"The battle is far from over. Look at your current state—how can you talk about helping me?"
A stubborn look appeared on Jingliu's face as she gritted her teeth and forced herself to stand up. When she saw the sword before her, her gaze instantly froze.
It was her Master's sword.
From Azure City until now, it had slain countless Abominations, and it had also been stained with... the blood of loved ones.
"Listen, the Great Nest Father of the Eclipsed Moon Hunting Pack has already arrived in this world. Before it receives news of the Yaoqing's main force, it will not easily withdraw."
"If you don't want to see your remaining comrades fighting the Borisin with their bare hands, then grip your sword tight."
As his voice fell, Qi Zhimu's mind stirred. Countless flying swords manifested from the horizon, lining up in an orderly fashion above the abyss to form a sword formation.
"Kill the Borisin as they come, one by one. Do you understand?"
"Yes! Master...!"
Jingliu placed her right hand on the hilt, intending to lift it, but to her surprise, it didn't budge an inch.
She gripped it with both hands and exerted all her strength, only then barely managing to lift it.
Hiss... what terrifying weight.
Looking again at the flying swords her Master was controlling, she did a rough count and arrived at an approximate number in her heart.
At least three thousand blades.
"You have less than six minutes to adjust your condition," Qi Zhimu said coldly as he tossed down some healing medicine.
Once that time passed, the Borisin a hundred miles away would arrive here.
For Jingliu's current constitution, although a few short minutes couldn't possibly restore her to her peak, a brief respite was enough for her to escape her weakened state.
Jingliu cherished this precious time, doing her best to adjust her condition.
The hellish training of the past, where she would practice until she fainted, finally revealed its significance at this moment.
Only after experiencing this bloody battle that transcended her physical limits did she understand her Master's painstaking intentions.
Otherwise, she would have died in battle long ago.
While Jingliu was recovering, Clear Cold and Sleeping Snow quickly tallied the battle losses.
The bloody numbers were silencing.
Of those still alive, less than eight hundred thousand remained... If Qi Zhimu had arrived a moment later, those eight hundred thousand would likely have quickly dwindled to zero.
Such catastrophic news made it impossible for anyone to remain calm.
A few Cloud Knight captains who still held weapons stepped forward one after another to request to continue the fight.
Qi Zhimu glanced at them and strictly forbade it.
"Before I am exhausted, I do not need comrades whose weapons are blunt and chipped and whose bodies have reached their limits to throw their lives away for nothing. Fall back and wait for reinforcements. This is an order."
"As you command... Vanguard!"
Even though their eyes burned with a sky-high hatred for the Borisin, the captains could only grit their teeth and retreat.
They all knew that Qi Zhimu was right.
At this moment, every one of them was at the end of their rope, holding on solely through will and conviction.
Six minutes passed in the blink of an eye.
At the edge of their vision, the suffocating tide of beasts appeared once more, accompanied by the dull thundering sound of a large-scale charge.
"Sleeping Snow, Clear Cold, Jingliu, defend your assigned coordinates. My flying swords will assist you."
Qi Zhimu's expression was calm as he issued the military order.
As his voice fell, the sky full of flying swords hummed, forming a defensive posture around the abyss.
Jingliu and the Sleeping Snow sisters needed to rush to the flanks of the sword formation to guard the weakest areas of the defensive line.
The bloody battle was about to erupt.
This was not a contest between equals, but a one-sided slaughter.
None of the surviving Cloud Knights expected such a scene.
The Borisin's fearless charge became a laughable act of suicide before those lightning-fast flying swords.
The flying swords did not directly pierce the enemies; instead, they constructed a high-speed rotating sword-qi storm barrier.
Anyone who touched it would be instantly drawn inside and ground into mincemeat.
Occasionally, a few stray wolf soldiers would roar and break through the sword net, but before they could even land, they were met by Qi Zhimu's seemingly casual punches and elbows.
