Chapter 842: Tremor of the Withered Bone
"Aren't you coming down yet?"
Shen Anyu glanced at the three beauties clinging to him like oversized pendants. He gave each of them a light, deliberate pat and chuckled.
"Ah!"
"You dog!"
Zhong Lingyin and Liu Ruyan yelped, scrambling down from his body. Their faces—ninety percent identical and equally stunning—were flushed. One lowered her head in bashful silence, while the other shot him a heated glare.
Murong Jieyu, however, was blushing so furiously that the crimson hue spread all the way down her tender neck and earlobes.
'He actually patted me there! Was that on purpose, or an accident?' Her mind spun, her heart fluttering wildly against her ribs.
"Wait here. Keep your guard up," Shen Anyu instructed, his tone shifting back to business. "I'm going to deal with that guy."
"Brother Shen..."
"Husband..."
"Shen Anyu..."
Seeing him actually turn back toward the Baiwu Mountain Valley to face a thousand-year-old monster, panic seized the three women. They hurried forward to block his path.
"Brother Shen, it's too dangerous..." Zhong Lingyin's beautiful face twisted with anxiety.
The ancient monstrosity inside had casually unleashed a palm strike that carved a crater seven meters deep and twenty meters wide into the earth. It was absolute devastation.
"Yes, husband, we need to think this through—"
Liu Ruyan's frantic words were abruptly silenced. Shen Anyu pulled her in, sealing her chattering red lips with a deep, forceful kiss that lifted her feet entirely off the ground. Before the others could react, he released her and captured Zhong Lingyin's lips in the same breath.
Finally, he turned to Murong Jieyu.
When their lips met, Murong Jieyu stiffened as if struck by lightning. She froze in place, her beautiful eyes widening into perfect circles.
He... he actually kissed her!
Pressed for time, Shen Anyu kept it to a swift, dominant peck. He pulled back, leaving them with a single, heavy sentence.
"If I have to sacrifice myself to hold him off, run. Don't look back."
Leaving those tragic, moving words hanging in the air, he turned and dashed resolutely into the valley, leaving the three women staring after him with tear-filled eyes.
[Ding! Detected destiny value +5 for Destined Heroine Murong Jieyu. Plundered +15,000 destiny value!]
[Ding! Detected destiny value +83 for Destined Heroine Murong Jieyu. Extra plunder +30,000 destiny value!]
[Ding! Destined Heroine Zhong Lingyin is moved to tears. Plundered +9,999 destiny value!]
[Ding! Destined Heroine Liu Ruyan is moved to tears. Plundered +9,999 destiny value!]
'Throwing out a tragic one-liner really is the fastest way to farm favorability,'Shen Anyu mused, inwardly amused.'But there's no need for tears. What a waste of water resources. They can shed a different kind of moisture for me later.'Naturally, he wasn't going to die. He had a dozen backup plans tucked up his sleeve. If things truly went south, his Love Infinite Teleport would pull him to safety in an instant.'Chen Yuhua will definitely rush over the moment she hears this commotion. If I don't finish off this old fossil quickly, she'll crash the party.'
If there were no treasures involved, the ever-pragmatic Young Master Shen would have gladly let Chen Yuhua clash with the old monster while he sat back to reap the benefits. But there was loot on the line. Letting her handle it now would be like throwing a meat bun at a ravenous dog—a one-way trip with zero returns.
He didn't take the Qinghong Elder of the Yunhai Sect seriously. Despite this being their first encounter, Shen Anyu had already seen through the old monster's hollow foundation.
A thousand years ago, this man might have been a mighty Nascent Soul ancestor, but time had ravaged him. He didn't possess even one percent of his former glory. For a millennium, the elder's Dao Body, essence, blood, and vital energy had been relentlessly drained to nourish the Dao Artifact hidden within the Heavenly Emperor Palace. He was completely withered.
Even his Nascent Soul had shriveled and fractured, causing his cultivation realm to plummet. The current Qinghong Elder couldn't even output the strength of a true Golden Core cultivator. At best, he was hovering at the Peak of the False Core realm, or perhaps a half-step into Golden Core.
"Junior, you dare to return?"
A voice, hoarse with the vicissitudes of time, echoed with genuine surprise.
