The four massive fists struck the silver defensive bell at the exact same fraction of a second.
For a single heartbeat, there was no sound. The sheer kinetic violence of the impact outpaced sound itself, compressing the air in the courtyard into a visible, rippling dome of distortion.
Then, the air cracked.
CRA-CRACK!
The Heavenly Tribulation Sword Array detonated. Shards of solidified profound energy exploded outward like silver shrapnel. The backlash was instantaneous and catastrophic.
Behind Vane, the triangular formation violently collapsed. Elon's eyes rolled back into his head as his overtaxed meridians ruptured. He was thrown backward like a broken doll, blood spraying from his mouth as he crashed through the remnants of a marble archway. Kael's knees buckled, both of his arms dislocating with a sickening pop as the overwhelming force transferred through his blade, dropping him face-first into the mud. Sira let out a sharp, choked gasp as the shockwave ripped her feet from the ground and slammed her brutally against a severed willow stump.
The array was dead. Vane stood entirely alone.
Without the stabilizing energy of his juniors, Vane's Spirit Profound aura flickered and died. The Taurus Fiend did not hesitate. Before the silver shards even hit the ground, the beast's lower right fist followed through, driving directly into Vane's chest.
Vane managed to cross his arms and bring the flat of his blade up just in time, but it wasn't nearly enough.
The impact sounded like a siege ram hitting a wooden gate. Vane's ribs cracked instantly. He was launched backward through the air, skipping across the shattered black jade paving stones like a skipped stone across water. He tumbled violently through the mud and debris, finally crashing to a halt at the very edge of the vaporized stream.
Leon dug his fingers into the dirt, his heart hammering against his ribs . He couldn't breathe. The sheer pressure of the Fiend's Earth Profound energy was suffocating.
His knuckles turned stark white around the hilt of his chipped short sword. His heart screamed at him to charge forward, to swing his blade, to do something. But Leon ruthlessly forced his legs to stay planted behind the pillar, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. He wasn't a coward; but he knew the bitter, infuriating truth -- stepping into this battlefield at this moment is would be a foolish thing to do ,with his Nascent Profound cultivation he couldn't save them. It would only make him a dead weight, forcing Vane to waste a vital fraction of a second to protect him. His time to act would come. He just had to wait for the exact right moment.
Through the settling dust, the Taurus Fiend let out a triumphant, blood-curdling roar. It stomped forward, the ground trembling beneath its hooves. It loomed over Vane's battered body, raising one of its massive, hooved feet to crush the Heavenly Tribulation genius's skull into the mud.
Vane lay on his back, staring up at the descending shadow.
He tried to summon his profound energy. He reached deep into his dantian, commanding his Qi to rise, to flare, to defend. But there was nothing. His meridians were scorched, his reserves utterly empty. His left arm was completely shattered, hanging at a grotesque angle. His right hand, slick with his own blood, still gripped his silver sword, but his muscles screamed in agony just holding it.
I am going to die, Vane realized.
It was not a panic-stricken thought. It was a cold, absolute fact.
And in that moment of absolute, inescapable death, something within Vane's mind simply... let go.
He stopped fighting the emptiness in his meridians. He stopped trying to force profound energy that wasn't there. He stopped seeing the sword in his hand as a tool to channel power, and instead, saw it for what it truly was.
This sword was not a weapon. It was an extemtion of his arm. It was his unyielding will.
Time seemed to grind to a halt. The descending hoof of the Taurus Fiend, large enough to crush a boulder, moved in slow motion.
Vane's eyes, previously wide with exhaustion, turned perfectly, terrifyingly calm. They resembled the surface of a deep, frozen lake.
He didn't use profound energy. Instead, a strange, invisible hum began to vibrate from the silver blade. It wasn't flashy. There was no blinding light, no rushing wind. But Leon, watching from his hiding spot, suddenly felt an instinctive, primal terror that made the hairs on his arms stand straight up.
The very air around Vane's blade was warping. It felt... sharp. So sharp that just looking at it made Leon's eyes sting.
Sword Intent !
It was the legendary threshold of martial comprehension. It was the manifestation of a swordsman's soul, unbound by the limits of mortal energy. A major breathrough for any recognized swordsman .
Vane moved.
He didn't leap or roar. Pushing off his right foot with the very last ounce of his physical strength, he twisted his shattered body out from under the descending hoof by a hair's breadth.
THOOM!
The hoof pulverized the ground where Vane's head had been a fraction of a second before, sending a shower of jagged rocks tearing through Vane's right thigh and shoulder. Blood painted his white robes red, but Vane's expression did not change.
