Volume 2 - Chapter 26: The Last Lesson I’ll Teach You - Part 1
“Do you dare?! Courting death!!”
As Li Hao's sword light streaked through the air, an enraged voice suddenly resounded from the void.
Immediately after, a sharp sound of something slicing through the air followed—a radiant golden feather abruptly appeared.
The feather tore through the void at an astonishing speed, like a flash of lightning.
By the time Li Hao noticed it, it was already inches from his eye, about to pierce through.
Unstoppable!
Li Hao’s pupils contracted, and his entire body felt frozen, his blood nearly solidified. In that instant, as death loomed closer than ever, a suffocating shadow enveloped him.
Yet, in the blink of an eye, the feather vanished.
An aged hand, moving with the slow grace of scooping the moon from the sea, seemingly casual yet accompanied by ghostly afterimages, had snatched the feather away in an instant.
A figure appeared before Li Hao. Clad in a simple gray robe, hair held in place by a plain, worn wooden hairpin, the person stood upright despite their humble attire. It was none other than Feng Boping, who had been shadowing Li Hao from the dark.
Realizing what had happened, Li Hao’s expression changed dramatically. His gaze darted forward, where he saw a figure cloaked in black, eyes burning with cold fury, now hovering above the Little Demon King’s head like a phantom.
“You dare cross boundaries, Demon King. Do you have a death wish?”
Feng Boping’s gaze remained calm as he glanced at the man, his hand tightening around the feather. The radiant golden light of the feather dimmed and shattered into nothingness in his palm.
“Gao Bo.”
The Myriad Mountains Little Demon King finally reacted, hastily calling out to the man in black.
“If I’ve intervened, none of you will survive!”
The black-cloaked man’s eyes blazed with murderous intent, his body emanating overwhelming demonic energy that darkened the sky.
Li Hao felt the suffocating wave of demon energy surge forward, causing his heart to race uncontrollably. The oppressive aura left no doubt—the man was a Demon King!
From the Little Demon King’s cry, it seemed this wasn’t the Myriad Mountains Demon King but another figure entirely.
“That might be a bit difficult,” Feng Boping replied with a faint smile, his expression unchanged.
He clasped his hands behind his back and, without turning, addressed Li Hao: “Little Haozi, I’ll leave this to you. Can you hold out for a quarter of an hour?”
“No problem,” Li Hao replied firmly.
Old Feng hadn’t revealed himself earlier, likely because he’d sensed the presence of this Demon King lurking nearby.
There shouldn’t be a second Demon King here, making it unnecessary to remain hidden any longer.
The black-cloaked man seemed to understand Feng Boping’s intent. Neither side could afford to fight here without risking mutual destruction, as their retaliation would endanger the individuals they sought to protect. The black-cloaked man was equally concerned about the Little Demon King being slapped to death in the crossfire.
“What are you all standing around for? Hurry up and finish this! Protect the young master!”
The black-cloaked man’s icy voice transmitted outward.
The demon, who had been fighting Li He, flinched at the command, his body trembling before hastily responding, “Understood!”
The ox demon, equally terrified, also responded immediately.
“Then let’s see who dies first in a quarter of an hour!” the black-cloaked man coldly declared, addressing Feng Boping.
The two locked eyes before vanishing without a trace.
Despite their disappearance, the overwhelming demonic energy above the sky lingered, growing even denser, like thick ink spreading across the heavens.
“Bastard! You deserve to die!!”
The Myriad Mountains Little Demon King glanced at the black-cloaked man’s departure before fixing his ferocious gaze on Li Hao.
He had refrained from unleashing his full strength earlier, nearly suffering serious injury at Li Hao’s hands. This had forced Gao Bo to intervene.
Yet Gao Bo’s intervention had now placed him on the Great Yu Divine Dynasty’s Demon King Kill List, ensuring that its most elite Fourth Pillar Realm experts would be dispatched to hunt him down. Unless Gao Bo fled into the Great Wilderness Heaven, escape was unlikely.
The Little Demon King was utterly enraged, his fury twisting his features.
His fur bristled as fiery red veins resembling molten flames appeared on his chest and arms—a formidable demonic body-refinement technique he’d discovered in an ancient fragmented scroll.
It was this technique that had rendered his body as indestructible as divine iron, allowing him to dominate his peers in the Three Immortals Realm, with few capable of injuring him. Yet today, a mere human junior grandmaster had managed to wound him!
“I’ll kill you!!”
With a thunderous roar, he finally unsheathed the blade strapped to his back.
What had once been a small knife concealed in his fur now absorbed divine energy, expanding into a massive golden blade over thirty meters long. The winds whipped by the blade alone were enough to topple houses and split the earth!
Rumble...
The giant blade descended with explosive force, aimed straight at Li Hao’s head. Its technique carried the power of his master-level martial domain, blending wind and thunder into one strike.
Under the colossal blade, Li Hao seemed as insignificant as a black ant. Yet his eyes glimmered with profound insight. During the Grandmaster Symposium, he hadn’t walked away empty-handed. Battling grandmasters from across the land had deepened his understanding of martial domains and his perception of all things.
Sword intent arose like the wind!
