Chapter 1464: The Death of the Immortal Butterfly

The dreamlike world froze solid.

After the deep blue sword-light shone in, at a certain moment, a corner of the dream world crumbled into streams of spiritual light and scattered into nothing.

That corner rapidly spread to the entire world, to every place in the dream world, to every living being within it; every puppet and phantom scattered into nothing.

In the end, only several dozen remnant shadows and clones fled.

"Here!"

A look of unwillingness crossed Xian Diezi's face.

This place was her opponent's home turf, and a completely spiritless world at that; the suppression she suffered was simply too great, the might of many of her arts reduced, unable to bring forth their full strength.

Her body grew hazy and indistinct, and then abruptly crumbled and vanished without a trace, completely lost to sight; even the Sun Material Sword Soul could not lock onto her.

Coming without a shadow, leaving without a trace!

Jiang Ding felt a chill of dread, staring fixedly at his own sea of consciousness, watching that figure that had suddenly vanished.

Strong.

Just a clone, and truly strong.

The strength of an Upper Realm Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong Dao Child far surpassed that of an inheritance disciple, completely exceeding his estimates.

Even at this very moment, when she was already no match for him, she could still easily escape—simply like a ghost, completely impossible to pin down; her ability to flee was far too strong.

"What a pity…"

Jiang Ding said lightly.

If this were any other place in the Immortal Dao cosmos, she would absolutely have escaped—certainly so; Jiang Ding simply had no means to hold her, his strength gravely insufficient.

The sword embryo was only at the threshold of eighth-rank, his swordsmanship had never broken through to the Heavenly Sword realm—neither side was a match for his opponent.

However, what kind of place was this now?

Jiang Ding's heart was utterly calm; he merely watched coldly at his surroundings.

Not long after—merely a breath's time later—a short ten thousand kilometers away, a dreamlike butterfly-winged woman appeared in the pitch-black void.

"This is no ordinary spiritless land!"

"Completely different!"

"Completely different—in essence, there isn't even a Heavenly Dao law here…"

Xian Diezi looked around in terror.

Everything that had happened completely overturned her worldview; many things she had taken as fundamental laws wavered in this moment.

Her divine soul, after leaving Jiang Ding's divine soul, did indeed strip Jiang Ding of his home-field advantage in soul combat.

But at the same time, it also plunged her into an even swifter drain of her divine soul; every minute, every second she grew weaker—this cosmos simply did not contain such a thing as a divine soul; everything had to fall toward a low-entropy state.

"Come back."

"Fellow Daoist, let us fight to the death."

Jiang Ding said calmly, "There are many things in this sovereign's homeland worthy of being spoken of—

?? But the most memorable of all is this vast, endless distance."

"Never has any intelligent being found the edge of the cosmos; there is even a theory of the great cosmic explosion, holding that the cosmos grows ever larger with the passage of time, without limit."

"What a pity—this is not your true body."

"If it were your true body, I would have gained far more, far beyond what I have now."

"Still, it is enough. This sovereign is but a man of low station; to be able to sever a fellow Daoist's head at this moment is already sufficient. The only pity is that I should have fought you to the death in the Ancient God Domain—that is what I had longed for."

"But you, you are too vile."

"You never showed yourself, and I could not find you; in the end, this is all I could do."

Clang!

Jiang Ding drew his sword, transforming into a meteor as he surged forth to kill, his killing intent chillingly cold.

He did not wish for this Upper Realm being to die a natural death; he wanted her all the more to die gloriously at his own hands, to grant him what he truly desired.

"Jiang Ding, you seek death!"

Xian Diezi said calmly.

In such a surely fatal moment, her heart knew an unprecedented tranquility; she no longer tried to flee, but intended to use every ounce of her strength to extinguish a rising sword-path prodigy of the human race, to prevent him from threatening the survival of the Heavenly Illusory Immortal Butterfly Clan.

Yes, she had sensed something ominous.

Human sword cultivators could grow; if they ceaselessly slew powerful foes, and their own talent and sentiment were sufficient, a human sword cultivator would undergo a fundamental breakthrough—not like bloodline beings who entrusted everything entirely to bloodline metamorphosis—he could complete his breakthrough through acquired effort.

This was a Taiyi Qingmu Xianzong Sword Child of the human race, one who was steadily drawing closer to her true body!

Hum!

The two dreamlike antennae on the butterfly-winged maiden's brow flickered, and the aura of bewildering dreams spread in all directions.

In that instant, the divine souls of every sentient being within tens of thousands of kilometers around instantly sank into slumber, entering into dreams, completely losing control of their own bodies.

The innate divine ability of the Heavenly Illusory Immortal Butterfly Clan—Touch of Dreams!

Legend had it that in the hands of that Butterfly Lord, even Jiang Jiang Jinxian-level experts would sink into dreams, unable to walk out for hundreds of years, trapped in an endless labyrinth of the soul, unable to transcend.

Jiang Ding only felt his vision blur before his eyes.

When he opened his eyes again, he had arrived on a bustling street; a small stream flowed past the roadside, people came and went around him, everything was familiar—it was a street in Rongcheng.

