The narrow cobblestone alleyway of the Grand Medicine Quarter had turned into an absolute vacuum of cold, suffocating pressure.
On the high slate rooftops surrounding the alley, eight Stage-5 High Sovereigns from the Golden-Eagle Sect stood like predatory specters. Their combined spiritual domains formed a massive, dark-red cage of spatial suppression that locked down every cubic inch of atmosphere. Below, standing on the frozen cobblestones, Grand Elder Eagle-Ancestor's pure crimson eyes burned with the arrogant, absolute confidence of a Stage-6 Sovereign—a realm that had transcended the physical boundaries of mortal cultivation to command the very laws of space.
Yet, as Li-Wen took that single, calm step forward, the entire atmosphere within the narrow alleyway shifted violently.
It was not a wave of chaotic spiritual energy. It was the sudden, absolute manifestation of a physical domain so dense and bone-snappingly cold that the spatial suppression cage established by the eight Stage-5 Sovereigns on the rooftops began to groan under microscopic stress!
Now that the dark-violet Void-Piercing Needle had been completely atomized by the Ninth-Refinement Earth-Core Liquid, Li-Wen's Stage-5 Peak Sovereign energy and his primordial physical marrow resonated together in perfect, seamless harmony for the very first time since he had left the Eastern Seas.
A microscopic sheen of sapphire-blue frost began to bloom across the frozen cobblestones beneath his leather boots, spreading outward in silent, geometric ripples.
" Arrogant fool!" Grand Elder Eagle-Ancestor hissed, his voice like rusted iron scraping over raw bone. "You think recovering your meridians allows you to challenge a Stage-6 Sovereign?! In my Blood-Eagle Spatial Domain, your physical kinetic force is slowed by ten thousand times! Kneel!"
Eagle-Ancestor raised his skeletal right hand, encased in its five-clawed glove of black meteorite iron, and slammed his palm violently down toward the empty air!
BOOOM—!
The space directly above Li-Wen's head folded violently!
A colossal, five-hundred-foot claw forged from dark crimson spatial force materialized out of thin air, descending like a falling mountain of blood-red iron! The spatial pressure was so immense that the thick stone walls of the surrounding buildings cracked instantly, their basalt foundations splintering into fine powder!
On the rooftops, the eight Stage-5 Sovereigns sneered maliciously, expecting to see the solitary man crushed into a flat smear of crimson paste upon the cobblestones.
Down in the alleyway, Li-Wen did not even raise his head to look at the falling spatial claw.
He simply stood with his right hand extended, his broad palm facing forward, his posture straight and immovable as an ancient glacier.
"Xiao-Yue," Li-Wen murmured softly, his raspy voice flat, calm, and utterly undisturbed by the descending mountain of spatial force. "Hold the lantern high."
"Okay, Brother Li-Wen!" Xiao-Yue replied sweetly, raising her pink lotus lantern. Its soft ruby glow created a quiet three-foot sphere of comforting warmth that completely isolated her small boots from the cracking cobblestones.
Li-Wen's right hand formed a simple, loose fist.
He did not execute a complex martial technique. He did not summon elemental magic. He simply released the combined, unsealed physical mass of his absolute-zero marrow alongside a single, concentrated thread of his restored Stage-5 Peak Sovereign energy!
He threw a straight, simple punch directly into the descending spatial claw.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!
An ear-splitting, apocalyptic roar shattered the silence of the Grand Medicine Quarter!
It was not merely an explosion—it was the total, catastrophic collapse of spatial resistance!
The five-hundred-foot dark crimson spatial claw constructed by a Stage-6 Sovereign did not merely break or shatter. The microsecond Li-Wen's fist made contact with the spatial energy, a wave of absolute-zero sapphire shockwave erupted from his knuckles, snap-freezing the spatial law itself! The crimson claw froze into a gigantic, pale-blue crystalline sculpture mid-air before violently exploding into billions of microscopic, sparkling frost-dust particles that drifted harmlessly into the cold air!
"WHAT?!" Grand Elder Eagle-Ancestor's eyes dilated in pure, unadulterated shock! His skeletal body stumbled backward three steps, a thin thread of black blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as his spatial domain was violently backfired! "MY SPATIAL LAW WAS FROZEN?! IMPOSSIBLE! YOU ARE ONLY AT THE PEAK OF STAGE-5! HOW CAN PHYSICAL COLD FREEZE SPATIAL FORCE?!"
