The rumble on the horizon was no longer mere summer thunder; it was the roar of clashing spiritual essences, tearing the atmospheric veil of Yao Gu into a vacuum. Above the formerly dim sky of Cangyun Village, destructive streaks of light were etched—emerald green from the wood element, searing red from tongues of flame, and sharp silver from sword strikes.

  "Hand over the Dark Soul Pearl, Elder Mo! Your Black Valley Alliance is unworthy of possessing such an Earth-grade treasure!" A thunderous shout echoed from above the clouds, followed by the appearance of a middle-aged man in purple robes with a lightning bolt insignia on his chest. He was Elder Lei of the Thunder Sword Sect, an early-stage Soul Transformation practitioner.

  Before him, a gaunt old man shrouded in dense black aura sneered, his hand clutching a jade box that pulsed with ripples of darkness. "Thunder Sword, you are too arrogant! Our alliance found this in the ancient ruins; it was washed in the blood of our members. If you want it, trade it for your life!"

  "Enough nonsense!" A cold female voice cut through. From the south, a dozen female practitioners in white robes embroidered with crescent moons appeared, led by a female Elder from the Moon Immortal Sect who had reached the peak of the Five Elements realm. "My Moon Immortal Sect will not allow such an evil object to fall into the hands of the Black Valley devils. Hand it over, or we shall purify this place with moonlight!"

  "Purify?" Elder Mo laughed manically, his eyes flashing red. "Look down! These mortal villages have already been leveled by the remnants of our energy! The Heavenly Leaf Sacred Pavilion won't even glance at this trash heap. In the eyes of the Holy City, the western region is nothing but disposable dust. Let us see who shall become the master of this dust!"

  BOOM!

  Elder Lei swung his heavy sword, conjuring a lightning dragon that struck downward, incinerating a row of thatched houses at the village edge in an instant. Fires erupted, devouring the granaries that the villagers had painstakingly built over decades. Five Elements practitioners from the three sects began to clash in the air and on the ground, unleashing destructive techniques without regard for the graves or homes beneath them.

  "Use the Moon-Binding Formation!" the female Elder commanded. Instantly, pillars of silver light pierced the earth, creating a shockwave of pressure that flattened banyan trees and shattered the headstones on the hills behind the village.

  In the midst of this minor apocalypse, the empty Cangyun Village became a slaughterhouse of energy. Dust, fire, and building fragments flew in all directions. However, at the end of the now-ruined road, a strange sight remained.

  An old, rickety woodworking workshop still stood upright. Though the shockwaves from the Soul Transformation clashes struck it repeatedly, the building only trembled slightly, as if a giant, invisible hand were cradling it gently.

  Zhi Xuan remained seated in his rocking chair. The creak of the wood was barely audible amidst the explosions of mantras. He did not open his eyes, yet within his soul, he could feel the overflowing arrogance of the practitioners in the sky—the arrogance of beings who felt they held the keys to life simply because they could destroy mortal matter.

  "The Nine Plains are still the same," Ruo Xianxue whispered, her voice sounding disgusted within Zhi Xuan’s mind. "They gamble their lives for a low-grade pearl, oblivious that beneath their feet sits a dragon capable of swallowing their sects in a single breath. Zhi Xuan, will you let them destroy the final resting place of your mortal friends?"

  Zhi Xuan did not answer. His chair continued to rock. TAK... TAK... TAK...

  In the sky, Elder Lei of the Thunder Sword Sect noticed something amiss. His sharp eyes glared downward, piercing through the fog of smoke and fire, until they locked onto the intact workshop in the middle of the leveled village.

  "Hah? Is there still a mortal fly that hasn't died?" Elder Lei snorted with disdain. "How dare he sit there so casually while I am fighting! An insolent ant!"

  With a flick of his finger, Elder Lei released a bolt of purple lightning—a residual strike sufficient to turn ten mortals into ash—aimed directly at the old man sitting at the threshold.

  "Die!" Elder Lei cried out, turning his focus back to his enemy.

