The battle was far from over.
"Look at your current state. How can you speak of helping me in this condition?"
A stubborn expression crossed Jingliu's face. She gritted her teeth and forced herself back to her feet. The moment her eyes landed on the sword lying before her, her entire body froze.
It was her Master's sword.
From the fall of Cangcheng until this very moment, that blade had slain countless Abominations. It had also been stained with the blood of those once dear to her.
"Listen closely. The Great War Chief of the Eclipsed Moon Hunting Pack has already descended upon this world. Before it receives word of the Xianzhou's main forces, it will not retreat easily."
"If you do not wish to see your remaining comrades forced to fight the Borisin with nothing but their bare hands, then grip your sword tightly."
As soon as his voice faded, Kanzaki's mind stirred. Countless flying swords materialized along the distant horizon. They aligned themselves in perfect order above the abyss, forming an imposing sword formation.
"Kill every Borisin that dares approach. One by one. Do you understand?"
"Yes! Master…!"
Jingliu placed her right hand on the hilt, attempting to lift the weapon. To her shock, the sword refused to budge even an inch. She gripped it with both hands and poured every ounce of her remaining strength into the motion. Only then did the blade slowly rise from the ground.
A sharp hiss escaped her lips. What terrifying weight.
She glanced toward the countless flying swords her Master controlled and performed a quick mental count. There were at least three thousand blades.
"You have less than six minutes to adjust your condition," Kanzaki stated coldly as he tossed down several vials of healing medicine.
Once that brief window closed, the Borisin horde currently a hundred miles away would reach their position.
For someone in Jingliu's current state, a few short minutes could not possibly return her to peak condition. Even so, this precious respite would be enough to pull her out of her severely weakened state.
Jingliu cherished every second. She focused entirely on regulating her breathing and restoring what little energy she could. The hellish training regimen her Master had put her through in the past, the one that often left her fainting from exhaustion, finally showed its true value in this life-or-death moment.
Only after experiencing this brutal battle that pushed her far beyond her physical limits did she truly understand her Master's painstaking intentions. Had it not been for that rigorous preparation, she would have perished long ago on this blood-soaked battlefield.
While Jingliu focused on her recovery, Hanya and Xueyi swiftly assessed the remaining forces and tallied their losses. The bloody numbers left a heavy silence hanging over everyone present.
Fewer than eight hundred thousand Cloud Knights remained standing. If Kanzaki had arrived even a moment later, that number would have dwindled rapidly to nothing.
Such devastating news made calm nearly impossible to maintain.
Several Cloud Knight captains, still clutching their damaged weapons, stepped forward one after another. They requested permission to rejoin the fight.
Kanzaki glanced at them and spoke with strict authority.
"Before I am exhausted, I have no need for comrades whose weapons are chipped and blunt, whose bodies have already reached their absolute limits, to throw their lives away needlessly. Fall back and await reinforcements. This is an order."
"As you command… Valiant Guard!"
Though their eyes burned with towering hatred for the Borisin, the captains could only clench their teeth and obey, retreating from the front lines.
They all understood that Kanzaki was right. At this moment, every single one of them was running on nothing but sheer willpower and conviction.
Six minutes passed in the blink of an eye.
At the edge of their vision, the suffocating tide of beasts reappeared. The ground trembled under the dull thunder of a large-scale charge.
"Xueyi, Hanya, Jingliu… defend your assigned positions. My flying swords will support you."
Kanzaki's expression remained perfectly calm as he issued the command.
The moment his words fell, the sky filled with flying swords began to hum with power. They shifted into a defensive formation around the abyss, creating an impenetrable barrier.
Jingliu and the Xueyi sisters moved quickly to the flanks of the sword formation to reinforce the weakest points in their defensive line.
The bloody battle was about to erupt once more.
This was no longer a contest between equals. It had become a one-sided slaughter.
None of the surviving Cloud Knights had expected to witness such a scene.
The fearless charge of the Borisin turned into a suicidal farce when faced with the lightning-swift flying swords. Rather than piercing their enemies directly, the blades created a high-speed rotating sword-qi storm barrier. Anything that touched it was instantly pulled inside and ground into mincemeat.
