Ouyang Boyan's throat worked.
"G-Great… Elder…"
The words scraped out, raw and disbelieving.
Ouyang Dihua's jaw hung open.
His mind, so quick to scheme and sneer in the small kingdom below, was suddenly blank. He stared at the man hanging limply from the stranger's grip—half-dead, chest caved in, meridians shattered.
Uncle Guang…?
His heart shrank to a pinprick.
"Uncle Guang?!"
Ouyang Ming's composure cracked for the first time in his life.
The proud, polished chief disciple of Acacia Faction—who had always walked Acacia Peak like a young king—forgot to breathe. His eyes widened, pupils trembling as they darted between Ouyang Guang's ruined body and the man holding him by the neck with one lazy hand.
That man stood suspended above Acacia Peak's central plaza.
He wore simple clothes: a plain robe, an ordinary belt, boots dusted with shattered array-stone. His aura, on the surface, was only Houtian—so "weak" that none of Seven Profound Valleys' protective formations had known what to do with him.
But everything else around him told another story.
The Heaven and Earth Origin energy over Acacia Peak had gone mad. Fire, thunder, and wind Laws twisted in the void like three restless dragons, wrapping around him in invisible coils. Every breath he took pulled the entire valley's elemental essence in and out, as if heaven and earth had unconsciously chosen him as the center of their rhythm.
Ren Ming looked at them.
His gaze was flat.
Calm.
Under that calm, the pressure spilling out of his body only grew more horrifying. Fire, Thunder, and Wind wove a domain that pressed down on every meridian within sight. The temperature of the world tilted with his mood; the wind had already forgotten how to blow unless he allowed it.
The outer and inner court disciples of Acacia Faction felt their knees weaken. The more sensitive among them almost coughed blood on the spot. Their true essence circulation, carefully trained for years along Divine Acacia Power's twisted paths, stuttered like bad instruments.
Even the Xiantian Elders felt their cultivation bases quiver uneasily, as if some instinctive part of their bodies—older than any technique—was shrieking at them to flee.
Ouyang Boyan forcibly steadied himself.
He had always been the pillar of their faction: direct descendant of the Ouyang bloodline, proud Xiantian powerhouse, future Sovereign in everyone's eyes. He could not afford to crumple in front of disciples.
His fingers clenched so tightly around the hilt of his Blue Treasure Sword that the tendons stood out on the back of his hand.
He glared up at Ren, fury and fear warring in his chest.
"You…" His voice came out hoarse, scraped raw. "Who are you? You dare—"
Ren's eyes shifted, only slightly.
"Shut the fuck up."
He didn't raise his voice.
But when those four words left his lips, they rolled through the sky like thunder that had forgotten to make sound. The void itself seemed to vibrate. True essence in every body within range shivered, as if startled.
Inner court disciples flinched.
Several outer court disciples fell out of the sky entirely, only just catching themselves before they smashed into the mountain.
Even Ouyang Boxu's aged face twitched as those words brushed past his ears. For a brief, humiliating instant, the old Xiantian's heart mis-stepped—his true essence circulation faltered on a meridian he'd walked smoothly for thirty years.
Ren didn't bother looking at him again.
"Talking to corpses is a waste of time," he said lazily.
The words were spoken as if he were remarking on the weather.
He lifted his free hand.
Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent stirred.
The sky above Acacia Peak rippled, as if some giant had brushed its surface from the other side. Invisible Dao lines surfaced like veins beneath skin—thin, fine, and impossibly complex.
A translucent curtain of light unfolded from Ren's palm.
At first it was only a narrow band, like a waterfall falling sideways. Then it spread outward in all directions, woven from countless hair-thin sword-lines of Fire, Thunder, and Wind. True essence roared as those three Laws compressed to the extreme, then flattened into lines.
Each line carried a trace of Dao patterns: arcs, loops, intersections that made no sense to Seven Profound Valleys' core disciples, but made the Spiritual Seas of the strongest Sovereigns tremble.
