"I am nothing, just a void drifting against the currents of Dao. I feel nothing lust, love, nor fear, but then I feel everything, Joy, hatred, pride, and so I am everything."
As Lian spoke, his movements transitioned from the jagged violence of a warrior to the fluid grace of a calligrapher. His sword traced through the air, leaving a trail of shimmering white and abyssal black aura.
"The world is me, and I am the world."
He jabbed and swung, initiating a complex, rhythmic sword dance. As he carved through the atmosphere, a landscape began to manifest: a rolling hill emerged from the void, crowned by a massive, ancient tree whose branches were wide enough to shade the world. Birds made of living ink perched upon the boughs, their eyes watching the heavens.
"So, this is it," Bo whispered, his eyes wide with a rare, profound respect. "The Dao you've chosen to follow. I, Bo, dub you Wúxíng Jiànshì—The Formless Swordsman."
Lian finally slowed to a halt. The painting was complete. The moment he sheathed Guǐ Shā Shǒu, the entire valley was bleached into a blinding, sterile white. Then, the reality Lian had traced into the air suddenly roared to life.
The ink birds took flight, soaring overhead in spiralling patterns; the great tree swayed, its leaves rustling under the push of a phantom wind. The mountain groaned as a waterfall of pure ink began to cascade down its sheer face.
There was a sudden, heavy silence in this world. Even Bo felt a strange, terrifying peace wash over him, a serenity so absolute that his hand trembled, nearly losing control over the descending sky-blade.
CLAP!
Lian brought his palms together with a sharp, echoing strike, then slowly drew them apart, one palm facing the heavens, the other pressed toward the earth.
From behind the ink-stained mountains, a colossal dragon forged of Qi and ink charged upward. It let out a silent roar, its scales shimmering with ancient Qi, as it rose to meet the descending sword of the heavens.
CRACK!
The collision was cataclysmic. The air didn't just ripple; it fractured like a broken mirror.
Lian's hands blurred into another ancient Buddhist mudra. In response, a golden pulse began to throb within the belly of the ink dragon. A moment later, the Great Bell of Heaven manifested, rising from the dragon's shadow as a solid, radiant construct of pure divine energy.
"That looks like the Great Bell of Heaven... where did he even see such a thing?" Bo's thoughts struggled to keep pace with the shifting reality. "In this space, his imagination is reality. The world has become his anvil, manifesting anything his mind can conceive. Though these creations are fleeting shadows of the original, their weight is undeniable."
TANG—!!!
The first chime echoed with a force that pulverised the nearby mountains into dust.
"Seven-Tone Bell," Lian whispered.
TANG!
The second chime shimmered through the air, vibrating with a frequency that made the very atmosphere shake. Then came the third.
TANG!
As the third echo rippled outward, the spirit beasts of the valley, creatures that were Sovereigns in their own right, began falling unconscious, their spirits unable to withstand the divine resonance.
"Shit... this is draining far too much of my Qi," Lian thought, his earlier calm beginning to waver as his internal reserves plummeted. "I have to end this before I'm empty."
The fourth and fifth strikes rang out in rapid succession, the earth below them spiderwebbing with deep, jagged cracks. By the Sixth Tone, the impossible happened: small, hairline fractures began to appear on the edge of Bo's celestial sky-blade.
"Oh? He's actually doing it," Bo muttered, his eyes shimmering with a rare, childish wonder. "Even though I restricted myself to a tenth of my strength, the power of those bells is unmistakable. And that Azure Dragon... I expected it to be annihilated the moment it touched my blade, but it's holding me back with those flame-clouds. Amazing."
"But even that won't be enough!" Bo shouted. He snapped his fingers downward, and the descent of the sky-blade accelerated. In a blur of golden light, it roared toward the hill Lian had painted, the pressure liquefying the air itself.
"It's finally here," Lian whispered, his grip tightening on Guǐ Shā Shǒu.
His eyes, reflecting the giant blade, he began to perceive the world differently. He saw the invisible, tangled threads of causality that held Dao together. "I can see it now... the thread that will crush that blade."
TANG—!!!
The Seventh Tone of the Great Bell rang out, a final, world-shaking kneel. The hairline fractures on Bo's celestial blade spider-webbed across its entire surface. The earth beneath them surrendered, opening into a jagged abyss where molten lava surged upward like a wounded god. Suddenly, the ink dragon uncoiled from the blade's edge and spiralled into its centre, melting its shadowy essence directly into the fractures.
All Cultivators seek the Dao; they spend a lifetime trying to comprehend it because the Dao is composed of ten thousand million threads of Chaos. Rarely do individuals possess the talent to see through that chaos. The prodigies who somehow manage to see through them are known as Chaos Calculators, and they each have the potential to end the world. Among those closest to Lian, only Wang Gu possessed such a gift.
Through days of unconscious exposure to Wang Gu's aura, Lian had developed a budding affinity for the art. He couldn't calculate the whole thing like Wang, but he could see the weak point in a Sovereign's strike.
Lian drew his sword, holding it horizontally before his chest. Behind him, the ink-painted mountain melted into a shimmering puddle of flowing Qi. From that dark pool, a gargantuan, Faceless Swordsman rose, mirroring Lian's exact stance.
Lian leapt.
He charged toward the spot where the dragon had melted into the sky-blade. As his arm arched for the strike, the titan behind him mimicked the movement with a force that shattered the sound barrier.
BOOOOM!
The attack created a shockwave so great that all sound was cancelled in that space. Bo's celestial blade shattered into a million jagged shards of blue light.
"He did it! Hahahaha!" Bo fell backwards, his laughter echoing through the dying pocket dimension as his shattered Dao transformed into a thousand pieces of fading dust. "He actually severed my Dao!"