Decaying World Chapter 267

A dark starry sky?!

What was that?!

The bizarre, crushing oppression brought Tuyue back to the first ti she had ever laid eyes on the Longevity Wheel—to the sheer shock and dread that had seized her heart.

"Did you... know I would...?" Blood welled at the corners of her mouth as she stared at him in disbelief.

"No." Lin Hui drew his sword. "I simply make a habit of staying hidden. As for whether you or soone else would show up—I had no expectations either way."

"Ha—don't think... don't think you've won! You cannot kill !" Tuyue shrieked. "Xie Jun! Do it!"

Nothing happened.

She turned her head in disbelief, only to find Xie Jun's face drained white with terror.

"What are you waiting for?! Do it! Ahhh—!"

Her furious roar warped abruptly into an agonized scream.

"Y-Your Evil Weapon! The Longevity Wheel!" Xie Jun shook uncontrollably. "It's... abandoning you?!"

Before his eyes, Tuyue's entire lower body had dissolved into a bloody mist. That mist was rapidly coalescing into a dense, fleshy wheel, wrenching itself violently away from her. The Longevity Wheel dragged countless blood vessels and nerves from her upper torso, snapping them one after another.

Tuyue initially thought it was a hallucination, but the agony tearing through her body confird the impossible truth.

"No!" Terror finally took her whole. She let out a piercing howl, seawater flooding into her mouth.

Lin Hui had already retreated to a safe distance, quietly observing. This was the first ti he had used the Star Breath Sword Canon.

Sacred Form of Life.

By executing the sword moves of the Star Breath Sword Canon to inflict heavy damage on a Mistborn, he could weaponize his absolute command over gases. As the Mistborn's body reconstituted itself, he could forcefully inject sothing of his own into the process...

A massive surge of Disaster Energy, for instance.

Hence, Tuyue's current predicant.

He had slipped the Disaster Energy into Tuyue's regenerating flesh through the surrounding gases, masking the energy fluctuations entirely. It had rely been a test—to see exactly how an Evil Weapon identified its host.

The answer, it seed, was the simplest possible one: physical flesh and blood.

"This ans an Evil Weapon can actually be stolen..." Lin Hui murmured.

"What did you do?!" Tuyue's screams grew increasingly shrill.

The sound unsettled Xie Jun. Shaking all over, he edged backward step by step.

Flash!

The next instant, he turned and fled, blurring into an afterimage before vanishing entirely.

Lin Hui paid him no mind. Tuyue had already begun her final, desperate struggle.

Her hands locked onto the Longevity Wheel in a death grip, refusing to let it detach. Her form rapidly turned ashen, then broke apart into countless gray-white spores. The spores violently parted the surrounding seawater and coalesced into a massive hand, seeking to crush Lin Hui within its palm.

The colossal hand spanned tens of ters across, though its raw power fell far short of her previous Mind-Spirit Descent. Before its fingers could close around him, streaks of black sword light erupted from within, instantly slashing the construct into dozens of dissolving fragnts.

Lin Hui drifted slowly out from the epicenter, his long hair swaying in the water, the dark starry sky faintly discernible behind him.

"You are so weak right now, it's nauseating."

"Just you wait! I will return!" Tuyue's gray-white fragnts turned transparent and faded, her voice swallowed by the abyss.

anwhile, her true body was rapidly coalescing. A Treasure Relic on her person—a small, pearl-like bead—shattered in an instant. It released a bizarre, overwhelmingly glacial power that flooded the surroundings in a sheet of gray-white.

In her field of vision, everything slowed to a near-static crawl.

She re-entered Super Divine Speed. Enduring the agonizing pain, she seized the Longevity Wheel without hesitation and fled from Black Cloud.

"As a noble, innately powerful Mistborn—how could you choose to flee?"

Lin Hui's voice rang out directly in her path. As if teleporting, he had bypassed the Relic's freezing domain entirely, appearing right in front of her.

Tuyue's mind went blank. She glanced back and saw a glowing white silhouette standing exactly where Lin Hui had just been—a perfect copy of his figure.

A soul-substitute technique? Sothing to bypass the Relic's freezing effect?!

Before she could make sense of it, the glowing figure dissipated, leaving only the true Lin Hui standing before her.

Under normal circumstances, she might have paused to study it. But right now, ever since that sword had pierced her abdon, the Longevity Wheel had been frantically tearing itself free of her body.

"Quiet down!" Tuyue drove her palm against the Longevity Wheel. The impact hit her like a lightning strike, forcing a mouthful of bloody water from her lips.

Flash!

In that instant, her vision went black.

Pain detonated in her chest.

By the ti she recovered her wits, she had already been cleanly bisected from top to bottom.

Lin Hui's figure materialized before her, sword raised in one hand, eyes shining with a deep blue light.

The dark starry sky unfurled behind him once more—but vastly more expansive than before. Where it had previously covered only a few dozen ters, it now swallowed hundreds of ters in every direction. The surrounding seawater had been dyed into a vast, star-flecked void. Worse still, the oppressive aura radiating from him had multiplied exponentially.

