Ren let that one word hang for a breath.
Silence pressed down on Acacia Peak.
Then his gaze swept across the mountain.
Ruined pavilions.
Collapsed formations.
Crater after crater where Elders had once floated above the common crowd like distant stars.
Acacia Peak, once wrapped in a haze of seductive light and intoxicating fragrances, now looked like a battlefield after a divine punishment. Fractured jade tiles, shattered pleasure halls, twisted remnants of grand formations… all of it lay under that calm, indifferent gaze.
The Ouyang clan's core was gathered at the center of the devastation.
Ouyang Ming.
Ouyang Ziyun.
Several remaining elders, their robes stained with dust and blood.
Their expressions were a jumble of fear, confusion, disbelief—like gamblers who had bet their lives on a rigged table and were only now realizing it.
Further out, the other Factions' experts hovered in the air, surrounding Acacia Peak in a wide ring.
Sword Faction's chosen stood with blades trembling in their hands as they suppressed the instinctive urge to draw. Sharp sword intent leaked from between clenched fingers and white knuckles.
Refiner Faction's flame-clad geniuses watched with pupils contracted to pinpoints. The flames around their bodies, once blazing proudly, flickered uncertainly in the oppressive atmosphere.
Array Faction's robed elders had already half-circulated their arts, fingers moving in practiced mudras—only to discover that the core nodes their formations usually anchored to had been severed. Their senses reached for those familiar pillars of power and grasped only emptiness.
From Sword Faction's peak, a thin sword-like strand of True Essence was still rising, straight and cold, piercing the clouds like a solitary blade—Jiang Wuji's sword-heart locked in silent vigilance.
From the deepest valley, a vast, restrained aura lay coiled like an ancient dragon sleeping under the earth—Shi Zongtian, Valley Master of Seven Profound Valleys, watching with a face like stone.
Above, in the projection formed over the Seven Profound Martial House, a hundred thousand gazes watched silently.
Qin Ziya.
Hong Xi.
Bi Luo.
Ling Sen, Zhu Yan, Ta Ku.
Human and Earth Hall disciples who had never even seen a Xiantian master before this day, staring at the floating image where Xiantian experts were being smashed into the ground like chickens.
Within the Martial House, hearts pounded like war drums.
On the peak itself, Ren rolled his shoulders once, as if loosening stiff joints after a short nap.
"Then," he murmured, tone almost lazy, "let's finish this properly."
His eyes sharpened.
He lifted his hand.
He did not shout.
He did not spread his arms wide like some dramatist on a stage.
He simply pointed his fingers downward.
True essence stirred.
Heaven and earth responded.
On Acacia Peak, the spiritual energy that had been scattered by the collapse of the arrays suddenly trembled—then flowed.
Countless thin streams of Heaven-Earth Origin energy rose from every corner of the mountain like pale ribbons of light.
From medicine gardens where rare herbs had drunk spiritual mist for a hundred years.
From jade pavilions built atop hidden nodes.
From underground warehouses where Acacia Faction had hoarded its heritage—pills, treasures, spirit materials—since its founding.
Jade bottles cracked open with soft popping sounds, releasing pill fragrance that should have intoxicated the senses. Instead, the aroma was ripped away mid-air, devoured by some invisible force.
Ancient trees shuddered. Their roots glowed faintly, the last bits of Heaven-Earth Origin energy they had hoarded over centuries being drawn up against their will.
Underneath, deep in the mountain's bones, a spiritual vein that had once been tamed by Ouyang Xun groaned.
Its flow… reversed.
"This is—!"
"Spiritual vein… being forcibly diverted?!"
Array masters, who understood better than anyone what it meant to control a spiritual vein, went pale to their lips.
Refiner Faction's elders stared blankly.
They had labored for decades to forge treasure furnaces using Acacia's Heaven-Earth Origin energy, carefully siphoning off streams so as not to destabilize the vein. They had always treated it like a dragon lying under the peak—its temper unpredictable, its wrath capable of collapsing the entire mountain.
Now that dragon was simply… picked up by the neck.
Its flow torn free and dragged toward one man.
It was like watching the sky be turned upside down.
All that energy gathered overhead.
It whirled into a vast, invisible vortex. Clouds distorted; colors bled from the world as if even light were being drawn in.
