The arrival of the Sword Saint of the East did not begin with a roar of thunder or a sky full of fire. It began with a sound like tearing silk.
On the eastern perimeter of Beiluo City, a Type-59 Tank was on patrol. It was a forty-ton beast of rolled homogeneous steel, the pride of the new army. The crew was scanning the horizon for bandits. Suddenly, the tank shuddered. A thin, invisible line appeared horizontally across the turret. Slowly, gracefully, the top half of the tank slid off, crashing onto the asphalt with a deafening clang. The cut was mirror-smooth, severing the steel, the cannon barrel, and the radio antenna as if they were made of soft cheese.
The crew scrambled out of the bottom half, unharmed but terrified. Standing on the road, a hundred meters away, was a man in simple white hemp robes. He held a wooden sheath. He hadn't even drawn his blade fully; just the intent had severed the machine.
Ye Bai, the Sword Saint. A man who had reached the Spirit Severing Stage solely through the Dao of the Sword. He did not fly. He walked. And the world seemed to part around him to avoid being cut.
Ye Bai looked at the city of iron and smoke. He saw the drones buzzing in the air. He saw the pipes. He frowned. It was ugly. It lacked the elegance of nature.
"Jiang Chen!" Ye Bai's voice was soft, yet it cut through the noise of the factories, reaching every ear in the city clearly. "I have no quarrel with your people. But your existence disrupts the balance. You have merged the dead with the living. You have replaced the heart with a machine. Come out. Let my blade severe your karma, so you may reincarnate as a human in the next life."
Inside the Command Bunker, the alarms were screaming, but Jiang Chen was silent. He stood in the fabrication bay, his arms spread wide as robotic arms assembled armor plates around his body.
This wasn't the bulky, walking-tank design of the Titan Mark III. This was the Mark IV "Ronin".
It was sleek, modeled after the anatomy of a sprinter. The hydraulic pistons were replaced with bundles of Synthetic Myomer Fibers—artificial muscles that reacted faster than human nerves. The armor was thinner, made of a Tungsten-Titanium weave, painted a matte, non-reflective black.
"Administrator," Old Wu's hands shook as he handed Jiang Chen the weapon. "The Sword Saint cuts atoms. Armor is useless against him. If he touches you..."
"Then I must not get touched," Jiang Chen said. His voice was synthesized, deep and metallic, vibrating from the glowing green reactor in his chest.
He took the weapon. It was a katana, but the blade was not steel. It was a composite alloy derived from the Star Iron of the Golem. Connected to the hilt was a thick power cable that ran directly into his arm and plugged into his suit.
"System," Jiang Chen commanded. "Route 40% of the Reactor output to the blade. Activate High-Frequency Resonance."
HUMMMMM.
The blade didn't glow. It screamed. It vibrated at 30 megahertz. The air around the edge blurred, the oxygen molecules igniting from the friction, creating a faint halo of violet plasma.
"He cuts with spiritual intent," Jiang Chen said, sliding the blade into a magnetic sheath on his hip. "I cut with physics. Let's see whose edge is sharper."
The helmet slid over his face. It had no eye slits, just a smooth, black glass faceplate with a single glowing green optical sensor in the center.
The city gates opened. The citizens of Beiluo watched from the rooftops and windows, holding their breath. They saw their Prince walk out. He didn't look like a warlord anymore. He looked like an assassin made of midnight and neon.
Ye Bai waited in the center of the cleared highway. He watched the black machine-man approach.
"You wear a shell," Ye Bai noted, his hand resting casually on his sword hilt. "Do you think metal can stop the Dao?"
"It's not just metal," Jiang Chen's synthesized voice amplified across the silent plains. "It's geometry."
Ye Bai sighed. "Unrepentant."
He moved.
To the mortals watching, Ye Bai simply vanished. He moved faster than the eye could track. He appeared instantly in front of Jiang Chen, his sword drawing in a horizontal slash that aimed to decapitate the machine.
[Warning: Incoming Strike. Velocity: Mach 2.][Reaction Protocol: Automated Reflex.]
The Neural Link in Jiang Chen's spine bypassed his brain. The suit moved before he could think.
CLANG.
A shockwave flattened the grass for fifty meters.
The citizens gasped. Jiang Chen hadn't been decapitated. He had blocked.
The High-Frequency Blade was held vertically, catching the Sword Saint's spirit blade. Sparks—blue from the spirit sword, violet from the vibro-blade—cascaded like fireworks.
Ye Bai's eyes widened slightly. "You blocked my Severing Heavens Slash?"
"Vibration," Jiang Chen grated, pushing back. "Your blade cuts by separating matter. My blade vibrates fast enough to destabilize your field. You can't cut what you can't touch."
