A Thousand Blades Against Immortal Flesh

Ji Ning crashed onto the corridor floor, but the world around him had fallen into an eerie, suffocating silence.

His ears could no longer hear.

At the same time, his entire body had lost all sensation. The powerful vitality of his Fiendgod frame surged into action, rapidly mending everything—the torn muscles and skin, the shattered internal organs and meridians. His hearing returned, and all feeling flooded back into his limbs.

“Pain… so much pain.” Ji Ning forced himself to look into the distance. That momentary loss of sensation and sound had been terrifying.

“It’s truly… truly dreadful.” He stared at the stooped, black-furred monster radiating dense death-energy. “That single slap was too fast for me to dodge, and his raw strength far exceeds the combined power of those nine alien giants!”

The black-furred monster stood silently, its jade-green eyes fixed on Ji Ning. A hoarse sigh escaped its lips, heavy with helpless disappointment. “I have waited too long… so long that I have forgotten the passage of time. All you need to do is survive three trials. You don’t have to kill me—just knock me down or wound me.”

Ji Ning climbed painfully to his feet. The ground was soaked with blood.

“Knock you down?” He stared at the hunched creature.

“No, more precisely—just wound me. Break my skin and draw blood.” The black-furred monster spoke slowly. “I will fall on my own. I still remember… when Celestial Immortal Juhua was recruiting disciples, more than ten people charged before me in a single session. How lively it was! One young man even managed to wound me with a powerful Dao talisman. But I only took a step back—I didn’t fall. If I had fallen then, I would never have suffered this endless loneliness. Loneliness… it’s terrifying. Truly terrifying…”

Ji Ning held his breath.

This black-furred monster had existed since Celestial Immortal Juhua’s time. It could not be an ordinary cultivator—no normal cultivator could live that long. Only a Celestial Immortal could roam freely through eternity, and a Celestial Immortal would not be like this. A Celestial Immortal’s single breath would likely reduce Ji Ning to dust.

“My master set the rule: wound me or knock me down, and you pass.” The black-furred monster’s voice was slow and gravelly. “Come now. Wound me. If you break my skin, I will let myself fall.”

“Wound you?” Ji Ning used his divine sense to retrieve his two flying swords, the Northsea Swords. His broken fingers reattached. The black-furred monster merely watched silently, making no move to interfere.

It continued, “Give it everything you have. In the endless years, all who have reached me have been given the same chance—if they wound me, I will fall. But none of them could. Not a single one.”

Ji Ning’s heart chilled.

“Only that one time, during Juhua’s recruitment, a Dao talisman injured me. Why didn’t I fall that day? I missed that one chance, and it never came again.” The creature’s words were slow, as though the endless solitude had ground it down to utter misery.

“Wound him?” Fear gripped Ji Ning.

According to this being—perhaps dating back to the Primordial Fiendgod Era—only one person had ever wounded it, and that was thanks to a Dao talisman.

“In all these years, there must have been geniuses who grasped the True Meaning of the Dao who reached this trial,” Ji Ning thought. “How am I supposed to do it?”

“Come.” The black-furred monster shuffled forward. “Come. Wound me.”

Ji Ning gripped his Northsea Swords.

Whoosh!

He shot upward, soaring to the ceiling, and two talismans appeared in his hand—a Lightness Talisman and an Agility Talisman. From the storage treasures left behind by countless dead cultivators, he had found many talismans, but most had lost their power over the long ages. Only about a hundred still worked, and these two were the most common. Both talismans activated and dissolved into his body instantly.

“Die!” Ji Ning flew to the top of the corridor, then kicked off hard, executing the Windwing Evasion to dive down from high above.

In that moment, he reached his absolute limit of speed.

“Die!”

He channeled all his power into the right-hand Northsea Sword, thrusting downward.

The hunched black-furred monster halted, lifted its head, and stared up at the descending Ji Ning with those dull green eyes. It watched silently, its gaze empty and numb.

“Dripping Water Pierces Stone!”

Ji Ning plunged downward. The tip of his sword transformed into a single droplet of water, striking the monster’s fur-covered face. In that instant, both his divine power and Xiantian true ki were pushed to the limit. The speed of his dive, the piercing force it generated, and the True Meaning of Dripping combined into one devastating strike.

Swish!

The sword tip struck the black-furred monster’s cheek. The creature continued to stare up at him.

“Still far off.” The black-furred monster sighed, and its jade-green eyes filled with boundless disappointment. “I must continue waiting… waiting on. As for you… I can only kill you now.”

