Under Ye Shunguang’s control, the “Azure Empyrean Sword Casket” drifted down and settled squarely between her and Miguel.
The heavy metal base struck the wooden floorboards with a muffled thud entirely worthy of its weight.
Miguel’s meaning was clear enough.
The next step was for Little Guang to break the seal on the “Azure Empyrean Sword Casket” and draw the Azure Empyrean Sword out.
But break the seal on the “Azure Empyrean Sword Casket”?!
Those were layer upon layer of wards that Yixuan had laid down at the cost of untold painstaking effort, all to hold back the sword’s backlash!
The moment they came undone, that Void Hunter-class weapon would begin devouring its Sword Master, Ye Shunguang, on the spot!
Yixuan’s hands, only just lowered, clenched tight again.
She stared at the black-and-white casket in silence.
Her face stayed composed, but the dark gold Ether gathering at her fingertips without her meaning it to, and the tremor she couldn’t keep out of the corner of her eye, betrayed exactly how far from composed this young Sect Master was.
Ju Fufu and the others were every bit as worried about Little Guang unsealing the “Azure Empyrean Sword.” Yet not one of them spoke up to stop her now.
Because they all understood.
What happened next was Little Guang’s decision, and hers alone.
They had chosen to trust her.
So there was nothing left to doubt.
Ye Shunguang drew a deep breath and lifted her head to look at Miguel.
Miguel said nothing.
He only gave her an encouraging smile and a small nod.
That answer was enough.
The last thread of worry in her dissolved like smoke.
She stepped back half a pace, hands weaving a rapid seal before her chest.
A surge of wind rolled through the Tranquil Heart Pavilion as she moved.
An extraordinarily intricate Yunkui Summit talisman, built entirely out of pure Ether, took shape slowly in midair.
It gave off a faint golden light, carrying an air at once ancient and mysterious.
“Release!” Ye Shunguang’s clear shout rang out as her right hand shoved forward.
The Ether talisman became a streak of light and struck the dead center of the “Azure Empyrean Sword Casket.” Click—!
The crisp snap of a releasing mechanism burst through the room.
The dense sealing runes covering the casket’s surface dimmed and flaked away the instant the talisman touched them, like a fuse burning down.
And then.
BOOM—!!!
A pressure beyond any words came flooding out through the seams of the casket like a river through a broken dyke.
That blinding silver-white glare carried a cold that cut to the bone and a weight that crushed hope out of a person.
This was no ordinary Ether.
It was the destructive backwash of the two violent powers locked in endless struggle inside the Azure Empyrean Sword, loosed at last from their suppression.
Mere spillover, and its might had already reached the Void Hunter tier.
The furnishings shook violently under that pressure.
The wooden window frames groaned beneath a load they couldn’t bear, and the tea set on the table was rattled straight into powder.
Ye Shunguang stood directly in its path, and the color drained from her face.
The silver-white energy took the shape of a raging serpent and lunged straight for her body.
It had been held down far too long.
It needed fresh “balance” energy, and the current Sword Master was the finest fodder within reach.
“Little Guang!” Ye Shiyuan’s eyes went wild with anguish.
He ripped his sword free, desperate to hurl himself forward and put his body between his sister and the thing.
Even if it left him crippled, he would not let her be hurt again.
Yixuan’s expression broke too.
The spell she had been holding ready erupted all at once as she tried to force a defensive barrier into shape and wall that raging power off.
Too fast.
The sword’s rampage far outstripped the limits of their reflexes.
Ye Shiyuan had barely raised his blade.
Yixuan’s barrier hadn’t finished forming.
And the silver-white serpent had already opened its gaping maw, less than half an inch from the tip of Ye Shunguang’s nose.
At that hair’s breadth of a moment.
Time seemed to hit a pause button.
Hummm—!
A strange ripple, one no ordinary reasoning could explain, swept through the whole Tranquil Heart Pavilion in an instant.
Yixuan’s spell stopped in midair.
Ye Shiyuan’s charging figure froze mid-stride.
Even the dust drifting through the air hung motionless where it was.
Then a pale blue radiance flooded everyone’s vision like a rising tide.
The light didn’t sting the eyes.
It carried instead something gentle and all-embracing, almost divine.
Before that pale blue glow, the Void Hunter tier silver-white pressure turned fragile in a heartbeat, melting away like old snow under a blazing sun.
A long-fingered, steady hand, without the faintest ripple of Ether about it, reached in from the side in the most offhand way imaginable.
Miguel moved slowly, slowly enough for everyone present to catch every detail.
And he moved fast, fast enough that the rampaging Azure Empyrean Sword had no time to react at all.
That hand passed right over Ye Shunguang and pressed down on the heart of the silver-white energy about to break loose.
Which was to say, on the hilt of the “Azure Empyrean Sword” as it fought to tear its way out of the casket.
“What a mischievous little thing you are,” Miguel said into the absolute stillness, his tone as light as a man scolding the neighbor’s unruly brat.
“Would you mind settling down for me?” The instant the words landed.
Crack!
That silver-white sword light, arrogant enough a moment ago to destroy everything in reach, gave one brittle snap beneath Miguel’s palm.
The terrible power that had put even a Void Hunter tier fighter like Yixuan on full alert couldn’t raise so much as a ripple the moment it met his hand.
