As if answering some silent summons, the dead plain filled.
To the left, bone lanterns flickered and a procession of skeletal figures stepped out from the gloom. They were not fragile piles of white; their bones shone with metallic luster, every rib and joint tempered like divine steel. At their center walked a golden skeleton without a shred of flesh, golden flames burning deep in its eye sockets. Each step left faint bone imprints on the ground, as if the earth itself remembered him.
Golden Child of the Hundred Bones Sacred Tribe.
Ghost Immortals born without flesh, with bones that could block Life Treasures—among their younger generation, Golden Child was the sharpest fang.
To the right, a youth in divine robes strode forth, his body wrapped in holy flames. Behind him, divine rings appeared one after another, circling like halos, as if gods of ancient temples stood silently at his back. Disciples of Divine Spark Country followed in his wake, heads high, eyes full of the arrogant certainty that the world should part before them.
Divine Spark Prince of the Divine Spark Country.
Not far from him, another young man walked with his hands behind his back, surrounded by floating divine images—ancient god-phantoms chanting low, solemn hymns. Each phantom bore a different bloodline: beast, ghost, human, god. Hundreds of clans, hundreds of legacies, all converging into a single figure.
Hundred Clans Child, scion of the Kingdom of Gods—a country that had once birthed many God-Monarchs and left its shadow on an entire era.
In front of them stood a bald youth in monk robes, hands clasped together. The robe was simple, but beneath his bare feet, ghostly lotus patterns bloomed and faded. His eyes were half-lidded, face serene, yet the ghost qi around him twisted in a strange rhythm, as if Buddhist chants and the wails of the dead overlapped in a single breath.
Ghost Monk of the Ghost Zen Tribe.
Around them, other geniuses, royal nobles, and tribe descendants gathered—some stepping openly into the lantern light, some lurking at the fringes. Eyes like blades, like torches, like hungry beasts. Everyone wanted to watch.
In the shadows between bone lanterns, nothing could be seen.
But Ling Feng's Chaos sense felt a ripple—thin, cold, like the back of a knife grazing across the neck.
A presence walked inside darkness as if it were water.
Ye Sha of the Nightwalker Sect.
Ling Feng's lips curved into a small, amused smile.
They really rolled out most of the younger generation's proud sons just for one "crazy human", he thought. Must be flattered.
A little farther back, a different aura approached.
They were human.
Several elders in layered robes. And at the very front, clad in blue, with eyes bright as water under the moon—
Lan Yunzhu.
Their flying treasure descended in a sweep of light and settled quietly onto the plain. As they stepped down, the clamoring ghost qi parted slightly around them.
Lan Yunzhu's gaze swept the crowd once.
Her dao heart was well-tempered; she had stood before countless talents and so-called prodigies without a ripple.
But this time, her eyes stopped.
On the man standing at the center of the Snow-Shadow Tribe's formation.
On the human whose laugh seemed lazy, whose aura felt like a bottomless, quiet abyss that swallowed both ghost qi and starlight.
On the jade pendant hanging against his chest.
Her jade.
Her heart lurched.
So this is… the one the sacred tree chose?
The scene before her clashed in her mind.
Snow-Shadow's white shadows shrouding the human formation. Ghost elites forming a subtle defensive net around him as if he were their own Young Lord. His women beside him, dresses fluttering in the ghost wind. And this man—standing casually before gathered Heavenly Sovereigns and proud children of great tribes, hands loose, shoulders relaxed, as if he had simply stepped out to buy snacks.
Lan Yunzhu's fingers curled at her side, knuckles paling beneath her sleeve.
Her dao heart did not shatter—Thousand Carp River's training was not so shallow. But the calm lake inside her was no longer calm.
It now held a storm, and its color was vivid, unfamiliar.
On the road leading up from Necropolis, the earth boomed.
Mo Lidao took a step forward.
The ground trembled, tombstones shivered, a thin layer of dust sliding from stone markers carved in forgotten eras.
"Human," he rumbled. His voice was like boulders grinding together. "You are the one walking with Snow-Shadow. The one who dared cripple Yin Moon Prince and Black Chaos Young Lord."
Blood energy surged from his body like a rising tide. Two rings of blood-colored light blazed around him, each ring like a compressed world of devilish mountains and seas. Above his head, a tri-colored halo ignited—black, crimson, and ashen white—twisting together into a miniature, ferocious sun.
