Chapter 239: Love Makes One Blind
After three days of relentless travel, pushing through day and night without pause, the group of five finally arrived at the mist-shrouded foot of Tianqiong Peak.
Unlike her previous visit, Red Kite immediately sensed a dense cluster of auras blanketing the summit. Hundreds of distinct presences pressed down from above. Some carried the familiar resonance of her past, while others felt entirely foreign. This gathering of martial intent was undoubtedly the grand drama Su Mei had orchestrated.
"It seems the top martial artists of the entire world have gathered here, haven't they?" Rovel remarked, his gaze sweeping up the towering stone steps.
This was no longer a mere internal dispute among the Taixu disciples. Every single one of the two hundred and seventeen members of the Taixu Sword Sect, founded by Lin Chaoyu, had been mobilized. Beyond them, countless other sects from across Shenzhou, both large and small, had been dragged into the fray. Su Mei had pulled every string available, amassing this massive army just to increase their razor-thin chances of victory by a mere fraction.
Looking at the sheer concentration of martial talent gathered on a single mountain, Rovel finally understood why the cultivation system in Shenzhou would become so desolate five hundred years in the future. This upcoming battle was going to be a slaughter, wiping out an entire generation of prodigies and masters in one fell swoop.
"Quite a grand display," Cheng Lingshuang murmured casually, her voice devoid of any tension. "But they are all just fodder. No matter how many ants gather, they remain ants."
She had felt the oppressive weight of the hundreds of presences on the mountain, yet not a single ripple of panic disturbed the calm surface of her eyes. To someone of her deep realm, wiping out this entire crowd would require no more effort than flipping her palm.
However, she had no intention of intervening in this bloodbath. Unless Rovel explicitly asked for her assistance, she would keep her sword sheathed. She had come purely with the mindset of a detached spectator, treating this historic clash as a theatrical performance while bringing Li Sushang along to gain some real-world experience.
Li Sushang, on the other hand, felt a suffocating pressure bearing down on her shoulders. Her breathing grew shallow. Through her newly refined senses, she could detect at least twenty distinct presences on the mountain that were no weaker than Zhang Chengqi, the formidable opponent she had recently slain. Although her strength had grown by leaps and bounds after comprehending Sword Intent, the prospect of dealing with so many apex masters at once was far beyond her current limits.
"Let us go up," Red Kite said, her voice steady and resolute. Tianqiong Peak felt vastly different from her first tragic visit, but she was different now, too. She was no longer walking this path alone.
Rovel nodded, stepping up to follow closely behind Red Kite. Cheng Lingshuang walked casually by his side, with Li Sushang trailing nervously behind her master. As for Otto, the blonde man followed silently at the very back of the formation, his emerald eyes scanning the surroundings, seemingly waiting for a specific opportunity to present itself. Or perhaps he was simply biding his time because his agreement with Rovel had not yet been fulfilled. He still owed the young man a significant favor, and Otto Apocalypse was not one to leave debts unpaid.
As the group reached the midpoint of the mountain, Rovel placed his boot onto the next stone step. Instantly, the surrounding scenery warped and twisted around him. The towering trees and ancient stone paths blurred into streaks of chaotic color.
Rovel stopped in his tracks, his eyes narrowing as he scanned the new environment. The others had vanished. He had unknowingly been pulled into a Mirage, an complex illusion constructed entirely of manipulated light by Ma Feima. At that exact moment, the rest of the group had been forcefully separated, each trapped within their own isolated pocket of refracted reality.
"Trying to pick us off one by one?" Rovel asked the empty air, his tone perfectly calm.
He knew the limitations of this technique. A Mirage of this caliber could, at most, temporarily trap Li Sushang or Otto. Against Red Kite, Cheng Lingshuang, or himself, it was practically useless. Su Mei was far too calculating to miss such an obvious flaw, meaning this isolation tactic served a different purpose entirely.
"Immortal Art: Human Zenith!" Rovel declared. He took a single, deliberate step forward. A massive, glowing Taiji symbol materialized beneath his feet, radiating a pure, stabilizing energy that threatened to tear the illusion apart.
Just as he gathered his internal energy to shatter the Mirage with a single, devastating blow, a sharp hum sliced through the air. A gleaming blade materialized from the void, thrusting straight toward his throat with lethal precision.
"Ma Feima," Rovel said coldly. "Even at this point, are you still so stubbornly deluded?"
Rovel casually raised his hand, his fingers coated in a dense layer of true qi, and clamped down on the incoming blade. He stopped the deadly thrust dead in its tracks, his cold eyes locking onto the figure of Ma Feima stepping out from the refracted light.
"Do you realize that Su Mei's current actions could destroy the very foundation of Shenzhou?" Rovel demanded, his grip on the blade unyielding.
Ma Feima remained entirely silent. His face was a mask of grim determination. Although his mastery over light allowed him to create flawless visual Mirages, he could not alter the physical source of his voice. The moment he spoke, the acoustic reverberations would instantly expose his true location within the illusion.
Instead of answering, the space around them fractured. In an instant, several identical copies of Ma Feima materialized simultaneously. They lunged at Rovel from every conceivable blind spot, their swords drawing deadly arcs through the air.
"What kind of spell did Su Mei cast on you to make you so obedient?" Rovel asked, smoothly dodging a horizontal slash while parrying another with the back of his hand. "To make you willingly abandon your dreams, discard your freedom, and risk universal condemnation just to act as her disposable shield?"
Seeing the relentless barrage of attacks, Rovel released the floodgates of his inner energy. A dense, translucent barrier of true qi expanded outward, forming an absolute defense around his body.
