Logan Cross’s heart skipped a beat. Quinn Shepherd’s sword was unmatched in its sharpness—when it pierced through Logan’s First Heaven, he hadn’t even realized how dangerous it was.
He was quite young when he entered the Dao with his saber. His first Dao-Entering Divine Art was called Blue Sea, Clouds Part. When unleashed, his saber technique resembled a vast blue sea shrouded in mist; as the clouds parted, the saber art transformed, and a tidal wave descended from the sky.
But this was his very first Dao-Entering move—his foundation was still shallow, so it was not particularly refined. It was normal for it to be broken.
Yet in the very next moment, Quinn’s sword broke through his Saber-Firmament Path’s Second Heaven: Jade Gate, Rushing Snow. As this Dao-Entering Divine Art unfolded, saber-light transformed into swirling snow, locking the world in icy cold as frost formed a fortress called Jade Gate.
Once the Jade Gate opened, it unleashed a fierce killing move—the blizzard surged forward, and the fortress advanced, crushing all before it with the force of an icy city.
Countless powerful cultivators have died under this divine art.
But this move was also shattered by Quinn’s sword in a single strike.
Quinn’s sword pierced through his icy fortress, sweeping away the blizzard and causing the Jade Gate to collapse, the ice city to disintegrate.
His Saber-Firmament Path’s Third Heaven was called Iron Cavalry Charge. When the saber art was unleashed, heavenly troops and iron cavalry seemed to descend from above—war-steeds and golden armor. Yet this move was useless as well, for Quinn’s sword-light swept away all the heavenly soldiers and generals.
Logan Cross’s Saber-Firmament Path’s Fourth Heaven was Light-Stirred Tiered Towers. With one slash, the saber-light became thirty-three stacked towers, each unleashing lethal attacks from within.
But the tiered towers were pierced through by sword-light and instantly collapsed.
Then came the Fifth Heaven, the Sixth Heaven, the Seventh Heaven...
His saber arts formed the Saber-Firmament Path, consisting of fourteen Dao-Entering Divine Arts. These fourteen arts built up fourteen heavens, and this time he intended to finish the fight in a single blow—so all fourteen heavens overlapped, descending like fourteen layers of the firmament.
Quinn Shepherd’s sword swept in, piercing through one heaven after another, shaking Logan to his core.
Fortunately, after Quinn’s sword pierced through his Ninth Heaven, its momentum and power weakened considerably, which gave Logan some relief.
If Quinn had managed to pierce through all fourteen heavens in one go, there would have been no point in continuing the fight—Logan would have simply discarded his saber, knelt down, and admitted defeat.
Unexpectedly, just as Quinn’s sword seemed to falter, his sword art suddenly shifted—from Open the Calamity Sword to Raise the Calamity Sword. One sword split into countless leaping sword-lights, each trembling into a drifting petal.
In an instant, a storm of petals filled the sky, swirling and falling, flooding Logan’s Ninth Heaven.
His Ninth Heaven was called Nine Gates, Heaven Gate Opens—a move of vast, majestic power. But the sword-lights flooded the Heaven Gate, filled all nine passes, and then detonated them from within, flattening the gates and shattering the Heaven Gate itself.
Logan Cross had long heard of Quinn’s Raise the Calamity Sword—it was the sword art that made Quinn famous.
Back in the early Dragon-Han era, Quinn Shepherd severely wounded Venerable Vast-Sky with this sword art, even while under Madam Yuanmu’s projected suppression—leaving Vast-Sky bedridden for centuries, unable to care for himself.
From that moment, this sword art became legendary. Countless prodigies in later generations tried to imitate and recreate it, but none could succeed.
As Quinn disappeared, Raise the Calamity Sword became a lost supreme technique—a sword said to be invincible. Only when the Everpeace Era arrived did Quinn himself reinvent this sword art.
The greatest strength of Raise the Calamity Sword lies in the fact that it is a basic sword form—also known as Sword Nineteen.
Without mastering the previous eighteen basic sword forms, one cannot learn Sword Nineteen. But once mastered, this move allows a swordsman to directly enter the Dao through the sword!
This means Raise the Calamity Sword can be combined with other sword arts to create endless variations!
That is precisely what makes Raise the Calamity Sword so powerful and unique.
In the Earth-Mother Origin World, Quinn used this move to slay countless formidable enemies. To this day, no one has ever broken it. Even when Venerable Vast-Sky faced him personally, he could only exploit flaws in Quinn’s broader cultivation, never finding a weakness in this sword art itself.
Just as Raise the Calamity Sword was about to pierce through Logan’s Thirteenth Heaven, Quinn’s power finally ran dry. Logan breathed a sigh of relief as his Thirteenth and Fourteenth Heavens descended over Quinn’s head—vast and majestic!
At that moment, he saw the black-and-white Taiji diagram beneath Quinn’s feet expand, sweeping across a hundred li, turning the golden desert into black and white.
Within the black-and-white desert, the sun sank and the bright moon rose, bathing everything in moonlight.
“Such immense cultivation!”
Logan Cross felt a chill in his heart. As saber and sword collided, Quinn Shepherd stood beneath the Origin-Root Tree, rooted in the desert, his body utterly unmoving.
The crushing power of Logan’s two overlapping Saber-Firmament Heavens only made the black-and-white Taiji diagram around Quinn tremble violently, but it couldn’t shake Quinn’s body in the slightest.
“Is this the effect of fusing flesh and Primordial Spirit into one, with the Spirit Embryo Treasury domain manifesting as a field?”
Logan flipped to Quinn’s left, saber-light rising again. Yet Quinn seemed not to move, and Logan still found himself facing Quinn’s front.
The two fought at blinding speed. Logan slashed, darted, saber-light pouring down like a waterfall—but no matter which direction he attacked from, he always saw Quinn’s face head-on.
What shocked him was that Quinn never turned his body, not even once!
A sense of utter absurdity welled up in Logan’s heart. It was as if Quinn had countless faces—no matter what angle he attacked, he always confronted Quinn’s front, with not a single flaw to exploit, facing Quinn’s strongest strike every time!
In battle, every movement of the body—muscles, tendons, bones, blood—creates countless fleeting openings.