After Xu Fengnian and Tuoba Pusa vanished from sight, Duan Mao Deng Mao suddenly found himself in an awkward position. After all, standing before him were three martial grandmasters—Deng Tai’a, Luo Yang, and Xuan Yuan Qing Feng—who had ventured deep into the heart of the Northern Mang army. Any one of them could give him more than he could handle, especially the Peach Blossom Sword God, whose brilliance in this battle had been nothing short of dazzling. Deng Mao would likely need more than a vat of wine to drown his sorrows if he faced him.
Deng Mao had never been renowned for his martial talent, resembling more a diligent farmer tending his small plot of land, reaping his harvest through sheer perseverance. Of course, Deng Mao’s so-called “mediocre aptitude” was only relative to those “youngsters” who shone brightly in the grand epochs of the martial world—such as the Heaven’s Chosen, the Misty Snow Pavilion’s Moonless Tower Master, Xuan Yuan Qing Feng, who alone claimed three of the thirteen titles in the Xiangfu era. Now hailed alongside the young Prince of Liang as one of the twin jewels of the Central Plains’ martial world, her brilliance and fortune were nearly on par with Xu Fengnian, who already stood at the pinnacle of the mortal realm.
Earlier, Xu Fengnian had asked the Peach Blossom Sword God to escort two women away from the battlefield. Though Luo Yang was deeply concerned, she showed no hesitation, decisively preparing to leave with Deng Tai’a. She understood all too well that, given the current cultivation levels of Xu Fengnian and Tuoba Pusa, among the countless martial artists in the world, only Deng Tai’a and Hu Yan Da Guan could intervene. Anyone else—whether seeking to help or exploit the situation—would be delusional, not even the so-called “land immortals” could make a difference. If Luo Yang truly wanted to aid Xu Fengnian, the farther she stayed, the better. Otherwise, she would only become a hostage Tuoba Pusa could use against him.
Only Xuan Yuan Qing Feng, her gaze fixed beyond the solemn Northern Mang warrior Deng Mao, stared intently at the Northern Mang war banner, her heart stirring with restless energy, as if utterly indifferent to whether she might be caught in the crossfire of the impending clash between titans.
In this woman’s heart, loving someone was important. Whether that person loved her back mattered little.
In her eyes, she would never fixate on the shadow of a single person. She saw the blizzards of Misty Snow Pavilion, the ebb and flow of the martial world, the moon rising over the sea, and countless people, countless events, countless scenes.
Deng Mao, having achieved his current status through sheer tenacity, was no coward. Thus, this Northern Mang grandmaster, seemingly doomed to die, faced the three opponents without fear, his fighting spirit surging. Gripping his broken spear, his robes fluttering, he confronted the figure in Central Plains’ purple and asked gravely, “Are you Xuan Yuan Qing Feng of Misty Snow Pavilion?”
Xuan Yuan Qing Feng withdrew her gaze and sneered, “Or am I your long-lost mother?”
Deng Mao, who had already resigned himself to death, was momentarily stunned, speechless. Clearly, he hadn’t expected a martial grandmaster of her stature to speak so crudely.
Nearby, Luo Yang shook her head and clicked her tongue. “She really ought to fix that temper. It’s so unlikable.”
For some reason, Luo Yang harbored a peculiar admiration for this domineering leader of the Liyang martial alliance.
The Peach Blossom Sword God chuckled, unusually playful. “In the Central Plains, this is exactly what people love. Nowadays, martial masters who skulk around in secrecy are out of fashion.”
Luo Yang laughed wryly, then recalled something and asked quietly, “That strand of heavenly law that descended—why did it dissipate on its own? Did you sever it?”
Deng Tai’a shook his head. “My sword didn’t strike the pillar of light. As for why it vanished—whether it retreated from my Tai’a Sword or hid some deeper scheme—I can’t say for sure.”
Luo Yang looked up at the sky, frustrated. “Persistent and haunting!”
Deng Tai’a agreed wholeheartedly. Glancing toward the city walls of Ju Bei, he said solemnly to Xuan Yuan Qing Feng, “The Northern Mang army is about to advance. You two should return to support the city, lest Xu Fengnian be distracted. I must go to the heavens.”
Xuan Yuan Qing Feng replied impassively, “Since we’ve come this far, why turn back? Don’t worry about me. Xuan Yuan Qing Feng lives and dies by her own will!”
Deng Tai’a smiled faintly, then whispered, “Rise.” Stepping onto his Tai’a Sword, he soared into the sky, piercing the clouds and vanishing into the golden sea above.
