Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal? Chapter 862: Passing on the Torch

...

—Zhongli.

The sightless general from the floating peak of the Lower Realm, who had guided Chen Huaian and warned him, "Gods are not to be looked upon."

"That is..."

Mo Li Qing's savage smirk suddenly stiffened, with shock and dread flashing across his eyes.

"That lunatic?! The Heaven-defying Zhongli from the Ninth Cycle of Reincarnation?!"

"Wasn't his soul scattered on the Immortal-Slaying Platform?! How is he showing up now?!"

The shadowy figure gradually turned its head.

That indistinct face lacked any features, showing just hollow eye sockets.

Yet when it gazed at Chen Huaian, it seemed to behold a hope that had endured through endless cycles of reincarnation.

"Is this... the path you have chosen?"

A thought echoed directly into Chen Huaian's mind.

"Good."

"Then... walk it."

*Crack.*

The shattered spear crumbled apart.

Beneath the crushing weight of the execution blade, Zhongli's heroic soul burst into a vast expanse of golden light particles, fusing straight into Chen Huaian's body.

The initial blade strike got repelled.

"Bastard! Bastard!!"

Mo Li Hong raged in panic. "What's happening with this Immortal-Slaying Platform?! Remnant souls are still stirring chaos?!"

"Strike again! Hit him for me!!"

*Rumble—*

The execution blade rose anew.

This round, the bloody mist coiling around it grew denser, its suppressive force even stronger.

"Die! He has to die!!"

The Four Heavenly Kings channeled their secret techniques together, determined to wipe out this anomaly completely.

Down came the blade.

As if the sky itself was crashing down.

*Clang—!!!*

Yet another thunderous clash rang out.

Another silhouette emerged.

This one was a monkey.

A monkey with faded golden fur, bleeding six ears, still thrusting his iron rod toward the heavens while cursing sky and earth.

—Six-Ears.

With that long-ruined iron rod, he wedged into the descending execution blade's throat.

"This old Sun lost once."

"But this old Sun's Dao... has not lost!"

The monkey roared with laughter, his form breaking down into a wild, unyielding battle intent that surged between Chen Huaian's brows.

The second blade strike was halted.

"Mad... they're all mad..."

The pipa slipped from Mo Li Hai's grasp, clanging to the ground.

What did he witness?

Countless aggrieved spirits from past executions on the Immortal-Slaying Platform, buried in layers of dried blood, were stirring to life.

They weren't making trouble.

They were... safeguarding the Dao.

"Again! I refuse to believe we can't slay him!!"

Mo Li Qing's eyes burned red, lost to insanity.

For the third time, the execution blade descended.

This strike.

A scholar gnawed his brush, shattered characters, turning his body into ink.

An emperor turned from his people, wielding his bones as armor.

A devoted couple leaped into the furnace, forging a blade from their souls.

...

Every descent.

A valiant soul would rise from history's endless flow.

Their names varied, their backgrounds differed, and in their own reincarnation cycles, they had all faltered.

Yet right now.

They bore one shared title—Heaven-Slaying Ones.

*Clang! Clang! Clang!*

Collisions echoed without end.

That Ghost-Headed Execution Blade, embodying Heavenly Dao's will and said to cleave all things, surprisingly started to notch and blunt amid these relentless blows.

Notches scarred its edge, like teeth broken by unyielding bones.

Those crimson chains locking Chen Huaian also shook fiercely from the barrage, creaking as if overburdened.

Muscle Tyrant lay stunned nearby.

It watched the figures flicker into being and fade away, saw Chen Huaian at the core, enveloped in swirling light motes.

Suddenly it realized.

This Immortal-Slaying Platform was no longer just a killing field.

It had become... a monument.

"The last time..."

Mo Li Qing collapsed to the ground, his complexion deathly pale.

The Immortal-Slaying Platform's energy was drained to the brink; the execution blade hung in tatters.

"If even this blade fails to kill him..."

"Then we're the ones who perish."

*Boom—*

One final lift of the execution blade.

Draining every last drop of the Immortal-Slaying Platform's power, it morphed into a silent shroud of inky death, plummeting down.

This was the ultimate, inescapable strike.

No dodging it.

No more heroic souls emerged.

As if every flame had extinguished moments ago.

