Chapter 490 - 432: 50.0

The sheer intangible sharpness radiating from its very existence sliced through the void on both sides of its trajectory. Like fragile glass, the space silently and cleanly split open, leaving two pitch-black fissures stretching for thousands of miles that refused to close!

At the edges of the fissures, earth, wind, water, and fire faintly boiled.

In the next instant, this Sword Aura materialized out of thin air right between the brows of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace’s mountainous dragon head!

It had locked directly onto his Inverted Scale!

"What?!"

The massive dragon eyes of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace abruptly shrank to the size of pinpricks. A boundless, deathly chill, akin to hundreds of millions of years old Profound Ice, instantly froze his bloodline, marrow, and even his Divine Soul!

He had never experienced such a pure, extreme, and irresistible Sword Intent!

This Sword Aura appeared simple, yet it seemed to exhaust every conceivable possibility of a lethal strike. No matter how he dodged or defended, he seemed destined to be struck by this single "sword"!

"ROAR!!!"

At the brink of life and death, the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace erupted with all his strength, even surpassing his own limits! He could no longer afford to hold back. His ten-thousand-foot dragon body coiled frantically. Every single charred, dark-gold dragon scale stood on end, bursting with blinding lightning!

His majestic Dragon Essence burned without reservation, transforming into tens of thousands of overlapping layers—lightning shields, Water Essence barriers, and tangible armor condensed from his innate Dragon Qi. They enveloped his entire body in an instant. The defenses around the Inverted Scale between his brows were especially thick, forming a dazzlingly brilliant sphere of lightning!

At the same time, he fiercely opened his bloody jaws and spat out a fist-sized dragon pearl. Destructive purple lightning wreathed its surface, and a tempestuous sea of lightning seemed to roil within!

This was his lifebound dragon pearl, nurtured for ten thousand years. It was the core of his Great Dao, possessing enough power to instantly evaporate an entire ocean! Now, the dragon pearl streaked forth like a purple meteor, arriving first despite being launched later. It blocked the path of that Chaos Color Sword Aura. The destructive lightning inside the pearl erupted madly, intending to prematurely detonate and neutralize this terrifying strike!

"Block it for me!!!"

The roar of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace mingled with the booming eruption of the dragon pearl and the thunderous crash of thousands of overlapping barriers. The deafening cacophony sent the already Broken West Sea below surging with ten-thousand-foot-tall torrential waves!

In the next moment, the Chaos Color Sword Aura lightly bumped into the dragon pearl infused with destructive lightning.

There was no earth-shattering explosion. There was no deadlocked clash. There was only a faint, barely audible CRACK, like fragile glass shattering.

That dragon pearl—capable of making an ordinary Great Master give it a wide berth, packed with the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace’s lifeblood essence and Thunder Dao Law—was as fragile as a bubble before that Chaos Color Sword Aura.

The Sword Aura did not pause for even a fraction of a millisecond. It calmly and seamlessly sliced right through.

The dragon pearl was cleaved in two. The rampaging destructive lightning within extinguished and dissipated soundlessly, like dynamite with its fuse snuffed out.

The Sword Aura pressed forward, slashing into the thousands of overlapping defensive layers that condensed the lifelong Cultivation of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace.

SIZZLE!

Like a red-hot blade slicing through solid butter, the Chaos Color Sword Aura encountered no resistance. Wherever it passed, all defenses—whether their nature was lightning, water, or qi, regardless of how intricate or dense their structure—were treated as if they did not exist. They were smoothly cut apart, annihilated, and reduced to nothingness.

It ignored all defenses!

The unstoppable Chaos Color reflected in the pupils of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace as it drew closer and closer. Boundless terror and despair swallowed him whole. He could feel that his proud dragon body, the result of tens of thousands of years of bitter Cultivation, was no sturdier than a sheet of paper before this Sword Aura.

"No!!!" A despairing dragon’s cry resounded across the sky.

However, in the final split second, just as the Sword Aura was about to strike his hardest yet most vulnerable Inverted Scale and obliterate his Divine Soul along with it, the Sword Aura soundlessly dispersed.

It left the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace frozen in place. His dragon eyes were wide open, brimming with infinite dread and the bewilderment of surviving a calamity. A freezing, stinging pain lingered right at the Inverted Scale between his brows—a wound so minuscule it was virtually invisible, yet it made his very Divine Soul tremble.

The overlapping defenses surrounding him maintained perfectly smooth cross-sections as if sliced by an invisible thread wielded by a master craftsman. Then, they slowly crumbled, dissolving into primal motes of energy.

Had he blocked it? No... It was Qi Yun! He had dispersed the sword strike at the very last moment.