If Xu Fengnian’s opponent was the peerless Tuoba Pusa, then the foe worthy of the Peach Blossom Sword God’s life-and-death struggle could only be in the heavens.
Luo Yang called out lightly to Xuan Yuan Qing Feng’s retreating figure, then grinned. “Xuan Yuan Qing Feng, I’ll give you my Zhulu Mountain as a dowry. After all… I doubt you’ll ever marry.”
Xuan Yuan Qing Feng didn’t turn, but her shoulders stiffened slightly.
Luo Yang, clad in white, leaped away, laughing as she returned to Ju Bei City.
It wasn’t that the Northern Mang army had been cowed into letting the former demonic leader of the north come and go as she pleased. Rather, the battlefield behind her was already in chaos, with countless Northern Mang soldiers fleeing in panic, none daring to hinder her.
Meanwhile, the Northern Mang’s Martial God had been kicked away by the new Prince of Liang. Though his towering frame didn’t fall, he slid back dozens of feet, his retreating body smashing through a hundred armored cavalrymen, sending men and horses flying in all directions.
Xu Fengnian didn’t press his advantage. Landing lightly, he sheathed his blade.
As the dust settled, Tuoba Pusa stood firm, utterly unruffled despite being forced back. Golden energy, nearly tangible, coiled around his body like divine serpents, shimmering under the morning sun, making him resemble a celestial war god.
The tens of thousands of Northern Mang cavalry, witnessing this, drew their swords and roared in unison.
Tuoba Pusa closed his eyes, tilting his face toward the sun, as if basking in the vitality of the world.
Xu Fengnian took a deep breath, his sleeves billowing with surging energy.
He stepped forward, the ground beneath him cracking like a spider’s web.
In the next instant, he appeared before Tuoba Pusa, leaping high and driving his fist toward the latter’s forehead.
Tuoba Pusa, inexplicably, remained motionless.
Xu Fengnian’s strike sent him sinking into the earth, vanishing from sight.
Standing at the crater’s edge, Xu Fengnian frowned down at the figure below.
Tuoba Pusa, standing in the pit, slowly opened his eyes and smirked, as if mocking Xu Fengnian’s “polite” restraint—why not unleash the full force of his Two Sleeves Green Snake from the start?
Was Xu Fengnian growing weaker, or had Tuoba Pusa become too strong?
Xu Fengnian relaxed his brow, twisted his wrist, then clenched his fists.
This time, his movement was so fast that a cloud of mist exploded where he’d stood.
Clad in his purple-gold prince’s robes, Xu Fengnian’s charge left a black streak in the air.
No one on the battlefield could clearly see how the young prince attacked. They only glimpsed the golden Tuoba Pusa being struck and sent flying again and again, the black streak relentless.
Each collision sent shockwaves, delayed in their arrival, as if time itself lagged.
This was no elegant duel of flashy techniques, but a brutal, straightforward brawl—like two villagers brawling in the countryside.
Yet, because the combatants were Xu Fengnian and Tuoba Pusa, this was a clash of Diamond realms!
Xu Fengnian’s speed was nearly telepathic, yet each charge was preceded by a deliberate step—not the Daoist art of shrinking distances, but a technique learned from Liu Hao Shi, the gatekeeper of Tai’an City. This step, seemingly redundant, was the key to his overwhelming advantage.
Thus, even among the four great martial grandmasters, Xu Fengnian seemed to dominate Tuoba Pusa, leaving the latter only able to defend, never counter.
The clash of gods was no spectacle for mortals. From Qi Xuan Zhen’s ascension at Demon-Slaying Platform to Xu Fengnian’s battle with the Longhu Mountain immortals, countless had learned this the hard way.
The Northern Mang cavalry, though initially cheering for Tuoba Pusa, now scrambled to retreat, their formations abandoned, desperate to avoid being collateral damage.
A fleeing horseman suddenly found himself airborne, his horse shattered by Tuoba Pusa’s retreating form. Before he could recover, Xu Fengnian grabbed his head and hurled him at Tuoba Pusa, who swatted him aside like a fly.
Xu Fengnian lunged through the bloody mist, pressing his palm against Tuoba Pusa’s chest.
Years ago, outside Xiangfan, the young Prince of Liang had used a self-taught technique to repel the far superior Red Armor.
That technique was called “Unarm.”
Now, for the first time in this life-or-death battle, Xu Fengnian used a “fixed technique.”
Yet, contrary to expectations, Tuoba Pusa didn’t budge.