No one recognized him.

Jiang Ding walked and walked here, walked and walked.

He could not find a way out; even his divine soul was beginning to sink, gradually forgetting everything of the outside world, starting to believe this place was the homeland where he had been born and raised, the world he had lived in his whole life, and the thought of living out his days here arose in his heart.

There was nothing wrong with that.

Generation after generation had lived this way: born, primary school, middle school, university, take a wife and have children, middle age, old age, a burial mound behind the mountain—for countless years, no ancestor had ever lived otherwise.

"But I,"

"Unlike our ancestors, if a junior doesn't surpass his forebears, then wouldn't all these years have been lived in vain?"

Jiang Ding murmured.

Clang!

At this moment, his sword soul emitted a ringing sound.

Materialist Sun Sword Soul!

The Materialist Sun Sword Soul bloomed with endless radiance, dazzling as the sun itself. Beneath the light of this divine solar soul, the surrounding city streets began to melt, began to collapse, and an opening appeared in the endlessly cycling soul labyrinth.

The instant this opening appeared, the light of the Materialist Sun Sword Soul grew even more resplendent!

A jet-black, twisted line descended from the heavens, manifesting upon this soul labyrinth—without reason, without warning, simply appearing, this jet-black line.

Upon this line, every spiritual substance instantly crumbled, collapsed, and became mundane.

The power of the Materialist Sun Sword Soul—Materialism!

"No!"

"What kind of sword soul is this…"

From the void came a terrified shriek.

Xian Diezi strove desperately to throw off the twisted black line that had appeared upon her, to restore circulation to her blocked meridians and soul structure, but it was utterly useless. At least within an extremely short time, this imposed twisted black line could not be shaken off at all; every immortal-spiritual substance upon the line was completely sealed, like wood or stone.

Clang!

The sound of the Materialist Sun Sword Soul and the Taiqing Flying Sword leaving the sheath merged perfectly.

"What a pity, Daoist Xian Diezi."

Jiang Ding slowly drew his sword.

"If we were outside, if you were willing to fight me to the death, I could still slay you—despite heavy wounds, despite narrow escapes from death, despite my body and soul shattering for the most part, the final victory would still be mine. I would surely complete another breakthrough of my sword heart."

"But here, you are far too weak."

"It left the battle without any suspense, robbed this fight of much anticipation."

"I hope when I meet your true body in the future, you won't disappoint me again."

Clang!

The sword left its sheath!

The sun collapsed and condensed into a single point—the primordial rule of Metal among the Five Elements between heaven and earth took shape, the most mature sword among the earliest-born immortal technique prototypes.

Primordial Magnet Rule · Metal-Destroying Sword!

The Materialist Sun Sword Soul drove in a burning fashion; his entire body's magic power and divine sense erupted savagely. All his power merged into it. This twisted golden primordial sword-light, accelerated through six rings of worlds, reversed again, and passed through six rings of worlds once more.

Rings.

Repeating thus three times, it underwent a total of eighteen accelerations through the world rings, its speed reaching the extreme—even surpassing the propagation speed of rule-force within this stretch of starry sky.

"A mere ant…"

"You shall die!!"

Xian Diezi sensed a great terror.

She burned her soul origin, burned everything. The dreamlike antennae on her forehead bloomed with ghostly blue light, causing the surrounding damaged soul labyrinth world to rapidly recover. The ghostly blue ribbons disintegrated into a skyful of starlight, falling upon the labyrinth and generating living beings one after another; they amplified and strengthened the reality of the soul labyrinth, even transforming them into living beings capable of independent thought.

All of this caused the soul labyrinth to nearly become a real world!

Within this world, even a Dao-Confirming cultivator would instantly fall into delusion, and even a sword-child of an upper-realm immortal sect would be impeded, unable to escape in an instant.

Yet none of all this could alter that ever-shifting, flowing jet-black twisted line upon the labyrinth—materialism—every spiritual substance upon the line collapsing, becoming fragile mundane matter.

Whoosh!

That terrifying, extreme-speed primordial sword-light, accelerated through eighteen layers of worlds, its speed reaching the extreme of rules, flashed and vanished along the demarcated twisted materialist black line.

Xian Diezi and her dreamworld stiffened.

The next moment, the dreamworld collapsed. A jet-black thin line appeared between the brows of Xian Diezi and her dozens of lifelike avatars; along the thin line, every Xian Diezi was cleaved in two, slowly Xu Xu parting to either side, their vitality swiftly sinking into icy silence.

"Jiang Ding,"

"How truly unwilling."

Xian Diezi, her body split in two, was incomparably sorrowful, and said mournfully: "If we were outside, in any place with spiritual energy, I absolutely could not have died, much less been defeated."

"I hope… next time we can meet in the Meteor Immortal Realm."

Boom!

Her bisected body crumbled into a swirl of flowing light, dying completely.

In her place remained only two pairs of ice-crystal-like blue butterfly wings, glittering brilliantly in the zero-gravity starry sky, dazzling and captivating, impossible to look away from.