High on the rooftops, the eight Stage-5 Sovereigns gasped in horror, their hands trembling so violently that their drawn blades clattered against their scabbards!
Li-Wen did not give them a single second to comprehend their terror.
His dark, void-like eyes slowly drifted up toward the eight Sovereigns standing on the rooftops.
"You blocked the light," Li-Wen said flatly, his raspy voice carrying an absolute, unyielding coldness into the sky.
He pulled his right hand back slightly and swept his open palm horizontally across the air in a casual, backhanded flick.
SWOOSH—!
A crescent wave of sapphire-blue physical kinetic force—three hundred yards wide and thinner than a razor blade—slashed horizontally through the air!
"DEFEND! ACTIVATE SOVEREIGN SHIELDS—!" One of the Stage-5 High Sovereigns screamed in sheer, hysterical panic, burning his life essence to unleash a mountain-like defensive barrier!
It was entirely useless.
CRUNCH—! CRUNCH—! CRUNCH—!
The crescent sapphire wave passed through the eight Stage-5 Sovereigns, their mountain-grade defensive barriers, their legendary armors, and the slate roofs beneath their feet as easily as a red-hot iron wire slicing through soft butter!
The eight Stage-5 High Sovereigns didn't even have the time to scream. The moment the sapphire wave touched their bodies, their internal blood, their golden cores, and their souls were instantly snap-froze into solid blocks of pale-blue ice, before shattering silently into eight small heaps of harmless frost-dust that drifted off the rooftops!
In less than two seconds, the entire core council of the Golden-Eagle Sect—eight Stage-5 High Sovereigns—was erased from existence!
Silence—absolute, horrifying, and bone-chilling silence—returned to the narrow alleyway.
Inside the Silent-Pill Pavilion, Lady Mu-Qing stood behind the heavy oak door, looking through a small window shutter with wide, glassy eyes. Her hands pressed tightly against her pale chest, her heart pounding like a wild drum. She had known the Northern Sovereign was strong, but seeing him dismantle eight High-Grade Sovereigns with a casual flick of his wrist was a sight that completely shattered her understanding of the martial realm!
Out in the alleyway, Grand Elder Eagle-Ancestor was the only one left standing.
His dark-red robes were torn, his long white hair wild and unkempt, and his glowing crimson eyes were now filled with pure, unadulterated madness and terror. He looked at the empty rooftops where his eight core elders had stood moments ago, then looked back at the broad-shouldered man walking toward him with slow, unhurried steps.
"Monster..." Eagle-Ancestor whimpered, his raspy voice shaking uncontrollably as he dragged his five-clawed meteorite glove through the snow, retreating step by step. "You're not a Stage-5 cultivator... You have cultivated the Absolute Primordial Body! You have reached physical realm parity with Stage-6 without needing spatial ascension!"
Li-Wen stopped ten paces in front of the trembling patriarch.
His hands returned casually to his coat pockets, his expression as smooth, flat, and undisturbed as an ancient frozen lake under a winter moon.
"Your eagle had no wings," Li-Wen said softly, his deep voice cutting through the freezing air. "Your spatial law was too thin."
"DON'T COME NEAR ME! I AM THE GRAND ELDER OF THE GOLDEN-EAGLE SECT! OUR ANCESTRAL MOUNTAIN HAS THREE STAGE-6 ANCESTORS!" Eagle-Ancestor roared in frantic, pathetic desperation, burning every single drop of his Stage-6 blood essence!
"BLOOD-EAGLE SACRIFICE—SPATIAL ESCAPE!"
Eagle-Ancestor screamed as his entire body erupted into a blinding sphere of dark-red blood flames! The spatial air behind his back cracked open into a jagged, black void rift three feet wide! He intended to sacrifice forty percent of his lifespan to instantly warp three thousand miles back to his sect's ancestral mountain!
His upper torso was already stepping backward into the black spatial rift, a psychotic, vengeful grin twisting his wrinkled face! "Hahaha! Northern Sovereign! Once I return to the ancestral mountain, our three Stage-6 Ancestors will activate the Supreme Heaven-Killing Array and hunt you across the entire Western Continent—!"
Before he could finish his psychotic sentence, Li-Wen simply took a half-step forward.
He did not draw his heavy blade. He did not run.
He simply raised his left leather boot and stomped his heel firmly onto the cobblestone floor.
STOMP.
