Chapter 1311: Sword Cultivator

In almost the blink of an eye, the Mire True Lord and the emerald toad had vanished, their senses as sharp as a cicada that knows autumn wind before it stirs, terrifyingly keen, terrifyingly swift.

"Worthy of a powerhouse who fought his way up from the very bottom…"

Jiang Ding stood up, gazing quietly into the distance as he spoke.

A figure like this—talent, comprehension, combat brilliance all excellent—had no great flaws, save for an excessive fondness for walking the tightrope, dancing on the blade's edge, too great a gambler's streak, and over-reliance on luck.

Jiang Ding understood clearly in his heart that the gap between himself and such a person did not lie in how good his own talent and comprehension were; an important reason was simply that he was born into a sect, received the finest immortal Dao education, and had a sect backing him.

This was the shaping effect of environment on a person.

Jiang Ding drifted into a slight reverie.

He did not seem at all worried that the Mire True Lord and that emerald toad would escape.

In fact, after only a few breaths, following a shrill whistling sound that tore through space at the edge of the sky, a powerful grey-green mingled escape-light flew straight toward Jiang Ding.

He flew right up to Jiang Ding's face on his own.

The Mire True Lord, draped in emerald fish fins, saw the utterly unremarkable young man appear before him once more, his face taking on a ghost-seeing expression, terror-stricken: "How could you appear in front of me?!"

"Did you set up a teleportation array in advance?"

"How could you know which way I was fleeing? Could it be some heaven's-secret divination art?"

Clang~

The young man before him did not answer, unhurriedly drawing the longsword at his waist.

"Your heart is in chaos, Mire!"

"Ice Heart! Steady your spirit!"

The emerald toad barked in a low voice; in battle, the roles between him and the Mire True Lord had actually reversed—one calm, one irascible: "Look clearly, we've returned to where we started!"

"We've encountered this kind of ghost-beating-wall spell before. We've walked through wind and rain for tens of thousands of years, between life and death—what is there to fear?"

And at this moment, under the two's tense gaze, that blue-gold longsword had been fully unsheathed.

"A Void Refinement early-stage cultivator,"

"A Void Refinement early-stage barbaric exotic-species demon beast… not bad."

Jiang Ding brought his sword down in a slash.

Boom!

In a world of infinitely resplendent light, a sun rose slowly, casting endless radiance toward heaven and earth; every beam of light contained the auras of destruction, aberration, law-forbidden, law-annihilation, primordial magnetism, and the Sword Dao.

These rays of light were like billions of golden sharp swords piercing the firmament, stabbing the Mire True Lord's ten-thousand-li mire spatial domain full of holes, broken and battered beyond recognition, his control over the surrounding world's spiritual energy and space plummeting drastically.

Within that terrifying radiance, a sun hung in the sky

Appearing, bearing the dreadful might of annihilating all things as it pressed down to suppress!

"Sword Dao!"

"You are not Jin Chong Guang True Sect's Meltfire Old Demon of the Golden Sea Region!"

The Mire True Lord roared.

He knew that, having courted danger every day and kept company with life and death, today he had finally encountered a terrible life-and-death peril, walked into a trap carefully laid by his enemy, blinded by his own greed.

"Kill!"

Between life and death, the Mire True Lord instead became unprecedentedly serene; he spat out a crystalline coiled-dragon jade seal, which expanded to the size of a thousand-li mountain, rings of spatial law runes encircling it, and hurled it to meet the resplendent sun in the sky.

This was precisely his life-bound treasure, the Four Universes Eight Directions Coiled-Dragon Seal, which he had been refining for tens of thousands of years!

This seal had accompanied him through chance encounter after chance encounter, through growth after growth, countless rare heavenly materials and earthly treasures smelted into it, refined for tens of thousands of years, long since fused as one with the laws of space, its might tremendous; past opponents, whenever the seal pressed down to slay, none had ever failed to fall.

"Croak!"

"Jade-Blood Heaven-Clear Poison!"

The emerald toad coordinated seamlessly with the Mire True Lord; at the very instant the great seal flew out, he spat a streak of green light that clung to the Four Universes Eight Directions Seal.

Streaks of life-law radiance from Taiyi Taiyi Qingmu, biased toward toxin and death, interwove with the spatial laws within the great seal, causing the seal's might to surge several times over in an instant.

This stretch of sky was instantly filled by a resplendent sun and an emerald great seal, with no room for anything else.

Strangely, upon the earth, the many beasts—lions, tigers, cattle, sheep, snakes, and the rest—went on grazing, hunting, and sleeping as usual, utterly unaware of the dreadful great battle unfolding in the sky; not even the treetops swayed an inch more for it, remaining perfectly calm, as if those battles were happening in another world entirely.

Amid the resonance of countless orders and laws, the resplendent materialist sun finally met the emerald great seal.

Heaven and earth fell silent for an instant, forming a single painted scroll.

The spatial laws collapsed to their limit, the spiritual light of the life-laws biased toward toxin and death dimmed, and then the painted scroll shattered; across tens of thousands of li of space, dense cracks appeared in an instant.

Everything was tearing, everything was breaking apart, and then reached a limit—

Rumble!

Tens of thousands of li of space abruptly crumbled into fine powder!

The life-laws and spatial laws operating at their limit all snapped; before that endlessly resplendent materialist sun, everything was melting, everything was shattering—nothing beneath that sun was indestructible.

All manner of spatial anomalies and life-law anomalies vanished.

The coiled-dragon jade seal, its spiritual light dimmed, retreated; a deep sword scar now marred the seal's head, filled with the auras of destruction, law-annihilation, aberration, and the like, ceaselessly eating away at the seal's integrity.

"Puh—

??"

His life-bound treasure broken, the Mire True Lord vomited a great mouthful of blood, his body struck as by lightning, flung back dozens of kilometers,

"What laws are these?"

He stared in dread at that sword-wielding young man, a sliver of regret rising in his heart.

Had he not been blinded by treasure, he should still be in his old lair, the Mire Demon City, where there were many formations and countless contingencies he had laid over ten thousand years—he would never have been in such a wretched state.

"Void Refinement… Void Refinement early-stage…"

The sword-bearing young man did not answer his question.

He gently closed his eyes, as if savoring something beautiful, reluctant to let this wondrous moment slip away.

"It's been several thousand years,"

"How wonderful…"

Jiang Ding Zi murmured.

Since advancing to Hua Shen Qi, the Refinement Void cultivators of the immortal sects were untouchable, and those of Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong would never appear in the immortal sects. Heaven knows what a miserably poor life he had lived, a hundred times more wretched than Zou Zou Xiyuan's back in the day.

"Sword cultivator!"

"You are a sword cultivator!"

This frenzied, ruthless bearing instantly made True Lord Mud Swamp's eyes split with rage.

He no longer had any mind to negotiate at a heavy cost.

Sword cultivator!

In this era where two great sword-path immortal sects stood side by side, the term "sword cultivator" was utterly notorious, despised by gods and mortals alike, and had even triggered a slight trend of old and new immortal sects merging together.

These lunatics, these madmen among immortal cultivators—they want nothing, set no store by any heavenly treasure or great opportunity; the only thing they need

is your life!

The life of the strong is the finest opportunity of all!