The light mist rose rapidly, the killing intent staining the dust.

In the Canyon of Severed Souls, a storm of blood rained.

The “ghosts” above the canyon and the “men” within, after a brief standoff… unleashed a massacre.

At this point, although the martial heroes had suffered over a hundred casualties, they still had a fighting force of nearly three hundred. And those exiles from the Valley of Buried Hearts numbered only a little over a hundred. At first glance… it seemed the former had the advantage.

But… numbers were not the main factor determining victory, because this was a “martial world conflict,” not a battle between armies.

If this were a battle between armies, the deciding factors would mostly be numbers, formations, soldier quality, terrain, and the degree of use of bows, crossbows, and firearms.

But in a martial world melee… these things have little reference value.

Those sect leaders and disciples were not well-trained soldiers. Although, in terms of individual combat ability, they were definitely much stronger than ordinary soldiers, they were divided into dozens of factions fighting their own battles, and there was almost no coordinated combat ability between them… not to mention people from different sects, even within the same sect, few could cooperate.

Simply put, everyone played their own tune, and the wolves went up while the dogs stayed behind…

On the other side… those "little devils" under Yama's command didn't cooperate much either, but they had a great advantage in terrain; striking from above in an encirclement naturally yielded twice the result with half the effort. In addition, their martial skills were all top-notch, so gaining the upper hand was only natural.

Soon, dozens of cannon fodder from the major sects were killed in the enemy's encirclement; while only a few of the masters from the Valley of Buried Hearts suffered minor injuries…

However, this situation changed instantly after Yuan Qi made his move.

Yuan Alliance Leader's figure shot out swiftly, his wrist flicking, and the sword in his hand immediately lashed out like a living thing.

This sword was a soft sword, or rather… a "cloth sword."

The cloth was ordinary cloth.

The man was extraordinary.

Before the age of thirty, Yuan Qi would not use a sword. In fact, he did not use any weapons at that time.

But after the age of thirty, he gained the power of profound energy… once he had this almost perfect internal energy as a foundation, practicing any weapon or technique… was easy and progressed rapidly.

Therefore, after the age of thirty, Yuan Qi successively learned many martial arts, gradually reaching a state where he was proficient in all eighteen weapons. Some skills… he only needed to see them once to wield them more powerfully than those who had practiced for many years.

And after the age of forty, the Yuan Alliance Leader rarely used weapons anymore. The only weapon that remained by his side was this cloth sword embedded in his belt…

As the saying goes, "A sharp sword has no intention, a soft sword is unpredictable." Driven by Yuan Qi's unfathomable internal energy… the soft sword was sometimes as fierce as a dragon, sometimes as insidious as a snake, sometimes as ruthless as a jiaolong, and sometimes as powerful as a python.

In the blink of an eye, nearly ten people had died under his sword, each one struck in the neck with a single blow… their heads separated from their bodies.

"Hmph…" At this moment, a cold snort came, accompanied by a burly figure, "I have long heard that Yuan Alliance Leader's power is unparalleled in the world. Seeing it today, it is indeed extraordinary."

The speaker was a large, bearded man. His figure and appearance were like a Luohan, and he was holding a ringed broadsword. Judging from his voice… he was undoubtedly the one who first spoke through internal force not long ago.

"Desert Sabre King… Di Hou." Yuan Qi stared at the opponent and said in a deep voice.

"Oh?" Di Hou laughed, "Alliance Leader Yuan actually recognizes me? I am truly flattered."

In fact, the reason why Yuan Qi recognized Di Hou was very simple… because they were about the same age and belonged to the same generation in the martial world, they had met a few times in some large and small martial world events in the past. However… at that time, Di Hou was already the famous Desert Sabre King, while Yuan Qi was just an unknown nobody. So, the latter remembered the former, while the former didn't even know of the latter's existence.

"Ha! Hahahaha…" Yuan Qi laughed out loud upon hearing Di Hou's words.

Di Hou didn't know what he was laughing at, and neither did the people around him who saw this scene.

Only Yuan Qi himself understood how ironic and ridiculous the other party's words were…

"Sabre King Di…" After laughing for a while, Yuan Qi's expression turned cold, "I remember… before you fled into the Valley of Buried Hearts, you were the leader of the Desert Eight Sabre Society?"

"That's right, I was." When Di Hou answered this question, he was quite puzzled. He didn't understand why the other party would bring up these irrelevant past events at this moment.