That curtain did not stop at Acacia Peak.
It stretched.
Further.
Further still.
It crossed valleys and rivers, mountain ranges and cloud seas. It ignored distance, ignored spatial barriers, ignored the fact that the one who cast it was "only" Houtian.
It reached toward a small kingdom far to the south.
...
Sky Fortune Kingdom.
Seven Profound Martial House.
The morning sky above the vast compound had been clear.
Now—
Now it tore open.
On the Martial House's central plaza, disciples gasped as one.
Where there had been only blue sky moments before, a massive projection unfurled like a god's tapestry.
Mountains.
Seven mountains, rising like pillars from a mist-filled sea.
At their center, a lush, flower-covered peak whose spiritual energy had just turned wild and chaotic—Acacia Faction's mountain.
At the peak's summit, a man in simple clothes hung in the air, holding a half-dead old man by the neck as if the latter weighed nothing. The man's other hand glowed faintly, Dao lines already forming between his fingers. Beside him, within a shimmering barrier, five familiar figures stood—Na Yi, Na Shui, Qin Xingxuan, Murong Zi, Bai Jingyun.
"Ren… Ren…" Na Shui's voice trembled as she stared at the scene around her, then at the translucent curtain connecting their position to the Martial House. "You—this is—"
Even with Acacia Peak's winds roaring around them, the connection was so clear that every blade of grass in the Martial House's plaza could be seen.
Ren smiled slightly.
"Just a small trick."
It really was—at least, to him.
It was only because his Immortal Soul Bone and terrifying soul had long since stepped into a realm the people of this world could not imagine that he could pull this "small trick" off so casually. He had wrapped his Heaven-Piercing Intent around his consciousness, then stabbed it directly through space, anchoring it to Sky Fortune Martial House's area.
In the plaza below, Qin Ziya's breath caught.
He recognized that sea of clouds. Those seven peaks.
Seven Profound Valleys.
His heart pounded so hard he could hear it.
The illusion in the sky was no illusion at all.
"Seven… Seven Profound Valleys?!" a disciple stammered.
"He actually teleported straight there—this… this is…"
The words died.
The disciples—Human Hall's noisy troublemakers, Earth Hall's diligent grinders, Heavenly Abode's proud geniuses—could only stare.
On Acacia Peak, inner disciples looked up at the curtain of light spreading overhead and froze.
In that new "sky", there was suddenly a small Martial House plaza in a far-off kingdom: a simple Spirit Spring's mist, Martial House's tall gates, the three great halls, the familiar stone platforms where they had once used foreign martial families as stepping stones.
"What is that?"
"Is that… Seven Profound Martial House?"
"Why—how—"
Voices on both sides of the connection tumbled over each other, panic and disbelief mixing into a rough roar.
And then—
Silence.
Someone noticed the man at the center of it all, and silence spread like ink.
Ren's voice cut through the stillness.
"This," he said quietly, "is the difference between heaven and mud."
His fingers tightened.
Ouyang Guang's eyes, already dulled by pain and fear, widened.
For a brief instant, the Great Elder's Xiantian instincts surged. True essence, tempered across decades of cultivation and violence, tried to explode. A lifetime of Acacia Faction secret arts screamed at him.
Burn your meridians. Crack your dantian. Self-destruct. Take this enemy with you.
Heaven-Piercing Intent had no interest in giving him that chance.
Ren's grip closed.
There was no dramatic shattering of bones.
No long, drawn-out scream.
Ouyang Guang's body simply lost cohesion.
From neck to toe, his flesh and bone crumbled into a cloud of impossibly fine blood mist. Each droplet was cut apart a thousand times by Heaven-Piercing's compressed Laws. By the time the wind brushed through, there wasn't enough left to stain Ren's sleeve.
A faint crimson haze briefly dyed the sky above Acacia Peak.
Then even that seemed… eaten.
