The five disciples’ brains briefly short-circuited as they shook their heads woodenly.
“No... nothing!”
Xu Xian’s gaze swept over the five somewhat disheveled individuals. After a brief silence, he said, “Retreat to Demon-Slaying City.”
“Huh?”
The five were confused.
With a beckoning motion, Xu Xian called the immortal sword, Wait—which had previously severed the beast king's arm—back to his hand. The youth stepped forward and spoke bluntly.
“You are too weak. Staying here won’t help anything. Don’t throw your lives away; it’s not worth it. Go back.”
Having said that, the youth leaped forward and vanished into the night.
Wen Qingxue glanced coldly at the five of them. Seeing their confusion and bewilderment, she spoke softly.
“Go. Obey the order.”
Then, she also departed.
On the ruin-like battlefield, only the five remained, staring at one another in total confusion.
It took a good while before they gradually came to their senses.
“Was that youth the Little Grand-Uncle?”
“He looked like him.”
“What do you mean 'looked like'? It was definitely him.”
“But I remember the Little Grand-Uncle was only at the fifth stage nascent soul?”
“That was four years ago.”
“True...”
One of them looked at the others and asked weakly, “So, do we retreat?”
The squad leader lowered his eyes and said solemnly, “The Little Grand-Uncle is a Pavilion Elder of the Sword Pavilion. If he tells us to retreat, we must retreat.”
“But Peak Master Li said to find the auspicious beast at all costs and kill it. If we retreat now, will it be okay?”
“Yeah, who do we listen to?”
The captain replied, “Peak Master Li calls the Little Grand-Uncle 'Martial Uncle.'”
The others exchanged looks. Then, as if by unspoken agreement, they withdrew from the ruins and retreated toward Demon-Slaying City behind them.
It wasn't that they were afraid of death.
It was simply that they had to listen to the Little Grand-Uncle’s words.
...
In the Demon Suppression Abyss, it seemed as if no patch of land remained intact.
Everywhere were fallen dead trees, rubble, dust, and a dense network of pitted ravines.
Xu Xian’s arrival made the already chaotic situation even more turbulent.
He roamed through the area with Wen Qingxue.
They directly ignored fourth and fifth-grade beasts; any sixth-grade beast king was killed instantly upon encounter.
Xu Xian would strike first with a heavy blow, and Wen Qingxue would follow up with the killing strike.
Their movements were as smooth as flowing water.
Even when they encountered small groups of the beast king stage, they could tear through the enemy’s defenses in an instant and slay them all.
During this time, they also encountered the seventh-grade beast emperor stage.
It was usually at these moments that Xu Xian would use his strongest sword art, the Green Lotus Sword Song.
As his realm improved, besides the first sword, A Single Lotus Appears; the second sword, Green Lotus Transforms into Qi; and the third sword, Sword Qi Transforms Into Lotuses; Xu Xian had comprehended three more swords.
The fourth sword: Green Lotus Extraction.
The fifth sword: Green Lotus Mountain-Cleaving.
The sixth sword: Green Lotus Filling the Sky.
These three swords, like the first and second, were all finishing moves. Green Lotus Extraction was known for its speed; its invisible sword intent arrived in a heartbeat.
Green Lotus Mountain-Cleaving was known for its power; the sword strike could split mountains, its force piercing through like a rainbow.
As for the sixth sword, Green Lotus Filling the Sky, it was an area-of-effect technique. When the sword was drawn, a green lotus would bloom and rise to fill the sky.
The sword intent howled like rain, creating a tornado of green lotus sword intent within a hundred-meter radius around him.
Furthermore, it could move along with Xu Xian.
Wherever it passed, it crushed everything in its path with peerless sharpness.
Those below the sixth stage died instantly; those within the sixth stage were like lambs to the slaughter. Even beast emperors of the seventh stage dared not approach and had to evade its edge.
With Wen Qingxue providing support strikes from the side, the duo’s combination was practically unstoppable.
One green lotus after another bloomed in the dark night as beast kings and beast emperors fell one after another.
