Heart Demon Ling Tian flicked the spine of the jade dragon sword, and the Nine-Headed Xiang Liu relief swam out like a living creature. The jade dragon sword executed the most basic "White Rainbow Pierces the Sun" thrust, but its tip erupted with the dark gold Flame Dragon Fire of the fourth rotation. The moment the main body Ling Tian horizontally blocked with his sword, the sword momentum suddenly split into nine illusory and real afterimages, each precisely piercing his Acupoints.
"With this level of combat talent, you dare to use the jade dragon sword?"
The Heart Demon deliberately deflected the sword edge by three inches, and the dark gold Flame Dragon Fire coiled around the main body's right arm like a venomous snake. "When I annihilated the Yinkui Sect back then—" The sword light suddenly flared, pinning Ling Tian to a crystal pillar that reflected the Young Lord of Yinkui's sinister smile. "—I used this very move, Heaven and Earth Annihilation!"
Ling Tian activated the Flame Dragon's second rotation to counterattack, but the crimson gold sea of fire was drawn by the Heart Demon's sword edge. The Nine-Headed Xiang Liu's snake heads opened wide, refining the Heaven Burning Fire into nine dark gold fire nails, which he shot back into Ling Tian's limb joints. "Watch closely—" The Heart Demon's sword tip lightly flicked, and the fire nails suddenly burst into chains. "—This is the true essence of controlling the Flame Dragon Fire!"
The chains tightened abruptly, suspending Ling Tian from the dome of the mirror Domain. The Heart Demon leisurely swung his sword, severing seven chains, leaving only the fire chain on his right hand to maintain the suspension: "I'll give you time to break free. If you can escape within a quarter of an hour..."
"...I'll grant you a complete skeleton to be buried in your ancestral grave~"
The Heart Demon Su Meier leaned against the crystal pillar, giggling, her tail tip polluting Su Meier's main body's Moonlight Spiritual Qi into a bloody mist.
Ling Tian forcibly activated the Heaven Burning Fire to melt the chains, but he was slapped away by the sword's back the moment he fell to the ground. The Heart Demon pressed his throat with the sword's spine: "What a brainless idiot!"
The Heart Demon's sword tip suddenly pierced a geomorphic node, causing magma to erupt and blast Ling Tian towards the dome: "He's worse than a three-year-old child!"
Ling Tian, who was blasted into mid-air, spun around and flung several Flame Dragon Sword Qi at the Heart Demon, but they were flicked away by his finger.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, with your shoddy skills, how did Long Daozi dare to let you out to roam?" The Heart Demon suddenly conjured an illusion of Long Daozi, controlling him to utter scathing words.
"Shut up!" Ling Tian's eyes were bloodshot, but the oppressive pressure made it impossible for him to move an inch.
Watching Ling Tian being suppressed, Su Meier bit her tongue, preparing to cast a Qingqiu forbidden art, when the Heart Demon Nine-tailed suddenly appeared behind her: "What's the hurry, little fox?" A bone spur from its tailbone traced a line of blood across her neck: "After he deals with that trash, this venerable one will personally teach you the true essence of Moonlight..."
Heart Demon Ling Tian suddenly dispersed all his Heaven Burning Fire, suppressing his cultivation to the Nascent Soul Middle Stage. The jade dragon sword executed a simple starting stance—"Dragon Spirit! Transform!"—which was precisely Ling Tian's jade dragon sword's first innate move.
"Golden Dragon's Roar to the Heavens!" With a light flick of the sword edge, a real Golden Dragon roared within the hundred-mile mirror Domain. Ling Tian's hastily erected defensive barrier shattered like paper, and the residual sword momentum tore open the protective Dragon Flame on his chest, leaving bone-deep wounds arranged in the shape of the Big Dipper.
"Woo!!" Ling Tian blew the Demon Dragon's horn, and dark gold patterns snaked across the surface of the bone horn. The dome of the mirror Domain suddenly split open with a Guixu fissure. A Nether Demon Shadow Dragon, enveloped in Nine Nether Death Qi, swooped down. Its hundred-zhang Dragon body shattered three hundred crystal pillars, and dark purple Dragon Breath poured down like a waterfall.
