His eyes lost their shine, the violet fading.

He felt his vital force escaping. Each beat of his heart became an ordeal, an additional stab in an already mortal wound. His body was emptying of its Qi, of its Khao, of everything that made him a cultivator, and there remained only a dying young man, pierced by a sword of light, with trembling hands and blurred vision.

As he slumped, ready to breathe his last in this glass prison, the world stopped.

Time literally froze.

The particles of dust floating in the air remained suspended, motionless like insects trapped in amber.

The drops of blood that had escaped from his mouth floated halfway, shining weakly in the twilight light. The leader of the Demigods himself was frozen in his gesture of victor, the sword still embedded in the victim’s chest, but his eyes no longer moved, his eyelashes no longer blinked, his breath no longer vibrated his lips. An abyssal silence covered the battlefield, a silence so deep that BaiShe could hear the beats of his own heart, slow, regular, and yet so fragile.

Suddenly, without any prior Qi fluctuation, a titanic structure appeared in the center of the crater.

It was a massive throne, a nightmarish architecture composed of millions of swords. They were intertwined, rusted by the blood of fallen gods in battle, and some still bore traces of mummified flesh on their chipped blades. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The swords groaned in unison, creating a symphony of metallic screeches that seemed to cut the air itself into shreds. This groan was so high-pitched that it made BaiShe’s ears bleed, adding two streams of blood to the silvery tears already flowing on his cheeks.

Seated sovereignly on this monument of violence was a silhouette that BaiShe knew all too well.

LingBao, the Sword Demon.

She was installed with royal casualness. Her left leg was folded on the blade armrest, while her right leg dangled in the void, swinging slowly as if nothing was happening. Her matte hand rested on the sword armrest, indifferent to the blades that should have cut her palm.

Her matte skin, with a deep tan, contrasted violently with her long hair of an unreal white that cascaded over her shoulders like a river of melting snow. She wore her midnight blue silk outfit, the one he had given her ten years earlier, embroidered with golden dragons that seemed to move on the fine fabric as if they were alive.

The black headband that masked her eyes in no way prevented her from dominating the scene, and a slight smile floated on her plump lips, a smile that had nothing reassuring about it. Her opulent chest rose and fell with a glacial regularity, and her wide hips were molded by the delicate fabric, each curve drawn with an almost obscene precision.

The leader of the Demigods, although frozen in time, managed to emit a sound. An exhalation loaded with a terror he had never felt in his long existence.

"What is this?"

LingBao did not deign to respond.

She simply released a tiny fraction of her sword intent.

In the next second, the space around the four Demigods was saturated with invisible steel threads.

With a speed that defied the very perception of an Overlord, with a precision that paid homage to millions of years of training, the four experts were instantly cut into millions of pieces.

It was an atomic decomposition, a separation of each cell into ever smaller particles, until there remained only atoms scattered in the air. One could hear the sound of millions of simultaneous sections, a dry and continuous sound, like a rain of cleavers falling on a mountain of meat.

The golden blood spurted in a fine mist, so fine that it resembled a luminous fog, then this mist was instantly purified by the cutting Qi of the Demon. In less than a heartbeat, there remained of the Great Ancestors only a sparkling divine dust, a fine layer of golden particles that covered the ground like a strange snow.

The azure light sword that pierced BaiShe evaporated with its owner, leaving a gaping wound in the young man’s chest.

BaiShe fell to his knees. His hands pressed against the ground, his fingers sinking into the still warm divine dust. He was panting, each breath a fight against the pain, each exhalation bringing blood back to his lips.

It was the first time he had seen such a use of sword Qi. This was no longer technique, nor even art. It was a fundamental law of reality, a direct manipulation of the concept of "cut", and this realization terrified him as much as it amazed him.

LingBao rose slowly from her throne.

She descended toward him, floating a few centimeters above the ground.

The fabric of her dress barely wrinkled, her white hair floated behind her like a train, and her black headband seemed to stare at the wounded with an intensity that her hidden eyes could not express. She stopped right in front of him, so close that the shadow of her silhouette completely covered the bloodied young man.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"I must say that I am quite surprised, Celestial Demon..."

She paused.

"I would never have believed that you would sacrifice yourself for someone else..."

BaiShe raised his eyes toward her. His vision was troubled by the hemorrhage, black spots danced before his eyes, and he blinked several times to try to regain a clear image.

"Master..."

Suddenly, the system interface flashed before his eyes.

[ Ding! LingBao’s impression of you has decreased ]

The alert resounded in his mind like a death knell. BaiShe remained petrified, despite the atrocious pain radiating from his chest.

’ Huh!? But it should be the opposite? No? ’ he thought with total incomprehension.

In his manipulator logic, his act of heroism should have strengthened the karmic link, increased his master’s devotion for this disciple ready to do anything to protect his allies. But for LingBao, this was not the case.