The smile on Jiang Yue's face froze instantly.
"Jiang Li, is this the pretty boy you brought back from wherever you've been?"
Her cold eyes snapped toward Yang Cheng, her voice sharp and scathing. "You've been hiding away all this time—don't tell me you've been fooling around with trash like this? You've truly brought shame upon the Jiang Clan."
Her tone was filled with biting contempt. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she barked, "Men, seize them both!"
The moment her words fell, the four Insight God realm experts behind her narrowed their eyes. Like four predatory eagles, they lunged toward Jiang Li and Yang Cheng in perfect sync.
The air shrieked with killing intent, sharp as blades.
A faint smirk curled on Jiang Yue's lips, as if she could already picture Jiang Li and Yang Cheng pinned to the ground in disgrace.
But in the very next breath—
The crowd on both sides of the street blinked in confusion. The figures of the four experts suddenly blurred.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A string of heavy thuds followed, and those four Insight God experts were sent flying backward—like torn sacks of grain—each one thrown in a different direction.
It all happened in an instant, too fast for the eye to follow.
The onlookers gaped, gasping in shock.
Jiang Yue's mocking smile froze on her face, her pupils contracting sharply. She hadn't even seen how Yang Cheng had moved.
"Impudent!"
Rage and humiliation flooded her mind, shattering her composure. She screamed, "You dare harm members of my Jiang Clan—"
Slap!
A sharp, thunderous crack echoed through the street like an explosion.
This time, everyone saw it clearly.
Yang Cheng didn't even step forward. He merely lifted his hand and swiped through the air. A condensed, invisible palm print crossed the space between them and struck Jiang Yue squarely across the face.
She felt an irresistible force slam into her cheek, sending her body flying off the Qilin's back.
Bang!
She crashed hard onto the bluestone street. Her carefully arranged hair came undone, scattering like straw. One side of her face swelled up rapidly, the mark of five fingers burning bright across her cheek.
"You…"
Jiang Yue struggled to raise her head. One hand clutched her throbbing face, the other trembling as she pointed at Yang Cheng, her eyes wide with outrage and disbelief.
Yang Cheng's voice was calm and cold. "Say one more word—die."
That single word, die, was colder than the depths of winter.
Jiang Yue's rage and curses froze in her throat, unable to escape.
An invisible shadow of death enveloped her body. Her limbs turned to ice, her breath caught in her chest. She didn't dare speak again.
Jiang Li's eyes shimmered with awe.
She had always thought herself fearless, reckless beyond restraint.
But in this moment—watching her master crush the Jiang Clan's arrogance without even lifting a finger—she felt a fiery thrill run up her spine, searing into her very soul.
Compared to him, her so-called defiance was laughably small.
Such a master was too domineering… and far too mesmerizing.
Even if walking into the Jiang Clan meant death itself, she thought, as long as I can follow him, it's worth it.
"Presumptuous!"
A cold, harsh voice cut through the air as a middle-aged man appeared beside Jiang Yue. His face was grim, his aura sharp and suffocating—an Insight God at the peak stage.
As he emerged, rooftops and alleys nearby erupted with motion.
One after another, more than twenty Jiang Clan warriors leapt into view, each exuding a fierce killing aura.
Nearly half of them were Insight God experts—and several were even stronger.
"Capture that man," the middle-aged cultivator barked coldly, "dead or alive!"
The middle-aged man shouted his command and charged at Yang Cheng first, a fierce blade aura exploding from his body like a roaring tempest.
The other twenty-plus Jiang Clan martial experts followed, their killing intent soaring into the sky as they rushed forward to surround Yang Cheng.
All eyes locked on him. Every spectator held their breath, waiting to see how he would deal with this seemingly inescapable death trap.
But then—
Just as the blade aura closed in, and countless strikes were about to swallow Yang Cheng whole—
His figure vanished.
It wasn't speed, nor an afterimage. It was as if he had completely melted into space itself.
Divine Ability · Shrinking the Earth to an Inch.
The next instant—
Shh, shh, shh, shh!
A rapid flurry of sounds, like rain pelting a banana leaf, erupted in the center of the street.
Those watching saw only faint distortions—flickering, twisted shadows flashing past each Jiang Clan warrior in the blink of an eye.
There were no explosions. No deafening shockwaves.
Only stillness.
Within three breaths, the vanished figure reappeared beside Jiang Li. Yang Cheng stood there calmly, as if he had never moved at all.
Yet the twenty-some Jiang Clan elites who had attacked him—every single one of them—had stopped moving entirely.
Their faces were still frozen in savage expressions, mid-charge.
Then—
Thud. Thud. Thud...
They fell one after another, like puppets with their strings cut, collapsing onto the bluestone street.
Dust and the thick stench of blood filled the air, spreading through the long street.
Even the peak Insight God realm guard commander who had led the charge lay among them.
His curved blade halted just before the spot where Yang Cheng had been standing, a thin line of blood running across his throat. His head tilted at an unnatural angle, his eyes wide open—frozen with fear and disbelief.
Dead.
They were all dead.
In just three breaths, more than twenty elite warriors of the Jiang Clan—including ten Insight God cultivators and one at the peak of the realm—were slaughtered.
Before anyone could even process what had happened, the street had turned into a graveyard of still-warm corpses.
The echo of the commander's death cry seemed to arrive only now, reverberating faintly through the buildings, a chilling counterpoint to the silence of death that followed.
The entire street fell eerily quiet.
Even the air seemed frozen. Only the sound of people gasping remained.
Jiang Yue sat paralyzed at the edge of a pool of blood, staring in horror at the heap of corpses that had once been her family's strongest fighters.
Terror crushed her completely. Her face drained of color, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.
Even Jiang Li, who had long grown used to bloodshed and cruelty, felt her heart tremble at the sight.
In that instant, she truly understood—her master's killing intent was far more terrifying than her own.
A thousand times more terrifying.
When she killed, her emotions still stirred.
But her master—he viewed life and death as nothing more than dust, killing as easily as brushing away a speck of ash.
Yang Cheng didn't spare the scene another glance. To him, it was no more significant than crushing a few ants.
His voice was calm, emotionless. "Let's go. To the Jiang Clan."
Meanwhile—
Inside the grand, ancient Jiang Clan ancestral hall, the air was heavy with tension.
At the head of the hall sat an elderly man with silver hair and a gaunt face.
Though his aura was restrained, the natural pressure that radiated from him made every elder in the hall feel suffocated.
This man was the Jiang Clan Patriarch—Jiang Fu, a peak Yin God powerhouse.
Beside him, seated just below, was a youth who appeared astonishingly young.
A chilling, inhuman arrogance lingered between his brows.
He was none other than Jiang Bai—the Jiang Clan's Fifth Grandfather, and a cultivator who had already reached the Yang God realm.