Sky-Devil Mo Lidao of the Heavenly Devil Race. The kind of Heavenly Sovereign who had crushed his way over mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
"Today," Mo Lidao declared, each word landing heavy as a war drum, "you will pay your debt in blood."
Snow-Shadow's elites stiffened, white shadows flaring in instinctive response. The ghost qi around their formation thickened, but many faces still lost color.
"This is bad…" Peng Zhuang's expression sank.
"Mo Lidao…" Qiurong Wanxue's pupils constricted slightly, white shadow rising behind her like a crescent moon. She knew very well what that name represented for the Nether Border.
Mo Lidao was a Heavenly Sovereign.
Snow-Shadow couldn't withstand him head-on. Even with Ling Feng's presence, this was someone one did not treat lightly—by any normal standard.
Ling Feng looked at Mo Lidao for a moment.
Then he clicked his tongue and sneered.
"A big barking dog," he said lazily, "standing in the middle of the road and calling it justice."
The words fell into the ghost wind like molten iron dropped into cold water.
Faces twisted.
"How arrogant—"
"He dares call Mo Lidao a dog—"
Ghost Immortal experts in the distance glared. Blood energy surged and receded like an enraged tide.
Mo Lidao's aura flared even higher. Yin qi for a thousand meters scattered, howling as it was swept away. Tombstones creaked, cracks spreading across the ground like webs of black lightning.
"Human," Mo Lidao growled, eyes turning bloodshot. "Do you think you can be arrogant in the Nether Border forever?"
Ling Feng ignored him.
He turned his head slightly, looking back over his shoulder.
"Jianzhen," he drawled, as if bored. "Didn't you say you wanted to try killing a Heavenly Sovereign?"
Bai Jianzhen's lashes trembled once.
She stepped forward.
"Yes," she said simply, voice as cold and flat as a drawn blade.
Ling Feng's smile deepened, something like mischief flickering at the corners of his eyes.
"This one's yours," he said. "Mo Lidao. Good whetstone."
The plain fell utterly silent.
Golden Child's golden flames in his eye sockets flickered, dimming for half a heartbeat.
Divine Spark Prince's divine rings trembled, circles of light rippling unevenly.
The divine images surrounding Hundred Clans Child shifted, their solemn hymns turning a shade lower, as if sensing something off in the pattern.
Ghost Monk's eyes opened fully for the first time, pupils like deep, still wells. His ghostly lotus underfoot slowed its rotation.
Even Ye Sha's presence in the shadows stilled.
He's letting a woman from behind him… fight a Heavenly Sovereign?
Is this madness, or—
—confidence?
Mo Lidao's face turned dark as gloom.
"To ignore me and casually throw me to a woman…" he snarled, veins bulging at his temples. "You are courting death!"
His momentum climbed to scorching heights.
The two blazing rings around his body spun faster, resolving into blurred halos. The tri-colored sun above his head burned fiercely, its three colors churning together into a crushing radiance that made the air hiss.
He took a step.
The world shook.
He charged.
Each stride landed like a mountain leaping forward. The ground shattered into dust beneath his feet; grave markers toppled and rolled like pebbles. Shockwaves rippled outward, flattening nearby tufts of ghost grass and making distant bone lanterns sway wildly.
Heavenly Devil flesh, Fate Palaces, and Life Wheel all aligned into a single brutal vector—an unstoppable, direct force that had torn apart countless geniuses before this day.
"Mo Lidao is serious!"
"He'll smash that woman to paste—"
Bai Jianzhen's expression did not change.
She took one step forward.
The Emperor Sword at her waist left its sheath.
There was no shout, no declaration of merit law.
The blade simply moved.
Yet in that instant, sword intent soared.
It wasn't merely a sharpness that rent flesh. It was a line that connected grave and firmament, a sword honed by endless solitude, tempered in Chaos by Ling Feng's hand until its edge surpassed ordinary Immortal Emperor Life Treasures.
The dim Nether sky brightened for a heartbeat, as though a crack had opened in the ceiling of this world.
Every cultivator present—ghost or human, young or ancient—felt their dao heart quiver.
Lan Yunzhu's pupils shrank, breath catching in her throat.
"That sword…" she murmured, emotion slipping into her usually steady voice.
To some eyes, the sword light fell slowly—like a snowflake drifting down.
To Mo Lidao, it was impossibly fast.
Instinct screamed.
