Vessel of Worlds

The Demon Gate youth's mind raced through a dozen thoughts at once—but his hands never slowed.

As Andy deployed his ranks of puppets, the youth produced a blood-colored cape and shook it out rapidly, transforming it into a cloud of blood several zhang across that wrapped him in its protection.

At the same time he recalled the Blood Demon Sword to his grip, seized it two-handed, and with a great roar hacked savagely at Andy dozens of zhang away.

From the sword burst a blood-colored serpent more than ten zhang long, hissing, flicking a forked tongue several chi long, its eyes alight with greed and savagery, trailing a nauseating stench of gore as it lunged for Andy.

Andy met it without flinching, raising the Blazing Heaven Blade and cleaving at the blood serpent.

A fire dragon ten-odd zhang long—its ferocity yielding nothing to the serpent's—surged out fangs-first to meet it, radiating heat so fierce that the wooden tables and chairs about the hall burst into flame.

Serpent and dragon met in midair, coiling, tearing, savaging one another. Both presences dwindled by degrees until, at the last, they dissolved together into scattered motes of light.

Though this second exchange between Blazing Heaven Blade and Blood Demon Sword had again ended even, each man privately hid a flicker of satisfaction.

The Demon Gate youth had noticed: with every stroke of that fiery bone saber, the spiritual power in the high-grade fire stone set in its hilt dimmed a fraction. He had no idea where this early-stage cultivator had obtained a high-grade spirit tool and a high-grade fire stone—but plainly the stone had already seen long use, and little of its power seemed to remain. A few more strikes, perhaps, and it would run dry.

Without its high-grade stone, a high-grade spirit tool was scrap!

Then he would see how the man withstood a single blow of the Blood Demon Sword!

Andy, for his part, harbored a quiet delight of his own. The Blood Demon Sword's power was evidently not free to unleash. With every swing, the Demon Gate youth's face went a shade whiter—his blood essence was clearly draining fast.

Andy's spirit stones were inexhaustible. He rather doubted the same could be said of the man's vital blood!

Each convinced that time favored him, the two struck again in almost perfect unison, fire dragon and blood serpent tangling once more, neither giving ground.

At the same moment Andy passed an attack command to the puppets. The two rear ranks of archers drew their bowstrings as one, and sheet after sheet of many-colored spiritual light broke like a storm against the Demon Gate youth's protective blood cloud.

However remarkable that blood cloud's origins, it could not withstand what amounted to the simultaneous bombardment of twenty-odd Foundation Establishment cultivators. Within a single exchange, the cloud was battered apart and dispersed, laying his figure bare.

The Demon Gate youth paled in alarm. He bit down hard on the tip of his tongue and sprayed a mouthful of thick blood over the Blood Demon Sword, then swung it in two whistling strokes, one upon the other!

Two crescents of blood-light flew out in succession—one at Andy, one at the massed puppets.

Andy ignored the puppets entirely. A horizontal slash of the Blazing Heaven Blade sent a blinding red arc to meet the attack aimed at him.

His strike and the first blood crescent once more fought each other to nothing. But the second crescent smashed through the two mid-grade shields raised against it, and cut the two defender puppets—along with four or five archers behind them and the spirit tools in their hands—into countless fragments.

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Not a flicker of regret crossed Andy's face. Giving his enemy no room to breathe, he swung the Blazing Heaven Blade again and again, arc after arc of red light scything toward the Demon Gate youth with terrifying momentum.

The youth's alarm turned desperate. With blinding speed he drew both hands along the Blood Demon Sword's edge—severing all ten fingers. Dark red blood gushed forth, and every drop of it flowed into the sword.

Glutted on so much vital blood, the Blood Demon Sword darkened further still, the gore-light seething across its surface growing fiercer and thicker, as though at any moment it might shed real blood in pools.

Steering the sword with his spiritual sense, the youth swung with everything left in him. A blood serpent several times thicker than before burst forth to meet the onrushing arcs of red.

