Severing Ties: The Sect Regrets My Departure

Chapter 264: Supreme Evil Body, Continue Sharpening the Blade!

A Demon Emperor? Attempting to annihilate Azure Mystic?

Reading the frantic transmission on her jade token, the blood drained from Guan Xuelan’s face. The foot she had already raised to step down into Cloud Firmament City froze mid-air.

Her brows locked together in a tight, furious knot. “My Azure Mystic Sacred Land has no grievances with the demon race, nor have we had any dealings with a Demon Emperor. Why would one suddenly descend upon our sect to cause chaos?”

The message had been sent by her fifth disciple, Qin Meran, leaving Guan Xuelan profoundly confused.

However, she quickly shook her head, forcing her mind back to the present. Her foot resumed its downward trajectory toward Cloud Firmament City. Regardless of what was happening at the sect, the most critical issue right now was retrieving her Supreme Source!

A slight delay in responding to her fifth disciple wouldn’t matter.

BOOM!

As her foot descended, the fully activated defensive arrays and restriction barriers enveloping Cloud Firmament City violently shuddered. The terrifying Mahayana aftershocks rippled downward, causing the very earth beneath the city to quake.

Countless cultivators rushed out of their homes and inns, staring up at the sky in absolute terror. When they beheld Guan Xuelan standing there, radiant and oppressive as a full moon, many collapsed to their knees in sheer panic.

A Supreme… a Supreme Venerable was sieging the city!

“For a wretched hive of Rogue Cultivators, this defensive array is somewhat commendable,” Guan Xuelan remarked, her eyes chips of glacial ice. “It is just a pity… before this Venerable, it is nothing more than clay chickens and pottery dogs!”

With a derisive snort, Guan Xuelan raised her foot to take a second step.

But her communication token vibrated violently again. She frowned, pulling it out. This time, the transmission was from her third disciple, Xu Wanqing.

“Master, the sect-protecting grand array is on the verge of collapse! We cannot hold it for much longer. I implore Master to return quickly!”

Clearly, the situation at Azure Mystic was far more catastrophic than she had initially assumed.

“A bunch of useless trash!” Guan Xuelan spat, yet she still refused to turn back. Her foot came down for the second time.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Instantly, a spiderweb of massive, glowing fissures tore across the grand array protecting Cloud Firmament City. The impenetrable barrier looked like a shattered eggshell, groaning under the pressure. It was obvious that the next strike would completely annihilate it.

This time, the aftershocks within the city were devastating.

Hundreds of buildings crumbled into dust under the sweeping pressure, sending massive plumes of debris into the air. Dozens of lower-level cultivators violently vomited blood, their internal organs ruptured by the sheer, ambient weight of a Supreme’s aura.

And this was merely the aftershock. If the city’s grand array and countless restrictions hadn’t blunted the blow, they wouldn’t just be coughing up blood—they would have been vaporized.

Seeing the array on the absolute brink of destruction, Guan Xuelan no longer hesitated. She raised her foot for the third, final step.

But the jade token vibrated a third time.

This message was from Jiang Xun. The content was brief and desperate.

“I earnestly request Master to return quickly!”

This time, Guan Xuelan’s foot hovered, and she finally aborted the step.

If it were just the sect’s physical grounds being destroyed, she wouldn’t have cared. After all, wherever she, a Supreme Venerable, stood, Azure Mystic stood. But Jiang Xun was there. That changed everything.

Frowning deeply, she cast a dark glare at the heavily fortified City Lord’s Manor nestled safely within the crumbling array. A lethal light flashed in her eyes.

“Damn it!”

“No matter what Demon Emperor you are, since you dare to provoke my Azure Mystic…”

“I will ensure you die without a burial place!”

Ultimately, she couldn’t abandon Jiang Xun. She had to rush back.

However, looking down at the fractured array of Cloud Firmament City, Guan Xuelan had no intention of letting her prey escape. With a sweeping flourish of her voluminous sleeve, thick, suffocating wisps of pitch-black smoke billowed from her body.

In the blink of an eye, the black smoke coalesced into a dense cloud directly in front of her, rapidly condensing into a humanoid silhouette.

When the smoke cleared, a figure stood there, identical to Guan Xuelan in every physical aspect, but entirely composed of inky darkness. The figure was like a three-dimensional shadow, radiating a chilling aura of absolute annihilation and death.

This was a physical manifestation of Guan Xuelan’s condensed Killing Intent and death aura—her Supreme Evil Body.

Seeing the Evil Body successfully form, Guan Xuelan didn’t stop. She pointed a slender finger at it.

