Her world, once a shroud of endless night, was now blinding light. And in the center of it all, a face. A face etched into her memory, the ghost she had clung to for a decade. The boy who had pulled her from the fire and slaughter, his eyes burning with a coldness that paradoxically felt like the only warmth in the world. “It was you,” Xue Feng whispered, her voice trembling. Her newly opened eyes, clear as autumn pools, filled with tears that traced paths down her perfect face. “All this time… it was you.” Lu Feng’s expression remained placid, but a flicker of something ancient and sorrowful passed through his gaze. He simply nodded. For him, a decade was a blink. For her, it was an eternity of darkness. Before another word could be spoken, the ground trembled. A roar like a tidal wave crashed against the stone walls of the hidden chamber. “LU FENG! SURRENDER THE DRAGON ORDER AND YOUR LIFE, AND I WILL GRANT YOU A SWIFT DEATH!” The voice was amplified by immense Inner Qi, booming across the valley. It was righteous, commanding, and utterly hypocritical. The Alliance Leader of the Divine Sword Manor had arrived. Xue Feng flinched. “They found us.” Fear, a long-absent companion since Lu Feng’s arrival, crept back into her heart. Ten thousand men. She could feel the suffocating killing intent pressing in from all sides, a physical weight that could crush a lesser martial artist’s meridians. Lu Feng’s gaze drifted from her face towards the chamber entrance. His eyes were lazy, half-closed, as if annoyed by the interruption. He offered a hand to Xue Feng. “Stay behind me.” She took it without hesitation. His palm was steady, a silent anchor in a raging storm. He led her out of the chamber and into the sunlight. The sight that greeted them was an ocean of steel and murderous glares. Ten thousand elite disciples of the Divine Sword Manor and its allied sects formed a suffocating encirclement. Banners snapped in the wind, each emblazoned with the emblem of a so-called righteous Martial Sect. At their head, standing on a raised platform, was the Alliance Leader. He was a man with a scholarly face and a flowing white beard, the very picture of a virtuous Grandmaster. But his eyes held a greedy, venomous light. “Lu Feng!” the Alliance Leader bellowed, his voice dripping with false piety. “You harbor demonic arts and collude with evil! That sacred medical sect was wiped out by assassins, and you appear with its sole survivor! You dare steal a thousand-year elixir! Such treasures are not for the likes of you! Hand over the Dragon Order, the elixir, and the girl, and confess your crimes before the martial world!” His accusations were a tangled web of truth and lies, designed to paint Lu Feng as a villain and justify the slaughter to come. The surrounding disciples gripped their swords, their true essence churning, ready to drown the two of them in a tide of blades. Lu Feng ignored the speech entirely. He looked at Xue Feng, his voice a low murmur only she could hear. “Are you afraid?” She looked at the sea of enemies, then back at his calm profile. She shook her head. “With you, no.” A ghost of a smile touched Lu Feng’s lips. It was a sight more shocking than the ten-thousand-man army. He released her hand and took a single step forward. His eyes swept over the legions of warriors, not with anger, but with the profound boredom of a dragon looking at ants. He spotted a weapon rack nearby, filled with discarded, rusted training blades. He casually picked one up. It was a broken sword, the tip snapped off, its edge dull and nicked. A piece of scrap metal. The disciples of the Divine Sword Manor sneered. The Alliance Leader laughed aloud. “A broken sword against ten thousand? You are truly insane!” he jeered. “Kill him! Take the Dragon Order for the righteous path!” “CHARGE!” With a deafening roar, the vanguard surged forward. Three thousand experts, the elite of the elite, charged with a momentum that could shatter a city wall. Their combined sword-qi formed a vortex of destructive energy, a storm of shimmering death aimed at a single man holding a piece of junk. Lu Feng didn’t move. He simply raised the broken blade. No grand stance, no channeling of Inner Qi, no complex technique. He just held it. The air grew still. The roar of the charge died in an instant, replaced by a silence so absolute it was terrifying. A pressure descended from the heavens, a will that froze every man in his tracks. A killing intent so pure, so vast, it felt like the gaze of a god passing judgment. Lu Feng’s eyes were cold voids. He swung the sword. It was a lazy, almost casual motion. A simple horizontal slash. A single sword-line slashes across the heavens; ten-thousand-zhang sword-qi sweeps through and three thousand vanguard experts lose their heads in one second. The Alliance Leader staggers back in horror: “You... you’ve broken past the Mystic Ancestor realm? You’re a Sword God?!”

Chapter 9: One Sword Against Ten Thousand