No. Tuyue suddenly understood.

It's not that he's stronger. I've beco weaker.

She tried to lower her head to look at the Longevity Wheel, only to find that even that simple movent had beco nearly impossible.

From inexplicably failing to react to his first stab, to being sliced open just now—through each successive exchange, she had been struck without understanding how. Lin Hui hadn't done anything complex. He had simply drawn his sword and swung. He hadn't deployed a single visible technique.

And yet, for no reason she could identify, she was completely unable to dodge.

"What... in the world is this?!" Panic swallowed her whole.

"Can't figure it out?" Lin Hui leveled Ruyi once more, a cold smile settling on his lips. "A pity. I won't be explaining it to you."

…

This was the first layer of the Star Breath Sword Canon: the Sacred Form of Life.

A powerful domain that commanded all surrounding airflow. It lacked the Typhoon Sword Technique's massive range. Instead, the instant it made contact with an enemy, the domain latched onto them, drawing them into its specialized field of influence.

That field would only be visible when Lin Hui chose to reveal it.

It did not exist in the physical world, nor within the mind-spirit. It was the most bizarre domain Lin Hui had ever encountered.

The commanding field of the Star Breath Sword Canon existed in a special dinsion known as the Star Energy Layer—a dinsion capable of directly influencing the fundantal fabric of reality and the mind-spirit simultaneously. So long as an enemy was touched by a blade carrying the power of the Star Breath Sword Canon, they would fall under the domain's absolute suppression over all gaseous matter within their body—permanently, unless they possessed a power from that sa dinsion to dispel it.

In truth, Lin Hui himself had not changed at all. His physique, strength, and speed were exactly as they had been.

But Tuyue had changed.

Her speed was dropping. Her reactions were growing increasingly sluggish.

In short: a single touch was all it took for every trace of gas inside an opponent's body to fall under his control.

Mistborn did not need oxygen, but their bodies still contained nurous special gases dissolved within their blood. Furthermore, their forms relied on ethereal energies and unique gases that buffered their joints and maintained structural integrity. All of it was indispensable. Now that it was entirely under his command, the internal pressure bearing down on Tuyue had been pushed past the breaking point.

Added to that, Lin Hui had slipped a trace of Disaster Energy into her system for good asure.

Even so, he couldn't determine why the Longevity Wheel had violently rejected Tuyue. If simply introducing foreign energy into a reviving Mistborn's body were enough to sever the bond, soone else should have discovered it long ago—it wouldn't have remained a secret until now.

Logic suggested the anomaly was tied to the Star Breath Sword Canon itself.

But now was not the ti to study it.

"For my eldest disciple, Tao Xuehai." Lin Hui gently swung his blade downward.

In a clean, rciless arc, Ruyi sliced straight through the fleshy tether connecting Tuyue to the Longevity Wheel.

"No! Don't!" Tuyue scread, clawing at the stroke, but her hampered speed couldn't co close to keeping up.

The connection was severed.

The dark red flesh snapped back like broken springs, retracting to their respective sides. Tuyue felt her bond with the Longevity Wheel dissolving rapidly. Without it, she would revert to her original body of flesh and blood—the fragile, mortal vessel of a Minor Three Harmonies Grandmaster.

Yes—when she first fused with the Evil Weapon, she had been nothing but an ordinary person. It was only through casually dabbling in martial arts over the subsequent millennia that she had eventually beco a passable Minor Three Harmonies Grandmaster.

No... that's not right!

A sickening wet sound rolled through the water.

Grotesque fleshy tumors erupted across Tuyue's face. Her body swelled rapidly, warping out of proportion. Slender, sword-shaped black crystals burst through her surface, splitting the skin apart one by one. Simultaneously, her once-fair skin began to ulcerate and rot, festering into a disgusting dark red.

No... is this... Corruption?!

She shrieked, her voice drenched in absolute despair. "Why?! Why would I... lose to you?!"

Seizing the lingering mind-spirit tether to the Longevity Wheel, she forced her Evil Energy outward—Life-Span Seizure. But the mont it brushed against Lin Hui, it was deflected by a boundless, tyrannical force, scattering like smoke.

Tuyue choked out a cloud of bloody mist, staining the seawater crimson.

The dark starry sky behind Lin Hui seed to stir with fury—suddenly alive with countless silver lights. The myriad pinpoints of starlight resembled silver eyes, opening and closing, blinking in an eerie display that made the skin crawl.

Lin Hui flashed behind Tuyue. Ruyi flickered softly.

A dark red head—already bloated and hideous—went spinning into the water, tumbling with the current down into the dark abyss.

Finally, everything grew quiet.

The progression of Tuyue's bodily decay was cut short. Her headless corpse hung motionless in the water for a few seconds before silently dissolving into a cloud of black ash, bleeding away into the sea.

As for the severed Longevity Wheel—it flickered a few tis, then vanished like a phantom, leaving no trace behind.