In midair, darkness blanketed an area dozens of li across, vague silhouettes flickering within. Suddenly, three sword beams pierced the gloom, shooting out in different directions!
For an instant, the three sword rays illuminated the darkness, letting everyone glimpse the scene hidden within.
Lin Xuan Daozi, Wang Moran, and the others arrived just at this moment, but Qi Jiuyi had already reached the edge of the darkness ahead of them. As for Zhe Hua Li, he was still on his way.
Everyone looked up. Under the sword-light, the darkness seemed like gauze—hazy and indistinct—with countless tiny black dots drifting in the air.
Within the sword-illuminated darkness, Lou Qianchong charged toward Quinn Shepherd, meeting the sword-light head-on—only for a sword beam to pierce straight through his chest!
During his battle with Xu Shenghua, Lou Qianchong also unleashed earth-shaking divine arts—his void-world was stunning. Yet Lou passed straight through Xu Shenghua’s powers, unharmed by any of his techniques, and instead wounded Xu Shenghua in return.
Lou Qianchong seemed utterly invincible—no technique could touch him, no power could harm him.
Yet this sword beam pierced him clean through—blood burst from his back, spraying out in a flash!
Lou Qianchong froze in shock—another sword beam swept toward his head.
At that very moment, everyone saw behind Quinn Shepherd—his third sword beam blocked the steel trident, but the trident had three prongs. The central prong was shattered by the Calamity-Opening Sword, but the other two stabbed through Quinn’s body with a double thud, then yanked him backward and dragged him into the Netherworld Gate!
"Not good!" Everyone's faces changed dramatically.
Inside the dark portal, the instant Quinn was dragged in, that terrifying demon god revealed a hideous grin—making him look even more monstrous.
Suddenly, a sword beam came out of nowhere, flying in from beyond the sky. Just as Quinn’s second sword beam severed Lou Qianchong’s head, this new sword beam also lopped off the demon god’s head—two events happening in perfect sync, at the very same instant.
Lin Xuan, Qi Jiuyi, and the others never expected such a twist—the demon god behind the gate looked invincible, yet was beheaded by Quinn’s sword beam!
But what puzzled them even more—Quinn had clearly unleashed only three Calamity-Opening moves, producing three sword beams. Where did the fourth sword beam, the one that decapitated the demon god, come from?
At the same time, the demon god’s chest exploded open—a bloody hole appeared, and another sword beam shot out from his back, trailing a spray of blood.
The portal slowly closed, blocking everyone’s view of what was happening inside—leaving them with even more questions and confusion.
There was still no answer to the source of the fourth sword beam—when suddenly, a fifth sword beam appeared out of nowhere. What was going on?
Abruptly, a pitch-black portal materialized overhead, towering in the darkness—it was Quinn Shepherd’s Gate of Bearing Heaven.
The portal opened—Quinn Shepherd stepped out of his own Gate of Bearing Heaven, leaving the Netherworld, a severed head dangling from his hand.
Behind him, the darkness gradually faded, revealing Lou Qianchong’s body—its head had vanished without a trace!
No one saw when Lou Qianchong’s head fell. Quinn Shepherd’s three sword strikes—three executions of Open the Calamity Sword—the first heavily wounded Lou, the second severed his head, the third guarded against his Netherworld attack. Yet in that lightning-fast exchange, no one actually saw Lou’s head drop from the sky.
And yet, Lou Qianchong’s head was simply gone.
"The demon god inside the Gate of Bearing Heaven was actually your true body—not a real demon god, just something that looked fierce."
Quinn Shepherd took out a vial of Dragon Spittle Elixir, poured it over his chest wound, and said coolly to the head in his hand, "You hid in the Netherworld and attacked me from there. So to those in High-Emperor Heaven, you appeared as a shadow—no one could touch your real body. That’s why Xu Shenghua lost to you; he doesn’t know the Great Ruins well or understand Youdu arts. Honestly, you’re not as strong as Qi Jiuyi, just relying on the cleverness of Netherworld techniques. But when you run into someone born in Youdu and raised in the Great Ruins, I can kill you in all sorts of ways."
The severed head was that of the demon god, but now it began to change—its hideous bone spurs retracted, and the messy hair gradually smoothed out.
Its features returned to Lou Qianchong’s own face. His eyes were still wide open, still staring at Quinn Shepherd, as if he could still hear him speak.
Quinn Shepherd tossed Lou Qianchong’s head away, letting it fall, and Lou’s headless corpse dropped from the sky as well.
"But I’m in a hurry, so I chose the simplest solution."
Quinn Shepherd’s expression remained calm: "It looked like I was attacking your shadow in the darkness, but in fact I was striking your real body in the Netherworld. With the first sword, I severed your heart and shattered your blood; with the second, I took your head; the third, I just blocked your attack. Still, you really do have skill—you actually managed to wound me."
Qi Jiuyi was not far away. Seeing Quinn Shepherd wounded, he was about to make a move, but paused at those words and smiled faintly: "He still values me—he knows I’m stronger than Senior Brother Lou Qianchong!"
He didn’t take the opportunity to attack Quinn Shepherd. With his strength, he could easily keep the wounded Quinn here, but he chose not to.
Lou Qianchong and Qi Jiuyi were fellow disciples. Qi Jiuyi had originally cultivated under the Southern Heaven Crimson Emperor, then went to the Netherworld to apprentice under the Black Emperor, though he spent less time there and wasn’t close to his Netherworld brothers.
Quinn Shepherd suppressed his injuries, let his three heads and six arms fade, stuck the Golden Willow Leaf back onto his brow, and headed straight for the World Bridge.
The crowd didn’t follow him, but stood in place, each lost in thought.
"So that’s it—there really were only three sword strikes."
Dao Heir Lucas Lin muttered in a daze, "But those three sword strikes were so miraculous, they seemed like five. When did Cult Master Quinn’s sword arts reach such a level…"
The other young cultivators had the same thought. Quinn Shepherd’s three sword strikes looked so simple, yet went from complexity to simplicity—the shock they left lingered long after.
Few could truly see the subtlety behind three swords turning into five. But the more you understood, the more shaken you felt.
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