"Whoosh!"
Lin Lei shot through the passage like a streak of light, his speed pushed to the absolute limit. But in terms of speed, the Abyssal Blade Demons—rivals of Desli and Bei Bei—still had the edge over Lin Lei. They were closing in.
His eyes blazed red like fire, yet Lin Lei's lips were silently mouthing a magical incantation.
"Zip!" Lin Lei's direction of flight abruptly shifted.
He turned, angling sharply downward toward the depths of the earth. There were plenty of Abyssal Blade Demons already surging up from below. Lin Lei plunged down while the demons below rushed up—the two sides were about to collide in the blink of an eye.
"ROAR~~" The Abyssal Blade Demons below immediately let out a roar.
The group that had been chasing along Lin Lei's original trajectory also banked downward. Meanwhile, Lin Lei closed in on nearly a hundred Abyssal Blade Demons beneath him. Those demons almost simultaneously drew the war blades from their backs in a flash of lightning, and a cold gleam swept through Lin Lei's eyes.
Boundless wind elements gathered with explosive force.
"Die."
"Sssss~~" Abruptly, a pale cyan 'Dimensional Blade' four or five meters wide materialized out of thin air before Lin Lei, then shot directly toward the onrushing demons below.
The moment they saw the Dimensional Blade, the Abyssal Blade Demons scrambled to dodge in terror.
But the Dimensional Blade was far too fast.
"Sssss~~" Metal bodies were sliced into fragments. Under Lin Lei's mental control, the 'Dimensional Blade' carved an arc through the air, and in an instant dozens of Abyssal Blade Demons were cut to pieces. The surviving demons scattered in panic.
"Whoosh!"
Lin Lei seized the opening and dove straight down, rushing through the gap the Dimensional Blade had created toward the depths below.
The Dimensional Blade was only effective against a small number of Abyssal Blade Demons. Once there were thousands of them, how many could a single strike kill? That was precisely why Lin Lei had chosen to suddenly turn and dive downward.
The sharp turn had at least bought him some distance from the demons behind.
"I can flee for a little while, but I can't keep running forever." As he hurtled downward, Lin Lei's mind raced, searching for a way out of this desperate situation. "If I could cast 'Dimensional Blade' instantly, that would be perfect—no matter how many Abyssal Blade Demons came, I'd wipe them all out." For a fleeting moment, a wild fantasy surged through his mind.
Instant-cast Dimensional Blade?
Daydreaming, plain and simple. Lin Lei knew it wasn't realistic.
"Hm?" As he sped through the underground passages, a thought suddenly struck him. "Dimensional Blade?"
Lin Lei didn't fully understand the underlying principles behind the formation of this forbidden spell. He only knew the method—how to gather elements through magic power to create the 'Dimensional Blade.' But now, his mind replayed the scene of casting it.
The Dimensional Blade was, in essence, a 'Wind Blade' taken to its absolute extreme.
When Lin Lei had used his mental power to force the 'Dimensional Blade' into a slight arc, he had noticed something: inside the blade, countless streams of wind were rotating—some fast, some slow—following a mysterious pattern that ultimately produced the terrifying power to cut through space itself.
"Fast? Slow?"
Lin Lei had never pondered this before, but now a question arose: "The Dimensional Blade should be faster the better—so why are some of the winds inside seemingly slow?"
"No, that's not right." Lin Lei recalled more carefully.
The countless wind streams inside the Dimensional Blade weren't actually slow at all—they merely produced the *effect* of slowness, appearing unhurried while actually moving with incredible speed. Wind blades of varying characteristics merged into a single entity, forming the 'Dimensional Blade.' What principle governed this?
"Fast state? Slow state? Dimensional Blade..."
Another scene surfaced in Lin Lei's mind—the execution of 'Rhythm of Wind.' That technique made the Purple Blood Soft Sword simultaneously oscillate between 'fast' and 'slow' states, producing diametrically opposite results that created vibrations in space, generating air blades along the sword's edge.
Then came the scene of 'Ten Thousand Swords as One.'
When Lin Lei had developed that technique, he had been puzzled: why would ten thousand sword shadows cast in the fast state merge into one and produce an effect of 'spatial stillness'? Why could the fast state and slow state be swapped? At the time, he hadn't understood—but he had modeled it after the 'Mother Queen's' technique to create it.
The truth was, why sword shadows in the 'fast state' produced 'Ten Thousand Swords as One' with its effect of 'spatial stillness'—the underlying mystery remained beyond his grasp.
"Dimensional Blade... Rhythm of Wind... Ten Thousand Swords as One..." Scene after scene flickered through Lin Lei's mind at lightning speed. The mist shrouding one of the profound mysteries of the Wind Element Law seemed, before his eyes, to be slowly dissipating.
A half-understanding stirred in Lin Lei's heart.
It felt as though he were touching something, yet he couldn't quite grasp it.
Lin Lei didn't even notice that two Abyssal Blade Demons behind him were drawing ever closer. In that moment, he was completely immersed in that special state. The two demons were confused—in the past, Lin Lei would have been desperately fleeing the moment they drew near.
But this time...
He was flying in a straight line, not changing direction at all. The Abyssal Blade Demons were faster than Lin Lei! A straight chase meant they could catch him.
"Shriek~~" The piercing shriek finally jolted Lin Lei back to awareness. At the same instant, two war blades slashed down toward him.
A cold sweat broke across Lin Lei's back as his Purple Blood Soft Sword whipped out in response. He didn't even realize that this strike was neither 'Rhythm of Wind' nor 'Ten Thousand Swords as One'—just an ordinary-looking swing.
"Chk!" Like slicing through tofu.
The Purple Blood Soft Sword flashed through the bodies of both Abyssal Blade Demons like lightning. Both demons were instantly cleaved in two.
"What?" Lin Lei was stunned. The Abyssal Blade Demons' defense wasn't exactly the pinnacle of toughness, but even with 'Rhythm of Wind,' he had to give it everything he had to split one in half. Yet just now... he had casually sliced through two with a single stroke, as if it were nothing.
"Just now..." Lin Lei couldn't help replaying that unconscious strike in his mind.