He stood on a giant rock at the very edge of the cliff, every move he made concise to the extreme.
There were no redundant flourishes, only precision.
With a casual horizontal elbow strike, his power erupted, blasting several-ton Artifact Beasts into fragments, their mangled limbs falling into the abyss.
Beneath the abyss, the shrill howls of wolves were continuous!
As for the air above the abyss?
Any Borisin or Artifact Beast caught in the sword formation didn't even have a chance to scream.
Is this... Master's true strength?
Following the flying swords as they killed at will, Jingliu tightly gripped the incredibly heavy longsword in her hand, an endless longing surging from the depths of her heart.
She also wanted to become that strong; she absolutely had to become strong.
This renewed battle of offense and defense lasted for an unknown amount of time. The abyss in front of Qi Zhimu was once again filled with the corpses of Abominations, forming a path of blood leading directly to the isolated mountain.
Just then, all the Borisin and their subordinate Artifact Beasts ceased their attack.
"ROAR!!!"
A tyrannical roar loud enough to shatter eardrums spread toward the horizon!
That sound was laced with a terrifying spiritual pressure, causing many of the injured Cloud Knights in the rear to bleed from their noses and mouths.
From the back of the beast tide, a massive dark-red figure launched itself like a cannonball.
It crossed hundreds of meters in mid-air, carrying a sky-blotting wind of blood and baleful aura, and landed at the very front of the wolf pack!
It was the Great Nest Father of the Eclipsed Moon Hunting Pack.
Seeing countless wolf pups fall like wheat before that human figure, this regional overlord was completely enraged.
Its several-meter-tall body was covered in armor made from the bones of past powerful enemies, and its pair of giant claws gleamed with a chilling light.
"Finally can't sit still anymore, I see."
Qi Zhimu stood at the edge of the cliff, a crimson light even more violent than that of the Borisin flashing through his eyes.
"It's you... the one who killed war leader Ussa!" the Erosion Moon Great Nest Father roared in broken Xianzhou language.
"And?" Qi Zhimu tilted his head slightly.
"If I kill you here, I will be the next Borisin war leader! Remember my name—"
However, Qi Zhimu simply couldn't be bothered to waste words with the opponent.
The violence in his eyes didn't diminish in the slightest; he merely made a single movement.
—His figure turned into an afterimage!
BOOM!!!
The instant Qi Zhimu disappeared, the giant rock beneath his feet shattered into dust.
An afterimage tore through space, appearing above the Erosion Moon Great Nest Father in an instant.
A palm that looked slender and fair, completely out of proportion to the hideous beast claws, fell upon the massive wolf head with incredibly terrifying speed.
Slap!
There was no world-shaking explosion, only the faint roar of a tiger that seemed to penetrate the soul, and a dull thud like a ripe watermelon bursting under a heavy blow.
Time seemed to stand still in this second.
Jingliu's eyes widened as she stared blankly into the distance.
That menacing Great Nest Father of the Eclipsed Moon, its massive head failed to even let out a scream under Qi Zhimu's palm strike.
Its head was directly slapped into a cloud of crimson, eye-piercing blood mist!
The residual force of that palm strike did not dissipate, traveling all the way down the spinal column.
The bones of the Great Nest Father's massive headless corpse shattered inch by inch, turning into a pile of mush. Finally, the entire carcass, just like the head, completely exploded into a mist of blood.
The entire field was dead silent.
The countless Borisin in the rear seemed to have their throats collectively seized, unable to make a single sound.
Jingliu couldn't help but cover her mouth, her eyes filled only with Qi Zhimu's figure—not particularly burly, yet seemingly as vast as the entire world.
Trust, reliance, admiration, worship... all sorts of emotions crashed into her heart, incredibly complex.
She could feel that within her Master, the unextinguished fury of countless Cloud Knight comrades had gathered.
This was the second time she had seen her Master angry.
And the first time was the day Azure City was destroyed...