264: Chapter 264 The Revenge of the Severed Arm, Chen Xiaodao's Wrath

Above the scorched earth, the wind swirled ash, and gravel rolled down from the charred rock layers.

The indentation where Blood Butcher had crashed was further eroded by time and sand, its edges appearing even more shattered.

Blood Butcher lay prone on the ground, his right arm twisted and deformed, his shoulder collapsed; the entire arm looked like rotten wood smashed by a heavy hammer.

A beast-like wheeze escaped his throat, blood seeped from his seven orifices, and his face was pressed against the dirt. One eye remained open, its pupil trembling violently.

The countdown continued to tick: 2 minutes 10 seconds... 2 minutes 09 seconds...

But no one looked at him anymore.

Chen Wuwang slowly withdrew his fist. The mecha's energy reading dropped to 17.6%, and the hum of ion streams spraying from the armor's cracks weakened slightly.

He stood in place, his long silver hair fluttering in the hot wind. The red light of his Mechanical Prosthetic Eye had not extinguished, but it was no longer locked onto Blood Butcher.

At that very instant—

A figure charged forward from the edge of the battlefield.

Treading on scorched rock, moving thirty feet in a single bound, he kicked up a ring of black ash as he landed. It was Chen Xiaodao.

He had just broken through the blockade of psionic turbulence. A delay in his shield activation had caused him to miss the first half of the battle. Now, his chest heaved violently, and his eyes were bloodshot.

The Laser Sword at his waist had not yet been unsheathed, but his hand was already pressed against the hilt.

He saw it.

That Devil Head who once used the Blood River Barrier to crush his clansmen and drive young children to desperation was now lying in the mud like a dead dog.

But he also saw—Blood Butcher's fingers were moving, weak spiritual power still circulated deep within his Meridians, and though his breathing was rapid, it was not erratic. This guy wasn't completely crippled yet.

"Now—it's my turn." As soon as Chen Wuwang's voice fell, Chen Xiaodao drew his sword.

Zheng—!

The blade snapped out, its deep blue frequency-vibration edge tearing through the air with a high-pitched shriek.

Dense runes flowed along the spine of the blade; it was the Meteor Sword Intent he had personally engraved, a product of Fusion with nano-scale vibration technology.

He did not pause, did not speak, and did not even spare Chen Wuwang a second glance.

He had only one target: the base of Blood Butcher's right arm.

A three-stage accelerated thrust—the first stage used the ground's recoil to leap, the second stage twisted his body in mid-air to compress kinetic energy, and the third stage exploded with full speed the moment he landed, the sword tip aiming directly for the connection point between the shoulder and collarbone.

Blood Butcher jerked his head up, his eyes shrinking suddenly.

He felt it.

That strike wasn't a slash; it was a cut.

It was faster than a human should be able to react to, as precise as if it had been calculated ten million times in advance.

"No—!" he roared. His remaining spiritual power surged frantically toward his right arm, and a blood membrane as thin as a cicada's wing instantly condensed beneath his skin, attempting to protect his tendons and bones.

But it was too late.

The moment the Laser Sword cut into the blood membrane, it triggered electric arcs that sizzled and crackled.

The blood membrane collapsed, and the sword tip continued deeper, severing tendons, shattering bone joints, and twisting apart the Spiritual Vein connection points.

Crack!

The right arm was severed at the shoulder, flying twenty feet away. It twitched a few times on the scorched earth before turning into a pool of black blood and rapidly evaporating.

"Aaaaaaah—!!!"

Blood Butcher let out a shrill scream, heart-wrenching as if a piece of his Soul had been gouged out.

He collapsed forward, his left hand desperately pressing against the stump, but blood still gushed out, every drop carrying dark red crystalline grains—

Those were fragments of the Blood River Demonic Art's Origin, now dissipating along with the loss of his essence blood.

His eyes went wide as he looked at Chen Xiaodao in disbelief.

"You... how dare you...!"

Chen Xiaodao stood firm, his sword tip pointing to the ground, trembling slightly.

He didn't speak, only staring coldly at the other man. There was no pleasure in his eyes, only the suppressed rage of many years burning within.

He knew who this person was.