It was ground into dust, roughly and without ceremony, by a force from an entirely higher dimension: the Power of Creation.
Time began to flow again.
When Yixuan and the others, gasping for breath, dragged themselves out of that stunned state and looked forward once more, they saw a sight none of them would forget for the rest of their lives.
The huge, heavy “Azure Empyrean Sword Casket” now lay fully open.
And the blade that should have been sealed within it had vanished.
Their eyes followed to one side.
There, in front of Miguel.
The weapon that had once made the disciples of Yunkui Summit pale at the mere mention of it, that had swallowed the memories and souls of generations of Sword Masters, the “Azure Empyrean Sword.” It was wrapped from end to end in a mass of pale blue energy, sealed tight.
Not a trace of violence or defiance remained on that silver-white blade.
The whole sword hung in midair, meek and quiet.
It didn’t dare even entertain the thought of resistance.
Silence fell over the room.
Only the sound of Ju Fufu swallowing came through with peculiar clarity.
“Gulp…” The girl’s eyes were round as saucers.
She looked at the Azure Empyrean Sword, now about as fearsome as a poker for stirring a fire, then at Miguel and his mild, unbothered face, and felt her entire understanding of the world take a beating.
This Mr.
Miguel… what kind of monster was he?!
That was the Azure Empyrean Sword!
The one even Master wouldn’t meet head-on!
And he had just pinched it into obedience with one hand?!
A wave of belated fear ran through Ju Fufu.
Only a little while ago she had been boasting that she would protect Junior Sister Little Guang, and she had even toyed with the idea of getting Master to take him on as a junior disciple.
But… If even the “Azure Empyrean Sword” was no more than a baby chick in front of him!?
If she ever really fought him, this “fierce tiger” of hers would be flattened into a cat pancake before she could blink.
Pan Yinhu was in no better shape, and even so he kept turning a worried, caring look toward his little junior sister.
Ye Shiyuan’s sword hand still trembled faintly.
He lowered the blade slowly and looked at Miguel with nothing left in him but reverence and a deep, shaken awe.
Yixuan let out one long, heavy breath.
The tension finally drained from her body, and a fine layer of sweat had already gathered across her forehead.
Miguel turned his head, saw them all standing there dumbstruck, and offered an offhand explanation.
“Relax.
I’ve already ‘soothed’ it.” As for whether that “soothing” meant literally talking sense into the thing or absolute suppression by brute force, one look at the way the Azure Empyrean Sword was quivering told everyone all they needed to know.
Paying no mind to their shock, Miguel turned his attention back to the sword before him.
His divine sense followed the Power of Creation wrapped around the blade and slipped inside the weapon without the slightest resistance.
Before long, the two core forces tangled and warring deep within the blade lay fully exposed to his examination.
One was pure destruction and devouring.
The other strove with everything it had to protect and resist.
The two collided endlessly in that cramped space, each straining to overwhelm the other.
This was the root of the sword’s constant loss of control and backlash.
At the same time, deep inside that protective force, he found them: the devoured memories and soul fragments that belonged to Yijiang.
They had been wrapped up with great care.
Faint, but still whole.
The question that had nagged at him since that morning finally came undone.
Miguel withdrew his divine sense, and something meaningful glinted in those amber eyes.
He turned to look at Ye Shunguang, who still stood where she was, breathing a little hard after that near miss.
The price of this sword, it turned out, was not some limitless one-sided taking.
It was an “equivalent exchange” of the cruelest kind.
You burned yourself as fuel to become the balance point between two powers.
And the original intent behind the sword’s forging.
It had drawn on those two conflicting powers themselves from the very beginning.
So once the “Azure Empyrean Sword” chose someone, the Sword Master’s soul was bound to it completely.
That was also why a Sword Master whose own strength fell short of the weapon’s threshold could still drive it for a limited stretch of time.
The price, though, clearly came with no discount for a weaker wielder.
As for severing the contract between Sword Master and “Azure Empyrean Sword” outright, tearing it apart with external force was simply impossible.
The two powers and Little Guang’s soul had all but fused into one.
Pure destructive violence would lead to a single answer in the end: the sword shattered, the wielder dead.
Worse, the souls drawn inside it would scatter into nothing the instant the “Azure Empyrean Sword” was destroyed.
So to truly settle matters between Little Guang and the “Azure Empyrean Sword,” she would have to complete a trial that crossed the line between life and death, and take genuine command of the balance between those two powers.
Put simply, Ye Shunguang would have to do what Hoshimi Miyabi had done back then.
Complete the trial that belongs to a Void Hunter weapon.
Miguel walked over to her.
The ease had faded from his face, replaced by a gravity none of them had seen on him before.
He looked into the girl’s clear red eyes and spoke slowly.
“Little Guang.” Miguel’s voice wasn’t loud, yet it reached every ear in the room with perfect clarity.
“I have a plan for treating your Senior Martial Aunt now.
As for you and the ‘Azure Empyrean Sword’…” He paused.
His gaze seemed to pass straight through the girl’s body to the personality hidden deep in her soul.
That other Ye Shunguang, with a head of white hair and a single red horn on her forehead, cold in bearing yet able to look straight into her own heart.
“I can solve that as well.” “But I need you to answer me.” Miguel’s gaze burned, and his voice carried a weight rarely heard from him.
“Are you… resolved to change your own fate?” Walnut-chan🔥👻 🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: