Gu Qingfeng didn’t take a stance.
He didn’t widen his footing, he didn’t ignite his dantian core with the blinding flames of a peak Nascent Soul sovereign, and he didn’t recite an ancient, blood-drenched battle mantra. He simply stepped off the mossy boulder, his bare feet landing silently upon the river pebbles. Then he gave the slender bamboo twig in his right hand a gentle, almost barely noticeable upward flick toward the heavens.
It was a motion so light, so casual, that it looked like an old gardener shooing away a bothersome dragonfly on a lazy summer afternoon.
Yet in that single fraction of an instant, the world stopped breathing.
The murmur of the mountain brook vanished. The rustling of the bamboo leaves froze mid-flutter. The amber morning sunlight shattered into millions of crystal-clear prisms. The green canopy above dissolved into an infinite, soaring sky void.
Where the sky had been, there was now only light.
Ten million semi-clear, spectral swords showed up across the vaulted heavens, stretching from horizon to horizon like a glittering ocean of fallen stars. Each blade was slender and weightless. It glowed with a soft, rainbow-bright pearl soft glow that carried the quiet, sad beauty of an autumn moon reflecting on still water.