The air twisted around Ren's fingers, Fire-Thunder-Wind devouring the last traces of blood essence. Somewhere in Acacia Faction's depths, an elder guarding the life stones jolted as one of the brightest lamps on the wall silently went out—not splintered, not shattered, not cracked.
Simply gone.
On both ends of the projection—Martial House plaza and Seven Profound Valleys—everyone held their breath.
In Sky Fortune Martial House, Qin Ziya's hands clenched inside his sleeves.
That was Great Elder Ouyang Guang.
Someone they had once considered an untouchable pillar of the heavens. Someone they had bowed their heads to, tolerated humiliation from, because that was all a small third-grade sect could do.
He had been reduced to mist like some nameless outer disciple not worth leaving a corpse.
The faint despair lingering in the hearts of many Martial House disciples—the despair of "We can never resist Seven Profound Valleys"—cracked.
Ouyang Boyan's mind went white.
His Blue Treasure Sword, which had never once left his side since he reached Xiantian, felt terribly cold in his hand.
Ouyang Boxu's throat moved soundlessly.
Ouyang Wenzong's pupils shrank until only pinpoints of black remained.
Ouyang Dihua's legs shook so violently that he almost fell out of the air.
That was Great Elder Ouyang Guang.
A Xiantian master whose status in Seven Profound Valleys ranked just beneath the Sovereigns and Valley Master. A man whose casual words could decide the rise and fall of small kingdoms.
Now…
Now there was no body.
No broken corpse.
No dying roar that would be remembered in poems.
Ren shook his hand slightly, as if flicking away dust.
His gaze slid over the remaining Acacia Elders.
Ouyang Boyan's face twisted.
His pride, his rage, his fear all tangled into something ugly.
"You—"
"Sit down," Ren said.
His tone was mild.
He flicked his wrist.
Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent surged.
Sword-light appeared in his palm.
It wasn't a physical sword—just a drawn line, pure and terrifyingly sharp, formed from Fire, Thunder, and Wind Essence compressed past the point where ordinary true essence could still be called "true essence".
Around that line, Dao patterns unfolded like a skeletal frame: arcs of Fire Law that dictated how heat must move, lines of Thunder Law that decided how force must fall, traces of Wind Law that specified what direction "sharpness" itself would take.
The sword-light looked simple.
It was anything but.
Ren swept his hand.
The sky lit up.
Sword-light fell like rain.
"Divine Acacia Power—!"
"Blood Demon Claws!"
"Purple Flame Bone Lance!"
In that instant, every Xiantian Elder of Acacia Faction burned their true essence without reservation. Lifetimes of scheming and cruelty, all their lying and flattery and oppression, had been for this sect, this position, this moment.
They could not let their Great Elder's death go unanswered.
Purple flames exploded along the path where Ouyang Guang's body had just dissolved. Bone-piercing cold radiated from them, accompanied by ghostly cries that made weaker disciples' souls tremble. That was the Purple Flame Bone Lance lineage—Divine Acacia Power's most vicious branch.
Blood-colored claw shadows spread across the sky, each one dozens of feet long, true essence condensing at their tips until space began to squeal. That was Blood Demon Claws, Acacia Faction's infamous soul-rending art.
Swords, fists, palms; secret skills accumulated over generations; the full combined might of Acacia Faction's Xiantian backbone erupted toward Ren like a tidal wave, enough force to flatten a small kingdom.
The collision should have tore the peak apart.
But Heaven-Piercing didn't collide.
It pierced.
Ren's sword-light sliced into their techniques almost gently.
To the disciples' eyes, it looked as if a single thin line was cutting into a storm of purple fire and blood claws. It was ridiculous. It was arrogant.
It was… absolute.
Everywhere the line passed, Laws buckled.
Divine Acacia Power's twisted paths, which took in lust and life essence to twist them into flame and poison, were forcibly straightened, then snapped. Blood Demon Claws' horrifying grip on souls fell apart.
"This… impossible—"
Ouyang Boxu's shocked roar was cut in half as the sword-light grazed his body-protecting true essence.