Instantly, genuine Spiritual Qi fluctuations erupted from the shadow. The aura radiating from the Evil Body began to skyrocket, climbing through the cultivation realms at a terrifying speed. In mere seconds, it blasted from Qi Condensation, past Foundation Establishment, Golden Core, Nascent Soul, Body of Incarnation, Void Refining, and finally plateaued at the absolute peak of… Mahayana!

After completing the empowerment, Guan Xuelan formed a complex hand seal, her finger poised to strike the center of the Evil Body’s brow. As long as she infused a fraction of her Divine Soul into the construct, it would become a true external incarnation, capable of wielding her esoteric Supreme techniques.

But just as her finger was about to make contact, she hesitated and pulled back.

“With an anomaly possessing an Ascended Immortal Divine Soul down there, infusing a piece of my own soul might be a fatal liability. Very well…”

She pointed a commanding finger toward the city. “You. Go down there, execute Sang Shoudao, and retrieve my Supreme Source!”

She had decided to deploy the Evil Body as a mindless, soulless puppet. While it wouldn’t be able to utilize her complex Supreme techniques or Dao Domains, it possessed the raw, unadulterated physical power of a Mahayana cultivator. Against Sang Shoudao—whose soul attacks would be utterly useless against a soulless construct—raw physical dominance was the perfect counter.

Receiving its absolute order, the Supreme Evil Body moved instantly.

The pitch-black figure plummeted from the sky like a meteor, crashing head-on into the fractured grand array of Cloud Firmament City.

BOOM! The terrifying, raw Mahayana impact shattered the already crumbling array into a billion pieces of dissipating spiritual light!

Without breaking its momentum, the Supreme Evil Body violently adjusted its trajectory, diving like a hunting falcon directly toward the City Lord’s Manor.

Watching her shadow descend, Guan Xuelan sneered coldly. “That Evil Body cost me considerable effort to temper. Since you are so desperate to use me as a whetstone to break through to the Mahayana realm, old man, I will gift you this Fated Chance.”

“You had best catch it well!”

With those parting words, Guan Xuelan no longer delayed. The divine feather beneath her feet flared with brilliant light, and she vanished instantly, tearing through the sky back to Azure Mystic.

She had a Demon Emperor to butcher.

The exact moment Guan Xuelan vanished, deep within the City Lord’s Manor.

Sang Shoudao, who had been standing guard over Gu Xiu while simultaneously straining to manage the city’s failing defenses, felt the apocalyptic pressure shift. He violently furrowed his brows, horizontally raising his massive longbow.

He drew the string taut and nocked a brilliant purple soul arrow.

Whoosh!

The arrow shrieked through the air, transforming into a streak of lethal purple light that shot straight into the sky, intercepting the diving Supreme Evil Body.

However…

The Supreme Evil Body didn’t dodge. It didn’t even attempt to block. The moment the terrifying soul arrow made contact with its pitch-black form, the purple energy simply dissolved, melting away like snow hitting a hot iron stove.

Seeing this, Sang Shoudao’s frown deepened into a severe scowl. The aura radiating from his body exploded, surging to its absolute limits.

He took a single step forward, his body blurring as he launched himself straight into the clouds to intercept the falling shadow. He left behind only a single, echoing command.

“The Manor is protected by internal arrays! Do not step outside under any circumstances!”

He knew Gu Xiu’s situation wasn’t as immediately fatal as they had feared, but the young man was clearly at a hyper-critical juncture in his cultivation. He needed absolute silence and safety. Sang Shoudao would be his impenetrable shield.

He could see exactly what he was facing. It was a Supreme incarnation. While it lacked the esoteric versatility of the true Guan Xuelan, it was a spiritual construct forged from pure Mahayana energy, heavily saturated with a highly aggressive, Supreme-level evil aura.

In other words, holding the line against this mindless killing machine was going to be excruciatingly difficult, and incredibly lethal.

But… so what?

The battle ignited instantly!

Sang Shoudao’s figure vanished from the sky, reappearing directly in the path of the diving Supreme Evil Body. His hands blurred as he rapidly drew the longbow.

In a fraction of a second, a barrage of brilliant, condensed arrows of physical Spiritual Qi erupted upward.

The Supreme Evil Body didn’t evade. It plunged straight through the volley. The arrows shattered into harmless sparks against its impenetrable black skin. Without breaking its dive, the shadow pulled back a fist and threw a devastating punch aimed directly at Sang Shoudao’s chest.

Sang Shoudao reacted with terrifying speed. Utilizing the spatial mastery inherent to Void Refining experts at the Grand Perfection stage, he flickered out of existence, reappearing a hundred feet away.

He immediately fired another volley.