Cold sweat—no, icy dragon secretions—seeped uncontrollably from the colossal body of the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace. In the next second, his chaotic internal aura evaporated the moisture into white mist. His massive dragon body trembled uncontrollably. A chill that pierced into his marrow and seeped through his soul made him want to collapse.

The entire battlefield fell dead silent.

All the Great Masters, friend and foe alike, stared at the scene in absolute shock. They watched the once-imperious Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace, the master of lightning, forced to burn his dragon pearl and exhaust his trump cards against that effortless point of a finger—yet remain as powerless as a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

Ultimately, his life and death rested entirely upon a single whim of his opponent.

What kind of sword was that? It wasn’t some complex Sword Formula or Divine Technique at all. Was it just a single strand of Sword Qi? The most basic, primitive form of Sword Qi? But why would it be so unspeakably terrifying?!

Qi Yun slowly retracted his finger as if he had merely done something trivial. His calm gaze swept across the deathly silent battlefield, taking in the faces plastered with horror, dread, and sheer disbelief.

Then, before anyone could recover from the extreme terror of that sword strike, Qi Yun gently raised his hand once more toward the Celestial Vault, aiming at the area where the dozen or so Profound Yellow Great Masters hovered.

This time, he didn’t just point a single finger. Instead, he pressed two fingers together to form a sword hand and casually slashed downward at that patch of the void.

Between Heaven and Earth, everything abruptly lit up. It was blindingly bright. Bright enough to make one’s Divine Soul tremble.

The Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace and all the other Great Masters sensed something at nearly the same time, snapping their heads upward.

Above them, the Celestial Vault—originally dyed with bizarre colors by the shockwaves of various Divine Techniques—had silently been replaced by an endless, dense canopy of light motes glinting with a kaleidoscope of icy hues.

No, they weren’t light motes. They were Sword Auras. Tens of thousands—no, hundreds of thousands, millions, an incalculable number of Sword Auras!

Some were crimson like fire, others bone-chillingly ice-blue; some were heavy as mountains, ethereal as the wind, swift as lightning, or sluggish as mud. There were those solid as gold, misty as fog, harboring a will to sever anything, or carrying the Dao Rhyme of destruction. Some wove together into miniature sword formations, some spiraled like drills, and others split into thousands of variations...

Countless Sword Auras—each with completely different forms, attributes, characteristics, and underlying intents—all radiated the same soul-freezing, terrifyingly lethal aura. Like a meteor shower calculated with flawless precision, they hovered ominously in the void right above everyone’s heads.

Every single Sword Aura possessed the same origin and the same despair-inducing extreme sharpness as the Chaos Color Sword Aura that had just utterly defeated the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace.

They sealed off all directions, locking onto the qi signatures of every Great Master present.

The icy killing intent swept down like a tangible cold wave. It froze the boiling ocean waves, solidified the chaotic energy, and even seemed to make time itself thick and sluggish.

Earlier, a single Sword Aura had forced the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace to expend all his trump cards and hang by a thread. Now, millions—perhaps tens of millions—of identical, or even more specialized Sword Auras hung like the Sword of Damocles over them all, pointed directly at everyone.

Qi Yun stood in the void. Behind him, the phantoms of ten thousand swords in the Daluo Heaven resonated with him. Before him hung billions of floating slaughtering swords.

His calm gaze swept over the deathly pale Profound Yellow Great Masters, who looked as if they had plunged into an icy abyss. He slowly spoke. His voice wasn’t loud, but it crashed clearly into the dead-silent Heart Lake of every person present:

"Fellow Daoists, would you now be willing to listen to Qi’s advice..."

Before Qi Yun could finish, the old man from the Tyrant Sect narrowed his eyes and stepped forward.

"Grand Master Qi, are you truly set on making an enemy out of the entire Profound Yellow Cultivation Realm?

"A heaven-sent opportunity is right before our eyes! Why must you bitterly stand in our way?"

Looking at the old man from the Tyrant Sect who had spoken, and then at the rest of the Great Masters whose eyes echoed the same sentiment, Qi Yun suddenly smiled.

"I understand. It seems no matter how Qi tries to persuade you, none of you will give up.

"Since that is the case..."

Sensing the chilling resolve in Qi Yun’s tone, the Great Masters immediately went on high alert. They had all clearly witnessed how Qi Yun’s single strike nearly cleaved the Crown Prince of the South Sea Dragon Palace in two just moments ago.

His gaze swept past the Great Masters before he slightly raised his eyes, looking toward that majestic Celestial Palace suspended between Heaven and Earth.

"Then Qi will simply destroy this Celestial Court!"