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

The first sword moved.

It flew out from the sea of ​​swords, so fast that it didn't even have time to form an afterimage, drawing a straight silver line in the air, aiming straight for Astra's chest. Astra raised his right hand, and a dark golden halo condensed into a shield in his palm. The sword tip struck the shield, producing a crisp metallic clang.

The shield shattered.

The blade pierced Astra's palm, exiting from the back of his hand and drawing out a spray of dark golden liquid. Its momentum undiminished, the blade plunged into his chest, exiting from his back and pinning him to the void.

Astra looked down at the sword piercing his chest. Dark golden liquid seeped from the wound, flowing along the blade, gathering at the hilt, and dripping down. His face showed no pain, only an almost devout focus—he was analyzing the sword, analyzing why it had pierced his defenses, analyzing what power constituted it.

But Jiang Chen didn't give him time to analyze.

The second sword, the third sword, the tenth sword, the hundredth sword.

Countless swords flew out from the sea of ​​swords, converging into a silver torrent that surged towards Astra. Their speed was unbelievable, yet their trajectories were terrifyingly precise—each sword aimed precisely at a single point on Astra's body: throat, heart, dantian, brow, joints, and the intersection of meridians, leaving no blind spots and no omissions.

Astra's body was repeatedly pierced by the sword flow.

In the first volley, dozens of swords pierced his arms, and dark golden liquid gushed from countless wounds, turning him into a golden, blood-soaked figure. He tried to raise his arms, but the swords piercing them held him firmly in place, like a butterfly pinned to a specimen board with pins.

In the second volley, his legs were pierced by sword blades, from his thighs to his calves, from his knees to his ankles, with at least three swords embedded in every inch. His body began to fall.

In the third volley, his torso was covered in blades. His chest, abdomen, ribs, and back were pierced and exited from every angle, turning his body into a silver hedgehog.

His body was completely nailed to the void. His arms, legs, torso—every joint, every vital point—was riddled with silver blades. Dark golden liquid seeped from countless wounds, converging in the void to form a slowly flowing golden river. Several strands of his long, silvery-white hair were severed by the blades, drifting in the void, mingling with the dark golden liquid like silver threads floating in a golden river.

But his eyes remained open. Those golden eyes, cracked with dark red, stared directly at Jiang Chen through the gaps in the sword blade stuck in front of him. The maniacal smile on his lips was still there.

"Immortal and indestructible." Jiang Chen looked at him, his voice still calm, but the smile on his lips remained. "Your laws are indeed solid. My sword has pierced through every possible weakness in your body, but your core—that law etched into space—is still operating."

He raised his right hand, his five fingers spread.

"Then let's see if your laws are more robust, or if my swords are more numerous."

Behind him, in the sea of ​​swords, even more swords were coalescing. So many that the outlines of each sword began to blur, so many that the entire void was illuminated by the sword light, leaving no shadows.

The blade began to spin.

Ten thousand swords, a million swords, ten million swords, all began to spin simultaneously. They didn't spin randomly, but rather, centered on a common axis—Astra—revolved slowly, like a vast galaxy composed of swords. The gaps between the blades grew smaller, the boundaries between the sword lights became increasingly blurred, and finally, the entire sea of ​​swords transformed into a silver vortex stretching across the heavens and earth.

At the center of the vortex is Astra.

Astra watched the silver vortex slowly converge upon him. The blade was still a hundred paces away; each sword within the vortex was cutting through space itself, while his law of immortality was etched into this space. The blade cutting through space was, in effect, cutting through his own laws.

His laws began to crack under the grinding of the sword vortex.

The cracks were so fine that they were invisible to the naked eye. But he could feel them—like a person feeling a foreign object stuck under their fingernail, a subtle yet undeniable sense of unease. The cracks spread across the surface of his laws, starting from his arms, extending towards his torso, and towards his head.

His immortality is being ground down bit by bit.

Astra looked down at his disintegrating hands. His fingertips were turning into dark golden specks of light that spread from his fingertips to his knuckles, from his knuckles to his palms, and from his palms to his wrists.

He raised his head and looked at Jiang Chen.

The light from the sword vortex shone on his face, casting a play of light and shadow on his cracked features. In his golden pupils, dark red cracks had expanded to cover the entire eyeball, shattering what was once a flawless eye. But in those broken eyes, there was no fear, no despair, only a near-mad, burning fighting spirit.

"Your sword domain," he spoke, his voice broken and fragmented due to the collapse of the laws, like a radio with a poor signal, "is grinding down my laws. Every one of your swords is cutting through space, every one of them is leaving a crack in my immortality. Millions of swords are millions of cracks."

He paused for a moment.

Then he laughed.

The laughter was hoarse and broken, yet it carried a chilling kind of pleasure.

"But do you know what? The feeling of the laws being crushed reminds me of a long, long time ago—before I became 'immortal,' when I could still be killed."

He abruptly raised his head, his arms—those arms that were dissipating into specks of light—spreading wildly to the sides. The thousands of swords embedded in his body were simultaneously blasted away, their blades shooting out of their wounds, bringing with them countless sprays of dark golden liquid. His body broke free from the swords' restraints, hovering in the void, arms outstretched, head tilted back, like a martyr facing the final judgment.

"Come on!" His voice boomed through the void, no longer the languid, nonchalant tone, but a near-roar, a scream unleashing three hundred years of pent-up emotions. "Let me see if your sword can truly kill me!"

Jiang Chen looked at him.

Watching the apostle whose laws were crumbling, whose body was dissipating, yet who was still laughing maniacally.

He raised his right hand and slowly clenched his fist.

The rotation speed of the silver vortex suddenly increased a hundredfold. Tens of millions of swords emitted a clear ringing sound at the same time, a sound so sharp that it exceeded the range of human hearing, transforming into a pure, physical vibration.

Astra stood at the center of the vortex, arms outstretched, his long, silvery-white hair whipping wildly in the wind of the swords. His body was beginning to disintegrate from the edges—his feet had turned into dark golden specks of light, his calves were dissipating, and the edges of his thighs were beginning to blur. His hands had vanished from his wrists, and dark golden specks of light drifted from the broken ends like two reversed golden waterfalls.

But the smile on his face was more intense than ever before.

The silver vortex closed up.

Millions of swords pierced Astra's body simultaneously from all directions. The scene was silent—the void was so shattered that sound could not travel—but everyone could "hear" the impact of that instant.

The blades pierced Astra's body. They entered through his chest and exited through his back; they entered through his throat and exited through the back of his neck; they entered through his brow and exited through the back of his head. Thousands of swords, thousands of points of penetration, tore his body apart completely.

The chat in the live stream fell completely silent at that moment.

Billions of people stared at the boy in the school uniform on the screen, at the vast sea of ​​swords stretching across the heavens and earth behind him, at the dark golden specks of light still slowly dissipating in the void. No one typed, no one posted comments, not even one breathed. The whole world stood still at that moment.

Then, a comment slowly floated across the screen.

There are only three words.

"Is this really the end?"