Just as his voice rang out, a strange sound followed. From an unknown depth underground, seven streams of twisted, surging force burst upward. About three feet from the surface, they crossed paths in an eerie intersection, triggering a shift in over a hundred different qi mechanisms.

The surrounding air trembled with a low, resonant hum, as if hundreds of invisible steel wires were being yanked tight by unseen hands from all directions.

Qin Wanru's expression didn't change. She simply gave Li Xun a subtle glance.

Li Xun understood immediately and flung out the sect’s distress-signal flying sword. At the same time, Qin Wanru raised her pale wrist and traced more than a dozen flawless circles in the air.

Each rotation generated a slight adhesive force that latched onto the threads of true breath strong enough to tear flesh from bone.

When the spinning stopped, those layers of adhesive force subtly shifted, creating just enough repulsion to keep the razor-sharp "wires" from cutting into her. They brushed against her skin, leaving only faint white marks. No blood, no broken skin.

This level of precision showed her mastery over true breath was already near perfection.

But it still wasn’t enough. That was just the prelude. The real attack hadn’t arrived yet.

So when seven strands of true breath finally broke through the ground, seven long gashes appeared across Qin Wanru’s body.

Li Xun saw it clearly. She moved to block each one, but was just a hair too slow every time.

Even so, each strike missed her vital points by the slimmest margin and didn’t hinder her movements at all.

By this point, the message-sending flying sword had just disappeared beyond sight.

Though it took some damage pushing through the dense blockade, it still managed to shoot off at an awkward angle. Net Throat Demon made no real effort to stop it.

It was clear that he was far more interested in the man and woman standing before him.

With a loud crash, a dark blur burst out from beneath Qin Wanru’s feet, coming face-to-face with her in a brutal head-on clash.

The resulting shockwave blasted Li Xun dozens of yards away. As the wounds across his body reopened, at least two more bones snapped. The pain hit so hard, he nearly blacked out.

A moment later, Qin Wanru staggered down beside him. Her left arm hung limply, and a shallow cut now traced across her cheek.

Li Xun gave her a sideways glance, but words didn’t quite cut it. He yanked off his mask instead, revealing a face smeared with blood and spit.

“Why’d you save me?”

“I just didn’t expect saving you would be this much trouble,” Qin Wanru said with a calm smile. “If I’d known it was Net Throat Demon, I wouldn’t have come.”

Li Xun gave a dry laugh, though his eyes had already caught the glint of swordlight flickering in the distance.

Then he turned and saw the Net Throat Demon clearly for the first time.

The demon, infamous and terrifying, had a sharply defined face. But its skin was pitch black, and strange, demonic scales coiled across most of it—snaking from the edge of its face, past the corner of its eye, and vanishing into its temple.

It had no head, but where the head should have been wasn’t smooth. Instead, it was a tangled mess of flesh and skin, like a thousand ridges and furrows twisted together, pulsing with bulging veins that still throbbed faintly.

It was only then that Li Xun noticed: its blood-red pupils were vertical, long and eerie, and the whites of its eyes were a pale yellow. No different from a wild beast.

Its ten-foot-tall body looked like a bundle of scorched, dried wood. Cracks split open across its limbs, bleeding bright red. On each shoulder, three jagged spikes jutted outward—seemingly solid, yet twitching ever so slightly. Tiny pores dotted their surface, exhaling thin wisps of gray-white mist.

After spending so long in the Shadow-Devouring Soul Sect , Li Xun could say without hesitation: this mist was death qi, pure and potent.

Strangely, Net Throat Demon didn’t press forward. Its crimson eyes swept slowly over the two of them. That cold, demonic gaze felt as if it was branding their image into its memory. Then it let out a low, guttural hiss, its long, wiry body suddenly springing into the air, vanishing in the blink of an eye.

Qin Wanru let out a long breath, then slowly sat cross-legged. She didn’t even glance at Li Xun, focusing instead on tending her wounds.

Li Xun was in far worse shape, his injuries ten times more serious, yet his mind was painfully clear. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he forced a bitter grin, tugged his mask back on, and lay flat on the ground, too broken to care about anything else.

A flash of light streaked past. Ming Ji and Qingxu arrived almost at the same moment. When they saw the state the two were in, neither could speak.

Then, just as silence settled over the scene, a faint, drifting note passed through the air.

Not only did Li Xun and the others hear it; this soft, delicate sound rang clearly in every ear.

The flute’s tone was meant to be pure and clear, yet in this person’s hands, it took on an entirely different flavor.

Just a few disconnected fragments, nothing melodic or complete, yet somehow they manage to form a subtle thread hidden in the void, making you lean in and listen closely.

To the cultivators on the field, each note seemed to brush against their minds, nudging their focus ever so slightly off-center.

But in the midst of battle, how could anyone afford such a lapse?

Everyone felt a chill tighten in their chest. And right then, another note rang out beside their ears. This one was long, sharp and piercing.

It cut through the air like an unsheathed blade, crashing down without warning. No time to react, no chance to resist, it struck straight at the heart.

Across a battlefield stretching hundreds of miles, everything froze for an instant... then chaos exploded.

Countless stalemates shattered at once. Caught off guard, both sides lashed out instinctively to protect themselves, and in the blink of an eye, the tide turned in battle after battle.

The bloodshed in that single moment surpassed everything that had come before. From that point on, no one dared make another move.

Except for three pairs of combatants, each locked in a fight on a completely different level.

“Gu Zhixuan?”

As the note reached her ears, Qingming’s brow furrowed slightly. But his Heartlight sword remained steady. With a subtle flick, it sent out a ripple of blade-light, cold and clear as autumn water, dissolving the incoming heat wave into drifting wisps of smoke.