Occasionally, a few wolf soldiers would roar and break through the sword net. Before they could even land properly, they were met with Kanzaki's seemingly casual punches and elbow strikes.
He stood firmly on a giant rock at the edge of the cliff. Every movement he made was concise to the extreme, containing no wasted motion or unnecessary flourish, only pure, devastating precision.
A simple horizontal elbow strike sent his power erupting outward. Several multi-ton Artifact Beasts were blasted into scattered fragments, their mangled limbs tumbling down into the dark abyss below.
From deep within the chasm came the continuous, shrill howls of countless wolves.
Above the abyss, any Borisin or Artifact Beast caught within the sword formation did not even have the chance to scream.
Is this… Master's true strength?
Watching the flying swords slaughter their enemies at will, Jingliu gripped the incredibly heavy longsword in her hands even tighter. An endless yearning surged from the depths of her heart.
She wanted to become that strong. She absolutely had to become that strong.
The renewed battle of offense and defense continued for what felt like an eternity. The abyss before Kanzaki was once again filled with mountains of Abomination corpses, creating a gruesome path of blood that stretched all the way to the isolated mountain.
Then, suddenly, every Borisin and their subordinate Artifact Beasts halted their assault.
"ROAR!!!"
A tyrannical roar powerful enough to shatter eardrums exploded across the horizon. The sound carried a terrifying spiritual pressure that caused many of the injured Cloud Knights in the rear to cough up blood.
From the depths of the beast tide, a massive dark-red figure launched forward like a cannonball. It crossed hundreds of meters in a single bound, bringing with it a sky-blotting storm of blood and baleful energy before landing heavily at the front of the wolf pack.
It was the Great War Chief of the Eclipsed Moon Hunting Pack.
Having witnessed countless of its wolf pups cut down like wheat before this single human figure, the regional overlord was utterly enraged.
Its several-meter-tall body was clad in armor crafted from the bones of past powerful enemies. Its enormous claws gleamed with a chilling, murderous light.
"Finally, you can no longer sit still," Kanzaki murmured as he stood at the edge of the cliff. A crimson light far more violent than anything the Borisin possessed flashed through his eyes.
"It's you… the one who killed War Leader Ussa!" the Erosion Moon Great Nest Father roared in broken Xianzhou tongue.
"And?" Kanzaki tilted his head slightly, his expression indifferent.
"If I kill you here, I shall become the next Borisin war leader! Remember my name…"
However, Kanzaki had no interest in wasting any more words with the creature.
The violence in his eyes showed no sign of diminishing. In one fluid motion, his figure transformed into an afterimage.
BOOM!
The giant rock beneath his feet instantly shattered into dust.
The afterimage tore through space itself, appearing directly above the Erosion Moon Great Nest Father in the blink of an eye.
A palm that appeared slender and fair, completely disproportionate to the hideous beast claws before it, descended upon the massive wolf head with terrifying speed.
Slap!
There was no earth-shaking explosion. Only the faint roar of a tiger that seemed to pierce straight into the soul, followed by a dull thud resembling a ripe watermelon bursting under overwhelming force.
Time itself appeared to freeze in that instant.
Jingliu's eyes widened as she stared in disbelief.
The menacing Great War Chief of the Eclipsed Moon could not even release a final scream. Under Kanzaki's palm strike, its massive head was instantly slapped into a cloud of crimson blood mist.
The residual force continued traveling down the creature's spine. Inch by inch, the bones of its massive headless body shattered and turned into mush. Finally, the entire carcass exploded into a fine mist of blood, just like its head had moments before.
The entire battlefield fell into absolute silence.
The countless Borisin in the rear seemed to have their throats seized by an invisible hand. Not a single sound escaped them.
Jingliu instinctively covered her mouth, her eyes containing nothing but the image of Kanzaki. He was not particularly burly, yet at this moment he appeared as vast and unshakable as the entire world itself.
Trust. Reliance. Admiration. Worship. A torrent of complex emotions surged wildly within her heart.
She could clearly sense it. Within her Master burned the unextinguished fury of countless fallen Cloud Knight comrades.
This was only the second time she had ever seen her Master truly angry.
The first time had been on the day Cangcheng was destroyed…