Facing Yin's mockery, Nian Shi's face twisted in rage, but he had no retort. Yin's words were the absolute, humiliating truth.
Tantai Lanling, hovering nearby, felt the blood drain from her face. She looked from her enraged, injured master to the calmly powerful Yun Lintian, and then to the mocking, dying Yin.
The balance of power had catastrophically shifted. The fanatical faith she had in Nian Shi wavered, replaced by the cold chill of impending doom. She knew, in her heart, that Nian Shi could not win this.
Yun Lintian ignored the exchange. His gaze, filled with that unnerving calm, swept across the battlefield—the void littered with the ghosts of unmade galaxies, the fading auras of countless lost lives. The images of his wives, his friends, his people flashed in his mind, but they did not break his composure. They fueled it.
He then extended his hand, palm open, towards the distant void where the God Slaying Sword had been spinning away after Nian Shi was blasted back.