Ji Ning’s strike had failed to harm it at all. Unwilling to give up, he immediately executed both ‘Silk Rain Forms Threads’ and ‘Moth to the Flame’ with his twin swords, striking the monster’s chest and face. Neither attack could penetrate even a fraction of its skin.

“Fall back.” Ji Ning retreated several dozen zhang.

The black-furred monster lurched forward, walking slowly, but each step covered dozens of zhang. In pure speed, it was actually faster than Ji Ning—both in movement and attack. For the first time on this corridor, he had encountered an opponent faster than himself.

Previously, he could rely on the Windwing Evasion to buy time, but now delay was impossible.

“How can its skin be this tough?” Ji Ning’s desperation grew. He already knew that every Fiendgod Body Refining cultivator who had fallen here before him proved how impossibly hard it was to wound this monster. But having thrown his full strength into a sword strike that failed to pierce its cheek, true despair began to set in.

“Stop struggling. Die.” The hoarse voice sounded, and the stooped black-furred monster appeared beside Ji Ning as if by teleportation.

Three water-lotus petals and three fire-lotus petals immediately swirled around Ji Ning’s body, rotating in opposite directions, grinding and tearing. But to the black-furred monster, the Water-Fire Lotus felt like nothing more than small ripples lapping against its legs—it barely slowed the creature.

Ji Ning’s twin swords once again executed ‘Dripping Water Pierces Stone,’ this time aimed at the monster’s groin and thigh.

“I can’t escape, and defense is useless. I must find a chance of survival. Kill! Kill! Kill! Maybe different parts of its body have weaker spots I can pierce.” Ji Ning refused to give up.

“Stop struggling.”

The black-furred monster sighed, and its huge, shovel-like palm came swinging at Ji Ning once more. It didn’t even bother with his swords—it let his blades strike its body while its own hand landed on Ji Ning.

Boom!!!

The magic armor Ji Ning wore tore apart instantly. The thick, dead-energy-laden giant hand punched straight through his chest, sending him flying far across the floor.

Thud.

Ji Ning lay on the ground, a large hole gaping in his chest. His body was nearly torn in two. He couldn’t move at all; his entire frame was paralyzed. Only his innate vitality was working to heal him, but that would take about half a minute before he could move again.

And the black-furred monster was already approaching from the distance. It would reach him in perhaps a single second.

“Die.” The hunched creature took another step.

“No!” Ji Ning’s heart was filled with an overwhelming desire for life. He had died before. He had even visited the Netherworld and seen Meng Po. That was why he craved life all the more. He didn’t want to drink Meng Po’s soup. “What do I do? How can I survive? I can’t even move… The only thing I can use is my divine sense. Could I use it to lift the Northsea Swords and stab the black-furred monster?”

Despair gripped him.

Ji Ning understood the limits of his divine sense well. When he tested it after killing Tie Muzhan, he found that it could lift trees and boulders, exerting force comparable to a late-stage Xiantian Fiendgod Body Refiner. That a manifested thought could be so strong was impressive, but what use was such power here?

…

“I still have them.” As the black-furred monster drew near, Ji Ning suddenly remembered something. He let out a roar. “Come out, all of you!”

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Countless weapons materialized around him—swords, sabers, longspears, thousands of magic treasures, all floating in the air, each one controlled by his divine sense. Every blade tip, sword tip, and spear point was aimed at the black-furred monster.

“All of my Xiantian true ki—go!” Ji Ning was utterly insane now. The entire reservoir of Xiantian true ki in his dantian exploded outward, pouring into every single magic treasure.

These were all unremarkable treasures left behind by ancient dead Xiantian cultivators. Ji Ning had obtained and easily refined them. Normally, a Xiantian cultivator would wield such treasures by hand, but Ji Ning, thanks to his divine sense, could hold every one of them with his mind.

It was as though thousands of invisible hands had seized each weapon and aimed them at the monster.

His Xiantian true ki, split across thousands of treasures, tore his meridians apart. An ordinary Xiantian could fight for a long time with sustained energy, but Ji Ning had scattered all his true ki so thinly that each weapon received only a small portion.

“Kill!”

With his body broken and unable to move, Ji Ning’s face twisted in a savage howl.

That howl was filled with a desperate, boundless craving for life!

Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish! Swish!

A dense, endless storm of sword-light, saber-light, and spear-light shot out. In an instant, the entire corridor was flooded with blinding white radiance as every single attack landed simultaneously on the black-furred monster, who had opened his arms and closed his eyes…

Boom!!!