There was no explosion.
No spray of blood.
The sword-light strode through the wave of attacks like a god walking through morning fog.
It split the sky into five clean lines.
Ouyang Boyan met it first.
His Blue Treasure Sword raised high, he poured everything into one desperate block—years of training, nights spent calculating how to step up from core elder to Sovereign, his hatred for the entire lower world that had dared touch his niece-fiancee…
The sword-light touched his blade.
Crack.
The Blue Treasure Sword, a treasured weapon that had accompanied him for decades, shattered with a single crisp sound. Fragments of deep-blue metal scattered like falling stars, their edges still humming with the Divine Acacia Power he had poured into them.
The same line of light slammed into his chest a heartbeat later.
Ren wasn't finished with him yet.
Heaven-Piercing's Dao lines adjusted mid-flight: vital organs, dantian, heart—all were mapped in an instant and marked as "avoid".
Bones, meridians, Sea of True Essence—all were highlighted.
The light turned slightly.
Instead of tearing his heart out, it smashed through his meridian clusters, precisely targeting the nodes that defined his Xiantian circulation.
Bones shattered.
True essence seas cracked like dried-up lakebeds.
The sword-light repeated this three times.
Once for Ouyang Boyan.
Once for Ouyang Boxu.
Once for Ouyang Wenzong.
The three most important Acacia Elders—pillars that had stood unshaken for decades—were hammered from the sky like broken dolls. Their bodies arced through the air and slammed into Acacia Peak's stone platforms with such brutal force that the mountain itself trembled. Stone fractured, spiderweb cracks radiating outward.
They lay in smoking craters, blood pouring from their mouths, limbs at grotesque angles. Their auras clung to life in thin, ragged strands. Their meridians were ruins.
They would never cultivate again.
The other Xiantian Elders were not so "lucky."
Ren's gaze had swept past them once and found nothing worth keeping.
For those Acacia Elders he had no particular use for the sword-light did not twist aside.
It simply sliced through vital points.
Body-protecting true essence dissolved on contact. Meridians burst. Bones liquefied.
Several of them managed half a scream before their bodies exploded into blood mist, meeting Ouyang Guang in oblivion.
Under the projection's doubled sky, blood clouds bloomed on Acacia Peak and then were shredded by invisible wind.
In a single exchange—
Acacia Faction lost most of its Xiantian backbone.
The faction that had once spread its shadow over Sky Fortune Kingdom and countless small sects, whose disciples had swaggered through taverns and auction houses like wolves among sheep, was reduced to broken craters and drifting mist.
Silence.
Absolute silence.
Inner court disciples hovered in mid-air, shaking. Some simply fainted.
Ouyang Dihua's face had turned paper-white.
His eyes trembled as he stared at the crushed forms of his uncle and elders, bodies broken, limbs bent at unnatural angles.
"This… this…" His voice came out as a dry croak. "Who… what…"
The man who had casually smashed his pride under a foot in Sky Fortune Kingdom.
The man who had forced him to cancel his engagement and kneel in front of the Martial House he'd always despised.
At that time, Dihua had still comforted himself.
He had told himself that even if that "Guest Instructor Ren" was strong, he was just a hidden expert from some small world. A twist of fate. A single mountain.
Behind him, Dihua had Seven Profound Valleys.
He had Acacia Peak.
He had Uncle Boyan, Great Elder Guang, Sect Master Shenxiu.
He had the entire system of status, law, and power propping him up.
Now—
He watched all those pillars be cut down like weeds. He watched their titles, their prestige, their arrogance scatter into dust.
Na Shui sucked in a sharp breath.
"This…" Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, as if trying to escape. "This is… one side slaughtering…"
Murong Zi's blood boiled.
Battle-lust, which had risen in her when she first saw Acacia Faction's people, now twisted into something more complicated. Even she, who loved to clash spear to spear and bleed on stone, felt a chill creep up her spine at the sheer one-sidedness of it.
Qin Xingxuan's eyes were wide.