Eighteen golden currents coiled around him like dragons, his aura divine and unshakable.
This was the pinnacle of the Heavenly Phenom realm—a state where energy returned to simplicity, indistinguishable from the ordinary.
Tuoba Pusa, like Wang Xian Zhi before him, was an exception among land immortals—his energy so overwhelming it spilled out uncontrollably.
His eyes brimmed with disdain, as if mocking Xu Fengnian’s petty tricks.
Xu Fengnian shifted his palm into a sword-finger stance.
The “Finger Sword” technique.
Once, a female cultivator from Guanyin Sect had used two Finger Mystic techniques against him—one pointing at mountains, the other at seas.
Point at a mountain, and it would fill the sea. Point at the sea, and it would crush the mountains.
Tuoba Pusa sensed the shift in energy and sidestepped just in time, evading Xu Fengnian’s strike.
As expected, the moment Tuoba Pusa barely sidestepped that finger sword, a white rainbow of sword energy erupted forth. The might of that sword aura was no less than a full-force strike from a land-bound sword immortal at point-blank range.
However, Tuoba Pusa soon revealed a trace of helplessness in his expression. The seemingly earth-shattering sword aura, after shooting out just a few zhang, abruptly lost its momentum. At the same time, the young prince’s fingers, which had been pressed together, relaxed back into an open palm, pressing the back of his hand against Tuoba Pusa’s chest.
A horizontal arm strike.
**Stacked Thunder!**
Tuoba Pusa’s chest was struck as if by lightning, but with merely a soft inhale, the eighteen golden coiling dragons abruptly halted, miraculously dispersing the force of the Stacked Thunder.
The imminent Stacked Thunder, totaling six layers, surged endlessly, each strike building upon the last.
After inhaling, Tuoba Pusa exhaled, and the dragons resumed their sinuous movements.
Breathing—such an ordinary act—yet in Tuoba Pusa’s effortless transition between stillness and motion, the terrifying Stacked Thunder of the young prince was completely neutralized by the second layer.
Xu Fengnian’s left hand, hidden within his sleeve, clenched into a fist before relaxing—an equally understated motion.
Then, Tuoba Pusa’s head jerked violently, as if struck by a bell, before his entire body was sent flying sideways.
Gu Jian Tang’s **Inch Thunder** was renowned as a thunder pool within the palm.
Staggering mid-air, Tuoba Pusa stomped heavily on the ground, forcibly steadying himself.
The Northern Wilderness War God raised his arm, using his thumb to wipe away the blood seeping from his nose.
Golden blood!
Once the leader of the Buddhist sects, the Longshu Monk of Two Zen Temples, who had crossed paths with Xu Fengnian in the Northern Wilderness, had forged an indestructible Vajra body through supreme cultivation, his blood sublimated into golden liquid.
Eight hundred years ago, the Qin alchemists who tirelessly sought immortality overseas for emperors were most famously associated with the divine ability to **turn stone into gold**—a concept that, though dismissed as shortsighted by the mundane, remained highly revered in later Taoist traditions, particularly the Inner Alchemy School. The Wudang Patriarch, a master of Taoist inner alchemy, bridged the gap between past and future, with Wudang’s **Great Yellow Court** and Longhu Mountain’s **Jade Emperor Tower** techniques standing as pinnacles of qi cultivation. The former was even said to hold the secret of **”enlightenment in a single moment, ascension in an instant.”** Thus, Taoism’s **gold** and Buddhism’s **indestructible golden body**, both profound in meaning, stood as symbols of transcendence.
Tuoba Pusa glanced around, curious as to why his young mortal enemy had not chosen to press his advantage.
Had he realized that attempting to crush Tuoba Pusa’s outward energy in one go was a fool’s errand?
Or was he secretly gathering strength for a true killing move, akin to the White Fox’s **Eighteen Halts** that had once forced him back?
Whatever the young prince’s thoughts, Tuoba Pusa cared not.
Martial realm, warrior physique, martial mindset.
A tripod of balance.
Generally, external physique and internal mindset together elevate one’s realm.
Tuoba Pusa had once been supremely confident in his physique, much like Liyang’s Xuan Yuan Dapan—believing the body to be the true foundation. After his battle with Deng Tai’a, borrowing swords across ten thousand li, his mindset had neared perfection. Yet, his subsequent thousand-mile pursuit of Xu Fengnian in the Western Regions left him hanging by a thread, and the battle at Dragon Eye Plains saw him forced back by the unprecedented **Eighteen Halts** of the enigmatic White Fox. Though his physique now surpassed his former self, and his realm stood above the other three Grandmasters of the Martial Rankings, his only lingering regret—not a flaw, but a regret—was his mindset.
