Faint mist rapidly rose, murderous intent staining the dust.

Within the Duanhun (Soul Severing) Gorge, blood rained and a foul wind blew.

The "ghosts" above the gorge and the "people" within, after a brief confrontation...unleashed a slaughter.

At this moment, although the heroes of the martial world had suffered over a hundred casualties, there were still nearly three hundred combatants. As for the exiled ones from the Burial Heart Valley, they numbered only a hundred or so. At first glance...it seemed the former had the advantage.

But...numbers weren't the primary factor determining victory, because this was a "jianghu (martial world) struggle," not a military engagement.

If this were a military engagement, the factors determining victory would mostly be numbers, formations, soldier quality, terrain, and the degree of utilization of bows, crossbows, and firearms.

But in a jianghu melee...these things were of little value.

Those sect leaders and disciples weren't well-trained soldiers. Although their individual combat capabilities were certainly much stronger than those of ordinary soldiers, they were internally divided into dozens of forces, each fighting its own battle, and they had almost no ability to coordinate...not to mention people from different sects, even within the same sect, there might not be many who could cooperate.

Simply put, it was everyone for themselves...

On the other side...although those "little devils" under Yama's (king of hell) command didn't cooperate much either, they had a great advantage in terrain; from above, they formed an encirclement, so fighting was naturally much more effective. In addition, their martial arts were all top-notch, so gaining the advantage was a matter of course.

Soon, several dozen cannon fodder from the major sects were killed in the enemy's encirclement; while only a few of the experts from the Burial Heart Valley suffered minor injuries...

However, this situation changed instantly after Yuan Qi made his move.

Yuan Mengzhu's (Alliance Leader) figure shot out swiftly, his wrist flicking, and the sword in his hand immediately lashed out like a living thing.

This sword was a soft sword, or rather...a "cloth sword."

The cloth was ordinary cloth.

The man was no ordinary man.

Before the age of thirty, Yuan Qi wouldn't use a sword. In fact, at that time, he didn't use any weapons at all.

But after the age of thirty, he gained the power of profound internal energy...Once he had this almost perfect internal energy as a foundation, whether he cultivated any weapon or technique...he could master it easily and improve rapidly.

Therefore, after the age of thirty, Yuan Qi successively learned many martial arts, gradually reaching a state where he was proficient in all eighteen weapons. Some techniques...he only had to look at them once to use them even better than someone who had practiced them for many years.

And after the age of forty, Yuan Mengzhu rarely used weapons anymore. The only weapon that remained by his side was this cloth sword embedded in his belt...

As the saying goes, "A sharp sword is unintentional, a soft sword is unpredictable." Driven by Yuan Qi's unfathomable internal energy...the soft sword was sometimes as fierce as a dragon, sometimes as sinister as a snake, sometimes as ruthless as a jiao (mythical dragon), and sometimes as sinewy as a python.

In the blink of an eye, nearly ten people had died by his sword, each one struck in the neck with a single blow...their heads separated from their bodies.

"Hmph..." Just then, a cold snort came, accompanied by a burly figure, "I've long heard that Yuan Mengzhu's skill is unparalleled, and seeing it today, it truly is extraordinary."

The speaker was a brawny man with a bristling beard. His figure resembled a Luohan (arhat) Vajra (diamond), and he was holding a Ba Huan (Eight Ring) broadsword. Judging by his voice...he was undoubtedly the one who had first used internal energy to speak aloud.

"Desert Saber King...Di Hou." Yuan Qi stared at the other man and said in a deep voice.

"Oh?" Di Hou laughed, "Yuan Mengzhu actually recognizes me? I'm truly flattered."

In fact, the reason Yuan Qi recognized Di Hou was simple...Because they were about the same age and belonged to the same generation in the jianghu, they had met a few times in various martial arts events in the past. However...at that time, Di Hou was already the famous Desert Saber King, while Yuan Qi was still an unknown nobody. Thus, the latter remembered the former, while the former didn't even know the latter existed.

"Ha! Hahahaha..." Yuan Qi laughed out loud at Di Hou's words.

Di Hou didn't know what he was laughing at, and neither did the people around him who saw this scene.

Only Yuan Qi himself understood how ironic and ridiculous the other man's words were...

"Saber King Di..." After laughing for a while, Yuan Qi's expression turned cold, "I remember...before you fled into the Burial Heart Valley, you were the leader of the Desert Eight Saber Society?"

"That's right, I was." When Di Hou responded to this question, he felt quite puzzled. He didn't understand why the other man wanted to bring up these pointless past events at this moment.

