Chapter 213: When Anomalies Clash
"Shadow-Splitting Flash—Third Form."
Su Tianhao's voice rang through the clearing, Dark Nether already moving behind him.
"Ninefold Deathflash!"
BOOM!
He vanished—reappearing before Lu Ruyi in the span of a single breath.
Nine impossibly precise slashes tore through space in less than a heartbeat.
Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash. Slash.
Each strike followed the last not just in motion but in perfect intent—as though nine swords had moved with one soul. And this time the technique didn't merely carry Sword Sense and Killing Sword Sense. Sword Will ran through every arc, giving each slash the particular weight of absolute conviction.
Lu Ruyi's crystalline eyes narrowed to fine points.
"Petal Drift Step—Vanishing Wind!"
Her figure flickered. Blurred.
The nine slashes tore through space without resistance—passing through her completely.
Su Tianhao paused.
Her figure was already fading, dissolving like morning mist struck by light. No resistance. No impact. Nothing.
'An afterimage!'
The momentum of his Sword Will carried through regardless, manifesting outward—nine precise cuts carving themselves into the bark of a massive ironpine several metres away with clean, geometric finality.
Lu Ruyi appeared behind him, her movement fluid and entirely unhurried.
"You're going to need more than that if you want to defeat me."
'Behind me!'
His instinct fired before the words finished landing.
He turned—
"Radiant Petal Blade—Second Form: Petal Bloom!"
Her voice arrived like an icy whisper carried on winter wind. Her sword moved in rapid succession, each strike releasing petal-shaped sword Qi that spiralled through the air with a lethal, almost cruel beauty.
Chi! Chi! Chi!
Multiple streams of sword Qi tore through the clearing, converging on Su Tianhao from every angle—each one aimed at a vital point with surgical precision.
He recognised the technique instantly. He had watched her use it against the Berserk Bear in Dragonspire Forest. But that version and this one bore the same name the way a candle and a bonfire both bear the name flame.
"Dragon Burst!"
He surged sideways and then forward—a halo of golden light trailing behind him as his speed exceeded that of a 1st Level Martial Core expert. He cleared Lu Ruyi's attack in the same breath that he arrived before her, Dark Nether gleaming with ominous light.
Lu Ruyi stood her ground, watchful and entirely still.
Her lips curved.
"I wouldn't do that."
"What—"
The chill ran down his spine before the thought completed.
Without any conscious direction, the petal-shaped sword Qi he had just evaded had changed trajectory mid-air—curving back, redirected by Lu Ruyi's will alone, converging on his new position from multiple angles simultaneously.
His golden eyes widened by a fraction.
'Damnit!'
He turned to face them, eyes blazing with fighting spirit.
"Shadow-Splitting Flash—Ninefold Deathflash!"
Dark Nether tore through the air.
The crimson gemstone eyes of the dragon-head hilt flared with sudden light—brilliant and fierce, blazing as though the sword had recognised the threat before its wielder fully had. The blade responded instantly, the entire length engulfing itself in ethereal crimson-gold energy that radiated a sharpness the air around it couldn't comfortably hold.
Nine sword slashes erupted in a single breath. Each one impossibly precise. Each one cutting through Lu Ruyi's sword Qi like a blade through silk.
But in defending, he had opened himself.
Lu Ruyi arrived from behind—crystalline blue eyes gleaming with fierce focus—as though she had been waiting for exactly this.
"Radiant Petal Blade—First Form: Petal Drift Slash!"
Her figure blurred, arriving at his exposed back with effortless grace.
Slash! Slash! Slash!
Multiple rapid strikes rang out in quick succession, sharp and precisely placed.
Swoosh!
The Dragon Instinct fired. Without deliberate thought, Dragon Defence activated in the same instant.
Her sword found its marks—cutting through his azure robes—but instead of blood, it drew only brilliant sparks. Steel striking something that refused to be steel.
Su Tianhao gritted his teeth. Even with Dragon Defence absorbing the worst of it, the impact registered clearly. A dull, bone-deep ache, not pain in the ordinary sense, but the particular discomfort of force that had been redirected rather than stopped.
