People on the science side aren't incapable of settling things with real steel.
It's just that, in most cases, money, hacking, guns, drones, or nukes are much quicker and cleaner.
But when the art of artillery fails, only the violence of the blade remains.
One of the corp goons stepped through the rain curtain. In the howling, dim downpour, he drove the sword hidden in his umbrella straight at Li Pan's brow—a streak of light.
Calling that thrust "like a rainbow" would be an understatement. It felt like a shell roaring straight for his face. He didn't even hear the blade cut the water—cold steel was already at his eye.
Say this for swords: they're pure.
A sword doesn't care about your morals, your lineage, or what lofty dreams the wielder or the target carries.
It doesn't care whether its force is "scientific" or "cultivator."
A sword only cares whether it can run you through.
Luckily, Li Pan's upbringing was… special. Looked down on and beaten since childhood, he didn't need a pep talk or a flashback monologue to psyche himself up. He snapped into state.
Fight for your life.
The instant the point arrived, he answered the sword's call—leapt in, blade-first—returning heat with heat, cold edge with cold edge.
Saint Catherine's Sword, sheathed in pale-cyan light, fluttered in his wrist's twitch and whip—its shifting shadows like a green snake tasting the air. It slid along the incoming umbrella-needle, winding, sticking, twisting.
On that very first exchange the razor-straight strike was shredded section by section; under Nine Yin internal force and the Monkey Sword's grinding glow, the broken edge turned to glittering sleet—powder and dew scattering away—while the broad wash of swordlight rolled on to swallow the corp goon's face.
Beichen Sword-Qi—breaks all methods, pierces all things!
The goon's pupils pinched. Trusting his frame, he slammed brakes and sprang back to open space.
Li Pan's wheeling sword-flowers chased like a shadow. The pale blade spun, a serpent probing at the chest, its murderous shimmer rippling before the man's eyes—kaleidoscope flares blooming closer, closer—driving for the brow.
But the light stopped.
Li Pan didn't lunge to finish. He drove him back with the whirl and then planted his feet, blade held low.
Not unwilling—just forced. The man's teammates had moved.
Two more corp goons had already drawn their umbrella-swords, flanking him left and right, forcing him to check his point.
Even so, that probe told him enough.
Nine Yin Refined Form from third to fourth turn let him match the super-frames' speed—no longer a punching bag to be one-shotted—yet he still had no edge.
In fact, he was at an absolute disadvantage. His only flip-card was the Beichen Sword-Qi. If he gambled his body, he could likely kill one—but would never dodge the others' cross-kill.
So after a feel-out, he drew back.
The three took up an equilateral triangle around him.
The fourth stood outside the circle, umbrella still up—eyes glowing blue, staring unblinking as if recording. He spoke:
"What form is that?"
Li Pan smiled. "Screw-Your-Mom Sword. Badass."
It was actually Rolling-Cloud Form, from the Eight Immortals of Qingcheng—also archived at Shangzhen Temple. Strip it down and it's a mechanics drill: spin and paddle the blade with domineering internal force to grind a straight-in thrust to chaff—made to crack those suicidal lunges.
Both the God-Host and Master Xian had noted it in the Blood Register Heaven Book: you can skip fancy swordplay, but you must know this one.
Why, exactly? He still didn't really get it. But the move wasn't hard: enough power, enough edge, enough glow—you can trade steel for steel and shatter the other man's sword.
"I'll remember it," the recorder said.
Li Pan rolled his eyes, ready to snipe back—when a red flash at the edge of his vision made him start.
The blood hand from earlier had returned—clutching… a newborn blood monkey?
Before he saw it clearly, the hand slapped the thing onto Li Pan's raincoat with a wet smack—blood splashing like a dead rat crushed beneath a tarp.
…Gross.
Then—whoosh—a dozen bloody handprints lit up on the raincloak, clawing into the storm! The umbrella man's face tightened.
"He's got counter-sniper measures! Close and kill!"
All three lunged while Li Pan's attention flicked—left and right blades scissoring in!
Even the one whose sword was shattered popped a pair of manticore mantis-blades from his forearms—superheated edges flaring red through the rain. He dropped to four points like a rabid dog, skimming the water with a slide and scissoring for Li Pan's legs!
After that first taste, Li Pan knew the parameter gap. No solo fantasies.
He dragged a hand down his face—white mist washed over his features as if he'd wiped his eyes away.
Cheat on.
Handkerchief Knight—transform!
In the next instant, a needle-sword punched clean through his chest from behind—right through the heart.
Yet the tip drew no blood—as if it pierced a cloth.
