“Hah.”

The smell of dragon blood spread fast and filled everyone's noses, reminding them just how real the scene in front of them was.

Even with its head gone and its upper body split down the middle, the yellow-miasma venom dragon that had once ruled the waters and lands of Nanhong still wasn't dead. It had simply lost all will to fight, and its towering body stumbled forward.

Xihong lay just ahead. If it could only cross that line, it seemed there might still be hope.

But the young man in the ink-dark robe followed behind, gold-veined black saber in hand, in no hurry at all, and every swing of the saber left another hideous gash in what remained of the Ke Crown Prince.

Rrrip! Rrrip! Rrrip!

Scarlet blood sprayed again and again. The Ke Crown Prince's stumbling steps grew slower and slower, as though he might pitch over at any moment, until his whole body was stained dark red. Shen Yi raised his arm once more, and at last the long saber bit savagely into his shoulder and sank all the way down to his chest and belly before it stopped.

“Whew.”

Shen Yi slowly let go. Even the spaces between his fingers were coated with sticky, scalding blood. He lifted his eyes a little and watched the wreck of a body in front of him lose the last of its strength, sway, stop, and then topple forward, lifeless.

He put the Ke Crown Prince's corpse away in his thumb ring, and only then did he slowly turn to look around.

“……” The instant that gaze brushed over him, Cheng Xiaoyuan shivered without meaning to. He truly found it hard to imagine anyone wearing so indifferent an expression while swinging a blade so ferociously, hacking a Heaven Realm dragon demon to death out on the open water.

“What are you standing around for?!”

Huang Wenfa's low bark snapped Cheng Xiaoyuan back to himself, and he remembered Sect Master Shen's instructions from before.

The two of them shot out together and used the Peak-Suppressing Method, turning themselves into a vast…