The curses spewing from the man’s mouth were utterly vile, but He Lingchuan only lifted his hand and flipped him a middle finger.

He knew perfectly well that that clean, crippling strike had only landed because Mao Tao’s arrow had forced the man to flinch at the last instant. But in a melee like this, who cared about fairness, ambushes, or honorable duels?

If you could hit, you hit. If there was an opening, you took it.

He felt no guilt whatsoever about winning without honor.

Behind him, Shan Youjun had had his line of sight blocked and never actually saw the moment the arm flew. Naturally, he chalked it all up to Fleeting Life being unnaturally sharp.

To be fair, he was about sixty percent right.

Only He Lingchuan knew the whole truth. Fleeting Life’s Army-Breaker ability had actually triggered.

That was the saber’s most terrifying hidden property. It ignored an enemy’s origin energy and divine technique defenses entirely, carving through as if they were not there and dealing full, unmitigated damage.

The catch was that it almost never happened.

This “almost never” meaning that out of hundreds of swings, perhaps one or two might activate Army-Breaker.

Tonight, he had simply hit the jackpot. One exchange, one trigger.

This Lord Baili really was just incredibly unlucky. All that thick origin energy rolling off his body might as well have been stage smoke. The faint light rippling over his armor had already told He Lingchuan that the man’s military rank was not l...