"Can't win so you call for backup?" Heart Demon Ling Tian sneered and swung his sword, and the Golden Dragon's Roar to the Heavens sword momentum was actually crushed by a Dragon's claw. Where the Demon Dragon's tail blade swept, space folded into jagged cracks, forcing the Heart Demon to retreat half a step for the first time.
"A bit interesting." The Heart Demon's sword tip suddenly pierced the Void Realm, and the Nine-Headed Xiang Liu emerged from a different space, intertwining with the Demon Dragon to form a Chaos vortex. As the two primordial behemoths tore at each other for the seventh round, the Heart Demon suddenly appeared at the seven-inch mark of the Dragon's spine.
"Break!"
The dark gold sword light surged ten thousand zhang, directly bisecting the Nether Shadow. The Dragon body, split in half, had not yet fallen when it transformed into Nine Nether Phosphor Fire in the Heaven Burning Fire. Then, a Nether Dragon's roar echoed from the myriad ghost fires. The Demon Dragon, reborn in fire, was even stronger than before, and its giant Dragon claws, carrying the Chaos tide of the Guixu Sea Eye, slammed down.
Heart Demon Ling Tian dodged, then his Dragon throat rumbled, spewing black flames that concentrated the thirty-three layers of Guixu Death Qi. The Heaven Burning barrier constructed by the Heart Demon's sword dissolved like paper meeting fire, and the Xiang Liu on the sword's spine let out a mournful wail, its nine snake heads melting into molten iron in the Death Qi.
The Heart Demon suddenly unleashed his cultivation, his aura instantly soaring to the Immortal Realm. He formed hand Seals, stepped on the stars, and the Dragon patterns on the pitch-black jade dragon sword body lit up section by section, condensing into a Holy Dragon illusion deep within the clouds. The moment the sword tip pierced the nine heavens, the entire firmament transformed into a liquid golden pool, and the Holy Dragon's Spirit shed its mortal coil in lightning and fire.
"Dragon Spirit! Transform! Holy Dragon's Judgment!"
Ling Tian was greatly alarmed! "It's actually the jade dragon sword's fourth innate move!"
The Dragon's roar was like the first thunder that split heaven and earth, and platinum scales and claws extended from the cloud vortex. Each Dragon scale reflected the true sun's flame, and where the Dragon's whiskers brushed, all spatial distortions were smoothed away. The Nine Nether Death Qi spewed by the Demon Dragon vaporized and dissipated the instant it touched the Dragon scales, like snow meeting the scorching sun.
The Holy Dragon looked down with lowered eyes, the stars from beyond the heavens swirling in its vertical pupils. With a slight opening of its Dragon mouth, one hundred and eight thousand beams of demon-slaying golden light poured down like a heavenly river, each beam precisely locking onto the Nether Demon Shadow Dragon. The remnants of the Demon Dragon, pierced by the golden light, had not yet fallen when they were refined into ashes by the Holy Dragon Flame.
When the last golden light vanished, the battlefield had transformed into a glazed mirror. The remaining Nether Death Qi of the Demon Dragon was refined into a demon-subduing golden pearl, which spontaneously embedded itself into the newly formed Dragon pattern on the jade dragon sword's spine.
The Dragon patterns on Ling Tian's horn had now lost their luster, and the backlash of nether fire burned along his arm, scorching his Meridians. The Heart Demon stepped on the remnants of the Dragon head, sneering: "Is this your trump card?" He used his sword tip to pick up a fragment of a Dragon scale and insert it into Ling Tian's shoulder: "Trash with a beast, quite a match!"
At the battlefield, Su Meier's location.
The Heart Demon Nine-tailed lightly tapped the Void Realm with its toe, and the entire mirror Domain instantly plunged into a bloody eternal night. The Qingqiu Star Chart unfurled by the main body was forcibly twisted, and the star tracks actually pieced together the tragic scene of her clan's self-destruction that day—Moonlight Spiritual Qi boiled into a foul-smelling blood mist under the blood moon's illumination, and the Nine-tailed Sky Fox's Moonlight Holy Light was even reversed into a bone-corroding poison.
