After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

The ashes of the apostles are still drifting in the sky.

The entire capital was so quiet that you could hear the sound of ashes falling to the ground.

On the desolate plains north of the city, Shen Wanshan remained motionless, his hands still in the hand seal posture. His hands were still in the stance of unleashing wind blades, the bluish-white spiritual energy flickering at his fingertips, as if he had forgotten to retract them. His eyes were fixed on the sea of ​​swords stretching across the sky, his pupils reflecting the cold light of a million blades, his lips slightly parted, unable to utter a single word.

Zhao Tiangang slumped to the ground, blood still seeping from the wound on his left shoulder, but he was oblivious to it. The golden lightning spear in his hand, which had gathered the last trace of lightning spiritual power, had vanished sometime during the night. He sat there, head tilted back, watching the floating sword blades in the sky, watching them fall like a silver river, like divine soldiers arrayed in formation, stretching as far as the eye could see.

A hoarse sound escaped his throat, a sound he himself couldn't quite make out. It sounded like he was trying to say something, or perhaps it was just a pure, uncontrollable physiological reaction.

Zhou Boyong rested his hands on his knees, drenched in sweat, his face as white as paper. His earth-elemental spiritual power was almost exhausted, and his legs were still trembling slightly.

He had lived for over sixty years, seen apostles, projections of demons, and witnessed the cataclysmic destruction of humanity's most elite awakened beings when they unleashed their full power. But he had never seen anything like this.

Those apostles, those black giants that they had struggled with all their might to barely kill, couldn't even last half a second against that boy. More than twenty of them vanished in the blink of an eye.

Those countless gray apostles, stretching as far as the eye could see, were wiped out from existence the instant the sea of ​​swords swept over them, before they even had time to scream.

Wu Shichang leaned against a broken boulder, the blood at the corner of his mouth already dried. His dark spiritual power was the best among them all at concealment and perception, which allowed him to see more than others.

He saw the trajectories of the sword blades as they cut the apostles. It wasn't random slashing, nor was it an explosion of spiritual energy; the trajectory of each sword was precise to the extreme, as if it had been calculated billions of times. Each sword struck the apostle's most vulnerable point, and each cut achieved the greatest effect with the least amount of power.

Shen Qingxue stood behind her father, the ice sword in her hand having fallen to the ground at some point. She looked at the figure in the school uniform in the sky, at the boundless sea of ​​swords behind him, and at his calm, almost indifferent expression as he faced the 100,000 apostles.

She suddenly remembered what Jiang Chen had said to her that night in the alley.

"I don't need anyone to protect me."

At the time, she thought it was arrogance, conceit, and the strong looking down on the weak.

Now she understands.

That's not arrogance.

That was just stating the facts.

Just like someone saying "I don't need ants to protect me," it's not arrogance, it's just the truth.

She crouched down and picked up the fallen ice sword. Cracks remained on the blade, remnants of her earlier battle. She wiped the dust off the sword with her sleeve, then looked up, continuing to gaze at the figure in the sky.

After a ten-second silence, the chat exploded in a near-frenzied manner.

The text on the screen was layered and densely packed, almost completely obscuring the image. Millions of viewers frantically typed on their keyboards at the same time, everyone wanting to speak, but their voices were drowned out by the collective, out-of-control, hysterical roar.

"Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!!!"

"What did I just see??? Can anyone tell me what I just saw???"

"Where are the apostles??? So many apostles??? How come they're all gone???"

"Swords! So many swords! The sky is full of swords! What the hell is this ability???"

"This is not the ability of an Awakened One! An Awakened One could not possibly do this! Impossible!"

"Did you see that clearly? He just raised his hand! Just raised his hand!"

"One hundred thousand apostles! At least one hundred thousand! All gone? All gone!"

"I saw it with my own eyes in the east of the city! Those gray rows disappeared one by one! Like they were erased by an eraser!"

"Who's that in the school uniform? Who is it?!"

"Jiang Chen! Jiang Chen! Someone mentioned him before! Jiang Chen from Jiangzhou Academy!"

"That's the world's first person with disabilities? You call that a person with disabilities???"

"To hell with being the first in the world! If this is someone without abilities, I'm not even a biological being!"

"Did he just say 'noisy'? To an apostle of the city, calling him noisy?"