She had always been sensitive to Fire. Now, she could feel every detail of what had just happened: the precise cut of Laws, the way Ren's martial skill pierced through everything.
Compared to that level of control, her own Fire Martial Intent felt like a child waving a torch in the dark on a windy night.
Na Yi's gaze was very calm.
But deep beneath that calm, waves roared.
This is… the height he stands at now…
Bai Jingyun's gaze fell on the broken form of Ouyang Boyan.
That man.
The one who had used her family as bargaining chips, who had forced an engagement onto the Bai clan with a signature on a contract and a threat of annihilation. The one who had treated her as a chess piece that could be moved or sacrificed at will.
He lay in a crater now.
Gasping for breath.
Meridians shattered.
No more sword.
No more towering aura.
No more smug smile.
Her fingers trembled.
Not with fear.
With something that felt like the slow, quiet closing of a door that had been stuck open for years.
On the other side of the projection, in Seven Profound Martial House's plaza, Qin Ziya, Hong Xi, Bi Luo, Ling Sen, Zhu Yan, and all the disciples watched in dead silence.
Even the Human Hall brats, who could always find a joke in any situation, had forgotten they had mouths.
A third-grade sect's faction.
Xiantian Elders.
All crushed under one man's hand, without even the dignity of a drawn-out battle.
Compared to this—
The difference between their Sky Fortune Martial House and Seven Profound Valleys no longer seemed so vast and untouchable.
Compared to Ren—
The gulf between all of them and "heaven" felt as endless as the distance between heaven and earth.
...
Above Acacia Peak, Ren lowered his hand.
His expression never became savage.
His smile was faint, his gaze calm, like someone finishing a chore slightly more tedious than expected.
"Don't worry," he said softly, almost conversational. "All of you will be seeing the Yellow Springs soon enough."
No one answered.
Most of them couldn't have formed words even if they wanted to.
Down below, a furious roar finally broke through the suffocating fear.
"Who dares slaughter my Acacia Faction!"
The roar shook all seven valleys.
The Heaven-Earth origin energy between the mountains boiled.
In the distance, Sword Faction's peak flared. Sword-light rose in a straight, cold line, like a pillar that wanted to pierce the firmament. Blades in a thousand sword tombs hummed in resonance.
Refiner Faction's fire pools surged. Flames shot into the sky like pillars of molten gold, casting distorted shadows across the valley walls.
Array Faction's mountain trembled as countless formation marks lit up in sequence, geometric diagrams forming and dissolving across space.
Puppet Faction's hidden valley stirred; something immense and metal groaned once in the depths.
Mirage Faction's illusions shimmered; the outlines of countless phantom beasts flickered in the air for an instant before vanishing.
Zither Faction's melodies cut off mid-tune; strings snapped one after another as their owners' concentration shattered.
In the next moment, several terrifying auras erupted from deep within Seven Profound Valleys.
Valley Master—Shi Zongtian.
Sword Faction Sovereign—Jiang Wuji.
Refiner Faction Sovereign—Huo Xuan.
Other Sovereigns, other core elders, streaking toward Acacia Peak like shooting stars. Below them chosen disciples and other geniuses followed.
At their head, clad in luxurious Acacia robes, red sword at his waist, purple flames already flickering along his fingers, was Acacia Faction's Sovereign—
Ouyang Shenxiu.
His eyes were bloodshot.
He had felt it, from the moment Ren shattered Acacia Faction's protective array like rotten wood, through the elders' panicked response, to Great Elder Guang's crushing.
He had felt the formation he had guarded for decades crumble under a palm.
He had seen Great Elder Ouyang Guang—whose strength was only half a step beneath his own, who had accompanied him through life-and-death battles—reduced to blood mist like an ant.
Rage burned away caution.
The moment he saw Ren standing calmly in the air above his ruined peak, barrier wrapped around five young women, projection connecting this scene to some far-off Martial House, Ouyang Shenxiu no longer cared who the intruder was.