"A little fox dares to use Moonlight?" The Heart Demon suddenly appeared behind her main body, dark red bone spurs piercing through three of her tail vertebrae. "Cry, scream, this venerable one loves to hear agonizing wails the most~"
The Heart Demon Nine-tailed spread out like a blood-red curtain obscuring the sky, its tail tip hooking the blood moon to unleash corrosive rain. Su Meier's Moonlight Barrier melted like spring snow, and when she tried to activate the qingqiu imperial seal, she found that the space around her hands was confined, preventing her from forming Seals.
Suddenly, nine tailbones burst from the ground, pinning the main body to a crystal pillar that reflected Ling Tian's appearance. The Heart Demon deliberately made the bone spurs deviate half an inch from her heart, and dipped its tail tip into the blood moon's essence to draw a fallen fox tattoo on her face: "Watch closely—" The dark red bone spurs suddenly split into three thousand Ying Ren. "—This is how Moonlight should be used!"
The Ying Ren flew towards Ling Tian, whose head was being stepped on by the Heart Demon, and blood holes appeared all over Ling Tian's body.
"My dear, guess how long your beloved can last?" The Heart Demon's tail tip rolled up a shattered mirror fragment reflecting Ling Tian's dying image. "When he breathes his last, how about I refine you two into twin mirror spirits?"
The Heart Demon Nine-tailed suddenly threw Su Meier towards the blood moon, and its nine tails transformed into shackles, suspending her on the moon's surface. As the blood moon's essence began to extract the Qingqiu Bloodline, Su Meier was shocked to realize that the moon disc sealed the mournful souls of successive Sky Foxes—their eye sockets were flowing with the same blood tears as her own.
"Look~" The Heart Demon used his fingertip to pry open her jaw, "You cry exactly like these wastes!"
The two Heart Demons suddenly swapped opponents. The dark gold sword edge grazed Su Meier's throat, leaving a trace of blood; the blood moon bone spur pierced Ling Tian's right lung, pinning him to the mirror surface of a crystal pillar.
"Too weak!"
Heart Demon Ling Tian stepped on the main body's chest, crushing three ribs. "Back then, in my Nascent Soul Realm, I could casually cut down Soul Emergence with my sword! Even encountering an Immortal, I had the strength to fight!"
"Look at this pathetic state~" Heart Demon Su Meier's tail tip hooked Ling Tian's chin. "Why don't you sever your Meridians, and I'll leave her a complete corpse?"
"I've had enough, let's end this." Heart Demon Ling Tian, who had just been full of playful mockery, suddenly became expressionless, looking at Ling Tian as if he were a corpse. He then backhanded the jade dragon sword directly into Ling Tian's heart!
"Pfft!!" Ling Tian's heart shattered. Su Meier closed her eyes in pain, watching Ling Tian's rapidly dilating pupils.
"Senior, I've disappointed you. In the end, I still have to rely on your strength." Su Meier apologized to the Dragon Emperor in her mind with her eyes closed.
"Dong!"
"Dong!"
"Dong!"
The moment Ling Tian's heart stopped, a stronger, more powerful heartbeat sounded, like the war drums from an ancient tribe. "Ling Tian's" body stood up in a strange posture, slowly pulling out the pitch-black jade dragon sword from his chest and throwing it back to the Heart Demon. The golden blood flowing from his heart, guided by the Chaos Dragon patterns on his chest, burst forth with dazzling light, instantly transforming into living Dragon patterns and drilling back into his heart.
"What's going on?! My sword clearly pierced his heart!" Heart Demon Ling Tian was incredulous!
"Noisy!"
A low Dragon tongue boomed in the Void Realm. "Ling Tian's" flowing long hair instantly took on a gilded luster. Dark gold Dragon scales surged from beneath his skin, and three-foot gilded coiled Dragon horns, wreathed in Chaos Qi, emerged from his forehead. His originally pitch-black pupils melted into molten gold vertical pupils. When his gaze swept over Heart Demon Ling Tian, the Heaven Burning Fire around him spontaneously collapsed into a seed of fire, trembling as it submerged into the Heart Demon's palm.