"My mom asked me why I was kneeling while looking at my phone..."

"No, everyone calm down, is this really something a human could do?"

"Is he human? Are you sure he's human?"

"I don't care who he is, he saved our lives! He saved my whole family!"

"The location is in the north of the city. There were three gray apostles downstairs just now. I've already written my will. Then they suddenly turned around and left, all heading north. It turns out they were lured there by him..."

"Same location, east of the city. There's a black giant right outside my window. It stopped, glanced at me, and then turned and walked away. I fucking thought it was going to stomp on me, but it just left. It left!"

"He lured all the apostles to his side and then wiped them all out in one go? What kind of tactic is that?"

"It's not manipulation, it's strength. Absolute strength. He doesn't need to draw them in at all; he just stands there, and the apostles will come to him on their own."

"Why? Why are all the apostles running towards him?"

"Because in his presence, we are not even a threat. Only he is the real threat in the eyes of the apostles."

The comments were still scrolling wildly, but Lin Xiaoyu couldn't care less. She had witnessed everything firsthand, and those scenes had left an indelible mark on her young mind.

Command Center, Awakened Affairs Management Bureau of the Imperial Capital.

Chu Tianxiong stood motionless in front of the huge holographic projection screen.

He had been in that position for a long time. So long that his deputy thought he had been affected by some kind of mental ability, and cautiously waved his hand in front of his eyes, only to be glared at by him.

On the screen, the live feed of the northern wasteland was frozen on the boy suspended in mid-air. The footage was taken by a drone from high above, the angle perfectly capturing the entire sea of ​​swords behind him. Millions of sword blades gleamed with a cold, silvery light against the gray sky, as if someone had pulled down the entire Milky Way and hung it in the sky above the capital.

Chu Tianxiong's lips moved, emitting a very soft sound that even he himself could not hear.

"impossible."

He said.

He is a lightning-type S-rank awakened individual, the deputy director of the Dragon Kingdom's Awakened Individual Affairs Management Bureau, and has experienced countless battles, witnessing the full power of humanity's strongest awakened individual. He knows the limits of human strength, the ceiling of S-rank awakened individuals, and that those top experts admired by the world are nothing more than ants before truly world-destroying power.

But the boy in front of him was no longer within his comprehension.

It's not S-class, not SS-class, not SSS-class.

It's something else.

It is a completely different force, not belonging to this world, and cannot be measured by any existing system.

"Report!" A technician's voice rang out in the command hall, brimming with barely suppressed excitement. "All the Apostles in the north of the city have been eliminated! Twenty-three 30-meter-class Apostles and an estimated 100,000 5-meter-class Apostles have all been confirmed wiped out! Not a single one remains!"

A brief, suppressed cheer erupted in the command center. Several young technicians hugged each other; some cried, some laughed, and some knelt on the ground with their hands clasped together.

But Chu Tianxiong did not move.

His gaze remained fixed on the boy on the screen.

"What about the other areas?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"East of the city, south of the city, west of the city, city center..." The technician quickly pulled up the data for each area, then paused abruptly, "The apostles in all areas have all disappeared."

"all?"

"All of them." The technician took a deep breath. "They weren't destroyed, they... disappeared on their own. At the same time that the apostles in the north of the city were destroyed, the apostles in other areas also ceased their activities, then turned into black ice crystals and dissipated."

There was a moment of silence in the command center.

Everyone understands what this means.

Those apostles were not independent individuals; they were a unified whole. They were born from the ice flowers and were connected to each other in some way. When Jiang Chen annihilated the tide of apostles in the north of the city, that power, through some unknown channel, backfired on all the apostles.

Or to put it another way—when the core part is destroyed, the rest loses its foundation for existence.

"He killed more than just the apostles in the north of the city," Chu Tianxiong said softly.

"He killed all the apostles."

No one spoke in the hall.

A technician suddenly pointed at the screen: "Director, look!"

Chu Tianxiong suddenly raised his head.

On the holographic projection screen, the drone transmitted new images. The sea of ​​swords behind Jiang Chen was slowly dissipating. It wasn't shattering, nor was it falling; rather, like mist, it began to dissipate from the edges, gradually merging into the air, as if it had never existed.

After the million sword blades dissipated, only the boy in the school uniform remained in the sky.