Dragon Defence could only negate damage from opponents of equivalent output. His total output already surpassed 1st Level Martial Core standard. By logic, no cultivator at that level should be able to hurt him at all.
Which meant Lu Ruyi was not a 1st Level Martial Core expert in any sense the cultivation world had a framework for.
With Dragon Defence active, his presence transformed.
His skin pulsed with radiant golden light. Beneath the surface, his veins glowed like molten rivers through jade—the Dragon Veins alive and fully visible, surging in currents along his arms and throat. Individual strands of his hair lifted and stirred as though each one carried its own current of spiritual energy. Ancient patterns etched themselves across every inch of his body from scalp to sole—twisting, spiralling, breathing. They resembled dragon scales rendered in flowing script, as though something older than the cultivation world itself had pressed its signature into his skin.
"..."
Lu Ruyi had stopped moving.
She stared. Her eyes wide, expression stripped of its usual composure—caught somewhere between awe and something she hadn't prepared a name for.
Above the clearing, Qiongqi trembled. The Jade Winged Eagle's wings beat instinctively, then stilled—her entire body pressing downward as though her own bloodline had issued a command she hadn't chosen to obey. She lowered her head. Slowly. Deliberately. The pride she wore like armour nowhere to be found.
She didn't raise it again.
Su Tianhao glanced at Lu Ruyi's expression and deactivated Dragon Defence immediately.
"Are you going to keep staring," he said with dry patience, "or are you going to fight."
"S-Staring!"
Her face flushed—swift and total, colour rushing to her cheeks with absolutely no warning. She looked, for one unguarded moment, nothing like the Lotus Sword Fairy of the Lianhua Sect.
"Yes. You were staring."
The embarrassment lasted precisely long enough to be undeniable.
Then she hit him with it instead.
"Radiant Petal Blade—Third Form—"
Her spiritual energy flared. Aurora light spiralled outward from her in waves—beautiful, layered, utterly deadly.
Boom!
She launched into the air with a single burst, rising above the clearing with her sword raised high. Her black hair fanned behind her, threaded through with aurora light, and her expression had gone cold—the composed serenity of someone who has located the distance where embarrassment cannot follow.
"Night Cleaver!"
Her crystalline blue eyes glowed with a celestial shimmer.
The atmosphere bore down. An immense pressure descended on the clearing—and then her sword came down with a single, sweeping motion that carried a momentum entirely out of proportion with its simplicity.
"Brilliant..."
Su Tianhao's eyes flickered wide. The word left him before he chose it.
BOOOOM!!!!
The explosion of impact sent shockwaves of vibrant aurora light scattering in every direction, his robes whipping violently in the blast. Dark Nether met her silver blade in a precisely timed parry—and immediately the force pressing down on him was staggering, enormous, incomprehensible from a 1st Level Martial Core cultivator.
His muscles surged to their limit. Veins rose across his forearms and temples. His feet carved deep gashes into the earth as he was steadily, inexorably pushed backward.
'How is this possible?'
The strength behind her attack measured close to 800,000 pounds—comparable to a 3rd Level Martial Core expert. By every standard calculation, her output should not exceed 200,000. Even accounting for a powerful technique, the mathematics didn't hold.
"What? Not going to tease me now?"
Her aurora eyes gleamed with mocking delight, vibrant light shimmering around her like living flame.
"Damnit!"
"Raging Dragon Fist—Dragon God Enchantment!"
Whoosh!
Spiritual energy surged through his arms—spiralling around his fists before condensing inward, drawn tight against bone and muscle. His fists ignited gold, strange runic patterns spreading along his arms in the same rippling wave as the technique's activation.
Lu Ruyi's expression turned serious for the first time. Her eyes narrowed.
"AAARRGH!!!"
Su Tianhao roared and drove forward with everything the Dragon God Enchantment could give—440,000 pounds of output, surpassing ordinary 2nd Level Martial Core experts.
It wasn't enough.
Her glow intensified. Her feet didn't move.
BOOOM!
