He has been reincarnated through countless worlds, adorned with billions of mythological terms!

Xiao Yanzhi's body glowed from the inside out.

He himself was radiant—his dantian, meridians, bones, flesh, every inch of his body was glowing.

Light shone from his pores, from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, turning him into a human-shaped lantern.

The core of the killing formation spun in his dantian like a vortex, drawing in all the chaotic power in Yan Hui Valley—fragments of the anti-air formation, the maze formation, the trapping formation, along with the remnants of Xu Youlan's own zither music, were all swallowed by that vortex.

Xu Youlan's zither music stopped.

She didn't stop on her own; the notes she played were sucked away by the vortex.

She looked down at her instrument—the strings were still vibrating, but no sound was coming out.

All sounds were absorbed by Xiao Yanzhi's body, like a drop of ink falling into a sponge, disappearing without a trace in an instant.

"interesting."

Xu Youlan raised her head.

This was the first time she had looked Xiao Yanzhi in the eye.

The tall, thin boy had now become a silhouette of light, his face blurred, only his eyes remained clear.

He was burning his own life.

At the cost of one's life, they would trap Xu Youlan to death in the core of the killing formation.

"But that's not enough."

Xu Youlan's voice was not loud, as if she were stating a fact that had nothing to do with her.

She stood the violin upright in front of her.

She hooked all seven strings at once and pulled them back fully—until the instrument creaked under the strain, until the strings were almost snapping. Then she released them.

All seven strings vibrated together, producing seven notes in unison.

It wasn't the kind of music that used to be played with single notes or in succession; it was a single sound produced by all seven strings simultaneously.

That sound was no longer the sound of a zither—it was the voice of heaven and earth.

All the stones in Yan Hui Valley shattered simultaneously, exploding from the inside out, sending fragments flying and dust billowing up.

The stream leaps up from the riverbed, water droplets suspended in mid-air like countless transparent beads.

The clouds in the sky were shaken apart, revealing a huge circular hole. Moonlight poured down from the hole and shone on Xu Youlan.

Xiao Yanzhi's body was blasted away, like a leaf swept up by a gale, crashing into the north side of the mountain wall, with rubble falling down in a shower.

His light went out, and he slid down the mountainside, landing motionless in a pile of rubble.

But the killing formation was not broken—before he was blasted away, he separated the core of the killing formation from his dantian and left it in place.

The core of the killing formation was a fist-sized ball of light, hovering three steps in front of Xu Youlan.

Inside the sphere of light, all the remaining power of the four-fold array was compressed to the extreme, spinning at high speed and emitting a piercing shriek.

Like a crushed tin can, all the force is converging on a single point in the center.

The dot got smaller and brighter, and its brightness soon exceeded the limit that the naked eye could tolerate.

Helian Rong rushed in at that moment.

He waited at the valley entrance, waiting for Xiao Yanzhi's formation to exhaust Xu Youlan's zither music, and for Xu Youlan's aura to subside the moment she appeared after breaking through the formation.

Now he's finally got what he's been waiting for.

The power of the terrestrial immortals exploded within his body, his muscles bulged, his veins stood out, and a layer of dark golden patterns appeared on the surface of his skin—those were the "battle patterns" of the Martial King realm, each pattern a mark left when his physical body broke through its limits.

He stomped his right foot on the ground, shattering the large rock beneath him into dust, and his entire body crashed towards Xu Youlan like a meteorite.

Xu Youlan's fingers were still on the strings.

Instead of plucking the strings, she turned the entire instrument over so that the bottom faced out—the bottom of the instrument was inlaid with a bronze mirror, its surface mottled and covered in green rust, like an ancient artifact dug out of the ground.

The bronze mirror met Helian Rong's fist.

When the fist met the mirror, there was no sound; even the sound of the impact was absorbed by the bronze mirror.

Helian Rong felt as if he had punched an endless expanse of water, all his power swallowed up by the surface, without even a ripple.

Helian Rong's fist missed its mark.