Qinghong Elder was taken aback. He had been seething over Shen Anyu's escape, terrified that the boy would bring back the heavy hitters from the Heavenly Emperor Palace, permanently ending his chances of a revival. In the elder's mind, the secular world, with its pathetic, diluted spiritual energy, could never produce a peerless young genius like Shen Anyu. Only the Heavenly Emperor Palace had the resources to cultivate such a monster.
Yet, the boy had actually come back alone.
A streak of blue light erupted from the ancient pavilion, slamming into the entrance of the Baiwu Mountain Valley. It formed a barrier, trapping Shen Anyu inside to ensure he couldn't flee a second time.
As the blue light settled, the figure at its center was finally revealed.
Or rather, it wasn't a person at all.
Standing before Shen Anyu was a desiccated corpse draped in a tattered green Daoist robe. Its skin was a terrifying, pallid gray, radiating a suffocating aura of death. The face was a hideous, sunken mask, looking exactly like a life-claiming specter that had just crawled its way out of Hell.
"Heh... that I have fallen to such a pathetic state is entirely the work of your Heavenly Emperor Palace..."
Qinghong Elder's voice dripped with centuries of venomous hatred. Without another word, he thrust out his withered, bone-pale right hand and clenched it into a claw. Instantly, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth within a dozen miles surged into a violent frenzy, churning the sea of clouds above.
Even with a shattered Nascent Soul, a plummeted cultivation base, and a body stripped of its vital essence, his mastery over the ambient energy and his residual Domain were not things a mere junior could withstand.
Qinghong Elder stared at Shen Anyu with the cold, dead eyes of a butcher looking at a slaughtered pig.
"Heh, do you know why I actually dared to step back inside?"
Shen Anyu asked, his tone entirely conversational. He could feel the surrounding spiritual energy violently repelling him. Under this pressure, let alone a Qi Refining cultivator, even someone in the Foundation Establishment realm wouldn't be able to draw a single breath of spiritual energy, rendering them powerless against the elder. Yet, Shen Anyu didn't even blink.
"Because I've got you right where I want you."
He grinned, flashing a row of bright, neat teeth. His slender, fair fingers danced through the air, plucking at unseen zither strings.
In the next instant, the seven flags of the Inverted Five Elements Array shifted their alignment. A mysterious, invisible pulse swept through the void, instantly shattering the suffocating lock on the sky and scattering the gathered spiritual energy into nothingness.
"You..."
For the first time, genuine shock cracked Qinghong Elder's hideous visage. Shen Anyu had actually used an array to seal off the ambient spiritual energy of heaven and earth—an effect that rivaled a true Domain. How could such terrifying array mastery appear in a mere junior?
'This child absolutely cannot be allowed to live!'
The killing intent blazing in Qinghong Elder's sunken eyes intensified into a physical pressure. So young, yet possessing such high cultivation, mastering incredible divine abilities, and wielding such astonishing array formations—calling him a peerless genius was an understatement.
If this boy were a disciple of his Yunhai Sect, Qinghong Elder would have protected him like a supreme treasure. But he was a descendant of the Heavenly Emperor Palace. An enemy. He had to die.
Even stripped of his control over the world's spiritual energy, the elder still possessed his residual Nascent Soul physical body. Though his blood and essence had been drained, leaving him as little more than withered bones wrapped in a thin layer of skin, that skin was incredibly tough. Even high-grade artifacts would struggle to leave a scratch on it.
"Die!"
Without wasting another breath, Qinghong Elder stomped the ground. His skeletal right hand, curving like a dragon's claw, tore through the air straight toward Shen Anyu's heart.
Relying purely on residual physical strength, the strike carried the momentum to shatter mountains. Wherever the claw passed, the turf and black earth were ripped upward, surging forward like a tidal wave of destruction.
A rare flicker of genuine battle intent ignited in Shen Anyu's peach-blossom eyes.
He wanted to test exactly how far his God-level Steel Body had evolved.
Refusing to yield a single inch, Shen Anyu curled his five fingers into a tight fist and punched outward to meet the strike head-on.
Boom!
The moment fist met claw, a terrifying shockwave exploded outward, like a massive meteorite slamming into a placid lake. The ground violently buckled and trembled, mimicking a magnitude-nine earthquake.
Heaven and earth shook!
...
"Am I too late?" A white-robed silhouette suddenly materialized just outside the Baiwu Mountain Valley, her sharp phoenix eyes narrowing slightly at the devastation...
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