Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 856.24: One Sword Slays an Immortal

It took quite some time before Chen Huaian, still lost in a daze, departed the cliff and headed back to the white jade steps.

A wound marred his right hand, blood droplets still fresh and uncoagulated.

In his possession now rested a softly radiant jade slip alongside an axe appearing completely mundane.

Inside the jade slip lay a sword art, one comprising just a lone form.

The axe bore the name [Sky-Cleaving], its edge corroded by rust, too feeble to chop even basic timber.

Though the sword art possessed merely one strike, it earned the title Immortal-Slaying Sword-Drawing Art, forged for mortals to fell immortals.

Mortals resemble ants, immortals and gods loom like the vast skies.

This single strike aimed to instruct earthbound ants in toppling the immortals above.

Though the axe couldn't fell wood, it could tear open the barrier dividing the Upper Realm from the Lower Realm, letting mortals stand toe-to-toe with immortals and gods.

It spared flesh from its edge, cleaving solely at prisons.

Whoever grasped it rendered the ancient, uncrossable divide between mortals and immortals as flimsy as rice paper, shredded in a heartbeat.

"BOOM—!!!"

His mind barely settled when the turbulent sea of clouds trailing him abruptly crumbled.

Immense and overpowering Heaven's Might surged to envelop the whole realm.

The formerly raging and disorderly thunder sea resembled hardened amber now, completely still and lifeless.

Chen Huaian cast his eyes downward along the white jade steps.

The nine haughty and tyrannical Earth Vein Yellow Dragons lay reduced to fragmented jade strewn over the ground.

Just the head of the biggest one endured brutal stomping into the dirt by a foot, letting out a final, agonized cry.

That foot belonged to Bi Yue Wu.

More precisely, the authentic Bi Yue Wu.

No longer the sightless, one-armed, desperate and ragged True Spirit.

Before Chen Huaian towered a three-zhang-high Immortal General, his form ablaze with Immortal Dao's sacred radiance.

He had fully arrived.

Even at the expense of incinerating ten thousand years of cultivation base, despite his Divine Soul's erosion by the Lower Realm's Spiritual Energy, he had ripped through the realm barrier and manifested his True Form.

All for unleashing his fury.

All for slaying a single foe.

"Mortals."

Bi Yue Wu's voice shed its rasp, booming like a colossal bell that quaked the floating peak.

His newly formed golden eyes lacked prior malice, showing only detached apathy and supreme arrogance from one who pierced all illusions.

"This Venerable One must admit, you have some tricks. To actually manipulate Earth Vein Dragon Qi and force This Venerable One's True Form to descend, in the ten thousand years of this Lower Realm, you are the first."

Bi Yue Wu gradually lifted his arm, the one once dissolved by earth fire now flawless, fingertips swirling with pristine immortal force capable of obliterating an entire domain.

"Hand over what you obtained from up there, and also those seven torn scriptures from before."

"This Venerable One can leave your corpse intact, even permit you entry into the cycle of reincarnation."

Mountainous pressure descended, vast and inescapable.

Facing this true immortal aura, Chen Huaian dwindled to a mere mote adrift in gales.

Yet he grinned.

Grinned with airy ease like drifting clouds, grinned with wild abandon.

He casually flung the apparently delicate jade slip, then eyed the rust-eaten axe.

"Want them?"

Chen Huaian snapped his wrist, Black Scales Sword unsheathing half an inch with a crisp, resonant dragon chant.

"Come and get them yourself."

"Seeking death!" Bi Yue Wu's stare turned glacial.

When immortals rage, skies and lands shift hue.

Without elaborate spells, he plainly smashed down his palm.

This palm locked space, broke cause and effect.

In Bi Yue Wu's view, this strike would pulverize the ant ahead alongside these myriad steps.

Yet.

As the massive, heaven-spanning palm neared.

"Crack."

A sharp snap echoed.

Not bones fracturing.

Rather, Chen Huaian pinching the jade slip between two fingers, shattering it utterly.

Hum—

Time halted.

Roiling thunderclouds hung frozen, the plunging giant palm dangled motionless above, even the vicious smirk forming on Bi Yue Wu's face locked in place.

The world drained of hues, reduced to monochrome.

Amid this total hush, a colossal pull seized Chen Huaian's Divine Soul, dragging it into a void fragment.

