Sword of Immortal Slaying

诛仙剑 Sword of Immortal Slaying
器属类型：先天杀伐至宝 Primordial Slaughter Treasure
Artifact Tier: Zao Hua Xiong Qi (Creation-Forged Ominous Armament)
Current Holder: Historically wielded by Tongtian Jiaozhu (通天教主); fate after the Investiture War is ambiguous in the tradition
Current Status: The sword’s present location is unknown; some accounts suggest it was sealed by the Dao ancestors after the battle of the Immortal Slaying Formation

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The Sword of Immortal Slaying is inextricably linked to its master Tongtian Jiaozhu (通天教主), the founder of the Jie Sect, and to the Four Swords of Immortal Slaying set, which includes the Sword of Immortal Execution, the Sword of Immortal Extermination, and the Sword of Immortal Annihilation. These four swords together constitute the core armament of the Immortal Slaying Formation (诛仙阵图), a war-array that requires the sacrifice of four Da Luo Jin Xian-level true spirits to stabilize. The sword’s legend is primarily preserved through the Ming dynasty novel Fengshen Yanyi (Investiture of the Gods), which records its most famous deployment during the war between the Shang and Zhou dynasties, though its in-universe origins go back to the Honghuang Era and the crystallization of primordial slaughter principle. Readers exploring the sword should also refer to the entries on the Great Furnace (Hong Lu) and Living Soul Sacrifice (Sheng Hun Ji Ding), as the sword’s creation and operation embody the cruel logic of artifact refinement described in the Artifact Volume.

The Sword of Immortal Slaying is classified as a Zao Hua Xiong Qi, the highest and most dangerous tier of artifact. Its core power is not ordinary severance but the invocation of the purest “slaughter principle” (杀机) that operates at the level of causality. When the sword is drawn, it severs the target’s connection to cosmic law, karmic ties, and even their place in recorded memory. No magical defense can block this erasure, as the attack bypasses all intermediate phenomena. The wielder must possess at least the cultivation base of a Da Luo Jin Xian (大罗金仙) to withstand the sword’s ambient killing intent; anyone below that rank will have their soul shredded on contact. The sword’s range is limited only by the user’s ability to lock onto the target’s causal thread—in theory, it can strike across realms once the connection is established.

The Sword of Immortal Slaying was not forged in any mundane furnace. It is a primordial entity, born from the concentrated slaughter principle that crystallized during the cosmic upheavals of the Honghuang Era. No material was “mined” in the conventional sense, because the sword is itself a fragment of the Dao’s own destructive logic made tangible. Some sources within the Fengshen Yanyi tradition imply that its substance is derived from the residual killing energy left after the Primordial Gods’ wars—an incorporeal harvest that required no excavation but still scarred the nascent universe at a conceptual level. The sword’s existence alone perpetuates a subtle imbalance in the cosmic yin-yang equilibrium, much like a permanent wound in the order of things.

The sword contains an artifact spirit (Qi Ling) that is the sealed soul of an ancient primordial beast—a being of untold ferocity from the age before the Great Disconnection. During the sword’s shaping, this beast’s soul was captured at the moment of agony and forced into the sword’s core matrix as its animating intelligence. It is not a willing servant. It exists in a state of perpetual rage and hunger, and it can only be kept docile by regular offerings of the wielder’s own blood and spiritual essence. If the feedings are neglected, the beast-soul will overpower the artifact’s binding runes and devour the wielder from the inside. The Qi Ling has no desire for communication or partnership—it wants only to consume and to be released from its eternal prison, and it will seize any opportunity to break free.

Master recognition (Ren Zhu) for the Sword of Immortal Slaying is a near-suicidal undertaking. The would-be wielder must open their soul-sea to the sword and allow the killing intent to flood their being. If they survive, the sword then demands a blood pact: the wielder must periodically feed it their own lifeblood, and each activation of the sword carves an “Apocalyptic Slaughter Mark” (灭世杀痕) into the wielder’s soul. These marks are irreversible. After three such marks accumulate, the wielder’s consciousness is overwritten, and they become a mindless, indiscriminate slaughter puppet, driven only by the sword’s own will. The sword is thus a parasite that tolerates its host only as long as the host remains strong and useful. The moment the wielder is gravely wounded or their cultivation falters, the beast-soul will attempt to consume them entirely. No historical record shows a wielder surviving three activations and retaining their sanity.

Only one stable wielder is recorded in canonical texts: Tongtian Jiaozhu (通天教主), the founder of the Jie Sect (截教) during the Shang dynasty. He possessed the sword as part of the Four Swords of Immortal Slaying (诛仙四剑) and deployed it in the fateful battle of the Immortal Slaying Formation against the allied forces of the Chan Sect and Western Buddhism. He did not die from the sword’s backlash, but he was ultimately defeated and his treasures confiscated by the Dao ancestors. Some later legends claim that the sword briefly passed into the hands of a fallen disciple who attempted to use it for revenge—a story that always ends with that disciple being consumed by the beast-soul within hours. The sword has no record of a wielder who died of old age.

The sword’s most famous deployment occurred during the Investiture War, when Tongtian Jiaozhu activated the full Immortal Slaying Formation. Supported by the other three swords and the formation diagram, the sword’s power was magnified to a level that threatened to annihilate the entire army of gods and immortals besieging the Jie Sect. The formation drew all spiritual energy from a radius of ten thousand li (approximately 5,000 km), turning fertile lands into barren wastes and causing millions of mortal deaths through the collapse of natural cycles. After this single use, the sword reportedly entered a dormant state for several years, during which the beast-soul’s demands for blood increased tenfold. The formation diagram itself required the sacrificial offering of four Da Luo Jin Xian-level true spirits to stabilize its power alignment; without that sacrifice, the sword’s slaughter principle would have turned back on the formation’s master.

The Sword of Immortal Slaying is the chief of the Four Swords of Immortal Slaying (诛仙四剑), the other three being the Sword of Immortal Execution (戮仙剑), Sword of Immortal Extermination (陷仙剑), and Sword of Immortal Annihilation (绝仙剑). These four swords are not merely related; they are designed to work together as a single weapon system when placed on the Immortal Slaying Formation Diagram (诛仙阵图). The diagram binds their slaughter principles into a closed, self-reinforcing loop that magnifies each sword’s power by several orders of magnitude. No independent weapon is known to specifically counter the Sword of Immortal Slaying, though the combined power of four Da Luo Jin Xian—each commanding a different celestial principle—was said to be able to disrupt the formation’s coherence. The sword is not derived from any higher-tier weapon; it is a primordial creation in its own right.

After the defeat of Tongtian Jiaozhu in the Investiture War, the Sword of Immortal Slaying was confiscated by the celestial authorities—variously described as the Dao Ancestors (道祖) or the supreme will of Heaven. The Fengshen Yanyi states that the sword was sealed away to prevent its slaughter principle from contaminating the newly stabilized cosmic order. Its exact resting place is not disclosed in any surviving text. Some later Daoist apocrypha claim that the sword was cast into the primordial chaos beyond the Thirty-Three Heavens, while others insist it was broken and its fragments scattered across the void. In the mainstream tradition, the sword is simply considered “no longer accessible” —a treasure too dangerous for any age.