He no longer cared where he came from.
"You… are courting death!!"
Purple flames erupted from his body.
Divine Acacia Power, cultivated to the seventh layer, roared through his meridians. The twisted meridian paths carved by generations of Ouyang ancestors flared to life, circulating power in a way that no orthodox sect would have dared.
Every vein, every bone, every inch of flesh burned with demonic heat.
His hair whipped in the violent aura.
His eyes turned blood-red, pupils like vertical slits of flame.
He drew his sword.
The Red Sword at his waist—a blade baptized in the blood of enemies across the South Horizon Region, its every chip and scratch a story of slaughter—leapt into his hand with a joyous scream.
Red light erupted along its length.
This was an Acacia sword that had accompanied him for centuries, its sword-spirit steeped in Divine Acacia Power's lust, poison, and flame.
"Boy!"
Shenxiu's voice thundered, rolling between the mountains.
"Even if you were ten times stronger, in Seven Profound Valleys you cannot overturn the heavens!"
He thrust his sword out.
"Purple Flame Crystal Conversion—Blood Flame World Severing!"
Purple flame surged from his hands, flowed down the Red Sword's body, and exploded outward.
The fire wasn't simple heat.
It was the seventh-layer Purple Flame of Divine Acacia Power—cold and scorching at once, burning flesh while leaving an icy dread in the soul. The flame condensed into a layer of purple crystal hugging the blade, thin as a cicada's wing, harder than profound steel.
Then that crystal light erupted.
Purple fire poured out like a flood, then folded in on itself, compressing until it formed a world.
A hue between blood and amethyst dyed heaven and earth.
For a moment, everyone watching felt as if they had been dragged into a world of burning blood—mountains contorting into veins of purple flame, the sky becoming a vaulted ceiling of crystal fire, the air filled with ghostly cries, countless resentful souls shrieking in the wind.
Under that tide, even Xiantian Elders were forced to retreat several hundred feet, fearful of being caught in the aftermath.
Jiang Wuji's eyes narrowed sharply.
Shi Zongtian's expression turned heavy.
Huo Xuan sucked in a cold breath despite himself.
Behind them, the chosen disciples—monstrous talents who normally saw themselves as dragons among men—felt their chests compress. Their meridians protested under the mere leak of pressure.
Na Shui's heart jumped into her throat.
"Ren—"
The barrier around them didn't even tremble.
Ren's smile finally changed.
It became… cruel.
"Good," he said softly. "At least you came out yourself."
He took one step forward inside the barrier.
His body didn't move from where he stood in the air.
But in a deeper sense, something shifted.
Heaven-Piercing Intent, which had been flowing quietly like an undercurrent, suddenly sharpened.
He raised his right hand.
No spear.
No sword.
He simply extended his fingers together, forming a straight line.
Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent wrapped around that line like a second skin.
In his dantian, Fire, Thunder, and Wind seeds flared. True essence surged through meridians that had long surpassed the "perfection" this world understood, flowing as smoothly as water down a mountain.
The ancient imprint of Purple Flood Dragon Divine Thunder coiled around his Lightning Laws, lending them a savage bite. World-level flame burned quietly beneath the surface, no longer needing to roar to assert its existence. Wind, sharpened by endless refinements, honed the edge of his intent until "sharpness" itself seemed embarrassed.
Thunder compressed.
Flame condensed.
Wind carved.
All of it gathered into that one extended hand.
To those watching, it was just a single, pale hand, thrusting forward like a sword.
The purple flame world crashed down.
Ren's hand moved.
He didn't roar a name.
He didn't bother announcing a technique.
He simply thrust.
The world turned white.
For one instant, color vanished. Sound vanished. The howling of resentful souls went mute; the crackle of purple fire flickered out; the roar of Seven Profound Valleys' qi sea fell silent.
Then—
Reality snapped back.
The purple flame world shattered like glass.
Purple flames scattered into countless embers, each ember sliced finer than dust. They tried to burn, but the Laws had been pierced through.