"Do you remember how many disciples you had under your command?" Yuan Qi continued to ask.

"Five or six hundred people, maybe…" Di Hou replied casually, "What are you asking this for?"

"Can you name twenty of them?" Yuan Qi asked again.

"Alliance Leader Yuan… what do you mean by this?" Di Hou had decided not to answer these strange questions anymore.

"You can't name them, can you?" Yuan Qi said coldly, "But… you can name me." He gestured around with his eyes, "And the names of all the first-rate masters present."

Di Hou was silent. He wanted to hear what Yuan Qi was trying to say.

"That's how the world is. You never remember the ordinary people, because all you see are fame, martial arts, and appearance…" Yuan Qi seemed a little agitated when he said this, "Your eyes can only see those things, so much so that you ignore the 'person' themselves." He paused, "That's why I'm laughing. I'm laughing at you for being like a group of blind people… blinder than real blind people."

"Alliance Leader Yuan, forgive Di for not understanding what you're saying." Di Hou said, raising his broadsword, "I'm not here to listen to your mystification!"

"That's right…" Yuan Qi closed his eyes, "You people wouldn't understand…" He also raised the cloth sword in his hand, "You're just here to die, come on!"

Without him saying so, Di Hou came.

The Desert Sabre King was definitely not living up to a false reputation. The ringed broadsword in his hand was a unique weapon, custom-made for Di Hou by a renowned craftsman of the time.

This sword weighed over forty pounds, and the back of the blade was embedded with eight rings. The blade was like a shark's tooth, capable of cutting hair with a breath.

In the past, countless famous figures in the martial world had died without a complete corpse under this sword, which could be called a world-shocking weapon.

And Di Hou himself… was also a rare talent in the way of the sabre. He possessed innate divine strength from a young age, and could wield a Guan Dao weighing eighty pounds at the age of twelve; his comprehension of sabre techniques was also extremely high, and he integrated the strengths of various schools to form his own path at a young age. At the age of fifteen, Di Hou became the youngest blade-holder in the Desert Eight Sabre Society (similar to a "cadre" position among delinquent youths, you can imagine the specific ranks yourself), and at the age of twenty-eight, he became the chief leader of the eight divisions, enjoying unparalleled fame for a time.

However, after the age of thirty, his sabre technique encountered a bottleneck, and he became possessed during cultivation… Then, he began to kill innocent people indiscriminately, using the blood of masters to consecrate his sword. Before long, he became an enemy of the martial world and was forced to escape into this Valley of Buried Hearts.

Nearly twenty years had passed, and as one of the most senior exiles in the valley, Di Hou had naturally broken through the bottleneck of that year long ago. His current martial arts realm was comparable to that of the Wanxia Tower Lord and the Bafang Tower Lord, who were known as the Twin Heroes of the Martial World.

"Drink—"

As soon as he said this, he was quick. Di Hou gave a violent shout, and his figure had already flashed to Yuan Qi's side, and the ringed broadsword was falling like thunder.

His sword was heavy, but it was very fast, so fast that the human eye could hardly see it.

But Yuan Qi could see it.

Not only could he see it… but he could also see it very clearly.

"Too slow, too clumsy." This was the evaluation that Yuan Qi gave to the other party, and it was also the last sentence that Di Hou heard.

The next second, Di Hou's head left his body.

And his sword… struck empty air.

Indeed, Di Hou was a first-rate master, and perhaps no more than ten people present could withstand this strike.

But in Yuan Qi's eyes, Di Hou's sword technique was far from perfect… From the perspective of martial arts realm, Yuan Qi's cloth sword was "the ultimate in change" on top of "the ultimate in moves." As long as a person was still in the realm of "having moves," even if they practiced their internal energy to the same level as him, they could at most fight him to a standstill. People like Di Hou, whose internal and external skills were far inferior to his, were not even worthy of being called opponents…

"Alliance Leader Yuan's divine skill is unparalleled!"

"Everyone, follow the Alliance Leader and kill!"

The gang members standing nearby saw Yuan Qi instantly kill Di Hou and shouted out, adding to the momentum of the martial world camp.

Yuan Qi did not disappoint his comrades. He immediately displayed a superb lightness skill, flying out like a swimming dragon, leaving behind only the corpses of the valley people wherever he passed.