Li Pan didn't dodge. His left hand clamped the blade at his chest; his right elbow folded backward at an inhuman angle—Catherine's Sword flashing cyan like a chisel—slamming into the goon's collarbone, then tracking the neck-spine seam and splitting him in two.
The second goon flowed in, pinning Li Pan's reversed elbow tight to deny him swing space; his other hand thrust under the ribs—through the heart again.
Li Pan barked a laugh—snapped the piercing sword with his left, stabbed his fingers into the man's eye, and twisted—crunch—the cervical spine wrung into a pretzel.
The third was right behind—an X-cut—one strike into Li Pan's left thigh, another raking up to fillet the artery. The white-hot edge seared a charred furrow up his leg.
Li Pan merely chuckled. He torqued his waist—took the second head with a backhand—and drove a straight point at the third's face. The blade was caught on the crossed knives—and his left foot answered with a Five-Mach True-Dragon Kick, snapping the man's thigh. His guard collapsed; Li Pan's edge rode down the knife and slid into his lung, cutting the breath off.
Three dead in less than three seconds—to outside eyes only a chain of sonic booms tearing railings from the overpass.
No breath for him. Even as he looked up, seven or eight more suits vaulted from under the bridge, out of the rain, down from the sky—blades of every shape ripping the curtain to rush him.
Li Pan shrieked laughter—the wind whistling like a cave gale—as he tore the three corpses from his body and flung them aside. He sprang on one leg, leapt to five Mach, and barreled in—slip-left, weave-right—his sword flickering among the pack.
Thrust, hew, rake, cleave.
At that speed, the downpour seemed frozen in air. Only the super-humans and their naked steel crashed and caromed through the rain.
Sonic booms hammered the overpass, shockwaves blasting sheets of water into white gaps.
Sword-fights aren't elegant.
They're just dogs killing each other—this lot merely happen to use swords.
Li Pan didn't know that many exquisite patterns. In truth, neither Master Xian, the God-Host, nor the green-robed freak ever taught him extended forms.
Monkey Sword is a body-tuning set. Rolling-Cloud is a handling trick.
And in a rain-dance like this, everyone simply trades life for life. There's no room to flit and flutter.
In Handkerchief Knight state, he pressed a hair above them in raw violence—smash with the blade, hack, hew.
You cut me once—I must pay you back with a thrust!
With speed and strength equalized, no one escapes. No one dodges.
So you compare who can take the stabbing.
Who's left standing at the end.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
Slash.
"AAAHHH—WHO'S NEXT—WHO THE HELL IS NEXT—!"
Ten seconds later—
Li Pan stood atop a mound of corpses, using his sword like a hatchet—hacking off a suit's head and pitching it off the bridge.
Then he slumped onto the heap, coughing blood. His raincoat hung in ribbons; the blood-soaked handkerchief slid from his face into the puddles.
Damn. That was something.
These corp dogs were good.
For the first time, they'd slashed him out of Handkerchief Knight form by brute force. In those few seconds he'd eaten seventeen or eighteen blades—whatever they were—and his clothes looked like minced pork. The rain in his wounds set him shaking.
The umbrella man still stood there, expressionless.
"Your sword kills people, does it."
Li Pan rolled his eyes, laid Catherine's blade across his knee, and tore a tie off a corpse to wipe the blood from the edge.
"Come on. I can take ten more."
Footsteps splashed in the rain. Twenty-plus more suits walked out beneath umbrellas.
Li Pan: "…"
"I want his sword," the leader said.
Umbrellas folded. Swords drew. They strode into the blood.
Damn—no strength. Hands shaking…
Li Pan fished a sword orb from his pocket.
"Fell Ghost—sever."
No key. The orb didn't move.
Oh hell. That's it then.
Then he heard his own voice in his ear:
"Put me in your mouth."
He yanked off his gas mask, spat blood, and clamped the orb in his teeth.
Fáguǐ: "Blow."
Blow? Oh—Dao breath.
Fffff—
A clear wind rolled from his tongue over the orb.
The breeze curled—and a head tumbled to the curb.
Everyone froze—goons and Li Pan alike—staring at the rolling head.
Fáguǐ snarled:
"Idiot! Don't you even know how to blow a sword-flower? Can you whistle? Curl your tongue, feed a breath of sword-qi—blow!"
"Fffff—!"
Sword-wind kissed their faces—and another goon burst apart into ribbons of gore.
Li Pan: "…fff?"
The rest charged.
Fáguǐ sighed. "Hopeless…"
Then Li Pan watched himself move.
He flicked his point; the blade gathered a single fleck of cyan light.