"Do you remember how many disciples and followers you had?" Yuan Qi continued to ask.

"Five or six hundred people, I suppose..." Di Hou replied casually, "What are you asking this for?"

"Can you name twenty of them?" Yuan Qi asked again.

"Yuan Mengzhu...what do you mean by this?" Di Hou had decided not to answer these strange questions anymore.

"You can't name them, can you?" Yuan Qi said coldly, "But...you can name me." He gestured around with his eyes, "And the names of all the top experts present."

Di Hou remained silent, wanting to hear what Yuan Qi had to say.

"That's how the world is. You never remember the ordinary people, because your eyes only see fame, martial arts, and appearance..." Yuan Qi seemed slightly agitated as he said this, "Your eyes can only see those things, so you overlook the 'person' themselves." He paused for a moment, "That's why I'm laughing. I'm laughing at you for being like a bunch of blind men...even blinder than real blind men."

"Yuan Mengzhu, forgive Di for not understanding what you're saying." As Di Hou spoke, he raised his broadsword, "I didn't come here to listen to your故弄玄虚 (gu nong xuan xu - mystifying talk)!"

"That's right..." Yuan Qi closed his eyes, "A person like you wouldn't understand..." He also raised the cloth sword in his hand, "You're just here to die. Come on, then!"

Without him saying so, Di Hou came.

The Desert Saber King was by no means living on borrowed reputation. The Ba Huan (Eight Ring) broadsword in his hand was a unique weapon, custom-made for Di Hou by a renowned craftsman of the time.

This sword weighed more than forty jin (approximately 53 pounds), with eight rings embedded in the back of the blade and a blade like the teeth of a shark, capable of severing hairs blown against it.

In the past, countless jianghu celebrities had died without a whole body under this sword, which could be called a world-shocking weapon of slaughter.

And Di Hou himself...was also a rare talent in the world of sabers. He had been born with divine strength since he was a child, and he could wield a heavy Guan Dao (Guanyu's weapon) weighing eighty jin (approximately 106 pounds) at the age of twelve. He also had an extremely high aptitude for saber techniques, and he had integrated the strengths of various schools and created his own path at a young age. At the age of fifteen, Di Hou became the youngest Zhidao (blade wielder) of the Desert Eight Saber Society (similar to a "leader" in a gang of juvenile delinquents), and at the age of twenty-eight, he became the chief commander of the Eight Divisions, enjoying unparalleled fame for a time.

However, after the age of thirty, his saber technique encountered a bottleneck, and in his impatience, he became possessed by his inner demons...Then he began to indiscriminately kill innocent people and use the blood of experts to consecrate his saber, and soon he became an enemy of the martial world, forced to flee into this Burial Heart Valley.

Nearly twenty years had passed, and as one of the most senior exiles in the valley, Di Hou had naturally broken through the bottleneck of that year long ago. His current martial arts realm was comparable to that of the two masters of the Wanxia (Ten Thousand Glows) Tower and the Bafang (Eight Directions) Tower, who were known as the Twin Heroes of the Martial World.

"Ha—"

In the blink of an eye, Di Hou let out a violent shout, and his figure had already flashed to Yuan Qi's side, the Ba Huan (Eight Ring) broadsword falling like thunder.

His sword was heavy, but it was also very fast, so fast that the human eye could barely see it.

But Yuan Qi could see it.

Not only could he see it...he could see it very clearly.

"Too slow, too clumsy." This was the evaluation Yuan Qi gave to his opponent, and it was also the last sentence Di Hou heard.

The next second, Di Hou's head left his body.

And his sword...struck empty air.

Indeed, Di Hou was a top-notch expert, and perhaps no more than ten people among those present could have blocked this strike.

But in Yuan Qi's eyes, Di Hou's saber technique was far from being up to par...From the perspective of martial arts realm, Yuan Qi's cloth sword had reached the "extreme of change" on top of the "extreme of moves." As long as someone was still in the realm of "having moves," even if they cultivated their internal energy to the same level as him, they could only fight him to a draw at best. Someone like Di Hou, whose internal and external skills were far inferior to his, was not even worthy of being called an opponent...

"Alliance Leader Yuan's divine skill is unparalleled!"

"Everyone, follow the Alliance Leader and kill them!"

The people from the nearby gangs saw Yuan Qi instantly killing Di Hou and shouted out in unison, adding to the momentum of the martial arts camp.

Yuan Qi didn't disappoint his comrades either. He immediately displayed a superb qinggong (light body skill), flying out like a swimming dragon, leaving behind only the corpses of the valley's people wherever he passed.