  However, the impossible happened. The purple lightning, upon reaching a distance of three chi from the workshop, suddenly faded, slowed, and finally vanished as if swallowed by a profound silence. There was no explosion, no spark. Only silence.

  Elder Lei flinched, his expression of contempt shifting into a sharp frown. He halted his sword mid-swing, letting the electric currents crawl along his fingertips. "What? My attack... vanished?"

  Elder Mo of the Black Valley and the female Elder of the Moon Sect also ceased their clash of essence. The three hovered at different heights, but their eyes were now fixed on the same point: the white-haired old man still sitting peacefully in his rocking chair, as if the storm of energy around him were merely a passing afternoon breeze.

  Zhi Xuan slowly opened his clouded eyelids. He did not look at the sky; instead, he looked at a shaving of sandalwood that had just fallen from his lap due to the earth's vibrations.

  "You all..." Zhi Xuan’s voice was incredibly faint, yet strangely, it traveled with absolute clarity into the ears of the practitioners in the sky, as if he were whispering right beside their heads. "You have disturbed the peace of my friends."

  "How dare you, Old Man!" Elder Lei shouted, his voice booming like thunder. "Who are you? Hiding a cultivation base in a trash heap like this? State your name before I level your rotting workshop!"

  Zhi Xuan slowly stood up. Every joint of his mortal frame creaked, signaling extreme fragility. He took his black wooden cane and stepped, one by one, toward the center of the village road now riddled with craters.

  "My name is no longer important to this bloodthirsty world," Zhi Xuan replied, looking up. In his clouded eyes, a flash of icy sapphire light suddenly appeared, as if a black hole were sucking in all the light in Yao Gu. "For fifty years, I learned to carve wood to understand life. But you... in a single breath, you destroy what I nurtured with affection."

  Zhi Xuan swept his gaze toward the mounds of earth on the hills, now cracked from the impact of the Moon-Binding Formation. A long sigh escaped his lips—a sigh that caused the flow of spiritual essence in the air to instantly freeze.

  "Uncle Zhao loved peace. Da Zhu hated the noise of swords. And Auntie Mei... she had only just fallen asleep," Zhi Xuan said, his voice no longer hoarse but echoing with an ancient authority that shook the soul.

  "Enough of the charade!" Elder Mo of the Black Valley roared, his black aura exploding into a giant hand that attempted to crush Zhi Xuan. "Hidden practitioner or not, before the Dark Soul Pearl, you are merely a stumbling block to be destroyed!"

  Zhi Xuan raised his black wooden cane and tapped it once against the ruined ground.

  DUAG!

  Instantly, a transparent ripple spread like a wave across a still lake. The giant hand of black aura shattered into pieces before it could even touch his grey robes. Without stopping, the ripple shot into the sky, forcibly severing all connections between the practitioners and the natural energy surrounding them.

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  "What?! My connection to the Laws... is severed?!" The Moon Sect’s female Elder gasped, her beautiful face paling as she realized she could no longer summon moonlight. She felt as if the world itself had rejected her.

  Zhi Xuan stepped forward, his previously trembling legs now treading with an authority capable of shaking the foundations of the Nine Plains. "You call this place dust? You call the lives they lived something to be discarded?"

  He pointed at Elder Lei with the tip of his cane. "You, who exalt lightning. Do you know that lightning can only destroy, but never recreate?"

  Then he turned to the female Elder. "And you, who worship the moon. Your moon is cold and arrogant; you forget that without the earth you stand upon, your light has no place to fall."

  Zhi Xuan took a deep breath, and as he exhaled, the veil of the mortal shell he had worn for five decades began to crack. The wrinkles on his face faded, his black eyes transformed back into sharp sapphires, his stooped back straightened like a sword fresh from the furnace, and his white hair billowed in the wind, turning back into a glowing, deep purple.

  "Today, I shall not be a woodworker," Zhi Xuan’s voice shifted into a heavy resonance, as if thousands of bronze bells were being struck simultaneously. "But I shall make you know what true Destruction is."