It wasn’t just the space in front of him; within a five-mile radius centered around him, the air was now thick with rising steam. The cold seawater had inexplicably dropped by nearly two inches, creating a sharp contrast with the surrounding ocean.

It was Demon Phoenix.

A hundred years ago, during the great hunt, it had been a one-sided pursuit, many against one. Qingming never had the chance to face the Demon Phoenix alone.

Today was the first time the two had met head-on.

And as they exchanged blows, Qingming found himself feeling something hard to describe.

The Heavenly Demon Phoenix truly lived up to her legend. The unrivaled demon who had roamed free for tens of thousands of years. Her control over flame had reached a level unmatched in the entire recorded history of the Tongxuan Realm.

Under her command, fire took on astonishingly diverse forms.

Radiant Flame, Flame of the Seven Emotions, Purgatory Fire, Eight-Gate Windfire… In a single wave of flame, there could be dozens of distinct elemental qualities interwoven.

Yet she didn’t rely on change for its own sake. Every gesture she made wove all those complexities into something grand and cohesive. Like an awe-inspiring structure rising from the earth, majestic and magnificent. Her vast, masterful technique carried a clarity and elegance that could only come from deep creative insight.

Qingming understood this better than anyone. Though they were both experts of the “True One” level, he had only just stepped into this realm after surviving the Forty-Nine Tribulations. In both cultivation and battle instincts, he still fell a step behind the Demon Phoenix.

From the very start, he had no choice but to take a defensive stance.

Demon Phoenix moved around the perimeter with the ease of a casual stroll, while Qingming remained within, calmly swinging his sword.

On the surface, both seemed composed, even leisurely; but in truth, his space was shrinking. Bit by bit, inch by inch, the Demon Phoenix was compressing the battlefield. And once she pushed him past a certain threshold, she would unleash a killing strike as fierce as a volcanic eruption.

Just then, a subtle shift rippled through the flute’s sound.

Sure enough, through layers of mist, Qingming caught the distant glint in the Demon Phoenix’s eyes. Firelight danced in her gaze. Her slender fingers snapped into motion: four curled inward, thumb pressed gently down. And a brilliant beam of searing light tore through the fog, streaking straight for Qingming’s chest.

He angled his Heartlight sword, just in time. With a sharp ring, the blade deflected the beam skyward. In that instant, the Demon Phoenix spun gracefully, using the movement to break the mutual energy lock between them. Her figure flickered and vanished.

But just before she disappeared, she cast him a glance. Subtle, fleeting, yet impossible to ignore.

Qingming saw it clearly. And his heart tensed.

By now, he knew the other two battles had stopped as well.

What followed was strange. After the fighting ceased, even the rogue cultivators and demonic beasts, who had moments ago been locked in life-and-death struggle, began gathering up their wounded and retreating.

Qingming stood alone on the sea’s surface, furthest from Nightless City. He watched in silence as a stream of humans and demons passed him by, heading north toward the Polar Icefields.

Throughout it all, he neither swung a sword nor uttered a sound.

The retreating cultivators cast wary or provocative looks his way, but he didn’t react at all.

The atmosphere in Nightless City was tense and awkward. Among the righteous cultivators were quite a few hot-headed and impulsive types. Just shaken from the threat of the flute's earlier notes, they saw the demons retreat and immediately gave chase on their swords.

But most chose caution over rashness.

As the more aggressive cultivators closed in on Qingming, several figures suddenly appeared in the sky. Li Douliang, Sect Master of the Soul Suppression Sect, and Ling Fengzi, Sect Master of the Voidmist Sect, descended side by side and positioned themselves beside Qingming, both wearing grave expressions.

Li Douliang turned to face the incoming cultivators, just about to speak, when the flute rang out again. This time, it was a brief, piercing note.

In an instant, sword light scattered through the sky. The dozen or so cultivators in pursuit suddenly dropped from the air like dumplings into soup, crashing into the sea one after another. The scene was chaotic and brutal.

Yet not a single one was injured. They all surfaced moments later, dazed and confused, with no idea how they’d been knocked down in the first place.

Throughout all this, the three sect masters standing in the middle didn’t sense a thing.

Qingming looked at the ever-churning darkness ahead and spoke softly, “Ancient Daoist divine arts… truly unmatched under heaven.”

Ling Fengzi was a small, kindly-looking old Daoist. His eyes were always half-closed out of habit, leaving only a narrow slit, which made him look like he was always smiling.

But his smile now had a bitter edge to it.

He raised his sleeve and glanced at it. The wide robe was marked with several long, jagged tears crisscrossing the fabric. He gave a dry chuckle.

“Let’s not jump to conclusions. Just look at my sleeve! Seems Fairy Qin’s skills aren’t much worse than her uncle’s, huh?”

Among the three sect masters, he was the only one who hadn’t yet reached the “True One” realm.

Even so, the Voidmist Sect’s “Seven Void Principles” were said to be the finest defensive technique in the entire Tongxuan Realm. Even if he were caught in a pincer attack from both Qingming and Li Douliang, it wouldn’t normally leave him looking this ragged in such a short time.

Seeing him so disheveled, Qingming and Li Douliang exchanged a look. And both let out a helpless smile.

Just then, a stir began to ripple through the crowd behind them.

A few moments later, a long, mournful howl suddenly echoed through Nightless City. The cry was hoarse and grief-stricken, like a wound torn straight from the soul.

The three sect masters froze, caught off guard. Before they could react, another sorrowful howl followed close behind; and then another, and another, one after another tearing through the sky.

Even the night above Nightless City seemed to darken, weighed down by the flood of anguish in the air.