Chapter 850: The Way to Death!
"What was that?"
Shen Anyu had already returned to Liu Ruyan's side deep within Baiwu Valley. The spatial ripples of his supernatural skill, Love's Infinite Teleportation, faded smoothly into the cool mountain air. Out of sheer habit, he kept his invisibility active, leaving his sudden arrival completely undetected by those around him.
Recalling the final glimpse of the scene he had just left behind, his brows drew together in quiet contemplation.
'Let's see what exactly is going on over there.'
Fortunately, the young master of the Shen Clan never operated without a contingency plan. Before departing, he had discreetly deployed a Super-Nanometer Monitoring Robot in the immediate vicinity. It was a piece of technology so infinitesimally small and advanced that even cultivators in the Foundation Establishment realm would find it nearly impossible to detect with their spiritual senses.
As for Zhao Hao, Anyu had already extracted a single drop of the man's blood. With a mere thought, he could activate the Divine Blood Curse and obliterate him from miles away.
Zhao Hao was nothing more than a dead man walking.
… …
Meanwhile, back at Zhao Hao's original location in the desolate wilderness.
The air distorted violently. Two figures—a man and a woman—materialized out of thin air, both draped in the flowing, archaic garments of ancient Yanxia.
The man wore a towering crown and a wide sash over scholarly green robes. He possessed an elegant, handsome face, yet a distinct trace of frivolity lingered in the curve of his brow, entirely shattering the illusion of a proper, disciplined scholar. He appeared to be in his early twenties, but the sheer gravity of the aura radiating from his body was suffocating, far eclipsing the meager pressure of a Land Immortal.
Beside him stood the woman. She was equally young, clad in a minimalist green Daoist robe with an ancient longsword strapped to her back. Her face was an exquisite, oval-shaped masterpiece—a nation-toppling beauty that exuded an icy, untouchable allure. Her exceptionally ample figure seemed to strain against the loose, modest fabric of her robes, yet her demeanor remained completely frozen. Expressionless and aloof, she deliberately kept several feet of distance between herself and the green-robed youth.
"Yunchi, you and I are destined to be Dao companions. It was no easy feat for us to descend into the Secular World for this mission, so why must you act so distant?" Ouyang Che asked, a wicked, charming smile playing on his lips.
"You do not have the right to call me Yunchi," Gu Yunchi replied, her voice dropping to a glacial chill.
"Haha! Your Gu Clan and my Ouyang Clan are the two greatest pillars among the three founding families of the Qingyun Sword Sect. This arranged marriage has long been set in stone by our elders. I cannot defy it, and neither can you." Che's smile thinned into a sneer. "Could it be that you are still pining after that pathetic boy, Lin Yang?"
He took a step closer, his tone dripping with condescension. "The Lin Clan has long since fallen into ruin, and Lin Yang is the biggest piece of trash among them. He is entirely unworthy of you."
"Whether Lin Yang is trash or not is not for you to judge," Yunchi stated, her face an unreadable mask of frost. "But in my eyes, you are vastly inferior to him."
"You!" Che's handsome features twisted in sudden, visceral fury.
To be told he was inferior to a piece of trash like Lin Yang was the ultimate insult. He was the youngest son of the Ouyang Clan's patriarch, the reigning head of the Qingyun Sword Sect's three great families. His innate talent was extraordinary. At such a tender age, he had already stepped into the False Core realm. If he hadn't been deliberately suppressing his cultivation to refine his magical power and solidify his foundation in pursuit of a High-Grade Golden Core, he would have broken through to the Golden Core realm long ago.
And what was Lin Yang? A miserable wretch stuck at the third level of the Qi Refining realm. The Lin Clan was a decaying relic that had absolutely no right to breathe the same air as the Ouyang Clan.
Yet, in the eyes of this woman—his beautiful, promised bride—he, a prodigy with boundless prospects, was somehow lesser than that garbage?
A sharp, venomous glint of killing intent flashed through Che's eyes. It was not directed at Yunchi, but at the worthless Lin Yang. No man could stomach the humiliation of his betrothed harboring another man in her heart.
Yunchi caught that fleeting, murderous gleam. She remained outwardly expressionless, but a subtle, almost imperceptible flicker in her eyes suggested she had just finalized a very difficult decision.
Off to the side, Zhao Hao was completely dumbfounded.
Were this man and woman actual immortals?
He had just watched them tread through the empty air with his own two eyes. Their speed had defied logic, surpassing a supersonic fighter jet as they materialized before him in the blink of an eye, as ethereal and untouchable as deities from a myth.
"Mortal. I have a few questions for you." Che shifted his arrogant gaze down to Zhao Hao, speaking from a height of absolute superiority. "If your answers please me, you shall be handsomely rewarded."
Hearing this, a desperate spark of hope ignited within Zhao Hao's despairing chest. He might have lost his wilderness survival system, but if he could somehow cling to the thigh of a genuine immortal, wouldn't he be able to rise from the ashes once more?