At its center stood Ren Ming.
Within his body, for a breath, heaven and earth went silent.
Then—
Houtian True Essence, compressed to the limit by the Heretical God Force and the Modified Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians, suddenly burned brighter.
His True Essence sea rumbled like an ocean about to overturn.
The barrier that separated Houtian from Xiantian—that threshold most martial artists would batter against for years, sacrificing lifespan and burning blood just to open a crack—appeared before him as a thin, brittle film.
He didn't even feel the need to "strike."
His Ancient Ming bloodline, coiled quietly in every cell, stirred lazily—as if a predator that had been half-dozing finally scented proper prey.
It opened its maw.
It devoured.
Every thread of Heaven-Earth Origin energy that poured into his body was seized, crushed, stripped of impurities in an instant, converted into something his own Dao could use.
The film… tore.
Between one heartbeat and the next, his True Essence sea condensed, contracted into a single, blinding point.
The next heartbeat, it exploded outward in an entirely new form.
Xiantian True Essence.
Heavy.
Dense.
No longer bound by the shackles of the mortal world, no longer needing to breathe based on mundane heaven and earth. It circulated with a presence that made lesser cultivators instinctively want to kneel.
His meridians widened like rivers during flood season, banks breaking to form new channels. Gateways opened. Orifices connected. The dantian's structure shifted, lines of force rearranging themselves into patterns that could carry not just the laws of this world, but the heavier, wilder Dao that flowed through his inner Twelve Heavens.
Outside, the vortex of Heaven-Earth Origin energy thickened.
It should have turned any Peak Houtian martial artist into a balloon filled beyond bursting—meridians rupturing, bones shattering, organs bursting like rotten fruit.
Within Ren's body, the Ancient Ming bloodline devoured it like an endlessly hungry beast that had finally been given meat worthy of its fangs.
Rivers of True Essence became seas.
Seas became an ocean.
The realm barrier shattered.
Xiantian.
The aura didn't simply rise.
It leapt.
On Acacia Peak, every Xiantian expert felt their own True Essence wail.
Their cores trembled, their circulation stuttered, as if an invisible hand had reached into their bodies and pressed down on their cultivation.
"This… this is impossible…"
"Such a breakthrough… he's treating realms like steps on a staircase…"
Ouyang Ming's throat bobbed.
His eyes were filled with wild, bloodshot horror.
Just breaths ago, this man had still clearly been Houtian. Now—
In Seven Profound Martial House, Qin Ziya's legs nearly gave out from under him.
"Just now he was… Houtian," he whispered, voice raw. "Now…"
He could not finish the sentence.
In the projection overhead, Ren's aura had already stabilized.
Xiantian with a perfect foundation.
Not the shaky, inflated "perfection" of someone who had swallowed too many pills and stuffed their meridians with borrowed power.
His True Essence flowed with terrifying ease.
Every breath harmonized with heaven and earth.
Every circulation carried the imprint of Fire, Thunder, and Wind—fourth-level Laws compressed together, layered atop the ferocity of his bodily cultivation.
On Sword Faction's peak, Jiang Wuji's expression finally changed.
His sword-heart, honed across innumerable life-and-death battles, suddenly felt pressure.
Not just from above.
From everywhere.
It was suffocation.
As if an invisible hand had closed around the blade in his heart, preventing it from being fully drawn.
His domineering sword intent shook once, like a sword in a storm, then steadied—but a thin sheen of sweat had appeared on his back without him noticing.
Beside him, Valley Master Shi Zongtian's gaze turned as heavy as a mountain range.
From another direction, an old man in simple gray robes stepped into the air.
His hair and beard were snow-white. Deep wrinkles scored his face, but his eyes shone like cold stars. He carried the scent of ancient dust, as if he had not taken a step outside his seclusion chamber in decades.
Jiang Huan.
Highest Elder of Seven Profound Valleys.
In a third-grade sect like Seven Profound Valleys, a Revolving Core expert stood at the absolute pinnacle; their six hundred years of heritage had only ever produced one such elder, their Elder Ancestor.
In this era, Jiang Huan had already stepped into the Revolving Core realm.