The arrows vanished the moment they left his bow, instantly tearing through the spatial fabric to reappear simultaneously on all sides of the Evil Body, a point-blank omnidirectional assault.

Without waiting to see if the attack landed, Sang Shoudao teleported again.

He materialized directly above the crown of the Evil Body’s head. In his hands, he held a single, massive arrow that blazed with the blinding intensity of a miniature sun.

He released the string!

This entire sequence had unfolded in the span of a single heartbeat. When facing Guan Xuelan’s true self, Sang Shoudao had been forced into a desperate game of evasion, unable to launch a meaningful counterattack. But against this soulless brawler, he could finally unleash his full arsenal of spatial combat techniques.

Under this relentless, multidirectional assault, the Supreme Evil Body was finally forced to halt its descent. The blinding sun-arrow aimed at its skull was too concentrated to ignore, forcing the shadow to raise both arms in a cross-guard.

BOOM! A deafening explosion rocked the heavens. The impact was so violent that the overwhelming black aura surrounding the Evil Body was briefly blown away, revealing its core.

However…

When the smoke cleared, the Supreme Evil Body remained completely unscathed. It couldn’t wield Supreme Dao laws, but its physical durability was forged from the purest, most condensed Mahayana power.

Emerging from the blast, the Evil Body took a single step.

It instantly crossed the spatial void, appearing directly in front of Sang Shoudao. Before the old man could activate his spatial displacement to flee, the shadow threw a punch.

The sheer, raw physical force of the blow warped the surrounding space, instantly locking down the spatial coordinates. A punch containing the unadulterated physical might of a Mahayana Supreme was enough to shatter any enemy in the mortal realm!

Facing the inescapable, apocalyptic strike, Sang Shoudao’s expression hardened. He knew he couldn’t run. He gritted his teeth, circulating every drop of his Void Refining cultivation, preparing to meet the blow head-on and pray he survived the impact.

But just as the pitch-black fist was inches from caving in his chest…

The Supreme Evil Body suddenly froze.

It halted mid-strike, as if someone had slammed a pause button on reality itself.

“Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!” The frantic chittering of a monkey reached Sang Shoudao’s ears. He glanced sideways and saw the little black monkey, Hai Qi, hovering nearby. Its normally expressive eyes were currently completely pitch-black, devoid of any white, and it was waving its small arms frantically at him.

Sang Shoudao instantly understood.

Seizing the microsecond of paralysis, he violently wrenched himself out of the locked space, rapidly retreating to put a massive distance between himself and the shadow.

The moment he was clear, the Supreme Evil Body snapped back to life, immediately lunging toward him again.

It was obvious. Hai Qi possessed the innate, heaven-defying ability to control puppets and constructs. However, this ability couldn’t entirely ignore the absolute disparity in cultivation realms. While the Supreme Evil Body was technically a puppet, it was forged from Mahayana power. The little monkey could only interrupt its commands for a fraction of a second.

However, in a battle between elites, a fraction of a second was all that was needed!

The chaotic battle resumed in earnest.

With Hai Qi providing crucial, split-second interruptions, Sang Shoudao—a cultivator stuck at the Void Refining Grand Perfection stage—was actually managing to successfully brawl with a Mahayana-tier construct. He even consciously manipulated his spatial retreats, slowly but deliberately kiting the Supreme Evil Body further and further away from the airspace above Cloud Firmament City.

More importantly, he was once again using the overwhelming pressure of the Mahayana-level attacks to actively temper his own cultivation!

The shift was palpable. At the start of the engagement, he had been completely suppressed, desperately scrambling to survive. Now, with Hai Qi’s timely assists, he was fighting the shadow to a standstill, fluidly transitioning between evasion and devastating counterattacks.

Sang Shoudao’s aura was visibly condensing, growing sharper, heavier, and more profound with every passing second!

Guan Xuelan’s shadow was serving as the ultimate whetstone, helping this treasured blade—which had been rusted and hidden away for hundreds of years—meticulously chip away its imperfections.

He was merely waiting for the perfect moment… to unleash his brilliance upon the world!

While Sang Shoudao waged a spectacular war in the heavens, desperately using the Supreme Evil Body to forge his path to the Mahayana realm, a different kind of forging was occurring down in the City Lord’s Manor.

From deep within Gu Xiu’s petrified body, a heavy, rhythmic sound echoed into the quiet room.

CLANG!

It was followed closely by a second, then a third.

CLANG! CLANG!

It sounded exactly like a colossal blacksmith’s hammer striking an anvil.

High above, Sang Shoudao momentarily turned his head toward the sound, his eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated disbelief.

“Is he…”

“Is he physically hammering the Supreme Source?!”

“Is he actually refining that apocalyptic energy?!?”