  Zhi Xuan did not waste time; he waved his hand and the Heavenly Sword reappeared. He shattered his cultivation seal, and immediately a vast ocean of late-stage Soul Transformation essence exploded. The spiritual wave swept across the surroundings, the heavy pressure instantly crushing the Five Element cultivators into bloody mist as he unleashed his killing intent.

  Zhi Xuan allowed no sound other than the deathly hum emanating from the Heavenly Sword's blade. He stepped onto the air, which hardened as if it were the wooden floor of his workshop. His face was as cold as eternal ice, devoid of overflowing rage, reflecting only absolute finality.

  "Wait! Senior! We didn't know—" Elder Lei of the Thunder Sword Sect tried to scream, his previously arrogant face now drenched in cold sweat. He raised his heavy sword, trying to summon the last remnants of lightning for defense. "Mercy—"

  SRET!

  Without a single word, Zhi Xuan swung his sword. A thin line of reddish-lightning divided the sky. Elder Lei’s heavy sword crumbled into dust, followed by a red line appearing on the man's neck. His head detached from his shoulders before he could finish his plea, falling to the ground of Cangyun Village—now a tomb for the bringer of lightning.

  "Monster! He's a monster!" Elder Mo of the Black Valley roared in terror. He tried to shatter the Dark Soul Pearl to release a getaway mist, but Zhi Xuan’s fingers moved in the air as if plucking wood fibers.

  Instantly, the space around Elder Mo contracted. The old man shrieked as his bones began to crush under invisible spatial pressure. "No! I am a member of the Black Valley Alliance! If you kill me, our Grand Master will—"

  The crisp sound of breaking bones silenced his threat. Elder Mo’s body exploded into a mist of blood in the air, leaving the Dark Soul Pearl to fall as a useless, dead object beneath Zhi Xuan’s feet.

  The female Elder of the Moon Immortal Sect trembled violently, kneeling upon the clouds and dropping her weapon. "Senior... we are part of the Sacred Pavilion... please, for the sake of the Moon Goddess's face, let us go..."

  Zhi Xuan only looked at her with hollow sapphire eyes. To him, this woman was nothing more than a termite trying to consume the wood he cherished. The Heavenly Sword vibrated once, releasing a wave of essence that formed thousands of needles of light. In a single blink, the female Elder and all her disciples were pierced until they were formless, their souls shattered before they could leave their bodies.

  Seeing this horrific sight, the remaining disciples of the three factions lost their sanity. They threw away their weapons, using forbidden escape techniques that burned their longevity just to get away from the cursed village. The reddish-flame tongues of the Heavenly Sword lashed out wildly among the ruins of Cangyun Village.

  Zhi Xuan did not run; he simply walked through the air, yet each step seemed to leap across space and time. In his eyes, the practitioners trying to flee were merely messy wood fibers that needed to be pruned away.

  "Don't come near me! I am the son of the Great Elder of the Thunder Sword Sect!" a young man screamed hysterically, pushing his flying sword until it emitted black smoke. "If you touch me, the entire western region will hunt you down!"

  Zhi Xuan didn't even glance at him. He merely flicked two fingers to the side. A slash made of pure essence split the youth and his sword in two. Blood sprayed into the air, dripping onto the fields once tilled by Uncle Zhao.

  On the other side, three practitioners from the Black Valley tried to hide behind a shadow mist formation. "He can't possibly see us! Use the Soul-Cloaking Technique!" one of them whispered with chattering teeth.

  However, Zhi Xuan’s dark shadow suddenly elongated and appeared in their midst. Without a word, Zhi Xuan’s hands gripped the heads of two practitioners. With one twist, their necks snapped with a sickening sound. The third practitioner tried to drive a poisoned dagger into Zhi Xuan’s back, but the blade shattered upon touching the grey robe—which had transformed back into his black-and-white robe. Zhi Xuan turned, looked at the man for a moment, and released a burst of essence from his palm that instantly evaporated the practitioner's body into dust particles.