Within his dantian, a Revolving Core rotated slowly, like a miniature star, radiating power that far surpassed Extreme Xiantian. Even Shi Zongtian and Jiang Wuji, who stood at the very peak of Xiantian, were half a step beneath him.
The moment Ren's Xiantian aura stabilized, Jiang Huan moved.
Not to attack.
To stand between Ren and the core of Seven Profound Valleys.
His presence was like a silent mountain range stretching across the sky, cutting off Ren from the Valleys behind him.
Because for the first time, he could feel it clearly.
That young man's aura—
It did not lose to his Revolving Core realm.
In some aspects, it even pressed down on him.
"This child…" Jiang Huan's pupils shrank to pinpoints. "He has only just stepped into Xiantian, yet his True Essence foundation is so solid… it is comparable to… no, more terrifying than…"
Words failed him.
Ren tilted his head slightly.
His gaze swept over Shi Zongtian, Jiang Wuji, Jiang Huan.
Then down at the ruins of Acacia Peak.
He smiled.
"This Acacia Faction of yours," he said conversationally, "is quite something."
His voice was not loud.
But it spread clearly across the peak, across the Valleys, across the projection in Seven Profound Martial House.
"Taking whatever women they want." His eyes slid over a trembling row of female disciples in thin, revealing veils, standing pale-faced at the edge of a flower-lined avenue, the perfumes that once suffocated their senses now spoiled by the stench of blood.
"Pillaging small kingdoms. Using 'recruitment' as a leash."
Each word fell like a slap.
Jiang Wuji's jaw tightened.
Shi Zongtian's hands clenched behind his back until the veins bulged.
Acacia's methods… could they truly deny them?
Within Seven Profound Valleys, everyone knew. It was just that some evils were quietly tolerated so long as they did not disturb the balance too much.
Ren's gaze slid toward the Ouyang clan's core.
"To them," he continued mildly, chin lifting toward the projection where countless Martial House disciples watched, "you're a pillar that protects the region. To yourselves, you've been treating the South Horizon like your backyard for a long time."
He gave a small, careless shrug.
"Honestly, I don't care about that," he went on. "You can play however you want in your own courtyard."
His eyes cooled.
"But you tried to touch my women. You tried to forcibly marry Bai Jingyun."
His voice dropped, the warmth fading like sunlight behind a cloud.
"So…"
He raised his hand.
"…for that, you die."
The air froze.
Even the howling mountain wind seemed to pause.
In the barrier erected for Seven Profound Martial House's projection, Na Shui's breath hitched.
Murong Zi's blood burned, Fire intent stirring restlessly in her meridians.
Qin Xingxuan's grip tightened unconsciously around her spear until her knuckles whitened.
Na Yi's pupils constricted, a faint coldness flickering in her calm eyes.
Bai Jingyun's fingers dug into her robe, knuckles white, heartbeat loud in her ears.
On Acacia Peak, Ouyang Ming's heart plummeted into an icy abyss.
"No…!"
In Seven Profound Martial House's plaza, Qin Ziya's mouth opened.
"Ren Ming, wait—!"
Shi Zongtian's voice cut across the air, heavy with authority that had ruled the Valleys for decades.
"Little friend Ren!" he barked. "Leave some room—"
"Stop!"
Two shouts overlapped his.
Jiang Wuji's voice, sharp as a drawn sword.
Jiang Huan's, thick with Revolving Core power.
Sword light exploded.
Revolving Core power surged.
Jiang Wuji's sword-world unfurled—countless sword shadows rising from the void like a tidal wave of blades, forming a boundless ocean that rushed toward Ren. Each sword shadow carried killing intent tempered across a lifetime, each arc of light sharp enough to cut the sky.
At the same time, Jiang Huan's Revolving Core spun at full speed.
Power poured out, distorting space. The sky around his palm blurred as he thrust it forward. Within that palm imprint, one could faintly see the silhouettes of mountains, rivers, and a vast sect—Seven Profound Valleys' destiny, gathered and compressed.
They did not attack to kill.
Seven Profound Valleys could not afford to kill a man who had just slaughtered Acacia Faction like crushing ants and broken into Xiantian under their roof.
They wanted to stop him.
To salvage what threads of face they could.
To prevent this conflict from turning into an irreconcilable blood feud that would drag the entire sect into disaster.