Chen Huaian stared into the descending void.

He kept his eyes open.

For he spotted a figure.

An elder appeared... identical to him in every feature, yet withered by endless ages.

The elder donned a threadbare, pallid blue robe, a cracked gourd slung at his waist, his tresses a chaotic mop of white brambles.

Beneath the plummeting blade, he positioned himself.

No weapon did he wield, nor any Divine Ability invoke.

Simply, he stretched out a shriveled palm and softly, like snatching a drifting leaf, clamped the plunging execution blade betwixt his fingers.

*Creeeak—*

That inexorable doom... halted abruptly.

Halted right at the elder's bony fingertips.

His head dipped, gaze falling upon the youthful Chen Huaian.

Within those cloudy, aged eyes gleamed solace, liberation, and a hint of... roguish glee transcending eras.

"You've journeyed farther than I managed in my lifetime."

A grin spread across the elder's face.

That grin mirrored perfectly Chen Huaian's signature bold, untamed smirk.

"This last obstacle, this old fellow shall overcome for you."

"Proceed."

"Go forth and shatter this heaven... into oblivion."

With a flick, the elder snapped his wrist.

And wrenched with force.

*Snap—!!!*

A sharp crack echoed, stirring the gales at the South Heaven Gate.

The Ghost-Headed Execution Blade, drenched in divine and immortal blood, crumbled into countless iron scraps beneath the old man's spectral finger grip, scattering like dark snowfall across the sky.

*Crack.*

Chen Huaian's binding chains fractured segment by segment.

Slowly, he rose to his feet.

With his backbone aligning straight, the clashing floods inside him—the brilliant immortal gold and the savage demonic black—crashed together fiercely.

Mutual destruction and merging.

Without a whisper or roar.

The golden radiance faded, the Black Qi calmed.

A hazy, ashen hue, reminiscent of primordial chaos prior to the split of sky and earth, started permeating Chen Huaian's flesh, skeleton, and veins.

*Whoosh—*

A rancid gust swept through.

His raven-black locks whipped ferociously in the breeze.

In one breath, half shifted to autumnal white.

In two breaths, fully encased in frost.

A cascade of silvery mane poured forth like the Milky Way inverted, draping over the somber Immortal-Slaying Platform.

The savage demonic markings vanished; the holy dragon scales withdrew as well.

There he stood, resembling neither mortal nor deity.

Nor akin to a celestial being.

Muscle Tyrant sprawled amid the wreckage, forcing its lids apart to behold Chen Huaian, yet stinging agony pierced its vision, as though gazing upon a supreme, fresh-honed edge gleaming with icy sharpness.

The man embodied the sword.

The sword embodied the man.

Chen Huaian lifted his right arm and seized the void nonchalantly.

*Hum.*

The airborne execution blade scraps, the severed crimson chains, and even the petrified laws and resentments amassed on this Immortal-Slaying Platform across millennia.

All rushed to his grasp like myriad streams converging to the ocean.

Coalesce.

In his grip, a blade formed.

Lacking hilt guard or engravings, its form a solid drab gray. Forged from the Heavenly Tribulation's divine sword, echoes of it lingered in one-third measure.

Yet presently, it resembled a raw, unrefined ore slab.

Still, within Chen Huaian's hold, it became the deadliest armament under the heavens.

Chen Huaian bowed his head, fingers grazing the blade lightly.

His skin split, divine essence dripping into the steel.

A smile curved his lips.

Faint to the extreme, it bore a purified lucidity, stripped of all pretense.

"The sword... is honed."

He whispered.

Next, his gaze lifted.

Fixed upon the four Heavenly Kings, pallid as corpses, barely clutching their artifacts.

Those eyes held absolute detachment.

Devoid of murderous urge or fury.

Solely the serenity for handling lifeless objects.

"This Immortal-Slaying Platform... This Venerable One finds it most pleasing."

Gripping the sword, he advanced over the debris, stride by measured stride.

His silvery mane billowed madly in his wake, ripping at the nearby emptiness.

"In return..."

Chen Huaian's wrist flicked subtly.

*Zing—*

His utterance dissolved in the blade's resonant keen.

The cloud ocean beyond the South Heaven Gate cleaved asunder in an instant.

...