A single, microscopic ripple of absolute-zero sapphire light expanded outward from his boot heel, traveling along the stone floor and shooting straight up into the open spatial rift!
CRACKLE—! CRUNCH—!
The jagged, three-foot black void rift—a phenomenon of pure spatial law—was instantly snap-froze by the absolute-zero kinetic cold! The black void turned into a solid, pale-blue block of frozen spatial ice mid-air, completely locking Eagle-Ancestor's lower body inside the frozen spatial matrix!
"WHAT?! MY SPATIAL WARP WAS FROZEN IN MID-AIR?!" Eagle-Ancestor shrieked in absolute, unspeakable horror, his body half-stuck inside the frozen blue rift, unable to move a single millimeter!
Li-Wen walked up to the half-frozen Stage-6 Sovereign.
He looked down into Eagle-Ancestor's terrified crimson eyes with absolute, unreadable indifference.
He slowly extended his right index finger and lightly tapped the forehead of the black meteorite claw glove Eagle-Ancestor held up in a desperate attempt to block.
TAP.
A tiny, microscopic drop of pale-blue frost transferred from Li-Wen's fingertip onto the meteorite iron glove.
CRACK—!
The nine-thousand-year-old black meteorite iron glove snap-froze in a microsecond, turning into brittle glass, before shattering into fine dust! The pale-blue frost expanded instantly, spreading up Eagle-Ancestor's arm, across his broad shoulders, into his neck, and down into his Stage-6 golden core!
Eagle-Ancestor's frantic, screaming face froze mid-expression.
His eyes, his dark-red blood, his Stage-6 spatial law, and his four-hundred-year-old soul snap-froze into a single, lifelike pale-blue ice statue standing in the center of the alleyway.
CRUMB.
A soft gust of cold mountain wind blew through the narrow alleyway.
The pale-blue ice statue of Grand Elder Eagle-Ancestor, along with the frozen spatial rift behind him, collapsed silently into a small, sparkling heap of pale-blue frost-dust that melted harmlessly into the cobblestones.
The supreme patriarch of the Golden-Eagle Sect—a terrifying Stage-6 Sovereign who had ruled the Western Province for a century—was erased from existence without Li-Wen even drawing the heavy blade from his back.
The quiet alleyway of the Grand Medicine Quarter returned to its serene, tranquil silence.
The dark-red spatial cage was gone. The cold mountain wind swept through the narrow street, clearing away the lingering metallic scent of blood and replacing it once more with the earthy, rich fragrance of dried herbs and pine wood.
The heavy oak doors of the Silent-Pill Pavilion clicked open softly.
Lady Mu-Qing stepped out into the alleyway, her white silk robes fluttering gently in the breeze. She looked at the smooth, clean cobblestones where eight Stage-5 Sovereigns and a Stage-6 Grand Elder had stood just minutes ago—now completely empty, without a single drop of blood or a single weapon fragment remaining.
She looked at the tall, broad-shouldered man in the dark coat standing before her, her violet eyes shining with deep, unconditional reverence.
She dropped to both knees, bowing her silver-haired head all the way to the clean cobblestones.
"Junior Mu-Qing... bids farewell to the Northern Sovereign," Mu-Qing whispered softly, her melodious voice filled with absolute respect. "May Senior's path across the Western Continent remain forever unyielding."
Li-Wen turned his body slowly toward her, offering a brief, polite nod.
"Keep the shop quiet," Li-Wen said softly, his deep, raspy voice calm and steady. "The herbs are good."
He reached down and gently wrapped his broad fingers around Xiao-Yue's small, gloved hand once more.
Xiao-Yue raised her head, her clear eyes looking up at him with a bright, sweet smile. She held her pink lotus lantern high, its warm ruby light illuminating the clean, stone avenue leading out of the medicine quarter.
"Brother Li-Wen! Look, the sun is high up now!" Xiao-Yue pointed her small finger toward the bright golden sky above the city roofs. "Is the next road going to have more sweet oat cakes?"
"If you wish to eat them, we will find them," Li-Wen murmured, his dark, void-like eyes reflecting the warm golden rays of the afternoon sun.
Side by side, the solitary Northern Sovereign and the small girl holding her pink lotus lantern walked away from the Silent-Pill Pavilion, stepping out of the Grand Medicine Quarter with calm, steady strides, heading toward the western gates of Winter-Frost City and onto the vast, ancient highways of the Western Continent beyond.
See you in next chapter....