The subtlety of mindset lies in the small perfections of each level. Even second-rank masters could achieve flawless mindsets, like Xuan Yuan Dapan of Huishan or Li Houzhong, the Snow Hut Spear Saint of Liyang—both deemed near-invincible within their realms despite their notorious lack of martial virtue. Among the Three Teachings, those who reached first-rank often leaned toward benevolence but lacked combat prowess compared to pure martial artists who **”cultivated strength, not heart.”** The true challenge of mindset lay in its profound hierarchy. Wang Xianzhi, who dominated the martial world for sixty years, claimed he could fight nine others on the Martial Rankings simultaneously and remain undefeated—a mindset so towering it seemed he should have ascended long ago, sparing the world his dominance.
Tuoba Pusa wanted to know how the vanished young prince had once attained such a mindset. Thus, he refrained from counterattacking, allowing Xu Fengnian to unleash his life’s techniques—using him as the finest whetstone to hone his own mindset.
For the first time, Tuoba Pusa spoke, his voice like thunder:
**”Xu Fengnian!”**
The Northern Wilderness War God’s battle intent surged, as if to say: *I’ve let you warm up—now it’s my turn.*
Xu Fengnian finally revealed himself, his purple-gold python robe suspended high in the air as he looked down and replied:
**”Calling for your granddaddy?”**
Tuoba Pusa sneered upward:
**”The mighty Prince of Northern Liang, reduced to petty taunts?!”**
Xu Fengnian smirked dismissively, then narrowed his eyes and glanced south toward Jubei City.
*Here they come.*
A storm of swords.
If the world’s greatest sword borrowers were ranked, Li Chun Gang stood first, Xu Fengnian second.
The dense, soaring rain of swords came from the scattered remnants of Wudang Mountain’s battle with the Zhang Family Sage—thousands of buried swords from the Sword Mausoleums of Youzhou and Hezhou, supplemented by six thousand ordinary iron blades gathered by the Fushui and Yangying divisions alongside the Fish-Dragon Gang from the martial and civilian circles of Northern Liang and Huainan.
At that moment, the three ten-thousand-strong siege formations of the Northern Wilderness couldn’t help but glance upward and gulp.
Nearly eight thousand flying swords swept from east to west, then arced around Jubei City’s southern sky, streaking northward over the frontier fortress before—
**All pointing toward the Northern Wilderness army outside the city!**
A downpour of rain might drench, but few ever died from it.
But what if the heavens rained blades?
Tuoba Pusa growled:
**”Daring to split your focus controlling swords?! Xu Fengnian, you’re courting death!”**
Xu Fengnian’s hand slammed downward.
**Eight Thousand Swords Descend!**
A sleeve of green snakes—sword aura like a dragon emerging from water—lunged straight for Tuoba Pusa below.
Tuoba Pusa stomped the ground, triggering a thunderous explosion as he shot upward, one golden dragon leading the charge toward Xu Fengnian.
Xu Fengnian’s **Eighteen Sleeves of Green Snakes** lashed out one after another.
Below Jubei City, though nearly all Northern Wilderness infantry raised their shields against the arrow-like swords, a third of the blades pierced through heavy shields, armor, and flesh—nailing over three thousand soldiers to the ground.
Another two thousand luckier barbarians lost shoulders, thighs, or feet to the swords, their combat effectiveness crippled. The three infantry formations, painstakingly advanced to fifty paces from the walls, collapsed into chaos.
From start to finish, Jubei City had not loosed a single arrow.
Half of the eight thousand swords shattered, but four thousand remained intact, embedded in the earth like a forbidding sword array between the city and the Northern Wilderness army.
Such a massive sword-control feat, especially against a Grandmaster like Tuoba Pusa, demanded a heavy toll.
First, the eight thousand swords, then the eighteen sleeves of green snakes.
Against Tuoba Pusa, primed and shielded by eighteen dragons.
The young prince’s eighteen sword auras were indeed shattered by the golden dragons, though his **Immortal’s Caress** still struck Tuoba Pusa’s crown—only to be met by a fist to his own gut.
Tuoba Pusa, barely swaying, surged upward step by step, each punch hammering Xu Fengnian’s blocking arms until the final blow shattered his guard and smashed into his face!
The young prince’s body vanished like a daytime ascension, dissolving into the sea of clouds.
Tuoba Pusa hovered three hundred zhang above the earth.
**The heavens above—unchallenged!**
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