, all martial artists who transcended their tribulation and entered the ranks of true cultivators in the spirit realms were extraordinary people however, even among them such abilities were incredibly rare. From seeing the slight paling on the other man’s face after he used the technique it was obvious that doing this was greatly costly for him. Inwardly, Xing Zheng grimaced, it seemed that today he had the misfortune of kicking an iron plate.

As the saber bloody saber approached him, however, only resolve remained in his eyes. After all, kicking iron was only painful for mortals, shouldn’t a vaunted immortal disdain such things? At that thought, a small smile crossed his lips as a large amount of his Qi rushed outward from Xing Zheng’s body.

Immediately every single sword phantom under his control started to hum with sword hymns that seemed to contain the laws of heaven and earth…

Xiang Min was having an absolutely terrible time of it. In just the last few moments a dozen razor-sharp phantoms had bisected him into pieces. The only reason he was still alive was the remnant of mental energy that existed within each of his blood seals that were fused with his daggers.

Each held hundreds of years of Blood Qi that had been extracted from his enemies and that very energy had been used to regenerate his body. Normally even attacks that could cleave small hills of earth-grade treasure stone in two would only leave a shallow cut on his skin however, these sword phantoms passed through him like paper! Already this was the third such time he’d had to use the technique and the reserve of energy within his weapons was drained by almost half.

If this kept up he would run out of mental energy in a few seconds, before the seals even ran out of Blood Qi. Shivers ran up his spine as the wings on his back constantly blurred, sending him weaving between thousands of attacks. Each one was so close he could feel the wind on the edges of the blades as if every one of these uncountable attacks were being controlled by the most skilled swordsman he had ever encountered.

Sweat ran down his entire body as he worked overtime to simply send out enough attacks to make a small dent in the deluge of monstrous attacks that the azure-robed swordsman was sending out. Sparing the tiniest moment to observe the center of the conflict caused an even more profound shudder to crawl down his spine. There, within the network of the chained spherical sword arrays and the downpour of sword phantoms, an azure arc blurred at blinding speeds.

Every moment that Xing Min could process it appeared like dozens of afterimages of the arc, or the man within it, were present. In all of those appearances, he could be seen clashing with each of the Senior Sha Mu’s attacks multiple times. Through all of this more sword phantoms that seemed to glow even brighter would zip away from the arc and afterimages as they appeared.

These attacks would be sent outward to fend off Xing Min or one of the others. Although he had only opened seven of his Qi Condensation meridians, it never occurred that someone at the peak of the realm would be this much stronger. It felt as if he and the other two were simply annoying the azure swordsman, occasionally inflicting minor damage.

Meanwhile, the two titans clashed in the middle of this storm, booming shockwaves pushed outward in a seemingly continuous chain of explosions. All around them huge chunks of earth remained suspended in the air as ravines and deep pits had been carved from the landscape. Everything for 10,000km had been eviscerated and only deep-buried natural treasures with insane strength were weathering the shockwaves of the battle.

This caused the entire area to turn from a plain into a land filled with ravines containing large slabs of treasure rock with cuts on them. Those natural treasures that received those cuts were slowly absorbing the blood and sword energy into the land, causing it to suffuse into the environment. For years anything that came here would feel like blades that sapped their life force was lacerating their entire body.

However, Xing Min had no time to consider all of this as a brilliant set of sword strikes knocked a dozen of his weaving green slashes out of the air before arriving before him. With gritted teeth he blocked it as he was pushed back 1,000km, blood seeping out of his mouth as cuts appeared across his body. The attack had been blocked; however, proximity to such potent sword energy had started to wound him.

Just as he was wondering what had caused that attack to be so powerful, his divine sense detected a massive surge of Qi from the storm at the center of the battlefield. As soon as his attention focused on that direction he saw every sword phantom glowing just as bright as the last attack.

Xing Zheng grunted as he took a kick to his side, cracking sounds ringing in his eyes as he felt a few ribs give way. In response, he had landed a scathing cut across the left shoulder of Sha Mu while sending out a few phantoms while retreating. Add this to the new strength his techniques now carried and what resulted was the man now suffering multiple deep cuts that seemed to rend his body in three parts.

This had been something he was saving to show to his master once complete, attainment level at the Dao Foundation realm. In truth, he hadn’t finished getting there as the true form would be understanding the natural laws of the world enough to empower the strikes by commanding those laws. What he had done was to emulate that by using a large portion of his own Qi, in essence, cheating to attain a pseudo-Dao Foundation strength.

All of this showed just how hard the fight had pushed him as Sha Mu had been able to keep him occupied, even being a small realm weaker. Combine this with the debilitating effects of the other demonic cultivators and his Qi reserves and mental energy were quickly depleting. Although to mortals this battle would seem like it lasted only five or so seconds, to those fighting the battle had felt like hours.

With a rough estimation, he felt like only a third of his Qi reserves remained while his mental energy was at half and that was only because of the excessive use of his Azure Water Sword. He hoped that pushing his phantom's strength temporarily would kill at least two of the demonic cultivators; however, it seemed that was only a hope. The pale-faced man spit out a mouthful of black blood and instantly a portal seemed to open to a dimension that contained a terrifying aura. Out of that place, a giant mandible reached out and tore off the man's arm which split with one-half entering the portal.

Meanwhile, the other half spread out and formed an opaque black bubble of blood around the man which blocked over ten thousand empowered sword phantoms before starting to fade. In the sky, the young-looking man let out a primal roar before ramming both of his daggers into his throat. Immediately afterward a giant red demonic face that was seemingly made of crimson blades appeared.

Each of the blades carried a different hue of light and they shot outward to form a screen of slashes that appeared crimson while seeming to contain every color of the world in its depths. This too blocked many attacks however, after 9,000 or so the face seemed to run out of energy, and the young man was turned into pieces. Although this seemed good his daggers appeared shortly after and shined briefly before burning into dust after restoring the young man completely.

At the very least he plummeted to the ground while seeming to be unconscious. This would give Xing Zheng a small amount of time with one less opponent to contend with. Sha Mu was the least affected, as would be expected, as he simply activated some technique to make the wings on his back glow brighter which seemed to make him faster and his saber stronger. However, this time each of his saber’s swings, as well as the ones of the sabers he controlled in the air around him, seemed to carry the slightly delayed afterimage of six other such blades.

It seemed that the bulky blood cultivator was using some form of effect manipulation array to overlay the strength of all seven sabers in each swing. All of this happened the instant Xing Zheng empowered his attacks and before it finished he was preparing his next move. Already tens of thousands of sword phantoms were streaking through the air at each of the opponents.

Just as he pushed energy into his meridian inscription formation a voice seemed to physically enter his ears.

“So disappointing, still playing lapdog for the patriarch are you?” Suddenly the sound of a voice that Xing Zheng had never thought to hear again seemed to impossibly enter his ears.

That was the voice of a man treasured by the people of the empire, heralded as the greatest hero of the age among the mortal citizens, his brother, Xing Hai!