Jiang Chen twisted his wrist. The synthetic muscles in his suit flared. He launched a counter-attack. A flurry of strikes, driven by hydraulic force and computer-precision.
CLASH-CLASH-CLASH-CLASH.
They moved like blurs. Ye Bai was fluid, water flowing around rock. Jiang Chen was staccato, a piston firing at redline. The sound of metal on metal was a continuous shriek.
Ye Bai leaped back, floating in the air. "Impressive. For a puppet."
He held his sword to the sky. The clouds split open. A massive sword of pure Qi, a hundred meters long, formed above him.
"Dao Art: Mountain Divider."
The giant sword fell.
"Administrator!" Han screamed from the wall. "Dodge it!"
"No," Jiang Chen planted his feet. The magnetic clamps in his boots locked into the asphalt, cracking the road.
"System. Reactor Output: 100%. Overclock the Blade."
The green light in Jiang Chen's chest erupted. The Ghost King's essence roared. The violet plasma on his blade turned white.
Jiang Chen didn't dodge. He slashed upward.
"Active Skill: Rail-Slash."
He swung his blade so fast it created a vacuum blade of superheated air.
The tiny white slash met the giant spirit sword.
CRACK.
The spirit sword shattered.
The massive construct of Qi broke into a million shards of light, raining down over the city like glittering snow. The mortals cheered, a roar of disbelief. Their Prince had just cut a spell!
Ye Bai fell back to the ground, stumbling. His ancient sword, a treasure of the Eastern Seas, had a chip in it.
He looked at the chip. He looked at Jiang Chen, whose suit was smoking, the cooling vents hissing steam.
"You... you use the soul of a King as fuel," Ye Bai realized, sensing the necrotic energy leaking from the reactor. "You are in constant pain. That reactor... it burns you."
"Pain is data," Jiang Chen stepped forward, the single green eye glowing mercilessly. "And I am processing it."
Ye Bai's expression changed. The arrogance vanished. In its place was the respect of a master finding a worthy rival.
"Very well," Ye Bai sheathed his sword. He lowered his stance. The air around him went still. The temperature dropped. "I will use my final technique. The Void Cut. It ignores distance. It ignores time. If you block this, you win. If you fail, you die."
Jiang Chen stopped. His sensors were screaming. The energy building up in Ye Bai wasn't just Qi; it was a tear in reality.
"System," Jiang Chen thought. "Calculate trajectory."
[Trajectory: Omnidirectional. Evasion Impossible.][Block Probability: 0%.]
"Then we don't block," Jiang Chen whispered. "We interrupt."
Ye Bai drew.
At the same instant, Jiang Chen's chest reactor opened.
He didn't fire a beam. He fired the Magnetic Containment Field itself.
PULSE.
An EMP of necrotic magnetism exploded from Jiang Chen. It wasn't a physical attack. It was a disruption field designed to scramble energy signatures.
Ye Bai's Void Cut formed... and then warped. The precise mathematical formula of the Dao was corrupted by the chaotic radiation of the Ghost King.
The Void Cut missed Jiang Chen by an inch. It sliced the air beside his ear, severing the top of a mountain five miles behind him.
Ye Bai stood frozen, his arm extended, his sword drawn.
Jiang Chen's Vibro-Blade was resting gently against Ye Bai's throat. The violet hum of the blade buzzed against the Saint's skin, singeing his beard.
"Checkmate," Jiang Chen said.
The silence on the battlefield was absolute. The strongest swordsman in the East, held at knifepoint by a machine.
Ye Bai looked at the blade. He looked at the mountain crumbling in the distance behind Jiang Chen. He laughed. It was a dry, hollow laugh.
"You distorted the Void," Ye Bai whispered. "You polluted the Dao with chaos to make me miss."
"I introduced a variable," Jiang Chen corrected, withdrawing the blade and sheathing it with a sharp click. "Efficiency beats purity."
Ye Bai sheathed his own sword. He looked tired. He looked old.
"You spared me," Ye Bai said.
"I have enough enemies," Jiang Chen turned around, his cape billowing in the wind. "I need a teacher. My soldiers have guns, but they lack discipline. You will teach them the Way of the Sword."
"You want me... to teach your army?" Ye Bai blinked. "You just defeated me with machines. Why do you need swords?"
Jiang Chen looked back over his shoulder.
"Because one day, the battery might run dry," Jiang Chen tapped his chest. "And on that day, I want my men to be ready."
Ye Bai stared at the retreating back of the Iron Prince. He had come to kill a demon. He found a king.
He bowed deeply to the back of the cyborg.
"As you command... Administrator."