pjbooks Chapter 106 Is this enough?
Chapter 106 Is this enough?
When that sword fell, the heavens and earth fell silent.
The front-line Abyss Heavy Armor Soldiers didn't even have time to raise their tower shields. Their armor, forged from Abyss Black Iron and strong enough to withstand a full-force attack from an A-rank Awakened, instantly turned to the finest powder upon contact with the sword light. The sword light pierced through the armor, through the flesh beneath, through the bones behind the flesh, and through the second, third, and fourth heavy armor soldiers behind the bones. An entire column of Abyss Heavy Armor Soldiers, from the very front to the very back of the line, a total of one hundred and twenty, froze in place the instant the sword light swept past. Then their bodies split open from the center, the cuts smooth as a mirror, not a drop of blood seeping out—because the sword intent had sealed off all blood vessels, all nerves, and all cells in that same instant.
They resembled a row of neatly sliced bread pieces, silently falling to both sides.
The live stream chat went completely silent at that moment.
The sword light pierced through the front ranks and continued forward. Those bat-winged demons hovering in mid-air were the first to sense death approaching—their wing membranes began to disintegrate from the edges under the sweeping force of the sword's aftershocks, disintegrating so quickly they couldn't even flap their wings to escape. The first bat-winged demon attempted to defend itself with abyssal fire; dark red flames erupted from its palm, coalescing into a wall of fire before it. The sword light pierced through the wall of fire as easily as piercing a thin sheet of paper. The wall of fire extinguished silently. The bat-winged demon looked down and saw an extremely thin silver line across its chest. The silver line stretched diagonally from its left shoulder to its right waist, neatly slicing its entire body in two. It wanted to scream, but its throat no longer belonged to it.
The second, the third, the fourth. The twelve bat-winged demon kings suspended in the sky froze at the same moment. Their bodies, like insects frozen in amber, hovered motionless in mid-air, then simultaneously split open from the center. Twelve dark red blood mists exploded in the air, like twelve fireworks that had been paused—they froze halfway through their explosions, then were erased from their very existence by the residual power of the sword intent, even the blood mists turning into nothingness.
On the ground, the demon kings finally realized what was happening.
"Scatter! Scatter, all of you!" roared the demon king, his entire body covered in ice-blue bone armor, slamming his palms into the ground. A wall of ice several meters thick rose from the sand, dark blue abyssal runes flowing across it, each rune flashing wildly, compressing the power of abyssal frost to its limit. This was his innate defense, the "Eternal Frozen Wall," which had never been breached by any human awakened being in the past three hundred years.
The moment the sword light touched the frozen wall, all the runes on the ice wall extinguished at the same instant.
The Ice Armor Demon King looked down at the spreading silver line on his chest. His lips twitched, as if he wanted to say something. Then his body split open from the center, and his icy blue bone armor crumbled like shattered ice, clanging and clattering onto the sand, creating small craters. His abyssal core shattered in two, and dark blue light surged from the broken ends, flowing into a glowing river on the ground.
The sword light continued forward. It pierced through the Shadow Demon King, which was like a swirling black mist—the mist churned and struggled violently within the sword light, trying to break into countless fragments to escape, but the sword intent had already locked down every single fragment of its soul. The black mist began to glow from within, silver light seeping through every crevice, transforming it from pure darkness into a lamp lit from within. Then it dissipated.
The sword light pierced through the skeleton demon king enveloped in dark red flames. The skeleton demon king opened its jaws, letting out a silent shriek, and the flames around it suddenly leaped dozens of feet high, attempting to incinerate the sword light. The sword light passed through the flames; before the sword's intent, the flames were like snow thrown into a furnace, extinguishing layer by layer from the outer flame to the core. The soul fire in the skeleton demon king's eyes flickered wildly in the sword light; it was the first time in three hundred years that it had felt fear.
Second row, third row, fourth row. Ice Demon King, Fire Demon King, Dark Demon King, Curse Demon King, Corruption Demon King. Those Abyss Demon Kings, who were invincible in the eyes of the awakened humans, were like a row of dominoes being toppled before Jiang Chen's sword—no, not even dominoes. Dominoes at least have a process of falling, but these didn't even have that. Wherever the sword light passed, everything was instantly sliced, pierced, and erased from existence.
A bizarre scene unfolded on the battlefield. In the very center of the Demon King's army formation, where the sword light had struck, a straight, narrow strip of space, less than a finger's width wide, appeared. This strip of space stretched for miles from the very front of the Demon King's army to the very back, covering the entire battlefield. Within this strip of space was nothing—no corpses of demon soldiers, no remains of the Demon King, no trace of abyssal power, only a pure, absolute emptiness, where even grains of sand had been crushed into nothingness.
Then, the sword light stopped at the very back of the formation.
Balthalon stood at the rear of the formation. The horn runes on the right half of the goat's skull were writhing wildly at an unprecedented speed, while the dark green eyes on the left half of the withered old man's face were wide open, the parasitic patterns deep within them completely stilled. He stretched his hands forward, fingers spread, and a barrier of pure corruption law materialized in his palms. The barrier was entirely dark green, its surface swirling with countless fine runes, each flashing, annihilating, and regenerating frantically, compressing the power of corruption to a limit that even Balthalon himself had never used before.
The sword light struck the corrupting barrier.
