One Sword, and His Name Was Made! A Sudden Enlightenment.
"Kid, I got careless and let you land a sword strike on me. But now your sword's broken, what exactly do you plan to fight me with?!"
"You're not about to try those two fingers of yours, are you? Hahahaha!"
Li Tianshuo grinned through the pain. He'd taken a serious wound from that strike, but with Zhang Lingxiao standing there weaponless, he knew exactly what he was looking at: a Sword Cultivator without a sword was a mantis with its forelegs cut off. Nothing left to do but wait for the kill.
"I have plenty of swords."
Zhang Lingxiao said it flatly, like it barely mattered.
And it was true. The Nine Netherworld Demon Emperor had left behind no shortage of Spiritual Artifacts in the Nine Netherworld Demon Palace, most of them blades.
He just didn't want any of them right now.
Something new had opened up in his understanding of the sword. Something he hadn't touched before.
"Li Tianshuo, you actually gave me the idea. As thanks, you get to be the first to feel it."
Zhang Lingxiao looked up, a wicked grin spreading across his face.
"My heart is the Sword Heart. My will is the Sword Intent. Where thought goes, all things become swords. Wherever you reach, the sword answers every method."
Fingers as a blade.
I am the sword.
He raised his right hand and pressed his index and middle fingers together. Sword Qi tore free from the fingertips and shot straight at Li Tianshuo.
"Ah, you"
Li Tianshuo's eyes went wide with disbelief. Whatever he meant to say never made it out; the Qi punched through his throat before the words could form. All that came out after that was a wet, gurgling sound.
Thud.
A soft, final sound followed it.
Li Tianshuo's throat had been sealed by a single strike. He collapsed on the Life-and-Death Arena, and the moment he did, the contract talisman both of them had signed dissolved into nothing.
Li Tianshuo was dead.
Silence swallowed the crowd below the arena.
What had just happened?
The kid raised two fingers, flicked them once, and Sword Qi shot out, and that was it? Li Tianshuo was just dead?
And hadn't Li Tianshuo said it himself, right before it happened, something about fighting with two fingers as a sword?
He'd gotten his answer. Fingers as a blade, throat sealed in one motion.
It didn't seem real.
How had he even done that?
"Who is he?!" someone shouted from the crowd.
"Zhang, like the bow-and-arrow radical. Lingxiao, like success."
"His name is Zhang Lingxiao!"
From that moment, the name would travel through every corner of Qingyun Mountain, known to everyone who called the sect home.
Below the stage, Ouyang Shishi stared up at him, eyes gone soft and starry. How handsome he looked up there.
A true Sword Cultivator, what young woman wouldn't lose her head over one?
Nearby, Feng Jian's dark eyes shone with something close to awe.
This boy had reached Man-Sword Unity in his grasp of Sword Intent. A realm Feng Jian's own master had never touched.
Man-Sword Unity. Only the strongest Sword Cultivators ever came close to it, the kind of achievement that made lesser cultivators sick with envy.
"What a strike. Fingers as a sword, and Man-Sword Unity to go with it."
"Zhang Lingxiao's name won't stay in Tianhuo Country for long. It might reach the whole of Barren Province before this is over."
"Junior Brother, you have to come to Ten Thousand Swords Peak now. Worst case, I'll ask Master if you can serve two peaks under two masters that ought to work, shouldn't it?"
On the arena platform, Zhang Lingxiao was in no rush to leave. He lowered himself cross-legged onto the stage, letting the new understanding settle into him.
Insight into the Martial Dao worked like that: once it arrived, you held onto it with everything you had, or it slipped away and never came back.
No one below had moved. The crowd stayed rooted, waiting to see what this Epiphany would leave behind.
A man who killed at will, with nothing but a thought?
Even the Sky Tiger Gang members standing among the crowd looked shaken, some frozen in shock, some outright afraid, a few already fumbling with communication talismans, muttering reports under their breath.
Then a furious voice cracked through the silence before its owner had even arrived.
"Who dares! Who killed my Sky Tiger Gang's Second Leader?!"
The voice came first. The man came a moment later, disheveled hair, sun-dark skin, a build like coiled rope, veins standing out along his arms like something alive beneath the skin. He rode down out of the crowd on a shield-shaped flying artifact and landed square on the Life-and-Death Arena.
"It's the Great Leader! He's come to settle the score! Zhang Lingxiao's finished now!"
"Hahaha! Bully our gang, and this is what you get! Great leaders here!"
"Great Leader! Brother Hu! Brother Hu!"
The Sky Tiger Gang members erupted, cheering at the sight of him.
Everyone else in the crowd traded looks. Right on time, the real show was just getting started.
Whatever worry Ouyang Shishi had been carrying disappeared the moment she saw him.
She understood exactly what a Sword Cultivator who'd reached Man-Sword Unity was worth. Xing Hu had already reached Perfection in the Spiritual Martial Realm, a single step from the Xuanwu Realm, but a cultivator who'd grasped true Willpower fought on a level ordinary Martial Artists simply couldn't touch.
Willpower belonged to Heavenly Martial Realm powerhouses alone. Only a handful of geniuses at Perfection in the Earth Martial Realm ever managed to grasp even a trace of it.
Zhang Lingxiao had left ordinary cultivators behind entirely. Even Xing Hu wasn't a match for him now.
But right now, mid-breakthrough, digesting an insight this fragile, he couldn't afford a single disturbance.
Ouyang Shishi set her jaw, leapt onto the arena without a second thought, and planted herself between Xing Hu and Zhang Lingxiao. She wasn't moving.
"Shishi? What are you doing up here? Move, you can watch from down below like everyone else!"
Xing Hu stared at her, white palace dress, beautiful enough to pass for some immortal cast down from heaven, standing directly in his way. Confusion flickered across his face.
"Xing Hu, Zhang Lingxiao is at a critical point in comprehending his Sword Intent. I won't let you touch him. Walk away now, and I, Ouyang Shishi, will owe you a debt I'll repay properly."
"So the kid really did comprehend Sword Intent. Explains how a Middle Stage Spiritual Martial Realm brat managed to kill my brother, cultivation gap and all."
"Still... heh."
"He had the nerve to act like this in front of me. Sword Intent or not, he pays in blood for my brother today."
"Shishi, I do care for you, you know that. But brotherhood with Li Tianshuo runs deeper. This debt has to be settled."
"Move. He's a lamb on the chopping block right now, and I'm not wasting the chance. Don't make me kill you too."
Xing Hu looked between them, a cruel smile spreading across his face.
As if he'd let an enemy claw his way back from the edge, that would be handing over his own head on a plate.
Between a woman and his own life, the choice wasn't even close.