With a single sword strike, the heavens were cleaved! Ten thousand mountains were split in two! This was his true power!

"It's over..."

Su Li looked at the swarm of insects surging toward them like a black tsunami, covering the sky and the earth; only these two words remained in her heart.

Despair.

Utter, absolute despair.

She wasn't afraid of death.

But she could not accept dying so pointlessly before such an endless wave of monsters.

She gripped her longsword tightly, the meager True Qi remaining in her body burning frantically.

Even if she were to die, she would take a few of them down with her!

However, at the very moment that foul-smelling gale was about to hit her face...

An impatient voice rang out from behind her: "So noisy."

It was Lin Yuan.

Su Li whipped her head around.

She saw that Lin Yuan was finally no longer just a spectator.

He slowly raised his right hand.

With his fingers pressed together, he pointed vaguely toward the sky.

"Buzz—"

A strange sword hum echoed between heaven and earth.

That sound didn't seem like metal friction; it was more like a resonance coming from the very Origin of the Great Dao!

Su Li looked up in horror.

On that canopy of heaven, stained pitch-black by void energy, a speck of golden light had ignited at some unknown point.

Immediately following that...

That speck of golden light extended and exploded outward with unimaginable speed!

One meter.

Ten meters.

One hundred meters!

One thousand meters!

Ten thousand meters!

Finally, an indescribable... giant golden sword, spanning the entire firmament as if it could cleave even the stars, condensed out of thin air!

Divine runes flowed upon that giant sword, its Daoist charm naturally formed.

It hovered there silently, its tip pointing distantly at the endless swarm of insects below.

The light it emitted wasn't blinding, yet it completely dispelled the darkness of the entire world!

The pressure it released even overshadowed the Void Rift, causing the entire Hundred Thousand Great Mountains to tremble violently and wail!

It was as if they were offering their submission to their one and only Dominator!

"This... this..."

Su Li's mouth hung open unconsciously, but she couldn't make a sound.

Her mind was a complete blank.

Her sword cultivation, which she took such pride in, was as insignificant as a grain of dust before this divine sword that spanned heaven and earth!

The longsword in her hand let out an overburdened cry, as if it would shatter at any moment!

In this moment, she finally understood.

At the very instant Su Li completely lost herself in shock...

Lin Yuan's indifferent voice rang out once more.

"Since you've come..."

"Don't even think about leaving."

As the words fell...

He lightly waved his hand, which had been pointing at the sky, toward the dense black swarm of insects below.

It was as if he were simply shooing away a swarm of annoying flies.

High above in the sky...

That ten-thousand-meter-long Golden Divine Sword moved.

It didn't make a sound.

Nor did it stir up any earth-shattering airwaves.

It simply fell quietly at a speed that seemed slow but was actually at the absolute limit, as if it could sever both time and space.

A single strike.

Descending.

The world was split into two halves.

That endless black insect swarm, enough to drive any army to despair, didn't even have time to let out a single wail before being instantly vaporized the moment they touched the golden sword light!

From the very edge of the basin to its very center!

From the ground to the sky!

Every Void Plunderer enveloped by the sword light lost all color at the same time!

That Void Rift, which had torn open the world's barrier and was constantly spewing chaotic energy, was also split in two by this sword light!

The sword light continued downward.

The hard black rocky ground was sliced open as easily as tofu.

Mountain ranges were torn apart.

The earth was pierced through.

"BOOM—!!!!"

It wasn't until several seconds later...

That the long-delayed, eardrum-shattering, terrifying roar finally arrived!

The entire Southern Border—no, half of Longxia's territory—felt this violent tremor!

Su Li was wrapped in a gentle force, floating in mid-air.

She stared blankly at the scene before her, which looked like both a miracle and the apocalypse.

Before her eyes...

The entire D-13 Basin had completely vanished.

In its place was a... massive canyon of immeasurable length and bottomless depth!

The walls of the canyon were as smooth as a mirror, and even retained a faint golden glow, emitting a sacred and inviolable aura!

This canyon extended from beneath her feet all the way to the horizon, forcibly splitting the continuous Hundred Thousand Great Mountains... into two halves!

One sword.

To open the heavens!

One sword.

To split the earth!

One sword to slay billions of insects!

Su Li felt her very Soul trembling.

"Cough, cough..."

A bout of violent coughing pulled Su Li back from her daze.

It was Gu Ningxue.

She, Ayla, and Chen Ruoxi had actually been jolted awake from their unconsciousness by that world-destroying strike.

They stood up unsteadily, and when they saw the scene before them...

The three of them instantly petrified.

Their expressions were exactly the same as Su Li's had been.

"I... I'm not dreaming, am I?"

Gu Ningxue pinched herself hard; the sharp pain told her that all of this was real.

Her gaze fell blankly on the man standing with his hands behind his back, not a single thread of his clothes out of place.

The culprit.

Lin Yuan.

He slowly withdrew his hand and brushed off non-existent dust from his sleeve.

Then, he looked around at the world he had reshaped with a single sword strike, a satisfied expression appearing on his face.

"Hmm."

"Quiet at last."

His casual tone made it seem as if he had truly only done something trivial.

"..."

Gu Ningxue opened her mouth, but couldn't say a single word.

Quiet?

You call this quiet?!

You've beaten the entire world into silence!

Right then...

Another anomaly occurred!

"Buzz— Buzz— Buzz—"

That Void Rift, which Lin Yuan had split open with his sword, didn't close despite the heavy damage.

Instead, after being severed, it began to twist and expand violently in an even more frantic and unstable manner!

It was as if Lin Yuan's strike hadn't just split the mountains, but had completely shattered that door!

An aura that was a thousand, ten thousand times more terrifying than the previous billion-strong insect swarm—cold, deathly, and filled with endless malice...

...began to slowly seep out from behind that completely out-of-control rift!

It was as if an ancient evil god sleeping in the endless Void Realm had been startled awake by that earth-shattering sword strike.

And then, it slowly opened its eyes.

A cold, emotionless gaze crossed through endless time and space, landing precisely on Lin Yuan.

Lin Yuan's brow finally furrowed.

He looked up at the frantically expanding Void Rift, and the eternal indifference on his face quietly faded.

In its place was a touch of solemnity.

"Troublesome."

He whispered a single sentence.

"This time, it seems... I played a bit too hard."

Gu Ningxue's brain buzzed, almost coming to a halt.

She looked at Lin Yuan's face, which was showing a 'solemn' expression for the first time, then at the bottomless, terrifying canyon that had been split open, and finally at the frantically twisting Void Rift in the sky.

Her lips trembled, and for a long time, she couldn't squeeze out a single word.

You call this... a bit too hard?!

You call this 'a bit too hard'?!

Your sword strike almost punched right through the planet's tectonic plates!

If this is 'a bit too hard', then what counts as 'getting serious'?

Crushing the sun?!

*Gulp.*

Su Li swallowed hard; she felt as if her throat had been stuffed with a handful of sand.

She could clearly feel just how terrifying that aura seeping out from behind the out-of-control rift was.

It was a collective manifestation of pure malice!