His originally tattered robes were reshaped into battle armor by liquid Dragon marrow. The shoulder guards were forged in the image of a Ya Zi devouring the heavens, and the chest plate displayed a totem of the first Dragon Emperor holding a spear and shattering the moon. The hem of his battle skirt flowed with solidified pressure, crushing three zhang of crystal rock upon touching the ground.
"This... this..." Heart Demon Ling Tian's pitch-black jade dragon sword fell from his hand. The Xiang Liu relief on the sword body actually revealed its true form under the Dragon's might—the Nine-Headed Snake Soul crawled prostrate towards the Dragon Emperor's feet. The dark gold Dragon scales all over his body stood on end, oozing blood of fear with a foul stench.
"Ling Tian" clasped the Void Realm, and Chaos Dragon bones condensed into a Dragon-patterned spear. With a light flick of the spear tip, the spatial distortions of the entire mirror Domain tore like cloth. The spear momentum swept across, and Heart Demon Ling Tian's defensive array patterns, constructed with the Heaven Burning's fourth rotation, shattered like paper. The Nine-Headed Xiang Liu was annihilated into dust before it could even wail. Heart Demon Ling Tian spat blood and flew out, crashing into the wall.
Then, the spear tip turned, and the blood moon Domain activated by the Heart Demon Nine-tailed was inundated by Chaos Dragon Breath. The fallen fox curse Seal wailed in the Dragon Flame, and the moon disc mirror surface, which sealed the Qingqiu ancestors, was shaken by the Spear Intent, cracking with spiderweb-like fissures.
"Ling Tian" tapped the Chaos Dragon bone with his finger, and the entire Eighth Heaven suddenly collapsed into a miniature Guixu. The two Heart Demons were forcibly dragged into the Dragon Clan's Origin Sea, their limbs and bones beginning an irreversible Dragon transformation and distortion.
"Insects dare to usurp."
The Dragon Emperor's true body appeared, its Dragon head proudly breaking through the firmament. Nine gilded eyes were arranged in a celestial star formation, and dark gold scales surged with the Chaos thunder flames of the Guixu Sea Eye. The coiled Dragon horns pierced through dimensions, manifesting a Nine Heavens Emperor Crown, and where the Dragon whiskers beneath its jaw brushed, the chains of Law broke into submissive stardust. A light tap of its Dragon claw on the sea surface transformed the Guixu's weak water into one hundred thousand imprisoned Dragon stakes, pinning the distorted Heart Demons onto the Karma sin tablet. Each stake was inscribed with the Heart Demons' altered destinies, which were now backlashing against their Origin.
The Chaos tide condensed into billions of Dragon scale blades, peeling off the dark gold Dragon scales from Heart Demon Ling Tian's body one by one. Each scale peeled off revealed a segment of his altered Karma on the sin tablet.
Azure Dragon Flame surged from the depths of the Guixu, burning back along the Heart Demon Nine-tailed's fallen fox curse Seal. The Qingqiu fox souls, devoured by the blood moon through the ages, broke free from the Seal, transforming into vengeful nether fire that gnawed at his Primordial Spirit. Every inch of his soul body showed the weeping faces of the fox clan.
When the sin tablet was inscribed with seventy-six thousand marks of sin, the Dragon Emperor's clasped right claw suddenly tightened. The entire Guixu Sea Eye collapsed into a singularity, and the two Immortal Realm Heart Demons were compressed into two Chaos Dragon Pearls. Sealed within the pearls were their twisted Primordial Spirits.
"I grant you a resting place."
The Dragon's claw lightly flicked, and the Dragon Pearls transformed into streaks of light, entering Ling Tian's and Su Meier's Dantians respectively. Their Purple Mansion Nascent Souls opened their mouths and swallowed the Dragon Pearls, and Immortal illusions appeared behind them, becoming energy to be absorbed within their bodies.