Chapter 259 — Killing the Immortal

As the radiance thinned a little, the crowd strained eagerly to look up, and there in the fierce battlefield of the heavens they saw a vast vortex of air currents, a profound blackness like a bottomless abyss, gazing coldly down upon the mortal world; beneath the vortex the colored Immortal-slaying colossus had shed all its seven hues, becoming a blazing, dazzling white sword of light that pierced the firmament and came cleaving down with the momentum of world-annihilation.

The crimson spear snapped at the stroke!

"Ah..." A dreadful scream rose from the mouth of the King of Hell, now one with the Fuxing Cauldron; in his despairing disbelief—blood even streaming from his eyes—he howled madly: "Impossible, impossible... I have the power of Shura, I have Shura..."

His final words were drowned in the raging wind; the Immortal-slaying Sword had cloven the giant blood spear yet did not withdraw, but pressed on with its momentum—in an instant the whole vault of heaven was cloaked in the radiance of the Immortal-slaying Ancient Sword, the clouds of the sky rolling wildly, as though all the gods and demons of every heaven above and every hell below trembled and quailed before that terrible Immortal-slaying power!

That one sword—straight at the Fuxing Cauldron, straight at the King of Hell, straight into the depths of the red clouds, into the very heart of sin within the blood orb!

The blazing radiance burned all things, swept up and tore to shreds every gleam in the heavens; wind and cloud, thunder and lightning roared without cease, and countless torn clouds were swept upward and swallowed into that unfathomable black vortex in the firmament.

The King of Hell's face showed despair, but within that despair was revealed something more: madness. Laughing wildly, howling wildly, he waved both hands and abruptly thrust them into the eyes of the demonic visage carved upon the body of the Fuxing Cauldron.

"Boom!" A peal of angry thunder in an instant overwhelmed every sound beneath the heavens; two columns of blood suddenly spurted from the King of Hell's eyes, and though gravely wounded he still laughed on and on—and upon the Fuxing Cauldron, as though its final divine might had been roused, a dreadful blood-red silhouette, ten thousand zhang tall, slowly took shape behind the King of Hell.

"Die!" A maddened roar resounded through the heavens, and that eerie blood-demon shadow surged into motion, trailing a terrible aura and dragging the blood-qi of all the sky with it, and once more pounced toward the Immortal-slaying radiance.

And the blade of blazing white light that the Immortal-slaying Ancient Sword had become—in the very next instant, it struck the Fuxing Cauldron.

"Ah..."

Amid that dreadful howl, torn by heart-rending agony, and behind the dazzling burst of radiance, a figure was forcibly driven out of the Fuxing Cauldron by the Immortal-slaying Ancient Sword, flung far away as though all his strength had been stripped from him, vanishing beyond the distant horizon, never to be seen again.

And at that moment the dreadful blood-demon shadow had already pounced before the figure in the radiance; bereft of the Immortal-slaying Ancient Sword's protection, that figure now seemed frail and helpless before the terrible power of the blood-demon's ten-thousand-zhang body.

"Roar! Roar!" Amid the wild bellowing, the figure in the radiance was seized outright by the blood-demon; in but a moment the radiance scattered utterly, and the figure within was swallowed by the blood shadow. The people on Jietian Peak turned ashen with shock, screaming again and again; Lu Xueling shuddered violently, all color draining from her face, and with a "wa" spat out a mouthful of blood, swaying as though about to fall.

Suddenly, the blood-demon shadow, which had seemed to see victory and was laughing wildly in its savagery, stiffened all at once; the Immortal-slaying colossus, flying back, its Immortal-slaying power glimmering with blazing radiance, had plunged into his chest from behind.

Around the Immortal-slaying Ancient Sword the surging blood-qi scattered in a rush, revealing a dreadful wound upon the giant body that spread with terrible speed; the blood-demon shadow gave a heaven-shaking, earth-shattering roar, and in the instant before its body was about to shatter, it flung the frail body in its grasp toward the dreadful, profound vortex in the sky, where it was instantly swallowed by a mass of radiance and vanished without a trace.

Then the blood-demon shadow gave one last scream; at last it could no longer withstand the corrosion of that terrible Immortal-slaying power at its breast, and beneath the blazing white light, amid its roars, it dissolved into mist and was gone.

In the heavens, the red clouds slowly receded, the wind and clouds slowly stilled; bereft of the blood-radiance's control, the countless minions of the demon sect—as though waking from a nightmare—saw the red light fade from their eyes and slowly came back to themselves. On the side of the righteous path, everyone stared at one another, and after the nightmare there seemed to linger a surreal sense of disbelief.

"We won? We won?" Everyone asked one another this way, eyes brimming with hot tears, as though unable to believe what lay before them.

Wen Pei and Song Dayi clung to each other in a tight embrace, unwilling to part even for a moment. Only after a good while did Wen Pei remember something; tears streaming down yet a smile on her face, she turned to look at Lu Xueling and cried out, her voice hard to tell whether it was laughter or weeping: "Sister! Sister! Look at us..."

Her voice suddenly caught in her throat. Behind her, Lu Xueling's whole body had toppled over as though all life had drained from her—she had collapsed into a faint. But this small sorrow was quickly drowned out by the wave upon wave of cheering that erupted across the length and breadth of Jietian Peak.

The vortex above the horizon slowly faded away, and the gentle sunlight once more spilled down upon the world, bearing a long-awaited peace and warmth. (To be continued.)