"Where…" In the chaotic battle, Yuan Qi's heart was as still as water. While he was killing, he was thinking, "These people can't possibly be raising the mist… there must be a 'special person' among them, a person whose power is so strong that he can guide the airflow, and he must be found from the shadows…"

While thinking, he had killed dozens of people, more than the total number of enemies killed by other gangs. After the gap in numbers widened, the situation of the confrontation between the two sides reversed.

The martial world people still had more than two hundred people to fight, while only thirty or so masters from the Valley of Buried Hearts remained. In this case, no matter how advantageous the terrain was, it was useless.

The encirclement… had turned into a counter-encirclement. Even if the valley people's martial arts were strong, being surrounded by five or six people… the result was self-evident.

In the time it took to drink a cup of tea, the Canyon of Severed Souls was littered with corpses.

Fresh blood fell like rain, scattered like mist, taking away the souls of the dead…

Seeing that the "ghosts" in the valley were about to be exterminated, finally, the person who "raised" the light mist… appeared in people's sight.

"I never thought…" As soon as this person spoke, he attracted everyone's attention, "...that besides Yama, there would be someone in the world with such superb martial skills."

Similarly, it was transmitting sound through internal force, but depending on the speaker's skill, the effect was different.

For example, Di Hou and Feng Er (the second person who spoke before the fight, who had already received his lunch box) had a relatively high tone when they transmitted sound through internal force, and the voice they used was also louder, so that "qi" could send the words out and let people far away hear it.

However, the person speaking at the moment had a light and breezy feeling in his tone and voice; among the martial world people present, only Yuan Qi could do this… It could be seen that the speaker's internal power cultivation was extraordinary.

"Are you finally willing to show yourself?" Yuan Qi looked up in the direction the voice came from, which was a rock a hundred meters away.

At this moment, an old man dressed as a farmer with an ordinary appearance was standing there with his hands behind his back.

Before long, some people in the crowd recognized him, leading to a burst of panic.

"D-demon… demon…"

"It's him! He's still alive?"

"The former leader of the Demonic Cult… Du Ying…"

Yuan Qi knew this name, but he had never seen this person.

Twelve years ago, Yuan Qi did indeed see a leader of the Demonic Cult, but it was not the Du Ying in front of him.

That year, the Demonic Cult leader Liu Xiangru believed that his divine skill had been completed and he was invincible in the world… and launched a large-scale invasion of the various sects of the martial world.

As everyone knows, the "righteous people" of the martial arts world have a habit, that is… in the event of an unfavorable situation, they can always find a reason to justify ganging up on the few with the many, as for the reason, everyone knows…

Of course, it doesn't hurt to repeat this classic line here - there's no need to talk about martial world morality when dealing with these heretics!

In short, that year… the Demonic Cult was wiped out. And the biggest contributor to this event, as you guessed… was Yuan Qi.

Liu Xiangru didn't understand until his death where this Yuan had come from… Although Yuan Qi was already a recognized first-rate master at that time, because he had been too unknown in the past, no one knew how high his martial arts limit was. It was not until he single-handedly killed Liu Xiangru… that the various sects of the martial world realized that this person had seemed to have been seriously underestimated in the past…

And that incident later became the key asset for Yuan Qi to become the leader of the martial arts alliance.

However, the Du Ying in front of him was completely different from Liu Xiangru…

In terms of seniority, Du Ying was Liu Xiangru's martial uncle, but his age was a few years younger than Liu Xiangru, and he was only in his early sixties this year.

The skill that Liu Xiangru took until he was forty-eight years old to master, Du Ying had already mastered it at the age of thirty… Afterwards, no one, not even the elders of the Demonic Cult, knew how high his martial arts really were.

Fortunately, although Du Ying was a martial arts prodigy, he did not like fighting, so during the years he was the leader of the Demonic Cult, the Demonic Cult always maintained a policy of not offending others unless offended.

Until the age of forty-three, Du Ying was tired of the internal strife within the cult and angrily passed the position of leader to the ambitious Liu Xiangru. Then he left in a huff, and no one could find his trace again.

Unexpectedly… today, this Du Ying has appeared in the Valley of Buried Hearts.

"Alliance Leader… he…" Ji Neng recognized this person and quickly took a few steps forward, wanting to remind Yuan Qi.

But Yuan Qi waved his hand, interrupting Tower Lord Ji's words.

A few seconds later, Yuan Qi looked up and used the exact same method as Du Ying to reply through internal force: "Du Ying, I've heard of you, it's great that you're still alive…"