The instant I bit through the tip of my tongue, the taste of blood and spiritual energy exploded through my mouth. The searing pain of burning my essence blood felt like a branding iron scorching through my meridians, yet the spiritual energy in my dantian surged like a volcanic eruption — this was an all-or-nothing gamble. I had to complete the blade and anvil's final fusion in the window while the Elder Kai kept Rex Zhao occupied.

"Hssss—"

Drops of essence blood fell onto the dark golden runes of the meteorite iron anvil. The sigils erupted in blinding golden light. Beside it, the Wave-Breaker Blade seemed to answer a call — the water-ripple patterns along its body trembled violently, resonating with the sword-intent locked within the anvil.

System alerts detonated in my mind:

"Warning! Host's combustion of essence blood has destabilized spiritual energy flow!"

"Warning! The Spirit-Eye Gathering Array is experiencing abnormal energy fluctuations — external combat is disrupting fusion stability!"

I shut them out. I devoured spiritual energy from the spirit stones in a frenzy while simultaneously channeling as much as I could into both the meteorite iron anvil and the Wave-Breaker Blade. The demand was bottomless — an abyss that swallowed everything I fed it. Watching my reserves fall behind the rate of consumption, I made the call without hesitation: I pulled out a Qi-Gathering Pill and a Life-Continuation Pill and shoved them both into my mouth. The Qi-Gathering Pill slid down, and the stilled spiritual sea in my dantian churned back to life; the warm current of the Life-Continuation Pill set about forcibly mending the body that had been pushed to the edge of collapse by the burning of my essence blood.

"Pfft—"

A second mouthful of essence blood sprayed across the junction of the anvil and the blade. The moment the two touched, it felt as though heaven and earth had been inverted. The anvil's Ancestral Sword Intent bore down like Mount Tai crushing stone; the Wave-Breaker Blade's water-attribute spiritual resonance surged like rivers rushing into the sea. Two utterly opposing forces slammed into each other under the guidance of my spiritual energy. My soul-sea felt as if ten thousand horses were stampeding through it, and darkness kept crashing across my vision.

"Ethan Lu! Hold on!" The Elder Kai's voice reached me through the array formation, carrying a barely perceptible edge of urgency.

I forced my eyes up. Through the water-veil of the Gathering Array, I could see the battle between the Elder Kai and Rex Zhao had reached a white-hot intensity. Rex Zhao was wreathed in a pitch-black, foul-scaled miasma; every swing of his palm trailed black radiance that corroded spiritual energy in its wake. The Elder Kai's dragon-head staff wove an impenetrable defense, yet he was retreating step by step — the hem of his robes already eaten through in several places by the black aura.

"Old thing — thirty years apart and your pathetic cultivation is still as worthless as ever!" Rex Zhao sneered, flicking bloodstained scales from his fingertips. They fanned out in mid-air and locked into a ferocious killing array. "The debt the Demon-Demon Demon Suppression Bureau owes me — today I collect it, principal and interest both!"

The Elder Kai let out a cold snort. He drove the tip of his staff into the ground, and the seawater at the array's edge instantly crystallized into ice spines that blocked each scale with surgical precision. "Rex Zhao — do you truly believe the foundation-stage late rank you've built by stacking evil pills makes you invincible? You were expelled from the Xuan Sect for secretly cultivating the Corpse-Scale Art, and now you've thrown yourself at Baizhen Pavilion. You're nothing but a dog begging for scraps!"

The two exchanged blow for blow, every word between them saturated with thirty years of enmity. Rex Zhao's strikes grew more and more vicious; wherever the black aura passed, even the water walls of the Spirit-Eye Gathering Array rippled as if disturbed. The Elder Kai, for his part, appeared to be struggling — yet each retreat guided Rex Zhao with precision toward specific positions within the array, and the arc of his staff's passage left barely visible sigils traced into the ground.

"He's setting a trap!" The old system voice sharpened suddenly. "The Elder Kai is feigning weakness — he's drawing Rex Zhao into the 'Tide-Reversal Eye' at the array's core!"

My heart lurched. Ignoring the savage pain of the fusion, I crammed three more Qi-Gathering Pills into my mouth. Spiritual energy flooded like a torrent into the junction between the anvil and the blade — and the combined radiance of both flared violently. The anvil's dark golden sword-intent coalesced into a dragon-form; the Wave-Breaker Blade's water-resonance became the shadow of a phoenix. The two coiled and wrestled in the palm of my hand.

"Now!" the Elder Kai suddenly roared, and drove his dragon-head staff into the earth with all his might!

In an instant, the entire Spirit-Eye Gathering Array convulsed — the seawater reversed, flowing backward and upward, forming a monstrous whirlpool. Rex Zhao had been pouring everything into a strike aimed at the Elder Kai. He had no time to react as the spiritual energy beneath his feet abruptly inverted and the whirlpool seized him, dragging him helplessly toward the "Tide-Reversal Eye" at the array's center.

"You scheming old bastard!" Rex Zhao's face twisted with fury and panic. The black aura around him exploded outward as he fought to tear himself free of the whirlpool's pull. "Baizhen Pavilion will not let you go! Pavilion Master Jin will grind your bones to dust and scatter them to the wind!"

"Baizhen Pavilion?" The Elder Kai's laugh was ice-cold. The sigil-light on his staff blazed. "A tumor the Demon-Demon Demon Suppression Bureau failed to cut out back then — I'll excise it myself today. This Tide-Reversal Array was made to break people like you who practice deviant arts. Enjoy it."

End of Chapter 48: The Blade and Anvil's Final Fusion