In Balsalon's dark green eyes, the pupils shrank to the size of pinpoints. He had slumbered for tens of thousands of years at the bottom of the abyss, and upon awakening, he had slain countless powerful enemies. Even the previous Seventh Pillar Demon God was corrupted from within by his corrupting laws for a full three hundred years before finally dying. But now, he faced not the previous Seventh Pillar Demon God. He faced a Celestial Emperor who had returned from the world of cultivation. A Celestial Emperor who had honed his sword intent through a thousand years of slaughter. A Celestial Emperor who had once slain ancient dragons and elephants, ancient demon gods, and even the Heavenly Dao itself.
His corrupting principles are utterly worthless before the Heavenly Dao of the cultivation world.
The barrier shattered.
The sword light pierced through Balthazaron's hands, which he had been protecting, through his palms that were frantically releasing the laws of corruption, through the bone bracelets on his wrists engraved with abyssal runes, and through his forearm, elbow, and upper arm. Balthazaron's right arm, from hand to shoulder, was cleanly severed in two by the sword light. Dark green blood gushed from the cut, splashing onto the sand, instantly corroding it into a giant crater several meters deep—but his right arm did not fall off, because the sword intent had sealed off all blood vessels, all nerves, and all muscle fibers the instant it was cut. His right arm was still attached to his shoulder, but it had been completely destroyed from the inside.
Balsalon let out a hoarse, broken scream, like the simultaneous hissing of a billion snakes.
His body flew backward, smashing countless boulders across the Gobi Desert and carving a furrow hundreds of meters long into the sand. Dark green blood seeped from the severed end of his right arm, leaving a trail of discontinuous green blood in his flight path.
Jiang Chen sheathed the Severing Thoughts Sword, its tip pointing diagonally at the ground. He looked at the demon god in the distance, struggling to his feet from the pile of rubble, his expression unchanged.
The battlefield was deathly silent.
On either side of the blank strip stretching for miles, the surviving demon kings stood frozen in place. Their numbers had dwindled from over seventy to less than thirty after Jiang Chen's sword strike. Every demon king still standing trembled violently.
On the city wall, Zhao Tiecheng gripped his dulled sword, frozen in place. His lips trembled; he wanted to say something—"Fuck," "Awesome," "Is this even human?"—but he couldn't utter a word. He simply stared at the blank space below the city, cleaved open by a single sword strike, at the demon kings frozen in place on either side of the blank space, and at the demon god struggling to his feet from the rubble in the distance.
Beside him, a young communications soldier suddenly burst into tears.
After a complete 30-second silence, the live stream chat exploded in a way that was unprecedented in the history of the internet.
"One sword!!!! One sword slayed more than forty demon kings!!!!!"
"Balsalon's hand!!! His right hand has been cleaved in two!!! The Seventh Demon God!!! He was cleaved away by a single sword strike!!!"
"I saw that line!!! The line in the middle of the battlefield!!! There's nothing there!! Not even sand!!!"
"What did Balsalon just say? 'I'd like to see if the Celestial Emperor can withstand the combined attack of the seventy-two Demon Kings'—he did!! And he did it with a single sword strike!! He cleaved your Demon King in half with one sword strike!! Doesn't your face hurt??!!"
"Did you notice? This sword strike from Brother Chen is different from all the swords he used in the Apostle Hall. This sword is a physical one! He really has a sword in his hand! This is the first time that sword has appeared!"
"'Sword, come!'—He just said 'Sword, come!' That sword is his natal flying sword!! It's the kind of natal flying sword from cultivation novels that has been nurtured for thousands of years!!"
"So he didn't even use a sword when fighting the Apostles??? He killed Astra and Morgana with just sword fingers and sword domain???"
"Barsalon is still alive, but his right hand is ruined! You see, his hand didn't fall off, but it's completely shattered inside!"
"Is this the Immortal Emperor? Is this the Immortal Emperor who has fought his way up from the bottom of the cultivation world for a thousand years?"
"I realize I was completely wrong about the term 'Immortal Emperor' before. I thought it was a level slightly stronger than S-rank. Now I know it's another dimension, a dimension of existence in itself."
"Liangzhou has been defended! Liangzhou has been defended! 120,000 civilians have been defended!"
On the screen, where comments were scrolling wildly, Jiang Chen gripped the Severing Thoughts Sword and strode towards Balthallon. His school uniform fluttered gently in the morning breeze, and the stains on the hem were not blood, but rather the dark green specks of light left over from when he shattered the power of the abyss with his sword—those specks landed on the uniform like dust on ordinary fabric, easily brushed off.
Jiang Chen stopped about twenty steps away from Balsalon. He looked at the demon god who was trying to stand up by supporting himself with his left hand, at his broken face that was half withered old man and half goat skull, at the dark green blood that was still seeping from the broken part of his right arm, his eyes as calm as if he were looking at a roadside stone.
"You said you would use the lives of the seventy-two demon kings to test my limits."
Jiang Chen's voice wasn't loud, but every word clearly pierced through the deathly silence of the battlefield.
"The results are in. Is that enough?"
Balsalon's dark green pupils suddenly contracted. He opened his mouth—the face that was a patchwork of a goat's skull and a withered old man now looked more like a misplaced puzzle piece. He tried to say something, but only a muffled, bellows-like wheezing came from his throat.
"If that's not enough," Jiang Chen raised the Severing Thoughts Sword, its tip aimed at Balsalon's brow, "I can let you test it yourself."