Cold moonlight flowed silently, and within it, the very concept of time seemed to freeze.
That enormous ice-blue full moon in the sky began to "weep blood."
One strand.
Two strands.
Hundreds, thousands of strands...
Endless moonlight cascaded from the heavens, coalescing mid-air into crescent sword energies that spanned the sky.
Each sword energy carried the sharpness to sever karma and the absolute stillness that froze all creation.
They tore through space, leaving behind dark trails deeper than the void itself.
A meteor shower of sword energy, spanning the entire sky, burst forth like a broken dam.
Its target: the tiny Bone-Armored Werewolf on the ground below.
The celestial river poured down, illuminating ten thousand streams!
Faced with this apocalyptic scene, akin to divine punishment, the werewolf leader Modu—who had just devoured Tina and whose power had swelled to its absolute peak—unleashed the most frenzied roar of its life.
It crossed its two giant claws, covered in twisted bone armor, before its chest.
All the chaotic, tyrannical energy within its body erupted without reservation, condensing into a Dark Shield over twenty meters in diameter.
The shield was as black as ink; on its surface, countless wailing soul phantoms drifted and flickered, emitting a malevolent aura that corroded all things.
This was its final bastion.
And the entirety of its dignity as a leader-class existence!
The members of Zhou Yi's Team had forgotten to breathe.
Their minds had given up on thinking; they could only instinctively tilt their heads back, their vision completely filled by the torrent of sword energy resembling a god's punishment and the shadow shield symbolizing despair and misfortune.
Time stretched infinitely in that moment.
The first Crescent Moon Sword Slash silently descended.
There was no earth-shattering boom, only a soft chime like shattering crystal.
The surface of the shield, which seemed capable of devouring everything, trembled violently.
A faint, ice-blue crack appeared out of thin air.
Then...
The second.
The third.
The tenth...
Endless crescent sword energies surged forward, one after another, in relentless succession.
It wasn't a violent impact, but an utterly cold cutting and erasing.
The densely packed slicing sounds merged into the whisper of Death at one's lips.
In the stunned gazes of Zhou Yi and his team, that massive shadow energy shield didn't even last three seconds.
Countless ice-blue cracks crawled across the entire shield at a frantic speed, as dense as a spiderweb.
The next instant.
Crack!
The shield let out a final, overwhelmed wail and exploded into a sky full of dark light motes.
The torrent of sword energy didn't pause for a moment.
It surged past the remnants of the defense, instantly engulfing Modu's massive body, which had just swelled to its absolute limit.
No screams.
No struggles.
Not even a shred of decent resistance.
On Modu's savage wolf face, the last traces of disbelief and terror froze solid.
Its body, under the relentless slicing of the endless crescent sword energies, was rapidly disintegrated.
First, the savage, dark bone armor on its surface was shaved into billions of fine dust particles.
Then, its knotted muscles, hard bones, and scalding organs...
Its massive body was mercilessly dismantled and annihilated by the ultimate sharpness and extreme cold, reduced to the tiniest particles, then instantly frozen into crystalline ice dust.
In less than three seconds.
The leader-class BOSS, Modu, the chieftain of the Moon-Howling Werewolves, who had just been radiating world-destroying pressure, was utterly erased from existence.
Not a single shred of flesh, not a single strand of fur, remained.
Where it had stood, only a massive ice crater remained, frozen by absolute cold and smooth as a mirror.
"Another one of those 'leave no corpse' eco-friendly fighting styles."
Lin Xiyue whistled, crossing her arms as she commented.
"Full marks for special effects, full marks for the scene. But the BOSS exited too quickly, didn't even get to say its last words. Bad review."
Su Wan analyzed calmly, whispering rapidly in a voice only she could hear:
"Not low-temperature freezing... it's a 'Sword Intent' focused on slaughter and destruction. I can learn from it, but I can't replicate it..."
Xia Lian watched the virtual screen as it neared its end, muttering under her breath:
"Sister Qingyue's 'Heroic Spirits' are getting more and more ridiculous... Oh! The video's about to end!"
The ice-blue full moon in the sky slowly faded, and the soul-freezing, terrifying cold receded with it.
Above the plaza, the ridiculously catchy BGM reached its final line.
"The long road ahead starts today!!!"
The singing stopped abruptly.
The massive virtual projection screen flickered once, then dissolved into specks of light and vanished into the air.
The dark clouds dispersed, and the world returned to its original brightness.
Only the frost-covered ground and the plaza filled with "human sculptures"—frozen in various poses, utterly dumbfounded—remained.
City Lord Punk's mouth hung wide open, his two cat ears drooped limply, and his thick tail behind him was as stiff as an iron rod.
His guards, every last one of them, remained frozen in their skyward gazes, completely petrified.
In a corner, Marcus, who had sacrificed a portion of his life force to summon Modu, lay瘫软 on the ground.
On his face, which had aged decades, only endless bewilderment and collapse remained.
The ultimate trump card he had gambled everything to summon...
Gone?
Insta-killed... in a single move?
Zhou Yi silently swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.
His worldview had been completely formatted, and the recycle bin emptied, in those few short seconds.
This level of destructive power... his mentor, a Lv. 81 High-Rank Class Holder, could also achieve it easily.
But Lin Qingyue was just a Novice!
The Mecha Form... was somewhat understandable.
A creation of Technology, high energy output, strong destructive power—it was logically consistent.
But this "Blindfolded Sword Immortal" form...
Insta-killing a Corrupted Boss of unknown level with a single move?
This wasn't a question of being strong anymore.
This was Transcendent!
In his mind, he silently, and with great difficulty, raised Lin Qingyue's "Blindfolded Sword Immortal" form's combat power level by several tiers he himself couldn't even comprehend.
Finally, he gave up.
Impossible to assess.
Impossible to imagine.
Are we... really from the same class system?
Are we... really all Novice Class Holders?
Just then, in mid-air, the slender figure in the blue and white swordsman's uniform shimmered with light, transforming back into the pink-haired Priest Girl.
"Sis!"
Lin Xiyue, acting almost on muscle memory, pushed off with her legs, launching herself forward like a cannonball!
In the past, after unleashing such a world-destroying ultimate move, her sister would always lose her strength and fall from the sky.
And she was her sister's most steadfast harbor!
She spread her arms, striking a textbook-perfect "princess carry" preparatory pose, her face radiating the reliable message: "I've got this."
However, the soft body she expected never fell into her arms.
In mid-air, Lin Qingyue merely swayed slightly before landing lightly, her feet planting firmly on the cold stone slabs.
She even had enough energy to stretch with a big yawn, her joints cracking with a series of crisp, light sounds, her face filled with contentment.
"Hmm? It seems... I'm not that drained?"
She murmured to herself, feeling that aside from some mental fatigue, her body still had reserves and hadn't been completely emptied.
The Adeptus Breathing Method scores big
On the other side, Lin Xiyue, already halfway through her charge, screeched to a halt.
The immense inertia sent her skidding across the smooth ice, carving out two long skid marks, until she finally stopped in an extremely comical pose, just barely in front of Lin Qingyue.
She froze in place, still in her "ready to catch" posture, staring wide-eyed at her sister who was perfectly fine and even casually flexing her wrists. Her mouth slowly dropped open into an "O" shape.
This isn't how the script was supposed to go!
Where's my incredibly cool rescue scene?!
What happened to the hero saving the damsel (my sister) in distress?