A burst of dazzling sword-light erupted, swelling like a miniature sun—its radiance was pure sword-light unleashed!
That sphere of light expanded to a diameter of over thirty feet, then suddenly shrank back down. At its smallest, it condensed into the Sword Pill floating before Quinn Shepherd’s brow, radiating an intense, blinding glow—then erupted once more!
Whoosh—
In that instant, the sword-light exploded past a hundred feet. Over a hundred demon-path experts shouted in fury, unleashing every art they had to desperately block the terrifying sword-light. The clang and clash of impacts rang out again and again.
"Don’t be afraid of him!"
The demon-path expert who had broken Quinn’s enlightenment shouted, "I’ve been through this kind of enlightenment too! When body and Dao merge, every move fits the mysteries of the Dao, making him hard to hit. But now he’s come out of that state—he’s just an ordinary man again. We can kill him at our leisure!"
All the flying swords burst forth in full force. Each person was surrounded by seventy or eighty swords, unleashing basic sword forms—thrust, sweep, cloud-cut, chop, tap, hang, collapse. The moves were simple, but the attacks varied wildly; different swords and sword forms combined in unique ways, so every person faced a different pattern of assault.
At that moment, Quinn’s figure flickered ghost-like among eight thousand flying swords. Time seemed to slow—the swords drifted like flower petals in his eyes, and every demon expert’s stance, attack, and divine art all became eerily sluggish.
It was just as the demon expert who interrupted Quinn’s enlightenment had said: once you leave the Dao-realm, you can’t maintain that unity of body and Dao. But what he hadn’t realized was that Quinn hadn’t been comprehending Daoist arts or divine techniques at all.
He was comprehending his own cultivation method.
He was entering the Dao through his cultivation method.
The Overlord Three-Core Art was already exquisitely profound, granting Quinn Shepherd a vast and mighty reserve of power, letting his Primordial Spirit far surpass his peers. Otherwise, he couldn’t have slain four top-tier demon prodigies despite his flesh being weaker than theirs.
But now, by comprehending his cultivation method and entering the Dao, he had patched that shortcoming.
His body reached a state of perfection—each limb and bone was both an independent entity and unified as part of his flesh, allowing him to marshal the strength and energy of his entire body as one.
His speed reached its peak, far beyond before. To the demon experts fending off flying swords, all they saw was a chain of Quinn Shepherds racing forward—dozens of him overlapping in motion at the same instant.
Sssht—
Quinn grabbed a flying sword and stabbed—blood burst from the throat of the demon expert trying to block the swords.
A moment later, Quinn let go of that sword, appeared behind another, grabbed a second blade, and drove it through the next demon’s back—its tip bursting from his chest.
Boom!
He clashed head-on with a demon expert who’d broken free of the flying swords. Their fists collided with a thunderous crash—Quinn’s Nine-Dragon Thunder Rush unleashed its power an instant before their knuckles met, but only after the demon’s arm was blasted open, bones bursting through his skin behind his shoulder, did the divine art continue expanding outward.
When Quinn left, he stabbed another demon through the brow—only then did the divine art strike, shattering the demon’s chest, bursting his back open, and sending forty-five divine dragons flying out from his heart, trailing all his blood and qi!
It was as if Quinn had entered a world where time flowed slowly—his improvement touched every aspect of himself.
Before the enemy’s divine arts could erupt, strings of beautiful blood-light burst from their vital points, blossoming into slow-blooming blood-flowers in the air. By the time their divine arts exploded, Quinn was already gone.
In his eyes, even the enemy’s divine arts seemed slow. Every art’s eruption unfolded as demon yuanqi transformed from qi to runes, then from runes to Daoist law, and finally exploded with power—each step dazzlingly beautiful.
None of these demon cultivators were weak—they were all disciples trained by demon gods, the elite of the demon race. Their divine arts retained immense power and were exquisitely refined; every moment of transformation was brilliant, beautiful, and mesmerizing.