The Wendao Sect squads roaming the Demon Suppression Abyss in search of the auspicious beast were mostly composed of nascent soul and soul transformation disciples, organized into teams of five to eight.
They did not prioritize killing and rarely lingered in combat, constantly searching for traces of the auspicious beast.
However, because they were from the Wendao Sect, they were easily targeted by beasts.
After all, among the Great Desolation beasts, nine-tenths of their hatred for humanity was directed at the Wendao Sect, with only one-tenth left for the rest of the Central Plains.
Thus, even though they deliberately avoided combat, the losses over the past ten days remained heavy, with many disciples dying.
Fortunately, more than half of the two hundred seventh-stage cultivators from the Wendao Sect had entered the Demon Suppression Abyss. Although they relied on their high cultivation to search alone, they frequently monitored the battlefield and intervened to rescue their fellow disciples.
However, there were simply too many beasts. Sometimes they were overwhelmed, and many of them were being tracked by powerful enemies.
One had to realize that within these three thousand miles of land, the total number of human cultivators and beasts gathered likely exceeded a hundred thousand.
For two worlds, this number might not seem like much.
Only a hundred thousand? Is that a lot?
Indeed, it wasn't. But one must not forget that among these hundred thousand humans and beasts, more than half were at the fifth stage nascent soul level, and those at the sixth stage already numbered over ten thousand.
Even at the seventh stage, the combined total of both sides was no less than a thousand.
Even if all two hundred people were thrown in, it would be a mere drop in the bucket. Moreover, only half had actually come, and they were busy looking for the auspicious beast, making it difficult to turn the tide.
Xu Xian roamed the Demon Suppression Abyss, hunting beasts and collecting corpses. If he was lucky enough to encounter demonic cultivators trying to fish in troubled waters, he would kill them and loot their bodies without a word.
When he encountered those from the Wendao Sect below the seventh stage, he persuaded them all to retreat. As for those at the seventh stage, he took them along with him.
The group behind him grew larger and larger.
Similarly, more and more Wendao Sect cultivators retreated to Demon-Slaying City.
After leaving the abyss, these Wendao Sect disciples did not immediately depart from Demon-Slaying City to return to Boundary Mountain.
Instead, they spontaneously gathered atop the walls of Demon-Slaying City, standing ready.
The Little Grand-Uncle told them to withdraw from the Demon Suppression Abyss, but he hadn't told them to leave Demon-Slaying City.
They stayed on the walls, ready to provide support at any moment.
Their way of greeting one another had become quite peculiar, with every conversation revolving around the Little Grand-Uncle.
“The Little Grand-Uncle told you to pull out too?”
“You ran into the Little Grand-Uncle as well?”
“The Little Grand-Uncle made you retreat?”
“I wonder what the Little Grand-Uncle is planning?”
“The Little Grand-Uncle is truly fierce. I saw him slay a beast emperor with my own eyes. The whole process took less than the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.”
“Back then, he slew nascent souls while at foundation establishment. Now he slays beast emperors while at soul transformation. My estimate was too conservative; maybe he can even kill a beast sovereign...”
Four years had passed, and the youth had been in the immortal sect for eleven years now.
Things had changed. The young boy who had once shattered the sword stele with a single kick on Wendao Square had transformed into a god of slaughter rampaging through the Demon Suppression Abyss.
Time passed in a daze.
If it were anyone else, they would naturally be amazed and shocked. But because this was happening to Xu Xian, it wasn't strange to the people of the Wendao Sect—at least, they accepted it easily.
Many even felt it was only natural.
Simply because he was Xu Xian.
He was different from everyone else from the start.
Inside Demon-Slaying City, the other rogue cultivators and those from the Central Plains saw the Wendao Sect members retreating and gathering on the walls. They too began to whisper and speculate incessantly.
“It’s the people from the Wendao Sect.”
“Why have they all pulled back?”
“Has the Wendao Sect given up?”
“It doesn't look like it...”
“I suddenly have an ominous feeling. I feel like something big is about to happen.”
“Maybe we should just go back. Let’s not get involved in the chaos.”
“What are you afraid of? Fortune is found amidst danger. The more it's like this, the more we must forge ahead...”
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