Chapter 200: A Single Sword Flattens Mountains and Seas! Old Ancestor, your appearance fee is quite expensive, right?

"Thud."

Gu Lan, like a kite with a broken string, heavily crashed into the pile of rubble, kicking up a cloud of dust.

The metallic taste of blood in his throat was so rich that it made him want to vomit, and his vision began to blur, only vaguely seeing two figures scrambling and crawling as they rushed toward him.

"Junior Brother!"

"Gu Lan!"

Jiang Wanqing and Saintess Ji Wushuang knelt down beside Gu Lan almost simultaneously.

Jiang Wanqing's hands were trembling violently. Disregarding her own internal injuries, she desperately mobilized that trace of newly loosened true essence, wanting to seal Gu Lan's ruptured wounds. As for Saintess Ji Wushuang, she was much more direct; gritting her teeth, she pulled out a large pile of precious Medicinal Pills from her embrace, and regardless of whether their medicinal properties conflicted or not, she crammed them all into Gu Lan's mouth.

"Don't… don't stuff anymore, I'm… I'm choking…"

Gu Lan managed to spit out a few words with difficulty, his consciousness regaining a trace of clarity. He felt that the fatal squeezing sensation behind his neck had disappeared, replaced by a refreshing… fragrance of wine?

He laboriously turned his neck and looked toward the top of the cliff.

That slovenly, one-armed old man was leisurely carrying a wine gourd, the moonlight shining on his messy white hair, unexpectedly exuding an indescribable sense of sanctity.

"Li Taixuan?!"

The heavy-armor-form Demon God Remnant Soul let out a piercing screech, retreating three steps. For the first time, a look of apprehension appeared within its originally arrogant and unyielding blood-red eyes.

"You old fellow, didn't your Sword Intent shatter five hundred years ago, and you passed away in the back mountain of the Qingyun Sect?"

"Passed away?"

The one-armed old man Li Taixuan picked his ear and flicked the earwax downward with a disgusted look on his face.

"This old man was just sleeping too deeply, and that group of little brats mistook me for dead. But speaking of which, as soon as this old man woke up, I saw you, a noseless stray dog, bullying my granddisciple. Where am I supposed to put this old face of mine?"

Li Taixuan took a step forward.

As this step fell, the earth, which had been collapsing due to the birth of the Demon God, mysteriously stopped trembling.

"Li Taixuan! Even if you aren't dead yet, so what?"

The Demon God Remnant Soul was enraged out of humiliation, waving the black shield in its hand as the surrounding Devilish Qi gathered crazily once again.

"You only have one arm, and even your natal divine sword is gone. What percentage of your strength from back then can you possibly have left now? Although this deity is only a remnant soul, having swallowed the flesh and blood of that Zhang fellow at the Soul Transformation Stage, killing you is more than enough!"

"Kill me?"

Li Taixuan chuckled and took another gulp of old wine.

"Although this old man only has one arm left, killing a coward like you who only knows how to hide in the smoke really doesn't require a second hand."

As he spoke, Li Taixuan bent down and casually picked up a withered tree branch from the ground.

That branch was no more than three chi long, as thin as a finger, and still carried two withered, dried-up leaves on it.

"Old Ancestor, are you going to use this thing to fight?"

Lying in Jiang Wanqing's embrace, Gu Lan's eye twitched uncontrollably as he watched. Although he knew that when cultivation reached its extreme, grass and trees could all become swords, this opponent was the Demon God Remnant Soul after all! Wasn't taking a tree branch a bit too perfunctory?

"Little fellow, watch closely."

Li Taixuan said without turning his head.

"The path of the Dao, it does not lie in the material of the sword, but in that Qi within your heart."

"Once this Qi is smooth, all things can flatten mountains and seas."

As soon as his voice fell,

Li Taixuan casually slashed forward.

At that instant, Gu Lan felt as if time had frozen.

There was no earth-shattering sword hum, no dazzling sword light.

There was only a faint, nearly transparent arc cutting across the Void Realm.

"Hiss—"

In front of that arc, the Demon God Remnant Soul's proud black heavy armor shattered instantly, just like suet sliced through by a hot knife.

"Ah—!!!"

The shrill scream shook the clouds.

The thick black smoke on the chest of the Demon God Remnant Soul was directly split open, revealing the core inside that had turned crimson due to absorbing the Sect Master's essence blood.

"This… What kind of Sword Intent is this?!"

The Demon God Remnant Soul frantically slid backward, its massive heavy-armor body continuously dissipating as it landed, transforming back into its previous black smoke form. It was terrified; in that plain slash, it felt a power capable of completely obliterating its Divine Soul.

"This is called 'Xiaoyao'."

Li Taixuan shook his head, looking somewhat regretfully at the withered tree branch in his hand that had already turned to dust.

"What a pity, the branch is too brittle; it's still not as easy to use as the demonic sword in that little fellow's hand."

As he spoke, his gaze swept toward the soul-devouring sword at Gu Lan's waist.

At this moment, the Soul-Devouring Sword Spirit shrank inside the scabbard, not daring to let out even a fart. It had seen Li Taixuan a thousand years ago; that was a true god of slaughter, and a small character like it was just someone who hammers iron in the other party's eyes.

"Grandmaster…"

Jiang Wanqing's eye rims turned red as she looked up at the old man suspended in mid-air.