"Where is it..." In the chaotic battle, Yuan Qi's heart was as still as water. While he was killing, he was thinking, "These people couldn't have raised the fog...There must be a 'special person' among them, someone whose power is strong enough to guide the airflow. I must find him from the shadows..."

As he pondered, he had already killed dozens of people, more than the total number of enemies killed by other gangs. As the gap in numbers widened, the situation of the confrontation reversed.

The martial artists still had more than two hundred people who could fight, while only thirty or so experts remained in the Burial Heart Valley. In this case, no matter how advantageous the terrain was, it was useless.

The encirclement...had turned into a counter-encirclement. Even if the people in the valley had high martial arts skills, being surrounded by five or six people...the result was self-evident.

In the time it takes to drink a cup of tea, corpses were lying all over the Duanhun (Soul Severing) Gorge.

Fresh blood fell like rain, dispersed like fog, taking away the souls of the dead...

Seeing that the "ghosts" in the valley were about to be wiped out, finally, the person who "raised" the light mist...appeared in people's sight.

"I never thought..." As soon as this person spoke, he attracted everyone's attention, "...Besides Yama, there is someone in the world with such superb martial arts."

Similarly using internal energy to transmit sound, the effect varies depending on the speaker's skill.

For example, Di Hou and Feng Er (the second person to speak before the fight started, who had already been killed) before, when they used internal energy to transmit sound, the tone of their speech was relatively high, and they used a relatively loud voice, so that the "qi" could send the words out and let the people far away hear them.

However, the person speaking now had a light and casual tone and voice; among the martial artists present, only Yuan Qi could do this...The speaker's internal cultivation was evident.

"You're finally willing to show yourself?" Yuan Qi looked up in the direction the voice came from, which was on a rocky mountain a hundred meters away.

At this moment, an old man dressed as a farmer with ordinary features was standing there with his hands behind his back.

Before long, some people in the crowd had recognized him, leading to a burst of panic.

"Mo...Mo Mo..." (Mo = Demon)

"It's him! He's still alive?"

"The former leader of the Demonic Cult...Du Ying..."

Yuan Qi knew this name, but he had never met this person.

Twelve years ago, Yuan Qi had indeed met a Demonic Cult leader, but it wasn't the Du Ying in front of him.

That year, the Demonic Cult leader, Liu Xiangru, believed that his divine skill was complete and that he was invincible...so he launched a large-scale invasion of various martial arts sects.

As everyone knows, the "righteous people" in the wuxia (martial arts) world have a habit, that is...in unfavorable situations, they can always find a reason to justifiably gang up on the few, as for the reason, everyone knows...

Of course, it doesn't hurt to repeat this classic line here - no need to talk about jianghu morality when dealing with these demonic heretics!

In short, that year...the Demonic Cult was wiped out. And the biggest contributor to this event, you guessed it...was Yuan Qi.

Liu Xiangru didn't understand until his death where this person named Yuan came from...Although Yuan Qi was already recognized as a top expert at the time, because he had been too unknown in the past, no one knew how high his martial arts limit was. It wasn't until he single-handedly killed Liu Xiangru...that the various martial arts sects realized that this person seemed to have been seriously underestimated in the past...

And that incident later became Yuan Qi's key capital to become the leader of the martial arts alliance.

However, the current Du Ying was completely different from Liu Xiangru...

In terms of seniority, Du Ying was Liu Xiangru's martial uncle, but his age was a few years younger than Liu Xiangru's, and he was only in his early sixties this year.

The technique that Liu Xiangru took forty-eight years to master, Du Ying had already mastered at the age of thirty...After that, no one, not even the few Dharma Protectors (high-ranking members) in the Demonic Cult, knew how high his martial arts were.

Fortunately, although Du Ying was a martial arts genius, he didn't like fighting, so during the years when he was the leader of the Demonic Cult, the Demonic Cult always maintained a policy of "we will not attack unless attacked."

Until the age of forty-three, Du Ying became tired of the internal strife within the cult and angrily passed the position of leader to the ambitious Liu Xiangru. Then he left in a huff, and no one could find his trace ever since.

Unexpectedly...today, this Du Ying had appeared in the Burial Heart Valley.

"Alliance Leader...he..." Ji Neng recognized this person, so he quickly took a few steps forward, wanting to remind Yuan Qi.

But Yuan Qi waved his hand, interrupting Master Ji.

Seconds later, Yuan Qi looked up and used the exact same method as Du Ying, using internal energy to transmit his voice back, "Du Ying, I've heard of you. It's really great that you're still alive..."