121: Chapter 121 Fleeting Beauty

Su Chen's mind was firmly gripped by the battle occurring not far away on the ice field, which he perceived through his spiritual power.

He could feel it.

The two parties currently engaged in combat.

One side emitted a pure aura of an ancient behemoth originating from the Primordial Era.

It should be the terrifying existence awakened on the Snowy Plateau that Su Zixi had mentioned.

The other side's aura was weaker and seemed to be continuously collapsing.

But that other aura...

Under his perception... it actually felt somewhat familiar?

...

On the distant ice field.

Cang Mingyue sat slumped within a blue protective shield on the snow.

She glanced at Ye Jingjun beside her, who was sitting cross-legged, condensing sword qi with a tightly furrowed brow.

"Sister Jingjun, is it not ready yet?"

Ye Jingjun's expression was somewhat blank.

"I have never used this move, 'No Meeting Spring', on a battlefield before."

"It should still take a few more minutes..."

Cang Mingyue's hands tightly held a deep blue orb whose light was rapidly dimming and already showing cracks.

It was precisely the source-protecting treasure transformed from the "mermaids tear" she had gifted Su Chen years ago.

The orb sustained a blue, crack-filled light shield, struggling to resist the external attacks.

But the light shield flickered unsteadily, clearly having reached its limit.

She could even feel that she could hear the faint, rancid stench emanating from the primordial behemoths outside the shield.

"Sister Fox went out just now to help us pin them down; she's heavily injured now and probably won't last much longer."

She glanced at Su Daji, whom she had just dragged back from outside the shield.

Her seductive red dress was reduced to mere rags, her delicate body exposed.

Her snow-white skin was covered in hideous wounds, the most severe one being at her abdomen, nearly piercing through her.

She had already fallen unconscious, her aura so weak it was almost imperceptible.

"If you don't hurry, all three of us will meet our end here..."

Around the blue light shield.

The Tiger-bodied, human-faced divine beast, the six-legged, four-winged, featureless Dijiang, and the nine-headed, human-faced, snake-bodied monster...

They spared no effort in unleashing their attacks upon Cang Mingyue's crumbling protective shield.

Finally.

Cang Mingyue's shield finally reached its end.

With a soft "crack," it shattered.

The moment the shield vanished, the nearest Dijiang screeched, its four wings whipping up a destructive ice storm as its sharp claws lunged straight for the brow of Cang Mingyue, who seemed to stand dazed from exhaustion.

Another Tiger-bodied, human-faced divine beast roared and pounced toward Ye Jingjun, who was condensing her final sword intent.

Ye Jingjun stood up with difficulty.

After a long period of concentration, her sword qi had finally gathered for this final strike.

Whether they lived or died depended on this single move.

Cang Mingyue had very little spiritual power left.

However, she still gritted her teeth, unfolding the unique domain of the Mermaid Clan to assist Ye Jingjun while also placing the unconscious Su Daji back into a bead capable of holding living beings.

The aura around Ye Jingjun began to condense and climb at a speed that defied common sense.

"Cang Mingyue."

Her voice was terrifyingly calm.

"Buy me three more breaths of time."

Cang Mingyue's delicate body trembled.

Looking back, she saw the tattered red clothes on Ye Jingjun's body fluttering and snapping loudly without any wind.

Illusory peach blossom petals with a pale pink glow actually began to drift around her.

That sword technique was so overbearing that in this frozen, deathly desperate situation, it actually birthed an untimely sense of spring.

"No Meeting Spring? It's actually this powerful?"

Cang Mingyue, who knew Ye Jingjun quite well, naturally understood.

This was a technique this devoted Female Sword Immortal had developed after losing her beloved on the day Su Chen fell.

It was a move born from extreme grief, containing the supreme sword principle of "nurturing life within dead silence."

"Fine."

Cang Mingyue said no more.

She spat out a mouthful of her lifeblood, forming a thin mist of water between the two of them and the monsters.

Although it was far inferior in strength to the previous light shield, it was enough to block for a moment.

Ye Jingjun seemed oblivious to everything around her.

Her entire mind was immersed in that profound sword intent.

Countless fragments of memory swirled in her sea of consciousness.

The moonlight in the small courtyard of Qingzhou, the wind by the sea in East Lai, the red candles of the grand wedding in the capital.

And... his face as he lay in her arms at the end, coldly passing away.

"Su Chen..."

She murmured softly.

From the corner of her eye, a single crystal tear quietly slid down.

—Boom—

With Ye Jingjun as the center, a powerful sword intent erupted.

It was not a pure destructive killing intent, but a warm power of "life."

The drifting phantoms of peach blossoms suddenly became solid, sweeping across the entire battlefield in an instant.

Wherever the peach blossoms passed, the frozen snow melted at a speed visible to the naked eye, revealing the black permafrost beneath.

Even a few tiny sprouts of tender green grass struggled to emerge from the cracks.

The ferocious beasts like the Dijiang and the Tiger-bodied, human-faced divine beast seemed cowed by this sudden sword qi filled with contradictory intent.

Their movements stalled for a split second.

How could the battle-hardened Ye Jingjun miss such a perfect opportunity?

"Now!"

Ye Jingjun's phoenix eyes snapped open, no longer containing a trace of human emotion.

She gripped her sword with both hands, pointing the tip toward the sky, as the peach blossom sword qi sweeping through the world suddenly contracted and condensed inward.

It finally transformed into a massive, pink-and-white phantom of a peach blossom that pierced through the heavens and earth.

It slowly "bloomed" toward those few ancient ferocious beasts.

"No Meeting Spring, Final Form—Ephemeral Radiance!"

As the sword qi swept past, there was no earth-shattering explosion.

Only an extreme "stillness."

At this moment, time itself seemed to be stretched and frozen.

Under the shroud of the peach blossom phantom, the demonic qi on the massive bodies of those ferocious beasts also seemed to be vanishing.

"Did... did it succeed?"

Cang Mingyue slumped on the ground, watching the scene before her in disbelief.

She felt the terrifying auras of those ferocious beasts rapidly fading.

Ye Jingjun remained motionless, maintaining her sword-swinging posture.

Executing this forbidden move, which far exceeded her own capacity, had drained her of almost every last ounce of strength.

Although her overall strength was not the highest among the Transcendent Heroic Spirits of Blue Star...

In terms of pure lethality, no warrior on the entire Blue Star should be able to surpass her.

If even this move couldn't deal a devastating blow to these monsters, then the human race of Blue Star was truly doomed.

She looked at the gradually dissipating peach blossom phantom, perhaps remembering something.

"Sister Jingjun..."

Cang Mingyue struggled to crawl to her side, looking at her pale, beautiful face.

She asked the question she had always wanted to ask but had never been able to voice.

"All things return to spring, all things return to spring..."

"Why, back then, did Young Master Su..."

"You clearly know this 'No Meeting Spring', so why didn't you use it to save him?"

Ye Jingjun slowly turned her head to look at Cang Mingyue.

The corners of her mouth curled into an extremely faint, extremely bitter arc.

"I did."

"After he took his last breath, I held him and used it more than once."

"But this sword intent can bring spring back to withered wood and turn dead lands into lands of life."

"Yet it could not warm him in the slightest."

"His body grew colder and colder... and my heart grew colder and colder too."