"Master… he has fallen."

Li Taixuan's movements paused for a moment. He glanced at the rock wall stained red with blood, a trace of complexity flashing in his eyes.

"This old man knows. That child had mediocre Aptitude, and his mind was small as well, but he at least died quite stubbornly."

He slowly turned his head to look at the Demon God Remnant Soul, which was preparing to quietly escape into the depths of the earth.

"Hey, did this old man let you leave?"

Li Taixuan casually tossed the wine gourd into the air.

"Hum—"

The wine gourd grew upon encountering the wind, instantly transforming into a giant tripod a hundred zhang large, hanging upside down above the basin.

A terrifying suction force erupted, and the Devilish Qi that originally wanted to dissipate was forcibly dragged back.

"Li Taixuan! Do you have to drive us to absolute annihilation?!"

The Demon God Remnant Soul roared, desperately crashing into the barrier formed by the wine gourd.

"If you drive this deity to desperation, this deity will self-detonate this remnant soul, leaving not a single blade of grass alive within a radius of a hundred miles! Not a single one of these disciples and descendants of yours will survive!"

"Self-detonate?"

Li Taixuan sneered, his only single arm abruptly pressing downward.

"In front of this old man, you don't even have the right to die."

"Gu Lan, receive the sword!"

Li Taixuan suddenly gave a low shout. Gu Lan only felt his waist lighten as the soul-devouring sword actually unsheathed itself automatically, drawing a purple radiance and flying into Li Taixuan's hand.

Leaning in Jiang Wanqing's embrace, Gu Lan widened his eyes.

He saw that the moment Li Taixuan grasped the soul-devouring sword, his entire aura changed once again.

That slovenly old man disappeared, replaced by an emperor among swords with wild white hair dancing and towering Battle Intent!

"Soul-Devouring, wrong you for a bit, let this old man borrow some fire."

Li Taixuan gripped the sword, and a layer of golden scales faintly surfaced on his arm—that was the sign of the Dao reaching divinity.

The soul-devouring sword felt unprecedented pressure, the magic eyes on the sword body blinking desperately. Not only did the purple-black Devilish Qi not repel Li Taixuan, but instead, as if it had found its backbone, it frantically clung to the blade's edge.

"Slash—"

Li Taixuan made no superfluous movements, swinging a sword down directly at that cluster of black smoke.

This sword had no Moves.

There was only speed.

It was so fast that even Gu Lan's Purple Extreme Golden Core could not capture its trajectory.

It was so fast that the Demon God Remnant Soul hadn't even finished turning the thought of self-detonation in its mind.

"Hiss!"

The time of the entire basin seemed to fault for a second.

The next moment.

Under the purple-gold intertwined sword light, that Demon God Remnant Soul, which was massive enough to destroy the Qingyun Sect, was neatly cleaved into two halves.

The purple Devilish Qi and the golden Sword Intent acted like a millstone, grinding it into the most primitive energy particles the moment its core split open.

"No… This is impossible…"

A final faint wail came from the Void Realm, and then it returned to dead silence.

The black clouds filling the sky began to scatter, and a trace of long-lost moonlight once again sprinkled down into the messy basin.

Li Taixuan withdrew his sword and stood in the Void Realm. The Qi on his body rapidly declined, turning him back into that unremarkable slovenly old man.

"Clang."

The soul-devouring sword fell from the air, plunging into the dirt beside Gu Lan's feet.

Gu Lan blankly watched all this, having only one thought in his heart.

Is this… the combat power of the ceiling of this world?

"Ouch, this old man's waist…"

Rubbing his lower back, Li Taixuan swayingly descended from mid-air.

He walked up to Gu Lan and glanced sideways at him.

"Not dead yet?"

"Not dead… but close to it." Gu Lan smiled bitterly.

"Old Ancestor, your appearance fee is quite expensive, right? If you had arrived a second later, these few hundred catties of my flesh really would have become that monster's dim sum."

"Expensive? It is indeed quite expensive."

Li Taixuan glanced at the two women tightly hugging Gu Lan in his embrace, and chuckled.

"However, this old man sees that you brat have quite good fortune. A Righteous Path Fairy and a Demonic Cult enchantress, one for each. Brat, can your waist still hold up?"

Hearing this, Jiang Wanqing and Saintess Ji Wushuang's faces flushed red in an instant.

Only then did they realize that in front of everyone, they had acted so out of character just to fight for Gu Lan.

Jiang Wanqing tightly bit her lower lip, but had no intention of letting go of Gu Lan.

Saintess Ji Wushuang glared at the old man. Although she was afraid in her heart, her possessiveness made her still grip Gu Lan's arm tightly.

"Alright, stop being all mushy here."

Li Taixuan's expression suddenly turned serious as he looked toward the exit of the basin.

"Those three old fellows just now ran quite fast, but the matter of this Sword Tomb is not over yet. Although the Demon God Remnant Soul has been destroyed, its main body…"

Just as Li Taixuan's voice fell,

within the distant ruins, a burst of extremely unharmonious applause suddenly came over.

"Clap, clap, clap."

A figure wearing a black robe and a mask slowly walked out.

Gu Lan's pupils abruptly constricted.

This aura… how is it so similar to that Female Demon Lord Ye Hongzhuang?!