It wasn't that he was thrown off course by an external force; he deliberately veered off course—his body instinctively avoided the bronze mirror before he even realized it.

The fist grazed past Xu Youlan's ear, the force of the punch severing a strand of her hair, the moon-white hair falling to the ground.

Liu Xier's mental power entered the battlefield at this moment.

As a fifth-realm spiritual master, in terms of spiritual strength alone, she is indeed higher than a Nascent Soul stage cultivator.

Her spiritual power transformed into an extremely fine and sharp needle, which pierced through the gaps in Xu Youlan's zither music, directly targeting Xu Youlan's sea of ​​consciousness.

It wasn't an attack, but an "insertion"—she inserted a needle condensed from spiritual energy into the connection between Xu Youlan's sea of ​​consciousness and the outside world, like inserting a nail into a door crack, preventing the door from closing.

Xu Youlan's zither music was interrupted for a moment.

Helian Rong seized the moment and delivered his second punch.

He didn't use any technique with that punch.

He simply concentrated all the physical strength from the three major systems into his right fist.

Before Xu Youlan could turn the bronze mirror over, she plucked the strings with her left hand at lightning speed—a sound blade flew out from the strings, as thin as a cicada's wing and as bright as moonlight.

The sonic blade struck Helian Rong's fist, cutting in half an inch before being clamped down by his muscles.

The sonic blade was stuck between his finger bones, vibrating violently and emitting a piercing metallic scraping sound.

Helian Rong's fist continued forward, the sound blade shattered, and his fist smashed into the zither that Xu Youlan had placed in front of her.

The body of the instrument is cracked.

A crack ran through the entire guqin from head to tail, the lacquer peeled off, the crack broke open, and the strings snapped one by one. The plucked string tip struck Xu Youlan's hand, leaving several thin bloodstains.

Xu Youlan's body slid backward, her feet carving two shallow furrows in the ground.

She stopped three steps away, looked down at the cracked zither, and her expression finally changed.

"I put a lot of thought and effort into making this instrument."

She placed the cracked piano on the ground very gently, as if putting a sleeping child into a cradle.

Then she stood up empty-handed, facing Helian Rong, Liu Xier, Xiao Yanzhi who had climbed up from the cliff with blood still on his lips, Su Zhong who had drawn his bow on the east ridge, Qin Yu who was remotely transmitting healing essence to Xiao Yanzhi in the woods on the west, and Shen Qingqing who had been hiding on the north ridge.

Xu Youlan, empty-handed, was even more unapproachable than Xu Youlan, carrying a zither.

Su Zhong's arrows have arrived.

The straight-line distance from the eastern ridge to the valley floor is 360 zhang.

The combination of wind-based magic, a trace of causal power, and archery skills gives this arrow the attribute of "guaranteed hit".

He learned that trace of causal power after spending a full 100,000 points.

Xu Youlan heard the sound of the wind.

She instinctively tried to dodge, but the arrow followed her instincts and veered off course.

An arrow that was bound to hit; she couldn't dodge it.

puff--

The arrow pierced straight into her mind.

But at the very moment the arrow struck, Xu Youlan transformed into a flower petal.

Su Zhong's second arrow failed to fly.

Because he discovered that the target he had locked onto had disappeared.

The valley floor was deserted.

The moonlight shone on the shattered rocks, on the dried-up streambed, and on the core of the killing formation left behind by Xiao Yanzhi—the sphere of light was still collapsing, getting smaller and smaller, and brighter and brighter.

Helian Rong stood at the bottom of the valley, his fist still in the throwing posture.

Liu Xier's mental energy network covered the entire Wild Goose Valley, but she couldn't find her target.

Shen Qingqing's eyebrows furrowed slightly.

Then the piano music started.

Xu Youlan reappeared in the same spot, as if she had never moved.

But she had something else in her hand—a broken string from the cracked instrument, which she had pulled out and held between her fingers.

She plucked the lonely string with her finger, producing only one note, extremely short and very soft.