Severing Ties: The Sect Regrets My Departure

Chapter 261: Ascended Immortal Divine Soul! A Supreme Opportunity?

“Hold nothing back! Bring down Sect Leader Guan!”

Sang Shoudao’s roar did not just echo from the heavens; it bled from every corner of the earth, heavy and absolute. Those words acted as a physical blow, shattering the mask of arrogant disdain plastered across Guan Xuelan’s face, replacing it with sheer, unadulterated shock.

“You are…”

Ascended Immortal Divine Soul! She finally saw it. The suffocating veil lifted, revealing the true, terrifying weight of the bow-wielding elder’s trump card. She finally understood the primal, creeping dread clawing at the edges of her Mahayana consciousness. The man had not changed. The bow remained the same. But the purple-tinted arrow nocked against the string was an entirely different beast.

It was not an arrow forged from Spiritual Qi. It was an arrow sculpted from pure Divine Soul!

Just the sensation of being locked in its sights drove a phantom spike of agony into Guan Xuelan’s mind. She knew with absolute certainty that if that ethereal bolt took flight, her own Supreme Divine Soul would be powerless to repel it. What else could wield such apocalyptic, soul-crushing gravity if not the power of an Ascended Immortal?

“Just who are you?” Guan Xuelan demanded, her voice cracking the frozen air.

She had not bothered to ask before. To a transcendent Mahayana Supreme, the names of ants were irrelevant. But this man—an elder whose physical shell had clearly never breached the Mahayana threshold—wielded a soul pressure that dwarfed her own. This man was a leviathan disguised as a corpse.

“Cloud Firmament City Lord, Sang Shoudao.” He did not cloak himself in mystery, offering his title with a steady, unyielding calm.

The name struck a discordant chord. A residual echo of his Five Soul Severings rippled through Guan Xuelan, carving a deep furrow into her brow. The name felt heavy with forgotten history, buried beneath centuries of slaughter and meditation. Cloud Firmament City… Cloud Firmament City Lord… She ransacked her ancient memories, but the truth remained submerged in the murky depths of time.

Failing to unearth his past, Guan Xuelan discarded the thought. Her eyes locked back onto the deadly, purple-glowing arrowhead tracking her every microscopic movement.

“Hmph. A Divine Soul that has Ascended to Immortal?” she sneered, wrapping herself in a blizzard of killing intent. “This Venerable One will see just how much weight that title holds!”

She took a single, earth-shattering step forward.

The temperature plummeted into the abyss. A howling tempest of razor-sharp ice and blinding snow erupted into existence, swallowing the battlefield whole. This was the terrifying manifestation of her Supreme Domain: the Wind and Snow Domain.

The instant the domain crystallized, Sang Shoudao’s fingers slipped. The Divine Soul arrow tore through the void.

Guan Xuelan dared not underestimate the strike. With a sweep of her arm, she directed the full, crushing force of her blizzard to intercept the projectile.

It was utterly useless.

The arrow did not exist within the physical laws of her domain. The howling vortex of ice passed right through it, leaving the soul-piercing bolt completely unhindered as it screamed straight for her brow.

Guan Xuelan did not panic. She extended her palm and violently crushed her fingers together. The fabric of space warped as a colossal, phantom hand materialized, attempting to crush the ethereal arrow in its grip.

Failed again!

The phantom fingers phased harmlessly through the purple light. The arrow did not even tremble, maintaining its lethal trajectory.

A shadow of murderous frustration darkened Guan Xuelan’s features. Yet, the mind of a Mahayana Supreme was forged in blood. She instantly shifted her tactical paradigm. With a mere twitch of her foot, she vanished, teleporting directly in front of Sang Shoudao.

This man’s soul had touched the Immortal realm, but his mortal flesh tethered him to the dirt. To battle him in a contest of minds was suicide. However, a titanic soul housed in a fragile vessel meant his physical body was a gaping, fatal flaw. If she eradicated his physical foundation, his divine soul would dissolve into rootless duckweed!

Her logic was flawless, but Sang Shoudao was no fledgling cultivator who had stumbled into power. The millisecond Guan Xuelan vanished, a massive, monolithic shield of solidified purple qi erupted from the earth to guard him.

Sss—CRACK! The sickening sound of shattering glass tore through the courtyard. Guan Xuelan’s sheer, physical destructive force obliterated the giant purple shield, her deadly strike carving a path straight toward the center of Sang Shoudao’s forehead.

But… right as the killing blow was about to connect, Guan Xuelan aborted the strike. Her silhouette blurred as she forcefully aborted her momentum, violently throwing herself backward.

In the exact space she had occupied a fraction of a second prior, the purple-qi arrow materialized. It had punched cleanly through her lingering afterimage, banking sharply in mid-air like a predatory hawk, and resumed its hunt for her soul.

Landing gracefully, Guan Xuelan reached up and clamped her hand onto a colossal, materialized sword of Spiritual Qi hanging in the firmament. As her fingers wrapped around the hilt, the azure blade ignited, coated in a thick, dense layer of her own purple mist.

She was leveraging her Supreme Divine Soul!

With a heaven-cleaving arc, she brought the massive, soul-infused blade crashing down onto the incoming arrow.

CLANG! A deafening, metallic shriek rang out. For the first time, the purple-qi arrow was physically stalled, shuddering violently before being knocked back. Guan Xuelan’s divine soul was inferior to Sang Shoudao’s, but by fusing her soul pressure with the overwhelming physical might of her Mahayana cultivation, she could finally interact with the phantom strike.

Seizing the opening, Guan Xuelan stepped through the void. Her giant sword materialized directly in front of Sang Shoudao, thrusting forward with the force of a falling mountain.