Using the Fiend's own downward momentum, Vane pivoted on his bloody heel and thrust his sword straight upward, aiming directly for the thick, muscular neck of the demon-bull.
The silver blade, wrapped in the invisible, terrifying edge of Sword Intent, pierced the Fiend's throat.
But this was an Earth Profound beast. Its flesh was as dense as a mountain, its bones forged in the raw, ambient energy of the ancient ruins. Even with Sword Intent, the blade did not simply glide through.
The sword sank deep into the meat, slicing through the jugular, but then it hit the massive cervical spine.
SCREEEEECH!
A horrific, ear-piercing sound of metal grinding against impossibly dense bone echoed through the courtyard. The sword stopped.
The Fiend's eyes bulged in agonizing shock. Boiling, foul-smelling blood geysered from its throat, showering Vane in dark crimson. The beast thrashed wildly, its four arms blindly swiping at the air in a desperate frenzy to crush the human attached to the blade. One of the flailing fists clipped Vane's shoulder, snapping his collarbone with a sickening crunch.
But Vane did not let go.
He planted his feet in the bloody mud. His face contorted into a mask of absolute, savage exertion. The veins on his neck bulged as if they were about to burst. He screamed—a raw, mortal, blood-gargling roar—and threw his entire body weight, his soul --his newly born Sword Intent into the hilt of the blade.
"BREAK!" Vane roared.
The invisible aura around the blade flared with a terrifying hum.
CRACK.
The Earth Profound bone finally gave way. The silver blade ripped through the spine, slicing horizontally through the rest of the thick muscle and hide.
The colossal, horned head of the Taurus Fiend slid off its neck.
It hung in the air for a fraction of a second before crashing heavily onto the black jade stones, its dead, crimson eyes staring blankly at the rainbow sky.
A geyser of black blood erupted from the stump of the beast's neck, raining down upon the courtyard. The massive, four-armed body swayed for a long moment like a felled oak tree. Then, it collapsed backward, hitting the earth with a final, booming thud that shook the ruins one last time.
Silence, thick and absolute reined over the Sunken Expanse .
Vane stood completely still for two seconds. He looked at the headless corpse. He looked at his own blood-soaked sword off which the sword intent has now dissapeared .
Then..
His eyes rolled back. His grip failed. The silver sword clattered against the stones. Vane collapsed onto his back, sinking into the mud and the blood of the beast, his chest heaving with shallow, ragged gasps.
Leon slowly, unsteadily pushed himself up from the dirt.
His clothes were torn, and his face was covered in a thick layer of grey dust and dried mud, but beside a few scrapes from flying debris, he was relatively unharmed. He had been shielded from the true nightmare of the battle by the swordsmen from the Heavenly tirbulation sword sect .
Leon stumbled out from behind his pillar, his eyes wide as he took in the absolute carnage.
The beautiful, serene courtyard was gone. The crystal stream was a dry, scorched trench. The giant weeping willows were nothing but splintered stumps. The black jade paving stones had been pulverized into a massive, cratered arena of ruin.
And scattered across this wasteland were the members of the Heavenly Tribulation Sword Sect.
Elon was curled in a fetal position near a shattered archway, coughing up weak, bubbling spurts of blood, completely unable to move his legs. Kael was lying flat on his back, his dislocated arms resting uselessly at his sides, his breath coming in short, agonizing wheezes as he stared blankly at the sky. Sira was slumped against a broken pillar, her eyes half-closed, her white robes stained dark with her own blood, barely conscious.
And Vane, the leader, the newly awakened master of Sword Intent, lay motionless in a pool of the fiend's blood, his chest rising and falling so weakly he looked increadibly feeble .
They had won. They had crossed the impossible chasm between True Profound and Earth Profound.
Leon limped toward the center of the crater. He looked down at the broken, bleeding youths who, just hours ago with bright smiles, had promised they would protect him.
They had done exactly that. They had kept their word to the absolute limit. They had nearly forfeited their own lives, yet they never once called upon him to act as bait or fodder, knowing this battle was certain death for someone of his level.
Looking at their battered bodies, a profound shift occurred within Leon. The lingering guilt of his earlier manipulation burned away entirely, replaced by an iron-clad resolve. He was indebted to them, body and soul. These people were rare in this cruel world, and they were worth protecting.
Leon gripped his chipped sword, his jaw setting as he made up his mind. He would not just be a survivor hiding behind them anymore. When the moment comes, he would repay this debt .