  "Why? Why is there such an existence in this trash heap?!" a female disciple from the Moon Immortal Sect shrieked, her tears mixing with the blood flowing from a wound on her forehead. She crawled on the ground, trying to move away as Zhi Xuan landed calmly a few paces in front of her. "Forgive me... I was only following the Elder’s orders... I don't want to die here!"

  Zhi Xuan’s calm footsteps were the most terrifying answer. He swung the Heavenly Sword in a lazy, sideways motion. A sapphire crescent wave of energy glided out, severing the waist of the woman and ten other disciples standing in a straight line. Silence. Only the crackle of fire devouring the remnants of buildings could be heard.

  "Run! Run to the headquarters!" roared a senior Thunder Sword disciple who had lost an arm. He burned his blood essence—a forbidden technique that ruined his cultivation foundation—for the sake of lightning speed. "Don't look back! Report to the world that death has descended upon Cangyun Village!"

  They scurried like rats whose nest had been torched. The fear they felt had transcended logic. When they looked back, they did not see an old woodworker, but a god of death shrouded in a haunting purple and red aura.

  "That purple hair... a sword capable of splitting the Laws... a gaze that freezes the soul..." one of the surviving Black Valley practitioners screamed with a breaking voice, his eyes bulging until the red veins were clearly visible. "I remember! I remember! That is Gu Fengyan, the Dao Protector of Fairy Ye Xishui!"

  "Gu Fengyan!" the cry shook the air, followed by other screams echoing one another. "He is Gu Fengyan! The Southern Devil who was rumored to have disappeared!"

  The name, Gu Fengyan, echoed among the valleys of Yao Gu, carrying with it the weight of a horror buried for decades. The once-arrogant practitioners were now merely trembling heaps of flesh. They saw the figure of Zhi Xuan standing in the middle of the burning village, surrounded by thousands of energy needles ready to launch.

  Zhi Xuan remained silent. He raised his head to the sky, letting the name Gu Fengyan be screamed by those headed for the gates of hell. The Heavenly Sword in his hand stopped vibrating, now emitting a glow so dense it could swallow the moonlight.

  One final wave of his hand was cast. Thousands of sapphire light needles shot out in all directions, chasing every practitioner still breathing within a ten-mile radius. There was no avoiding them. There was no place to hide. The final screams of the three major factions soared high, then were extinguished simultaneously.

  Cangyun Village returned to silence. Only the sound of fire consuming wood scraps and the heavy scent of blood remained. Zhi Xuan stood in the middle of the ruined road, gazing at the headstones on the hills now covered in the dust of battle. The mortal shell of Grandpa Zhi had vanished entirely, leaving behind the figure of a purple-haired youth with an aura capable of shaking the heavens of Yao Gu.

  "The silence I built for fifty years..." Zhi Xuan whispered, his voice now as cold as a sword fresh from a blood-wash. "...you destroyed in a single night."

  He walked toward the ruins of his woodworking workshop, picked up the black wood statue of the two fairies, then dissolved into a shadow and vanished. Black smoke billowed high from the remains of Cangyun Village, cloaking a morning that should have been bright with the scent of death and scorched wood.

  Above the sky, two streaks of light shot forward at insane speeds before finally landing with a violent impact that sent hot dust flying. Nalan Shu and Nalan Yu stood frozen. Their faces were deathly pale, their breath labored, and their eyes trembled as they stared at the hell that remained. The village where they grew up, the granary where they played—everything had become an expanse of ash.

  "Uncle... Uncle Zhi!" Nalan Yu cried out, his voice breaking.

  He ran with staggering steps, tripping over the smoldering debris of buildings. Nalan Shu followed behind, her fingers clutching her white sect robes so tightly her knuckles turned white. They passed the corpses of practitioners severed in gruesome ways, but they didn't care. There was only one point they sought: a corner at the edge of the village where the old woodworking shop once stood.