Faced with the explosive and ferocious golden blade, Li Hao’s sword light was as gentle as a breeze. His movements resembled the flight of a butterfly, effortlessly dodging the oppressive blade winds.
In the next moment, he moved with lightning speed, his sword light piercing toward the Little Demon King’s eyes like a thunderbolt.
“My Wind and Thunder Dao!”
The Little Demon King’s pupils shrank as he recognized the intent within Li Hao’s strike. Shock and fury flashed across his face. “How could you possibly know it?!”
Just as the sword light was about to pierce his eye, a gray bone shard suddenly flew out, surrounded by a faint gray mist, blocking the strike.
The bone shard was knocked away but remained intact. The brief pause gave the Little Demon King enough time to evade.
The shard was too far for him to retrieve. It was a remnant of an ancient and fearsome Demon King’s skull, refined into a protective artifact by his father. To his astonishment, it had saved him from a mortal blow.
Humiliated and enraged, his eyes turned blood-red.
“Lionheart Ninefold Transformation!!”
With a deafening roar, he activated a secret technique. His aura surged dramatically, and the flames surrounding his body intensified. The massive blade in his hand ignited with what appeared to be illusionary flames, the hallmark of a blade technique cultivated to its ultimate form.
Li Hao’s expression shifted slightly as he immediately retreated, employing the agility of the "Thousand Mountain Bird Flight Diagram" and the "Snow Mountain Spirit Fox Technique." His movements became fluid and swift, enhanced by martial arts integrated into his domain. Like a breeze, he effortlessly avoided the incoming blows from the blade.
The Little Demon King pursued relentlessly, roaring furiously as he swung his blade repeatedly. However, Li Hao continued to weave and evade, avoiding direct confrontation.
Perhaps due to the high energy consumption of the technique, the Little Demon King began gasping heavily within moments. Noticing Li Hao’s tactical retreat, his expression twisted with fury.
“You think you can outlast me? Don’t forget, I am in the Undying Stage!”
Activating his undying force, the wounds on his arm visibly healed, and his aura quickly stabilized.
The Little Demon King summoned his blood energy once more, reactivating the "Lionheart Ninefold Transformation." His protective energy transformed into blazing flames that enveloped his blade as he charged at Li Hao with even greater ferocity. Each step left deep craters in the ground.
But this time, Li Hao did not continue retreating. Instead, he halted.
During his prior evasions, he had been contemplating something. Now, his thoughts had crystallized into a plan.
Boundless Sea, Heaven as a Peak.
This concept birthed a new sword move within him, which he named Heavenly Peak Sword.
Unlike the Other Shore, which focused on extreme speed and assassinations by severing spatial distances, the Heavenly Peak Sword embodied the ultimate strength. It condensed the boundless power of the sea into the form of an unshakable mountain peak.
Yet, this wasn’t the entirety of what Li Hao had been pondering.
He sought to merge the Other Shore, the Heavenly Peak Sword, and the Tai Chi Qian Kun Sword to create a new, unparalleled sword technique.
Yin and Yang, Death and Destruction.
By stripping each technique of its extraneous elements and combining their essences, Li Hao crafted a new swordsmanship technique, which he named Reincarnation.
Facing the raging Little Demon King, Li Hao exhaled deeply and activated the full power of his Seven-Star Illumination for the second time.
While using it earlier should have left him utterly exhausted, the two demonic body-refinement techniques he practiced had greatly enhanced his physique, enabling him to sustain it for a short duration once more.
As the techniques surged through him, his body brimmed with strength. His physical, spiritual, and divine energies converged, reaching their peak.
Hum!
The Dragon Sky Sword trembled, and the dragon-shaped markings along its blade roared in resonance with its master’s intent.
Li Hao stepped forward, and his sword light erupted, slicing through the darkness like a crescent moon illuminating the night sky.
The arc of the sword light resembled both a full moon and the gate of death.
The massive golden blade wielded by the Little Demon King collided with the swirling sword light. The blade's trajectory shifted, and its protective energy and blazing flames were extinguished entirely.
The golden blade flew out of the Little Demon King’s grasp, and the spiraling arc of sword light rolled up his arm, slicing through fur and flesh alike in a burst of blood and fragments.
The glowing sword arc pressed onward toward the Little Demon King’s head.
His pupils contracted in sheer terror, his expression frozen in shock and disbelief.
“Young Master!!”
A distant roar echoed as the serpent demon sprang forward at an unimaginable speed. Its soul burned like an intense flame, propelling its massive body to crash into the Little Demon King and send him flying out of harm’s way.
In doing so, the serpent demon’s own soul collided with the devastating sword light.
Boom!
With a resounding explosion, the serpent demon’s soul was obliterated inch by inch. Its enormous body, spanning over a hundred meters, shattered into several pieces before dissolving into nothingness like melting ice.
“Young Master... run...”
The serpent demon’s voice grew faint and distant, its eyes dimming as it uttered a final plea.
Moments later, its physical body was seized by Li He and three experts of the Helian Family, who swiftly decapitated it. The massive serpent’s head rolled to the ground, blood gushing in all directions.
The Myriad Mountains Little Demon King, who had landed some distance away, stood dazed. The serpent demon’s scalding blood sprayed onto him, hot and thick.
That was Serpent Elder’s blood...