He was sent flying—hauled backward through the air, crossing several metres before crashing into the solid trunk of a massive ironpine. Dragon Defence activated in the fraction of a second before impact—absorbing just enough to keep the collision from being catastrophic—then faded.
Su Tianhao groaned as he pushed himself upright, ironpine needles raining around him like green snow.
He raised his head.
Lu Ruyi was already arriving—no pause, no breath between—her aurora energy condensed and manifested around her blade in a long, spectral extension of pure sword Qi stretching nine feet from the tip.
"Dragon Burst!"
He surged sideways—Dragon God Enchantment and Dragon Burst combining, effective speed and force reaching 520,000 pounds. He vanished in a trail of golden light and reappeared dozens of metres away.
SLASH!!!
Her attack struck the ironpine trunk a heartbeat later. The cut glowed like molten metal, sizzling quietly at its edges, curling smoke rising from wood that had withstood years of Outer Court training without yielding a sliver.
Su Tianhao exhaled slowly through his nose. 'Terrifying.'
Ironpine bark was as dense as reinforced steel—every Outer Court Disciple knew that on their first day. It could absorb powerful strikes without flinching. Yet Lu Ruyi's attack had carved through it as though it were soft timber. It wasn't merely her strength. The sharpness of her technique existed at a different level entirely—Sword Will refined to a point where cutting was no longer a function of force but of absolute certainty.
Something deepened in his chest that he hadn't expected.
Respect. Genuine and uncomplicated.
"See that, rascal!"
Lu Ruyi's voice rang across the clearing—loud, invigorating, fierce. "That's the true strength of Sword Will! Without entering the Martial Core Realm, you're only touching the surface of your real potential!"
"Don't mislead me," Su Tianhao called back, steadying himself. "Sword Will enhanced the sharpness of your sword Qi—I'll grant you that. But it has nothing to do with your absurd strength. That's something else entirely."
"Me, absurd?" Lu Ruyi laughed—short and bright. "You are a Peak-stage Martial Adept hitting 2nd Level Martial Core output. You are the bigger monster."
"Just tell me how you did it."
She paused for a beat. Her aurora eyes flickered—something brief and internal crossing her expression before she set it aside.
"One of the few benefits of my heavenly constitution," she said, with a deliberate nonchalance that landed slightly heavier than she intended.
"I see."
Su Tianhao extended his hand—and breathed.
Spiritual energy answered from a forty-five-metre radius, drawn inward with control so precise it barely disturbed the air between them. Lu Ruyi's eyes moved across the clearing without finding the source of the change. A testament to the Devouring Dragon Tactic at Small Success. The world fed him, and she couldn't see the seam.
"Dragon Burst!"
He surged forward—faster now, smoother, the replenished reserves making the movement feel effortless in a way his previous bursts hadn't.
Lu Ruyi smiled. "Let's see what you have left."
"Shadow-Splitting Flash—Second Form: Phantom Bloom!"
He exploded upward into the air.
WHOOSH!
Dark Nether erupted from his side with sudden, violent force—its edge vanishing into a blur. The air distorted as the strike split apart into a torrent of phantom afterimages, obsidian petals spreading through the clearing in every direction like a sea of falling blades caught in a violent storm.
Lu Ruyi's eyes widened—caught, for an instant, between shock and the recognition of something genuinely beautiful. Hundreds of phantom blades surrounded her, each one indistinguishable from the last. A tidal wave made of swords and shadows.
Su Tianhao's eyes narrowed to a single, burning point.
One of those countless slashes was real. One carried true killing intent. One—aimed at the slender line of her neck—had been chosen from the beginning.
He brought it down.
Lu Ruyi closed her eyes.
One heartbeat before impact—they snapped open, gleaming with profound clarity.
CLANG!
Her sword rose to her exposed flank—not her neck, not the angle the attack had suggested, but the exact position the blade truly occupied—and blocked it without excess motion.
"How?"
His brows pulled together hard.
No one had ever seen through this attack. Not with that timing. Not with that certainty.