Purple Flame Crystal Conversion, which had dominated countless battles and terrified lower sects, simply burst apart as if it had been a child's trick.
The Red Sword in Shenxiu's hands screamed.
Heaven-Piercing Intent, riding atop compressed Fire-Thunder-Wind, pierced everything in its way.
A hairline crack appeared along the Red Sword's center.
Crack.
The amethyst sheen shattered.
Fragments of crimson metal rained down, each piece still radiating terrifying heat and twisted divine flame, each fragment still sharp enough to kill a Houtian martial artist on contact.
Ouyang Shenxiu's eyes bulged.
The shock of the sword's destruction slammed into his meridians.
He tasted blood.
Before he could even begin to form a second move—
Before Divine Acacia Power's seventh-layer circuits could redirect his power into another killing strike—
Ren's hand was already in front of his chest.
Fast.
It wasn't speed in the sense this world understood.
It was that Heaven-Piercing ignored the concept of distance.
Between one breath and the next, between one heartbeat and the next, Ren's hand simply appeared at Shenxiu's sternum, fingers still extended like a sword.
"Pierce," Ren murmured.
His hand went through.
Flesh parted.
Bone shattered.
Blood erupted in a harsh spray.
On Acacia Peak, countless disciples screamed. Even seasoned Xiantian Elders felt their scalps go numb; some nearly dropped their weapons.
Valley Master Shi Zongtian's pupils shrank to pinpoints.
Jiang Wuji's grip on his sword tightened unconsciously, knuckles whitening.
Huo Xuan's flame essence trembled; his fingers twitched as if feeling phantom pain.
Back in Seven Profound Martial House, the projection showed it all clearly.
The Acacia Sovereign, a man whose status in South Horizon Region had been only half a step beneath the Valley Master, whose name made small countries' kings lower their heads, whose cultivation at Xiantian's extreme peak and Divine Acacia Power's seventh layer had always been regarded as nearly invincible—
Had been pierced through the chest by a single thrust of a stranger's hand.
Ouyang Shenxiu coughed violently.
Blood mixed with purple flames poured from his lips, splattering his chest and the arm impaling him.
His eyes trembled, disbelief, horror, and hatred all warring in that gaze. He searched Ren's face for something—strain, effort, fear, even excitement.
He found only calm.
"You—"
Ren's free hand rose calmly.
He grabbed Shenxiu's face.
Five fingers dug into the Sovereign's cheeks, ignoring the heat of Purple Flame still burning around his skin. Divine Acacia Power's poisonous charm slid off his palm like water off oiled stone.
Then—
He slammed him downward.
Boom.
Acacia Peak's central square exploded.
Stone shattered like cheap porcelain.
Pavilions collapsed, roofs flipping into the air. Courtyards crumpled. Statues of past Acacia Sovereigns disintegrated before they could even be scorched.
Dust and debris erupted in a towering column, then spilled outward in a shockwave that rippled across the entire peak. Formation lines buried deep in the mountain flared in panic, absorbing as much as they could before overloading and popping like overstrained tendons.
When the shockwave finally cleared, there was a massive crater in the center of the peak, deeper and broader than the ones that had held Ouyang Boyan and his brothers.
At its bottom, Ouyang Shenxiu lay half-buried in rubble.
His chest was a ruin.
The hole torn by Ren's hand still poured blood.
His limbs twitched weakly; his aura flickered like a candle in a storm. The residual force of the slam had crushed his organs, shattered his meridians, and nearly extinguished the flame of his life.
He was alive.
Barely.
Na Shui's hand flew to her mouth.
Murong Zi, who moments ago had been ready to charge into battle herself, felt cold sweat slide down her spine.
Qin Xingxuan's fingers tightened around the barrier's edge, knuckles white.
Na Yi's heartbeat pounded so hard she could feel it in her fingertips.
Bai Jingyun—
Bai Jingyun closed her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them again, the faint shadow that had once wrapped around her chest whenever the words "Acacia Faction" were spoken… was gone.