Eight years ago, the Blood Demon Sect had launched a night raid on the outlying villages of the Chen family, slaughtering over three hundred people, including the orphanage where he had been hiding.

That night, hiding in the gaps of the ruins, he had watched with his own eyes as Blood Vines entwined a woman holding a baby, draining her blood dry.

Back then, he couldn't even wield a sword.

Now, he had personally severed an arm from his enemy.

"You... you just wait!" Blood Butcher gnashed his teeth, his voice raspy like a whetstone. "Today's humiliation... I, Blood Butcher, will return it a hundredfold! No one will have any peace!!"

Before his voice had even faded, he suddenly bit the tip of his tongue and spat a mouthful of essence blood into the air.

Boom!

The blood mist exploded, instantly rising into a thick, pungent stench that obscured all vision.

The temperature above the scorched earth surged, and the air distorted, forming a rotating blood-colored vortex.

Chen Xiaodao swung his sword, the blade cutting into the blood mist, but it only stirred a few fading afterimages.

"Trying to run?"

He stepped forward to pursue, his sword stance rising again, but a strange vibration suddenly emanated from within the blood mist—

It was the sign of spiritual power surging backward through the eight extraordinary Meridians, extremely dangerous; one slight mistake would lead to the body exploding.

But Blood Butcher didn't care.

He detonated a Blood Core he had long ago buried at the edge of his Dantian, using the self-destructive impact to create a brief energy vacuum, forcibly tearing open a spatial rift.

In the next instant, a distorted blood shadow lunged out from within, moving so fast that not even an afterimage could be left behind.

Whoosh—!

The blood shadow broke through the air, shooting straight toward the darkness of the sky and vanishing in an instant.

Chen Xiaodao rushed forward a few steps before finally stopping.

He stood there, the veins on his right hand gripping the sword bulging, his knuckles turning white.

His left shoulder trembled slightly; it was an old injury responding to the aftershocks of the battle.

On the ground, only half a blood-stained Taoist robe remained, along with a pool of steaming black blood.

The wind swept across the scorched earth, picking up a few charred strips of cloth that landed where the severed arm had been.

He didn't pursue.

He knew that in his current state, he couldn't catch up.

Though that blood shadow was weak, its Escape Technique was extremely bizarre, clearly a life-saving trump card.

Moreover... he sensed something was off—the look in Blood Butcher's eyes before he fled wasn't just anger.

There was also calculation.

That kind of sinister, lurking hatred was like a venomous snake coiled in the shadows, ready to strike back at any moment.

"Today, I only severed your arm..." he spoke in a low voice, very softly, but every word was clear. "In the future, I will take your life."

The wind ruffled his hair, revealing a faint scar on his brow—a mark left by the claw of a Zerg when he was five years old.

He slowly raised his left hand and touched the interface of his mechanical prosthetic.

The cold metal pressed against his skin, devoid of sensation.

But he knew that the lost left arm had never been just a limb.

It was dignity.

It was the last bit of the peaceful illusion of his childhood.

And now, for the first time, his enemy had screamed under his sword, and for the first time, had fled before him with a severed arm.

Yet he didn't feel the slightest bit of relief.

Because he knew clearly that this strike was not the end.

It was the beginning.

Blood Butcher would not let this go.

He would return.

With even more ruthless methods, more poisonous schemes, and perhaps he would bring other devils, or even... collude with alien races.

But it didn't matter.

He had waited for this day for far too long.

The scorched earth was silent, and the countdown continued: 1 minute 43 seconds... 1 minute 42 seconds...

In the distance, the smoke from the collapsed mountain had not yet dissipated, and new cracks were still crawling.

Chen Xiaodao stood in place, not turning back or moving.

He just quietly watched the direction where Blood Butcher had disappeared, and the Laser Sword in his hand was slowly sheathed.

On the hilt, a newly carved scratch was clearly visible—a mark left by the friction between the blade and the blood membrane during the thrust.

He reached out and stroked the mark, his fingertips applying a slight pressure.

In the next instant, a very faint echo came from the wind in the distance—like some kind of whisper, quietly spreading in the darkness.

He frowned and looked up.

There was nothing.

Only scorched earth, ash, and a deathly silent battlefield.

He gripped the sword hilt, his knuckles turning white once more.