Unlike the cyan-white he'd poured along the blade before, this glow perched on the tip.
In the deluge it was a green lamp, a falling star, threading the wall of rain into a single line.
He staggered and reeled—listing and lurching—no strength, no form, his whole body dragged by the sword as if boneless—a paper scrap dancing on the wind.
It was as if a ghost held Li Pan's hand, carrying a little green lantern through the rain—skimming past the charging wolves.
One thrust.
Heaven and earth went silent.
Well, not entirely—the charging suits, like torpedoes losing lock, howled past him and punched off the overpass, cratering into the mall below.
The umbrella leader stood a heartbeat, eyes on the tip glittering at his brow. He nodded slightly.
"Good sword."
Then the bloodline geysered—man and umbrella quartered.
In short:
One breath, one sword.
Everyone died under the blade.
"…"
Li Pan stood in the falling blood-rain, staring at the sword in his hand.
"Sick…"
The blood-infant popped out of the rain.
"Holy—Big Brother!!
Why is it that every time I come back, you're slaughtering with Beichen Sword! Could you once use my Church's arts?"
Fáguǐ: "Huh!? Demon Church! Ki—"
Li Pan hurriedly swallowed the orb and collapsed.
"Cough, cough! Brother! Thank heavens! I hurt so bad!"
"Easy, easy," the infant said. "I brought soup."
He spat an electric rice cooker into Li Pan's arms.
Starved and chilled, Li Pan ate. Warmth flooded him—overbearing life-force poured through his body. Under Nine Yin refinement, wounds sealed before his eyes—almost like Golden Ao Pills! Okay, not quite, but close.
"Ohhh, the lamb is so tender!"
"Heh. Took me several pots to get it right," the infant preened. "You can't blanch the head too long—"
Li Pan ate and talked.
"But little brother, why are you just eating? What about conquering the heavens?"
He patted his belly.
"What's the rush? Eating first is fine. You gave me so many treasures—each trades for two hundred sheep. A few dozen more won't matter. When they're gone, we trade for more."
That… almost made sense. Yet something felt off.
"Wait—aren't you in a hurry to conquer the worlds? Is there no time limit? Your Church army is just waiting around?"
He spread his hands.
"Conquest is self-motivated. What time limit? Besides, this realm has no grass—no one wants to come.
Don't worry. These herds are enough for our cultivation. Conquer this world, then others—slowly. When my divine art is complete, it'll be fine."
Li Pan frowned. "How long until your art is complete?"
Finger-counting, the infant said:
"With your help I've passed the self-annihilation calamity. Next Thunder Tribulation is in five hundred years. Thunder counters me, and the timings of this realm are erratic—so I must prepare carefully. But if I cultivate diligently and ready everything, I can pass and complete my art.
At my estimate—even in this world of dead souls—within five centuries I can find one or two generations of disciples worth training. With heaven, earth, and man aligned, we can prepare the shepherding breakthrough."
Li Pan set down the cooker and stared at him.
The infant blinked. "What?"
"You said five hundred years?"
"Mhm. Oh—and if the tribulation's particularly nasty, I may need another sixty years to heal—"
"Why didn't you say so earlier! Five—hundred—years before you summon the army! And we're buying sheep and hanging around now!?"
"Uh—these are for grazing and eating… There's no spirit herbs here… And five centuries pass in a blink—close your eyes and—it's gone…"
Great. He'd hoped to use the little brother as a distraction for the Company. Turns out the kid was no help where it counted…
No wonder he took his sweet time—remodeling, laying foundations—ah, so you're moving in permanently, huh!
Another miscalculation…
"Big Brother—again," the infant said.
Li Pan heard it too—iron-shod impacts through the rain.
He leaned over the railing.
Below, Night Riders in heavy armor formed ranks, marching into wind and water to take the ramp up to the blood-slick overpass.
The infant crouched to spring.
"Eat slow, Big Brother. I'll go pinch these monsters to death!"
"Hey—hey—wait!"
Li Pan waved him back.
The leader raised a fist; the column halted. She removed her helm—blue-ghost eyes fixed on Li Pan.
"Li. Hand over the Grail of Blood."
The blood-infant circled K, glanced at Li Pan, and pointed at her.
Li Pan shook his head urgently.
K snarled. "Mop-head! Why the bravado! If you can't win, have your Company pay! Do you really want to force me to act?"
The infant pointed at the others.
Li Pan nodded rapidly.
The infant gave an OK sign.
"Tch… You—wait here!"
With a roar, K drew her greatsword and vaulted onto the overpass.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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