Compared to the heaven-defying power of these beings, what did the Shen Corporation or Yanxia's Shen Clan even amount to?
If Anyu could hear Zhao Hao's inner monologue, he would have only laughed in pity.
Miles away, Anyu watched the high-definition feed transmitted by the Super-Nanometer Monitoring Robot. He narrowed his eyes, analyzing the data.
'Ouyang Che and Gu Yunchi... both are cultivators in the False Core realm. Their foundations are incredibly solid, and their auras are majestic. They are certainly no weaker than that decaying Old Dog Qinghong. If I want to kill them, it will take a bit of effort.'
Indeed, it would only take a bit of effort.
With his current arsenal of lethal methods, Anyu had absolutely nothing to fear.
While his orthodox immortal cultivation was technically low—only at the late stages of the Qi Refining realm—his martial arts prowess had reached the absolute zenith of a Land Immortal. A peak Land Immortal could easily rival an early Foundation Establishment realm cultivator. Add in his terrifying trump cards like the Steel Body, Divine Telekinesis, and the Dual-Phase Life and Death Mystic Light, and the gap vanished entirely.
If it came down to a brutal, life-and-death struggle, Anyu was entirely confident he could take on both Che and Yunchi simultaneously and grind them into dust.
Of course, he wasn't some Heavenly Star of Carnage descended to slaughter the mortal realm. There was no need to initiate a bloodbath without existing grievances, enmity, or a clear path to personal profit.
His decision to leave earlier was simply a tactical retreat; he hadn't been able to ascertain their true strength at a glance, so he chose to secure his position rather than fight blindly over Zhao Hao.
'The Qingyun Sword Sect? Isn't that one of the ten great sects of the Xuanhuang World?'
Having recently extracted the memories from Old Dog Qinghong's soul, Anyu possessed a wealth of detailed intelligence regarding the Xuanhuang World. The Qingyun Sword Sect was a dominant force among the ten great sects, specializing in the Dao of the Sword. Their combat prowess was notoriously unmatched, making them a hornet's nest no one wanted to kick.
The sect was jointly governed by three founding bloodlines: the Lin Clan, the Ouyang Clan, and the Gu Clan. Notably, this Xuanhuang Gu Clan was the direct ancestral lineage of Yanxia's Gu Clan.
According to Qinghong's memories, the Lin Clan had been the undisputed leader of the three families a millennium ago. But judging by Che's arrogant mockery, the Lin Clan had suffered a severe fall from grace.
A declining family, a supposedly worthless young master named Lin Yang, and a stunningly beautiful, cold childhood sweetheart...
Anyu raised an eyebrow, a predatory amusement dancing in his eyes. Could this Lin Yang be a Child of Destiny?
The formula was painfully obvious. If Gu Yunchi was a Destined Heroine, then Lin Yang was almost certainly the Child of Destiny she was tied to.
Anyu's gaze swept over the feed, lingering on Yunchi's incredibly ample figure. A deep, meaningful curve graced the corner of his lips.
Back in the wilderness, Che's expression darkened as he interrogated Zhao Hao. "What do you mean, the Ouyang Clan of Yanxia is gone?"
A thousand years ago, when the Qingyun Sword Sect migrated away from the Secular World and retreated into the Xuanhuang World, the Ouyang Clan had deliberately left behind a branch of bloodline descendants as a contingency plan. After all, the tides of fate were fickle, and no one knew if spiritual energy would ever flourish in the Secular World again.
Up until five hundred years ago, the secular Ouyang Clan had been incredibly prosperous, burning as brightly as oil on a roaring fire. During that era, the spatial passages between the Xuanhuang World and the Secular World were still somewhat stable, allowing Xuanhuang cultivators to occasionally cross over in search of talented disciples and Dao seeds.
But then, a catastrophic upheaval shattered the spatial pathways, turning the crossing into a chaotic death trap. Communication dwindled to nothing. Only recently had the spatial passages begun to stabilize once more.
Yet now, after a mere five hundred years of isolation, his Ouyang Clan was simply gone?
"Y-yes, yes! I swear I've never heard of any Ouyang Clan in Yanxia!" Zhao Hao stammered, trembling violently under the crushing pressure of the immortal. "There is only Yanxia's Shen Clan and Yanxia's Gu Clan..."
The very next second, Zhao Hao's eyes bulged so wide they nearly popped out of his skull.
Che's eyes also widened in sheer, uncomprehending shock. He slowly looked down at his own chest.
The glittering tip of an ancient longsword had pierced straight through his heart from behind, emerging from his sternum without a single drop of blood staining its freezing steel...
[Akarin's Note: "Laodeng" (老登) is a derogatory Northern Chinese internet slang term used to insult an older person, roughly equivalent to calling someone an "old dog," "old geezer," or "old bastard."]
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