Ma Feima held nothing back. The deep principles of Taixu Sword Qi, Sword Shape, Sword Intent, and Sword Soul merged smoothly with his own self-created martial arts. The combined assault rained down upon Rovel relentlessly. Violent torrents of Sword Qi, blinding flashes of sword light, and thousands of lethal sword shadows erupted within the Mirage. Every single strike carried absolute killing intent, aimed at erasing Rovel from existence.
Yet, as this apocalyptic storm of blades crashed against Rovel's energy barrier, a shield barely a foot thick, the attacks simply dissipated. The terrifying strikes shattered like fragile glass against solid steel, leaving Rovel completely unharmed.
Finally, Rovel seemed to grow tired of the futile display. His arm shot out with the speed of striking lightning, his palm piercing through the chaotic storm of sword light to grasp at empty air.
As his fingers clamped shut and applied a fraction of his terrifying strength, the surrounding Mirage shattered like a broken mirror. The false scenery vanished instantly, revealing the true mountain path. Ma Feima's physical body was now suspended in the air, his throat caught firmly in Rovel's crushing grip.
Just as Rovel prepared to snap the man's neck and end the meaningless struggle, a terrifying, chaotic power suddenly erupted from deep within Ma Feima's body.
Inside his meridians, a forbidden technique known as the Peerless Nine Cycles began circulating with frantic, self-destructive speed. The ambient true qi of Tianqiong Peak violently converged toward him, forcefully drawn into his collapsing core.
In the blink of an eye, his skin, normally sallow from years of harsh travel, bleached to a sickening, deathly white. Eerie, glowing purple patterns began to crawl across his flesh, pulsing with malevolent Honkai energy. The distinct blonde hair that symbolized his foreign Rakshasa lineage instantly drained of color, turning stark white from the roots down to the tips.
The signs were unmistakable. This horrifying physical transformation meant Ma Feima had completely succumbed to demonic corruption.
Worse still, he had chosen to induce this Qi Deviation voluntarily! He was intentionally sacrificing his sanity and his life to force a massive, temporary surge in power, all to stall Rovel for just a few moments longer.
Rovel's eyes widened slightly. He never expected that Ma Feima would go to such extreme, self-destructive lengths for Su Mei. Integrity, dignity, his humanity, and everything else he had built over a lifetime, he had discarded it all into the abyss, trading his very soul for a fleeting burst of strength.
The recently shattered Mirage violently reformed, the colors now twisted into a sickly, corrupted hue. Driven by the maddening power of corruption, Ma Feima's mastery over his Sword Intent actually forcefully broke through its limits, climbing to an entirely new, terrifying realm.
Hundreds of corrupted, purple-glowing phantoms materialized in the air, launching a synchronized, suicidal assault on Rovel.
"You really are beyond saving," Rovel sighed, his voice dropping to a chilling register. He finally stopped holding back, releasing the full, unbridled weight of his energy without a single reservation.
"Li above, Li below, the Blazing Light!"
A terrifying torrent of true qi and inner strength surged through Rovel's arm, flowing into his open palm. The surrounding space distorted as the energy rapidly compressed, converging into a massive, hyper-dense sphere of ink-black destruction.
Rovel swung his arm down with the force of a falling meteor. The ink-black sphere slammed into the mountain path, detonating instantly. A shockwave of pure annihilation swept outward, vaporizing the stone and smashing a massive, smoking crater into the earth.
In an instant, the corrupted Mirage and all its hundreds of phantoms were violently erased from existence. As the dust settled, Ma Feima lay broken and bleeding in the dead center of the crater.
The backlash of the forbidden technique had drained his life force completely. His face was heavily wrinkled, aged to look like a frail man in his seventies. His dimming eyes stared blankly up at the gray sky above Tianqiong Peak.
In his final, fading moments of consciousness, a hallucination took hold. He saw the gentle, smiling face of Su Mei leaning over him, her delicate hand reaching out to pull him up.
Ma Feima desperately raised his trembling, bloodstained hand to grasp hers. Weak, whimpering sobs escaped his throat, sounding like the cries of a lost child. He looked exactly as he had on the day he first arrived at Taixu Mountain, a helpless, broken boy, unable to even speak the language clearly, desperately clinging to the first person who showed him kindness.
But in the end, the vision of Su Mei was just like the countless illusions he had woven throughout his life. She was a beautiful phantom, visible to the eye, yet entirely impossible to touch. His hand passed right through the empty air, falling limply back against the cold stone.
A few feet away, the corrupted blade lost its glow, reverting back to its dormant form as the Xuanyuan Sword, Crimson Absolute Shadow. The dull clatter of the metal against the rocks signaled the official end of Ma Feima's tragic life.
Not far down the mountain path, a sudden, sickening crack echoed through the trees. Ma Feima's loyal steed, the majestic horse named Nightblood, seemed to sense its master's passing. Driven by an unbreakable bond, the beast let out a mournful neigh and charged headfirst into the solid mountain wall, shattering its skull and dying on the spot to follow its master into the afterlife.
Ma Feima's entire existence had been lived solely for Su Mei. He had been willing to discard his pride, his humanity, and his life for her ambitions, only to receive a fleeting, self-made illusion as his final psychological comfort.
But perhaps, in death, his shackled soul had finally gained true freedom.
"Love truly makes one blind," Rovel murmured, unable to stop a heavy sigh from escaping his lips as he looked down at the corpse.
He turned his head to check on the others, only to freeze in his tracks. A few yards away, Cheng Lingshuang was tightly hugging a large, moss-covered boulder. Her cheek was pressed affectionately against the rough stone, and a blissful, dreamy smile was plastered across her usually stoic face.
Rovel stared at the bizarre scene, his eye twitching slightly. He could easily guess exactly what kind of fantasy she was experiencing within the remnants of Ma Feima's Mirage.
He shook his head, rubbing his temples. Once again, love truly made one blind.
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