The serpent stretched wide its cavernous maw and swallowed the red arcs whole, every one.

Then, writhing as if in unbearable agony, it flared with a blinding crimson radiance—and exploded.

Serpent and swallowed arcs alike vanished into nothing in the blast.

The Demon Gate youth's face was now white as paper—but the Blazing Heaven Blade in Andy's hands had likewise spent its high-grade stone, its luster gone dull and dead.

The youth exulted. Had the blood not been churning so violently in his chest that he could barely speak, he would have thrown back his head and laughed aloud.

After a battle balanced on the edge of life and death, with victory suddenly in sight—who wouldn't feel as he did?

His own state was wretched, granted: his blood essence was catastrophically depleted, and even in victory he would need a year or more, and a fortune in elixirs, to recover his peak.

For that year, he would hardly dare cross swords with anyone at all.

But what were such losses against Recluse Ximen's legacy, now nearly in hand—and against the storage pouch of this staggeringly wealthy early-stage cultivator across from him?

Andy's next action, however, turned all those thoughts to foam on the water—and what replaced them was boundless terror.

Unhurried, Andy felt briefly at his waist, and two translucent high-grade fire-attribute spirit stones appeared in his hand.

One he swapped deftly into the Blazing Heaven Blade's hilt. The other he kept in his grip, rapidly drawing in its power.

Guiding a spirit tool cost only a modest trickle of spiritual power—but the sustained use of a high-grade spirit tool had drained Andy heavily all the same.

Watching the Demon Gate youth's face travel from elation to shock to naked terror, Andy gave a cold snort, raised the freshly re-stoned Blazing Heaven Blade, and brought it down through the air without mercy.

A crescent arc streaked toward the Demon Gate youth—and punched clean through his "body."

To Andy's utter astonishment, the figure dissolved in that instant into a puff of blood-mist. His strike had fallen on empty air.

Several zhang away, in midair, a smear of blood-shadow bloomed from nothing—and within it appeared the Demon Gate youth's trembling form.

What sorcery is this—instantaneous movement? Andy wondered, baffled.

But this was no time for inquiry. The youth, gripped now by fear, was making for the hall's exit.

The dozen-plus archer puppets on the ground loosed a furious barrage at the sole doorway, sealing his retreat in an instant.

Using the seconds the puppets had bought, Andy swung the Blazing Heaven Blade at him once more.

Past all strength to work any further secret art, the Demon Gate youth—despair written across his face—barely managed to raise the Blood Demon Sword crosswise before him.

The crescent arc, impossibly fast, slid past the Blood Demon Sword and struck his body directly. It met no resistance at all—soundlessly, as though cleaving through empty void, it cut him in two. Not a single drop of blood fell.

On the half-corpse that dropped from the air, the eyes remained wide open, brimming with bitter unwillingness. To his death he never understood how a mere early-stage Foundation Establishment cultivator could produce high-grade spirit stones one after another. His birth had been extraordinary; his roots wretched, yes, but his ambition soared and his faith in his path had never wavered—tenacious, decisive, tempered by real hardship even under his uncle's protection, all the way to late-stage Foundation Establishment. With Recluse Ximen's long-sought legacy at his fingertips and the great plan of Core Formation about to open before him—at this last threshold, he had been destroyed by an early-stage cultivator of unknown origin, and a lifetime of grand designs burst like foam.

Andy searched the corpse without ceremony. Beyond a storage pouch and the now dull, lifeless Blood Demon Sword, there was nothing.

He upended the pouch and poured its contents across the floor.

The late-stage youth had been worthy of his title of "Young Master"—the pouch was richly stocked. A hundred-odd mid-grade spirit stones of every attribute; dozens of artifacts of all kinds, several peak-grade among them, including a few of rare and exotic function; ores, raw materials, and beast materials in quantity. There were dozens of jade and wooden boxes of every size, shape, and color—some sealed with multiple restriction talismans, clearly treasures their owner had prized. A dozen-plus bottles and jars of every description.

And beyond all that—a dozen or so jade slips.