It was a strike Sang Shoudao physically could not evade.

So, he didn’t.

He planted his feet, anchoring himself to the stone like an ancient, immovable oak. A terrifying purple luminescence flared within his pupils.

Guan Xuelan felt a sudden, sickening pressure. She snapped her head up. Sang Shoudao had already drawn the bowstring back to his ear, unleashing a second, devastating Divine Soul arrow.

“Hmph!” Guan Xuelan spat a curse of pure rage. She did not halt her forward thrust, channeling every ounce of her Mahayana power into the blade at his brow. Simultaneously, the eight secondary giant swords hovering in her domain synchronized with her will, screaming through the air to impale the old man from all sides.

CLANG! The concussive force of the second impact shattered the purple aura cloaking Guan Xuelan’s main sword. Stripped of its divine soul enhancement, the physical blade lost its grip on reality, passing harmlessly through the second ethereal arrow.

A cruel, victorious smirk curled Guan Xuelan’s lips. Her eight secondary swords had overtaken the arrow. They were mere millimeters from obliterating Sang Shoudao’s skull.

Yet… the courtyard plunged into a dead, suffocating silence.

The eight massive blades froze in mid-air, hovering a hair’s breadth from Sang Shoudao’s skin. Not because Guan Xuelan wished to show mercy, but because two pulsating, purple-qi arrows were hovering just a fraction of an inch from her own retinas.

A perfect, lethal deadlock.

The entire exchange had unfolded in the space between two heartbeats. It was a blitz of apocalyptic violence condensed into a single, breathless instant.

“I have long heard that divine soul experts are akin to grasping a nest of vipers,” Guan Xuelan stated, her voice chillingly flat. “This Venerable One has finally experienced the weight of an Ascended Immortal Divine Soul today. It truly lives up to the nightmare of its reputation.”

Her face was an icy mask of composure, but deep within her eyes lurked a profound, festering disgust.

‘Troublesome’ was an understatement. Fighting a soul cultivator was utterly sickening! She possessed a Mahayana Supreme’s boundless arsenal and world-rending capabilities. Knowing his physical weakness, she should have crushed him like an insect. Instead, fighting him was like swinging a broadsword at mist—her crushing power found no purchase, while his ethereal strikes constantly threatened to lobotomize her. She was forced to fight with one hand tied behind her back, perpetually holding her most devastating arts in check lest she leave her soul exposed.

It was a uniquely infuriating impotence.

“This old man merely relied on a desperate trick,” Sang Shoudao replied, his voice raspy but calm. “If Sect Leader Guan had been willing to trade an injury for a life, I would already be a cooling corpse.”

Sang Shoudao possessed a terrifyingly clear grasp of the battlefield. His soul was Ascended, but he had not abandoned his flesh to walk the pure path of the ghost cultivator. His physical vulnerability severely limited his options against a Mahayana tyrant of her caliber. He knew she had held back. If she had been willing to let those two arrows impale her mind, her swords would have turned him into a fine red mist.

However, the resulting wound to her divine soul would be a catastrophic, bleeding rot that could take centuries to heal, if ever. It was a gamble no Supreme would willingly take.

“For Cloud Firmament City to harbor a monster like you exceeds my calculations,” Guan Xuelan said, her eyes narrowing as she scrutinized his weathered face. “I cannot shake the feeling that I should have known you, long ago.”

“Sect Leader Guan is burdened with the fate of millions and a myriad of worldly affairs. It is only natural that minor details slip into the cracks of time,” Sang Shoudao deflected smoothly.

Guan Xuelan merely curled her lip in distaste. Her piercing gaze slowly drifted past him, landing squarely on Gu Xiu. “Now, this Venerable One is truly curious. Who exactly is this boy, that you would bare your fangs at a Supreme to shield him?”

“Him?” A faint, bitter smile tugged at the corners of Sang Shoudao’s mouth. “He is the sole tether keeping this old man anchored to this mortal world.”

Hearing this, Gu Xiu shifted his gaze, studying the old archer’s back.

Guan Xuelan’s brow furrowed deeper. She dissected Gu Xiu with her eyes, a strange, phantom thread of karma plucking at her intuition. She felt she ought to recognize this youth, that their fates were somehow tangled in a bloody knot.

But she could not grasp the thread.

Shaking her head, Guan Xuelan turned her back to them. “Since the Lord of Cloud Firmament City has drawn a line in the sand to protect him, this Venerable One has no desire to be accused of bullying the weak.”

“However…”

She paused, turning her head slightly. “This Venerable One finds his face rather pleasing. I wish to bestow upon him a heaven-shaking Fated Chance.”

The temperature in the courtyard dropped. Sang Shoudao’s aura flared with violent, immediate hostility.

Before either man could react, Guan Xuelan casually flicked her index finger. A blinding, azure point of starlight tore through the fabric of space itself. It completely bypassed all physical distance, drilling directly into the core of Gu Xiu’s Dantian.

Simultaneously, Guan Xuelan took a casual step forward. Her physical body dissolved into the wind, leaving behind only a fading echo of her presence and a voice that chilled the blood.

“This Venerable One has gifted him a wisp of the Supreme Source.”

“If he possesses the unnatural fortitude to refine it and forge it into his own strength… then it shall be his heaven-shaking Fated Chance.”

“But of course…”

“If his foundation crumbles and he fails to digest it… then his ensuing death merely proves he lacked the fortune to survive my grace.”

Her final words hung in the empty air, heavy with a promise of future violence.

“Cloud Firmament City… Sang Shoudao… this Venerable One…”

“…will remember you!”