Chapter 208: 208- Metamorphosis

Before Fang Jingyi could protest further, a surge of qi rippled from Lin Zhaoyue.

With a casual sweep of her hand, she thrust Fang Lian straight through the barrier.

"Go on, my dear!" Lin Zhaoyue’s voice rang out, wild with excitement. "Get them all! Show me everything you’ve got!"

Behind her, Fang Jingyi went pale, the blood draining from her face. The sheer horror of the scene crushed her composure, and she crumpled to the ground in a faint.

Outside, Fang Lian stood in silence, her expression unreadable as she watched the sea of cultivators.

The attackers, startled at first, quickly shifted their focus. Dozens of them broke from the air and charged straight at her.

Without a word of complaint, Fang Lian’s sword was in her hand.

The air around her dropped to an icy chill as she whispered, her voice cutting through the chaos like the edge of her blade.

"Tyrant Light Sword—First Form: Divine Line."

A single, searing line of pure, condensed light manifested before her, humming with annihilating intent.

It shot forward, too fast to track with the eye, a divine verdict written in luminescence.

The front rank of the charging Golden Core cultivators had no time to react.

Five of them simply ceased to be, their bodies, spiritual shields, and prized artifacts vaporized where they stood, leaving behind only scorched earth and the acrid smell of ozone.

Those at the flanks recoiled, their aggressive shouts dying in their throats, replaced by a stunned, primal silence.

Hundreds of Golden Core experts, now halted their advance, their collective aura of invincibility cracking like thin ice.

They stared at the slender woman. She hadn’t even moved from her spot.

A grizzled elder at the front, his beard singed from the near-miss, found his voice. "You dare?! Who are you to stand against the combined might of—"

"Tyrant Light Sword—Imperfect Form: Scattering Prism."

Fang Lian did not let him finish. Her sword wove a complex pattern in the air, and the terrifying light around her blade fractured.

A hundred smaller, yet no less deadly, beams of light erupted outwards like a wrathful sunburst.

They did not discriminate, lancing into the crowd with pinpoint accuracy.

Panic finally broke the ranks.

Golden Cores flared as cultivators scrambled to defend, summoning barriers, throwing defensive talismans, and parrying with their own spiritual weapons.

Cries of pain and shock echoed as the beams punched through weaker shields, piercing shoulders, legs, and in a few unfortunate cases, hearts and cores.

Dozens fell, not dead, but grievously wounded, their formations crumbling into disarray.

"Form up! Don’t let her pick us off individually!" another commander roared, his voice strained. "Overwhelm her with combined techniques!"

A wave of elemental energy gathered, a coalescence of fireballs, ice shards, and earthen spikes, a tsunami of destruction meant to bury Fang Lian.

A flicker of contempt passed through Fang Lian’s cold eyes.

She took a single, graceful step forward, planting her foot firmly. She raised her sword and point it towards the heavens.

"Golden Shell armor—imperfect form: Unyielding Radiance."

A dome of golden light erupted from her, expanding outwards in a blinding, inexorable wave. It met the combined assault head-on.

The cataclysmic wave of techniques didn’t explode, it unraveled.

Fire was extinguished, ice sublimated into mist, earth shattered into harmless dust against the impervious wall of radiance.

The dome pushed further, forcing the hundreds of Golden Cores to stumble back, their faces a mask of disbelief and dawning fear.

She was one. They were hundreds. Yet in that moment, she was the immovable object, and they were the insignificant tide breaking against her shores.

Fang Lian stood within her dome of light, her expression unchanging, her breathing even.

She slowly lowered her sword, the unyielding radiance solidifying into a palpable barrier between the mob and her mission.

"The next one who takes a step forward," she said, her voice quiet yet carrying over the stunned silence, "will experience what it’s like to see the world without a head."

Hundreds of seasoned experts, each a powerhouse in their own right, hesitated.

They looked at the scorched line on the ground, the wounded groaning at their feet, and the impassive woman who seemed less a person and more a force of nature.

The cost of "overwhelming" her had suddenly become terrifyingly clear.

Lin Zhaoyue’s eyes shone as she watched Fang Lian. Every motion of the girl’s blade thrilled her to the bone.

"She’s killing them, truly killing them out there!" Excitement bubbled in her chest until she could no longer contain it.

She threw back her head and cried with wild joy,

"My husband! You raised a monster!"

And that’s when she saw it. Fang Lian had raised her sword once more, but the motion was different.

It was not the swift, cutting arc of the Divine Line, nor the defensive form of the golden shell armor line.

It was slower, more deliberate, like a summoning.

The terrifying white light that had lashed out before now drew inward, coalescing above her blade not into a line, but into a sphere, a miniature sun, humming with contained cataclysm.

It grew, its light so pure it seemed to bleach the color from the world.

And a star appeared in the sky.

But not just one... but two.

Lin Zhaoyue froze, breath caught in her throat. Her shock gave way to exhilaration. And she was not the only one.

The commotion outside the barrier had grown too fierce to ignore.

One by one, the Fang clan members poured out, from elders to the youngest capable disciples, who had now gathered at the entrance.

They arrived just in time to see the twin stars ignite in the sky, a sight burned into their collective memory.

A profound silence fell over them.

This was the pinnacle of their clan’s heritage, the Tyrant Light Sword’s Second Form: Star form, executed with a perfection they had thought lost to the world.

A wave of nostalgia swept through them.

They had seen this before, felt this same awe, this same unshakable security.

They had seen it in their patriarch.

Elder Fang Chen, his face weathered by grief, felt hot tears stream down his cheeks unchecked.

He wasn’t ashamed. He was witnessing a miracle. His voice, thick with emotion, broke the silence among his kin.

"Fang Yuan... you live on in that child." The words were a sob and a declaration.

"Your light did not go out."

He broke down then, shoulders shaking, but his tears were not of sorrow; they were an eruption of pure, unadulterated joy.

The hole their patriarch’s death had left in their world felt, for this one glorious moment, a little less empty.

And at that moment, not a single clan member thought to worry for Fang Lian’s safety being out there all alone.

For they all knew what it meant to wield the Star Form in perfection.

Fang Yuan had told them long ago: the perfected Star Form was not merely a technique, it was a threshold.

To wield it with such flawless mastery was to step beyond the limits of the Golden Core realm.

A complete understanding of its principles also paved the way for a smooth ascent into the Nascent Soul stage... and marked the path of a true Swordmaster.