Heavenly Devil defenses erupted with full force. The two rings around his body flared, locking his blood energy into a seemingly unbreakable fortress. The tri-colored halo condensed, the three colors twisting into a thick dome over his head, their combined power enough to crush mountains.
He roared, Heavenly Devil roar shaking dust from tombstones, and leaped, fists like collapsing peaks, intending to meet sword with blood and bone—to crush woman and blade alike in one overwhelming blow.
The sword passed.
No gaudy explosion of countless sword shadows.
Just one clean cut.
A line of argent light traced a straight path through Mo Lidao's tri-colored halo.
For a brief moment, there was resistance—like the sword was sliding through deep mud, pushing against layers of compressed Dao, blood energy, and Heavenly Devil flesh.
Then the resistance vanished.
The tri-colored halo split down the middle.
The rings around his body shattered, fragments of divine light scattering like broken shards of a sun.
The sword light did not stop.
It pierced through Mo Lidao's Fate Palaces, slicing through the shadowy projections of his past victories, severing the towering, illusory image of a Sky-Devil roaring behind him. Dao marks broke apart like dry twigs.
It entered between his brows and passed straight through his skull.
Silence.
Mo Lidao's charge halted mid-stride. One foot suspended in the air, the other buried in shattered stone.
His eyes—still wide with fury and disbelief—slowly lost their focus.
The sword light faded, as if it had never existed.
Bai Jianzhen stood calmly, Emperor Sword still faintly humming in her hand, white robes fluttering only slightly in the ghost wind.
Behind her, Ling Feng hadn't moved an inch.
With a deafening crash, Mo Lidao's body finally fell.
The impact shook the plain. Cracks spiderwebbed outward from his corpse, racing across the ground. Dust surged up in a choking cloud; the tri-colored sun above his head imploded, its light dissolving into scattered motes that vanished into nothingness.
A Heavenly Sovereign.
A Sky-Devil prodigy who had once crushed countless opponents beneath his feet.
Killed by a single sword.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
Even the distant, towering walls of Necropolis felt quieter, as if the city of the dead were listening.
Older Ghost Immortals who had been smirking moments before now stared, mouths dry, fingers unconsciously tightening around their armrests and life treasures.
Golden Child's golden flames shrank into pinpoints, their light flickering with unease. For a race born without flesh, whose pride lay in indestructible bones, seeing Mo Lidao's defenses peeled apart like wet paper left a mark.
Divine Spark Prince's divine rings shivered; one dimmed slightly around the edges, as if reflecting the tremor in his dao heart. He had arrived on the Nether Border with the arrogance of a prince backed by Myriad Bones Throne's Prime Descendant. Now, in front of a human man and his sword woman, that arrogance felt more like a thin robe in a winter gale.
Hundred Clans Child's floating divine images churned. The hymns they sang turned dissonant for a moment, like a choir losing its rhythm. The favoured child of a country that once birthed multiple God-Monarchs suddenly felt the faint illusion that he was still a frog at the bottom of a well.
Ghost Monk pressed his palms together, murmuring a Buddha's name under his breath. The ghostly lotus under his bare feet swayed, its petals turning in a slower, heavier arc.
In the distant shadow, Ye Sha narrowed his eyes.
Lan Yunzhu's fingers dug into her palm, nails biting into flesh.
Her heart pounded.
One sword.
She looked at Bai Jianzhen—sword like Heaven's judgment, expression as quiet as ice—and then at Ling Feng, who only watched with a faint, teasing curve to his lips, as if this outcome had never once left the realm of certainty in his mind.
Dust from Mo Lidao's fall had barely settled when Ling Feng's voice drifted out again, lazy as ever.
"If you're going to bark that loudly," he said, gaze sweeping over the gathered ghost experts, "you should at least make sure you're not made of tofu."
A faint murmur rippled through the plain.
Golden flames in Golden Child's sockets jumped once, then burned colder.
Divine rings behind Divine Spark Prince quivered again, one nearly flickering out before stabilizing.
The divine images around Hundred Clans Child shifted restlessly; the hymns they sang dropped another note, heavy and low.
Ghost Monk's ghostly lotus shuddered beneath his feet, the nether chants around him thickening like fog.
Ling Feng's eyes moved past them all, unhurried, as though he were simply people-watching on a street corner in some mortal city.
"Honestly," he continued, as if thinking out loud, "for a race that loves shouting about blood debts and vengeance, you all fold pretty fast. I've seen street dogs with more bite."
