The summit of the Heavenly Pillar had become a crucible of clashing intents. The Seven Swords of the Alliance—the absolute pinnacle of the "Orthodox" world—had fully unleashed their martial domains. The very air around the limestone peak screamed as lightning, fire, and razor-sharp Sword Qi tore through the mountain mist.
In the center of this hurricane stood Yun Cheon-Hwi. He looked small, holding nothing but a weathered wooden staff. Yet, to the eyes of the masters surrounding him, he felt like a mountain that existed in a different dimension.
"You speak of 'Truth,' Yun Patriarch," roared the Sword Saint of Mount Hua. His blade was now a literal sun of pink energy, radiating a heat that turned the mountain's snow into instant steam. "But the Truth of the Murim is written in blood and legacies! Your 'Federation' is a dream of fools!"
"A dream is only a fool's errand until it wakes up," Cheon-Hwi replied. He didn't take a stance. He didn't even tap into his internal energy in a way the Seven Swords could recognize.
The Ultimate Convergence
The Wudang Grandmaster signaled the attack. "Form the Heaven-Slaying Star Array!"
The Seven Swords moved in perfect synchronization, a feat of group combat logic perfected over centuries. The Ocean-Lord of Qingcheng launched the Tidal Crushing Force, a wave of blue Sword Force that threatened to collapse the very peak. From above, the Emei Swordstress rained down a thousand Needles of the Moon, while the Mount Hua Saint unleashed the Falling Sun of Plum Blossoms.
It was an attack capable of erasing a city from the map. The collective pressure was so immense that the limestone beneath Cheon-Hwi's feet began to groan and liquefy under the localized gravity.
Cheon-Hwi didn't dodge. He didn't block. He simply closed his eyes and whispered a single line from the Universal Origin Scripture:
"The Heavens do not speak, yet they govern all."
Nature Realm: Divine Transformation
At that moment, the world stopped.
To the observers below, it appeared as if the sun had suddenly been snuffed out. The color-coded Ki of the Seven Swords—the pinks, blues, and whites—was not just countered; it was erased. This was the Divine Transformation stage of the Nature Realm, where the practitioner no longer uses Ki to fight, but overwrites the local laws of existence.
Cheon-Hwi raised his wooden staff. The wood was common ash, yet as he moved it in a slow, horizontal arc, it didn't slice the air—it sliced reality.
A line of pure, white light erupted from the staff. It was a Slash Projection of such magnitude that it bypassed the concept of distance.
The "Heavenly Pillar" summit, a mass of solid rock ten miles wide, was suddenly bifurcated. A massive, jagged canyon opened up beneath the feet of the Seven Swords, stretching down three thousand feet into the mountain's core.
Above them, the thick layer of storm-clouds that had shrouded the Anhui province for a week was split in a perfect, geometric line. For the first time in memory, the citizens of the valley looked up to see a "River of Stars" in the dead of day—a phenomenon that would later be recorded in Murim history as the day "The Heavens Wept."
The Fall of the Icons
The Seven Swords were thrown to the edges of the newly formed canyon. Their weapons were not broken by force; they had simply turned to dust, their "Spirit Iron" unable to withstand the frequency of the Eternal Transformation.
The Mount Hua Sword Saint lay on the precipice, his white hair scorched, staring at the blue sky above. He tried to manifest a single spark of Sword Qi, but his Dantian felt like an empty well.
"You didn't... use a technique," the Saint whispered, his voice a broken rasp.
"I didn't need to," Cheon-Hwi said, walking across the void as if it were a solid bridge—a demonstration of Wind Walking at the highest tier. "The mountain, the wind, and the sky are the Yun's techniques. Your 'Orthodox' paths are merely children playing with matches in a forest."
Cheon-Hwi stopped at the edge of the canyon and looked East, toward the distant Alliance headquarters.
"Tell Jo Mu-Sang that the trial is over," the Patriarch's voice boomed, carried by the wind to every ear in the province. "The Nine Great Sects are now historical footnotes. The era of the Families is dead. The Murim Federation has already won. The rest is just... cleaning up the glass."
The Seven Swords—the icons of a five-hundred-year-old order—were found an hour later by their disciples. They were alive, but their "Martial Spirits" were gone. They had seen the true face of the Heavens, and they knew that no amount of bloodline pills or secret scrolls could ever bridge the gap.