Quinn admired this beauty. Under the gaze of his Nine Heavens Divine Eye Art, the slow-blooming process of their divine arts was a sheer delight to behold.
Especially when the blood sprayed out and hung in the air, forming blood-flowers that adorned the divine arts of over a hundred demon experts, making the scene even more radiant and spectacular.
This time, he took a different route—restructuring his cultivation method in a strange new way. Perfecting the Overlord Three-Core Art gave him more than just physical strength; it sped up his yuanqi circulation and boosted the power of his divine arts!
He moved among more than a hundred demon experts, wielding only simple basic sword forms—no fancy tricks. But with his speed and strength surging so dramatically, those simple moves became shockingly effective.
In his divine eyes, everyone slowed down—their arts, their moves, their spirit weapons, even their movement techniques. Everything became sluggish, letting him spot every single flaw with perfect clarity.
Quinn stopped moving. Flying swords howled toward him, clashing with the Worryless Sword in his hand, then vanished—soon, all eight thousand swords had merged into one.
Behind him, countless divine arts erupted and spirit weapons danced, tearing apart vast swathes of forest. The thunderous explosions never ceased.
Moments later, everything was calm again.
Then came the sound of bodies hitting the ground—thud, thud, thud. Demon experts collapsed everywhere, corpses sprawled in every direction.
Quinn gently rubbed the Worryless Sword in his hand, and it transformed into a single Sword Pill. He turned and looked at the only demon expert still standing in the field.
That demon expert—the one who’d warned the others to break his enlightenment—was the only one left.
His legs shook uncontrollably, sweat poured from his brow, and terror was written all over his face.
Quinn stowed the Sword Pill away, letting strands of yuanqi spill out as he tried to reconstruct the divine eye’s circulation route. But he couldn’t re-enter that state of enlightenment no matter what he did.
(This chapter isn't finished yet~ Please click next page to continue reading the exciting story!)
The surviving demon expert stared in a daze, not daring to move a muscle.
The more Quinn tried to re-enter enlightenment, the more impossible it became. Frustrated, he smashed the yuanqi-formed divine eye with a punch.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
He lost control—fists flying forward in a frenzy, unleashing a barrage of thunderous blasts so dense that the air itself became a wall, thickening visibly and driven ahead by his fist winds. Trees toppled, rocks shattered, sand and stones flew, and the shockwave plowed a massive trench ten miles long!
After venting his anger, Quinn suddenly turned his head, catching the demon expert in the corner of his eye. "You were the one who told them to break my enlightenment, weren’t you? Pretty clever!"
The demon expert stared blankly, but then his survival instinct overpowered his fear. He shrieked, leapt skyward, and transformed into a streak of demon qi, fleeing in a wild rush.
Quinn looked up—layers of formation patterns spun madly in his eyes, and the star river in his pupils whirled with them.
Buzz—
Twin beams shot from his eyes, slicing through the sky and severing the fleeing demon qi. A head, two legs, and half a torso tumbled from midair.
"That’ll teach you to run your mouth!" Quinn huffed and walked off, kicking a man-sized boulder to pieces along the way.
Moments later, figures descended from the sky, landing around the battlefield—the leader was a demon god, his demonic might saturating the air.
"Master, Sovereign Demon Zekkar’s disciple is dead!"
"King Yan’s disciple was killed too!"
"And King Yu’s disciple!"
"Over here—Lord Xiuqi’s disciple!"
"And King Liuye’s disciple!"
"Master, even Sixth Brother was killed!"
...
The demon god roared in fury—winds howled through the forest, and the clouds overhead shattered and vanished.
"You’ve slaughtered so many of my demon race’s elites, nearly wiping out our Seven Stars–Heaven-Man Realm! Quinn, you dare rampage in our territory—don’t even think of escaping! Send word: release the Netherworld Hound, search for his whereabouts, and do whatever it takes to keep him here!"
A Heaven-Man Realm demon expert hesitated. "Master, Sovereign King Buri’s orders are: if you can capture him alive, do so. If not, at least leave the body intact. The Sovereign King says this man is hiding a great secret…"