On Seven Profound Valleys' side, no one spoke.
Valley Master Shi Zongtian stared at the crater, at his peer lying broken within it, at the stranger standing calmly above, hand slowly withdrawing, not even stained with blood.
He felt a faint, unfamiliar sensation in his chest.
Not fear, exactly.
More like… the knowledge that the "ceiling" he had believed in for years had been an illusion.
Jiang Wuji's sword-heart trembled.
His entire life, he had pursued the sword. He had believed Seven Profound Valleys' Sword Faction to be the sharpest edge of this small world. Now, for the first time, he tasted what it meant for someone to regard his "sharpness" the way a grown man regarded a child's bamboo toy sword.
Huo Xuan swallowed, throat dry.
The Refiner Sovereign, whose flames could melt profound metals, felt his own fire essence recoil slightly from the aura wrapped around Ren's fingertips.
Ouyang Ming, chief disciple of Acacia Faction, looked like the world had collapsed.
Ouyang Dihua shook so hard he could barely stay afloat in the air, eyes fixed on the crater that held his Sovereign—his ultimate backing—like a broken animal.
In Sky Fortune Martial House's plaza, every disciple, elder, even Qin Ziya himself felt their martial hearts violently shaken.
Ren Ming stood alone above Acacia Peak.
One hand in his pocket.
The other slowly relaxing at his side.
His posture was casual.
His expression was calm.
Only the faint glint in his eyes—that cruel, icy sharpness buried under the lazy smile—told the truth of what he had just done.
Even Murong Zi, Qin Xingxuan, Bai Jingyun, Na Yi, and Na Shui—who had watched him erase Ouyang Guang with one palm, who had felt his gentle hands correct their breathing under the old tree in the Martial House courtyard, who had drunk his tea and argued with him about cultivation methods—
Even they couldn't help the shiver that crawled up their spines.
This man.
The one who brewed tea for them, who stole Na Shui's snacks and then quietly put better ones back in her bag, who corrected Na Yi's spear posture with patient hands, who listened silently to Bai Jingyun's quiet worries under the peach tree—
Was also the man who could step into Seven Profound Valleys, shatter Acacia Faction's array with a flick, crush its Great Elder into blood mist, cripple its Xiantian Elders, and slam its Sovereign into a crater in front of all the Valleys' Sovereigns and disciples.
Ren glanced sideways into the barrier.
His gaze met theirs.
The cruelty faded.
The edge softened.
His lips curved in that familiar, teasing smile.
"Scary?" he asked gently.
Murong Zi snorted, trying very hard not to look as rattled as she felt. Her grip on her spear—summoned out of instinct even inside the barrier—only tightened.
"Hmph. A little brutal, that's all," she said, chin lifting. Then, more quietly, unable to deny the satisfaction bubbling under her shock: "But… it was very satisfying."
Na Shui nodded rapidly, eyes shining even as her knees still felt like water.
"That's right! Serves them right!" she burst out. Then her cheeks colored, and she ducked her head. "But also… um… my knees felt kind of weak for a second. Just a second."
Na Yi's lips quirked.
Her eyes, dark and steady, held a storm of emotions that she kept carefully in check. Admiration. Gratitude. Something sharper, deeper.
Qin Xingxuan took a slow breath.
Her Fire true essence, usually so polite and orderly, now roiled restlessly in its channels, wanting to chase after that Heaven-Piercing line, to understand it.
"…Scary," she admitted honestly. Then her fingers brushed her chest once, where her own martial heart beat. "But… not in a way that makes me want to run."
Bai Jingyun looked at him quietly.
Complex emotions swirled in her gaze—gratitude, awe, a fragile, new warmth that had grown in the quiet days under the tree, in the nights spent studying the modified cultivation arts he'd given her.
They slowly settled into something firm and clear.
"…No," she whispered. "Not scary."
Ren's smile deepened.
"Good," he said softly.