…

Chaos devoid of sky or ground.

Chen Huaian lingered there, endless void encircling him.

In the void, a lantern ignited.

Under it stood a sightless elder, caressing a fractured zither.

"What is Immortal-Slaying?" the old man asked.

"Killing those who deserve to be killed," Chen Huaian answered.

The old man smiled, zither strings burst, morphing into sonic waves that fused into Chen Huaian's Sword Intent: "Disorder their heart, then immortals can be slain."

The lantern winked out, another flared.

Now a prostrate monkey, six ears wrecked, clutching an iron rod aimed skyward.

"What is Sword-Drawing?" the monkey asked.

"To cry out against injustice," Chen Huaian answered.

The monkey grinned too, iron rod shifting to a hair strand that blended into Chen Huaian's forehead: "Only by leaping out of causality can one draw the sword."

The lantern winked out, another flared.

A warrior in tattered armor, gripping a splintered spear, eyes weeping blood, glaring into emptiness with rage.

"If gods cannot be seen, how does one wield the spear?" the general asked.

"Close your eyes, slash with your heart," Chen Huaian answered.

The general bellowed a laugh, his broken spear disintegrated into golden gleam piercing Chen Huaian's eyes: "All that the eyes see is illusion, where the heart points is the edge!"

Lanterns kindled successively.

Husband and wife leaping into flames, scholar gnawing his brush to ruin, emperor forsaking his subjects…

At last, a snow-white figure viewed from behind.

That one never turned, bequeathing a sword mark echoing through eras.

"This sword move is named—Immortal-Slaying."

"Watch closely."

That figure unsheathed.

No cataclysmic display, merely peerless velocity, peerless plainness.

Swift beyond time's pursuit, plain beyond Great Dao's dodge.

"Can mortals also slay immortals?" Chen Huaian asked smilingly.

"What about gods? What about immortals?" that figure resheathed, "If there are no gods in the heart, then there are no gods beneath the sword."

Boom!

Myriad forms, myriad resolves, fused in this instant into a raging torrent, flooding Chen Huaian's Sea of Consciousness.

That wasn't a technique.

That was the unyielding spine—of forebears defying the Celestial God Clan, enduring endless rebirths yet scorning to bow to heavens or plead to divinities!

…

Back in reality.

A mere heartbeat elapsed.

Bi Yue Wu's colossal palm hovered three inches from his crown, dread wind already fissuring the white jade steps underfoot.

"Die!"

Bi Yue Wu's eyes brimmed with savage glee.

But precisely then.

He glimpsed Chen Huaian's gaze.

No longer mortal eyes.

In those profound, chasm-deep orbs, Bi Yue Wu beheld the death-defying general, blind zither virtuoso, blood-teared monkey, furnace-leaping couple, sky-burning emperor…

Legions of gazes, spanning rebirths, fording time's river, aligned with Chen Huaian now.

All fixed on him with icy contempt.

Chen Huaian stirred.

No flight; he advanced half a pace.

Left thumb nudged the guard, right hand eased on the hilt.

Slow like a rustic tilling soil, swift like comet pursuing luna.

—Immortal-Slaying·Sword-Drawing Art.

Clang!

A gleam erupted 'twixt heaven and earth.

This gleam shunned harshness, almost tender.

Neither thunderous fury nor solar blaze.

Resembling dawn's inaugural zephyr, softly grazing Bi Yue Wu's palm, his shielding immortal glow, his unbreakable golden frame.

The zephyr wafted by.

Sword resheathed.

Chen Huaian stood firm, robes billowing, locks streaming.

And in his wake.

Bi Yue Wu hung suspended, palm poised.

Those haughty golden eyes now mirrored childish bewilderment and bafflement.

"This… what kind of sword is this?"

Bi Yue Wu forced his throat to stir, whisper faint as self-musing.

"The sword of a mortal."

Chen Huaian didn't turn, merely brushed dust from sleeves.

Pfft—!

A thread-thin crimson line bloomed from Bi Yue Wu's brow, trailing down nose bridge, past larynx, past invincible golden mail, to his groin.

Then.

That three-zhang lofty, overbearing True Immortal golden form parted like tofu under idle knife.

It cleaved cleanly into twin sections.

Splash.

Golden immortal blood cascaded as downpour, drenching the ten thousand white jade steps.

One sword.

Slay the Immortal.

…