That one drew blood.
Ghost Immortal blood energy surged and withdrew in the distance, an agitated, restless tide. Many complexions turned ugly. Killing intent flashed in eyes that had watched dynasties rise and fall.
To be mocked like this on their ancestral land.
In front of Necropolis.
In front of the younger generation they had painstakingly cultivated.
Even Ghost Monk's fingers tightened slightly around his prayer beads, the overlapping nether-Buddhist chants dipping for a heartbeat. Golden Child's golden bones crackled faintly as the light in his eyes sharpened. Divine Spark Prince's expression twisted, then smoothed back out—arrogance and calculation wrestling beneath the surface.
Yet none of them moved.
Not immediately.
The plain was still. The ghost wind dragged gray dust across broken stone and shattered tomb markers.
In that silence—
Something else moved.
Not in the open. Not under lantern light.
In the shadows.
It slipped between bone lanterns like a blade sliding through water. Where Mo Lidao's prestige came from crushing enemies head-on, Ye Sha's name was built on the exact opposite.
No world-shaking momentum. No blazing halos.
Only the quiet certainty that once he chose a target, that target would die.
He vanished.
One moment, he stood half-hidden behind a formation flag, his presence thin as drawn ink.
The next, there was nothing.
Even Heavenly Sovereigns on the field felt a blur in their senses. It was as if a strand of darkness had been plucked from the world. Nightwalker bloodline power, honed since ancient times, swallowed his aura entirely.
One after another, divine pupils opened, Fate Palaces revolved, ghost pupils lit with eerie glows. Heavenly Sovereign perceptions stretched across the plain like invisible nets.
They caught only empty air.
Even Ghost Monk's ghostly lotus dimmed as his half-lidded eyes opened wider, pupils searching the shadows with solemn focus.
No one sensed Ye Sha.
The shadow itself had swallowed him.
From Ye Sha's perspective, the world slowed and separated into clear lines of opportunity.
The human stood there, relaxed to the point of insolence. Bai Jianzhen had stepped half a pace in front of him; her sword still hummed softly from that single strike, but her attention was outward, guarding against a frontal threat.
The women gathered loosely around him like stars around a moon. Snow-Shadow elites formed a loose perimeter, white shadows fluttering restlessly but leaving gaps only someone like Ye Sha could see.
None of them looked his way.
Good.
Ye Sha's lips curled faintly as he flowed from tomb shadow to lantern shadow, each step a perfect thread in the Nightwalker Sect's most guarded assassination art. In this world, almost no one could see through his veil once he truly focused. Even other Heavenly Sovereigns only realized he had moved when his blade was already inside their True Fate.
This human…
He couldn't sense the man's true cultivation at all.
That alone was dangerous.
But retreat was never an option. The more mysterious the enemy, the more they needed to be removed early.
Besides… everyone was watching.
If he reaped this human's life cleanly, his name in the Nether Border would stand above Mo Lidao's.
Step by step, the world folded around his footfalls, concealing each movement inside the seams of night.
The shadows at Ling Feng's back thickened, converging toward a single sharpened point.
There.
A line from behind the neck to the heart.
Ye Sha's pupils shrank, killing intent condensing into a needle of ice. His dao image flickered—his shadow overlapping his body, ghostly blades sprouting from his back like insect legs as he compressed every shred of his power into that one instant.
Now—
His hand slashed forward, fingers like a soul-hook reaching silently for Ling Feng's spine.
And then—
Everything stopped.
From Ye Sha's side, there was no warning.
One moment, his hand was a breath from the human's neck, Nightwalker veil flawless, Heavenly Sovereign senses whispering triumph.
The next, a warm, calloused hand was wrapped around his throat.
Ye Sha's eyes, used to seeing only weaknesses and blind spots, suddenly held a reflection:
A relaxed profile.
An unhurried jawline.
A pair of dark eyes that had finally turned to look at him, as if their owner had just now decided it was worth the effort.
"Ah," Ling Feng said mildly. "There you are."
The plain erupted.
Lantern flames jumped high. Countless experts' pupils shrank together.
They hadn't sensed Ye Sha's movement.
They hadn't sensed his arrival.
But they all clearly saw the moment shadow itself seemed to twist, and a slim figure in night robes was yanked out of nothingness, dangling in the air by the neck like a stray chicken.
"Ye Sha!" someone from the Nightwalker camp cried, the voice cracking.
