Chapter 37 – The Turning of the Tide
Brothers in Blood and Fire
The arena had become a slaughterhouse. Corpses lay across broken stone, smoke and blood mingling in choking clouds, but in the midst of the chaos, Lin Xuan and Bai Liang surged like a storm given flesh.
Lin's Blackstorm Pike blurred, arcs of lightning and fire bursting with every thrust. His movements sharpened with each exchange, the Heavenstorm Lance and Aegis of Shifting Skies grinding upward in mastery. Every parry was smoother, every spatial skip cleaner. His arts, once at the Proficient stage, began brushing the edge of Mastery—born of endless repetition under mortal threat.
Bai Liang's saber sang beside him, every cut heavier than the last. The upgrade Lin had forced upon him resonated now; his muscles no longer trembled with fatigue, and his aura swelled like a tide. His saber art, once precise but rigid, now flowed like water, weaving into Lin's spearwork with uncanny synchronicity.
They weren't two fighters. They were a single blade, cleaving in harmony.
Each clash made them stronger. Each kill hammered skill into steel.
The demonic sect realized too late that what should have ground these two into the dirt was forging them instead.
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The Sect on the Brink
Elsewhere, disciples and elders still staggered. Senior Brother Wen carved a path through demonic lieutenants, but his blade was nicked, his breath ragged. Junior Sister Mu clung to the ruins of the Alchemy Pavilion, lips cracked, qi dangerously depleted as she forced every last flame into walls of fire that blistered the enemy.
Cloudsky's defenders were past exhaustion.
If not for the baby dragon's cry, if not for Lin and Bai's impossible stand, the sect would already have drowned.
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The Clash of Giants
Above them all, the true war split the sky.
The Sect Leader, his qi towering like a mountain, fought with blade-light so pure it scoured the blood from the air. Each stroke should have ended battles on its own. But Mo Tianyin, swollen by sacrificial rites, met every decree with a tide of writhing chains and faces. The sky cracked, the mountain shook, and disciples below fought in the shadow of their clash.
"Yield the boy," Mo roared, fury laced with fear at the memory of the dragon's cry. "We need only one—the one who touched the heavens with alchemy!"
The Sect Leader's gaze was steel. "No hand of yours will touch my disciples."
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The Trump Card
Lin Xuan and Bai Liang fought in a narrowing circle of corpses when the Sect Leader suddenly spread both arms. The air stilled.
Around him, the great arrays of Cloudsky flared to life—inscriptions buried for centuries, each fueled by decades of sacrifice. He drew them inward, every line of power anchoring to his dantian. His aura became unbearable, the very fabric of heaven and earth bending in protest.
"Heaven-Sealing Strike."
His blade descended.
The world split.
The blood tide shattered like a sea struck by a mountain. Mo Tianyin screamed, hurled back, his body unraveling into smoke and shredded flesh as the forbidden power crushed him. Demonic cultivators across the sect reeled, their formations broken, their morale gutted.
But the cost was clear. The Sect Leader's hair turned half-white in a breath. His aura guttered like a flame robbed of fuel, still vast but… diminished. What he had spent would not return quickly. For years—decades, perhaps—he would remain weakened.
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The Retreat
The sect felt it: the shift. The demonic horde, once ravenous, broke. Cries rose—panicked, desperate. Elders of the Bloodfiend Sect shouted orders, pulling their battered forces away.
Lin Xuan drove his spear through the chest of one last lieutenant. Bai Liang's saber fell with a final, merciless arc. Together, they stood amid ruin, bloodied but unbroken, as the demonic sect fled into the night.
Cloudsky Sword Sect had survived.
Barely.
And though victory rang in the disciples' cries, Lin Xuan could not shake the image of the Sect Leader's trembling hand as he sheathed his blade.
The war was won, but the cost of survival had only just begun.