"Soul power," Lu Ruyi said, with the flat simplicity of someone stating a law rather than sharing a secret. "With sufficient soul power and the right application, illusions become transparent. Especially one this straightforward."
BAM!
She kicked him backward in the same breath—and was already moving before he left the ground, sword levelled into a forward thrust that tracked him through the air with the precision of a loosed arrow.
Su Tianhao twisted mid-flight.
The blade tore through a portion of his robe—close enough that he felt the air of its passage against his skin.
"Nice reflexes," Lu Ruyi said.
He didn't answer. He landed, flexed his grip on Dark Nether—and made a decision.
The Heavenly Surge Rune activated.
The single line running along the obsidian blade ignited—a pulse of golden light spreading from rune to edge, the blade's presence sharpening as the inscription amplified its output twofold.
'Since raw strength won't close the gap, I'll use every tool available. The Heavenly Surge Rune brings my output to 880,000—higher than her attack force. That changes the arithmetic.'
He charged without announcement.
His slash arrived at her right shoulder—sharp, committed. Lu Ruyi moved to block it. At the last possible moment, he reversed his grip and redirected—a clean switch in direction, the blade now driving for her left shoulder.
'A feint!'
She read it an instant too late. Her body had already committed to the block.
She tried to disengage—to create distance before the blade arrived.
Shiiiiiin!
Dark Nether rang through the air.
Whoosh!
The blade sliced through strands of her black hair, passing close enough to her face that she felt the edge of its intent as clearly as its steel.
Lu Ruyi stepped back sharply, her heart knocking against her ribs with a force she wasn't ready to examine.
"That was reckless! Are you trying to kill me?!"
"I achieved the Realm of Perfect Edge," Su Tianhao replied, his voice entirely even. "My control is precise. You of all people should understand what that means."
"Tch." She clicked her tongue. "And now you've resorted to runes. Cheap trick."
She kicked the earth—dust and debris spraying upward—and drove forward once more.
Su Tianhao studied her arrival. He prepared to deflect her attack—and then something in Lu Ruyi's eyes told him she had already anticipated the preparation. The quiet calculation in his expression. The subtle weight shift in his shoulder. The positioning of his leading foot.
She knew.
CLANG!
Steel met steel. Instead of the clean deflection he'd intended, he was forced into a parry—absorbing the impact rather than redirecting it. He held. With the Heavenly Surge Rune's amplification, his output now exceeded hers, and the lock held firm.
Her lips curved.
The standoff broke in the same instant—she dropped her centre of gravity, weight shifting forward and low, her blade angling into a riposte that moved through the gap his parry had created.
'A Riposte.'
He read it the moment her weight shifted. He moved with it rather than against it, stepping clear before the angle committed, and the counter found nothing.
Two anomalies.
Two prodigies who had touched the Realm of Perfect Edge.
The sword dao was their domain—every exchange a calculation in motion, every feint and counter a conversation conducted in steel and intent. The clearing had gone quiet around them, the forest holding itself back as though it recognised that something was happening within it that couldn't be adequately observed.
It was unknown who would win.
What wasn't unknown—what had been silently obvious to both of them since the moment the first exchange landed—was that neither of them had yet shown the other everything.
And Dark Nether, riding the Heavenly Surge Rune's amplification, hummed.
Not loudly. Not in a way that announced itself. A low, continuous resonance that lived in the blade's fuller—felt more than heard, like a frequency pressed against the palm. It had begun sometime in the last exchange and hadn't stopped.
Lu Ruyi's eyes dropped to the blade for one unguarded moment.
Her voice, when it came, was stripped of its usual competitive edge—replaced by something quieter, more genuine.
"That sword of yours," she said. "It's remarkable."
Dark Nether hummed again—a single, deliberate vibration, as though it had been waiting for precisely that observation and had decided to acknowledge it.
Lu Ruyi went still.
She stared at the blade. Then at Su Tianhao. Then at the blade again.
"...Did it just respond to me?"
Su Tianhao studied the sword for a moment, his expression carefully neutral.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
His grip, however, had tightened on the hilt—and he could feel the warmth there, steady and unhurried, entirely unbothered by the denial.