Many Heavenly Sovereigns' dao hearts lurched.
Even Mo Lidao's earlier death had at least followed visible logic. They had seen Bai Jianzhen draw, seen the sword, felt the force of her strike. Sudden, yes. Terrifying, yes. But still bound within the rules of the world.
This?
No ripple.
No hint.
One heartbeat, Ye Sha was nowhere.
The next, he was hanging in front of Ling Feng, feet off the ground, fingers clawing at a hand that might as well have grown out of the void.
"How—"
"That's impossible. Even I can't sense Ye Sha when he goes all out…"
Murmurs began and died halfway; no one wanted Ling Feng's gaze to land on them now.
Ghost Monk's eyelids twitched; the nether lotus under his feet froze mid-sway. Golden Child's golden flames tightened into sharp pinpoints, then widened again, burning with something sharper than pride—wariness. Divine Spark Prince's divine rings contracted until they were narrow bands, one dimming on the edges like a flame suddenly deprived of air. Hundred Clans Child's divine images shifted into a defensive pattern, hymns turning low and tense.
Ling Feng's fingers tightened just enough to make Ye Sha's face redden.
He looked up at the assassin, expression calm, even faintly amused.
"Some amazing assassin you are," he said conversationally. "All that sneaking around, and you still ended up in my hand."
Ye Sha's vision flickered.
His dao foundation roared, Nightwalker arts exploding in frantic urgency. Darkness crawled up his limbs, attempting to dissolve his body into shadow and slip free.
The problem was—
He couldn't move.
Not his body.
Not his soul.
Something invisible coiled around his True Fate like chains of molten iron. His consciousness felt nailed to a single point; the more he struggled, the more that point compressed, crushing every escape route he had painstakingly carved out over centuries.
Purple Chaos power wrapped around his soul like a cage that ignored all realm gaps, turning his famed escape arts into useless tricks.
"You… you…" he choked, words forced past his crushed windpipe. "Nightwalker Sect stands behind me… If you dare—"
He tried to spit out names.
Nightwalker.
Sky-Devil Gate.
Heavenly Devil Race.
He tried to throw out every banner he could grasp, like a drowning man tossing out hooks, hoping one would latch onto something solid.
Ling Feng did not bother to let him finish.
He snorted; the sound was small, but it cut clean through the panic and posturing.
"I don't give a shit about your Nightwalker Sect," he said flatly. "Or Sky-Devil Gate. Or whatever Heaven-something tribe you people like shouting about."
Those dark eyes, so soft when he looked at his women, turned cold enough to freeze the entire Ghost River.
"You pointed a knife at my neck," he went on. "That's all that matters."
His fingers tightened.
There was no grand technique name. No swirling multiplicity of dao patterns.
Just a simple, direct squeeze.
Crack.
The sound wasn't loud.
Yet on that silent plain, it echoed like thunder.
Ye Sha's neck snapped between Ling Feng's fingers like dry twig. His soul surged, trying to flee into the nearest shadow the way it had so many times in earlier assassinations.
A faint purple-gold ripple flickered in Ling Feng's eyes.
The escaping soul froze mid-flight, compressed into a tiny, struggling brand for a single breath—
Then vanished, stripped into harmless fragments of memory and scattered into nothing.
Ling Feng released his hand.
The limp corpse dropped at his feet.
He didn't bother looking down.
With his free hand, he flicked a finger.
A strand of power leapt from his fingertip—neither pure flame nor pure dao light, but something denser, heavier, more real. It arced lazily through the air, then split into two: one line striking Mo Lidao's fallen body, the other landing on Ye Sha's corpse.
The effect was anything but lazy.
The instant that power touched Heavenly Sovereign flesh—flesh that even Life Treasures struggled to truly damage—there was no explosion, no flames leaping high.
Color faded first.
Then form.
Their bodies collapsed into fine gray dust, crushed beneath an unseen law. Ghost qi recoiled with a hiss, as though burned by a force that sat above its level.
In just a few breaths, there was nothing left.
No limbs.
No blood.
No lingering soul marks.
Only two dark, glassy scars on the ground where the dirt had vitrified under the intensity of that strange energy.
A death colder and more absolute than anything Necropolis usually saw.
A chill swept across the plain.
The Nether Border had always been cold; this was different. This cold rose from inside the heart, from the realization that things one believed to be firm pillars—Heavenly Sovereigns, ancient sects, ghost tribes—could be swept off the board like dust.