Ren's eyes did not even flicker.
He moved his fingers.
Two lines of light appeared.
Heaven-Piercing.
They were thin.
Almost colorless.
To the naked eye, they looked like faint cracks in the air, too subtle to focus on.
Yet every martial artist present felt their hearts clench the moment those lines appeared—as if some invisible rule had been declared, as if the world itself had been told to make way.
Down in the crater, Ouyang Shenxiu, broken and bleeding, felt his soul tremble.
On the shattered stone, Ouyang Boyan, Ouyang Boxu, Ouyang Wenzong—all crippled but still conscious—stared upward in naked horror.
Jiang Wuji's sword-ocean roared down.
Sword worlds overlapped, layers upon layers of blade light grinding space into powder.
Jiang Huan's palm imprint, carrying the full weight of a Revolving Core expert, slammed forward like a falling mountain.
The two Heaven-Piercing sword-lights… simply cut.
They did not "clash" with the incoming power.
They pierced through it.
To them, nearly half of the sword-ocean's force and nearly half of the palm imprint's condensed power was treated as meaningless noise—True Essence and Law Essence that might as well not exist. Heaven-Piercing's Dao folded space along the shortest path between Ren's will and his targets, ignoring anything that was not directly aligned with that line.
Sword shadows tore apart like mist.
The majestic sword-ocean split from the center, dissolving into scattered motes of dim light that rained down uselessly.
Jiang Huan's palm imprint, which could have flattened an entire mountain range, collapsed like a fragile sandcastle swept aside by a rising tide.
The two Heaven-Piercing strands did not slow.
They descended.
They did not aim for hearts or heads.
They pierced shoulders.
Blood sprayed.
Jiang Wuji staggered backward, sword flying from his hand as one Heaven-Piercing line drilled through his right shoulder. It shredded meridians, nearly cracking his shoulder bone apart. His sword intent, which had always been firm and unshaken, wavered violently, nearly collapsing.
Jiang Huan's body trembled.
The second Heaven-Piercing line punched straight through his left shoulder.
Layered protective True Essence shattered.
The defensive frame of a Revolving Core expert crumpled as if it were made of paper. The force nearly spun his entire body sideways; only decades of unshakable cultivation and iron will kept him from being flung back like a rag doll.
"Ugh—!"
Both men coughed blood at the same time.
Red droplets scattered through the air, instantly evaporating into fine mist under the pressure of the colliding Laws.
Jiang Huan's hands shook.
He stared at Ren, pupils shrinking to needle points.
…Even with my Revolving Core…
I cannot block a single casual flick of his fingers…?
The sky went silent again.
The entire Seven Profound Valleys—who had just watched their Acacia Sovereign be smashed into a crater—now watched their Highest Elder and Sword Faction Sovereign be injured in a single exchange.
A single flick.
On Acacia Peak, countless disciples' faces went white.
In Seven Profound Martial House's plaza, even the most arrogant Heavenly Abode disciples felt a chill crawl up from the soles of their feet to the crowns of their heads.
Ren lowered his hand.
"I gave you a chance to watch," he said calmly. "That was already me being generous."
His tone was light.
Not mocking, not angry.
Just stating a fact.
He turned his head slightly.
His gaze fell on Ouyang Shenxiu.
On Ouyang Boyan.
On Ouyang Boxu.
On Ouyang Wenzong.
On the few remaining Xiantian Elders of Acacia Faction whom he had already crippled, their meridians in tatters, limbs broken, but consciousness still intact.
They all stiffened.
"I left you alive," Ren said softly, "so you could clearly see the gap."
"You saw your Great Elder crushed like an ant."
"You saw your Sovereign pierced through and hammered into the ground."
The crater where Shenxiu lay, his chest caved in, blood pooling beneath him, flashed in front of their eyes.
His smile showed a hint of teeth.
"That despair clawing at your hearts right now? That knowledge that nothing you do can change what comes next?"
He nodded once.
"That's the only mercy Acacia Faction gets."
He lifted his fingers.
Heaven-Piercing sword-lines gathered at their tips—six, seven, eight, nine thin strands, each one as fine as spider silk, so faint that if one looked away, they might doubt they were ever there.
Jiang Huan's voice was hoarse, the wound in his shoulder burning.
"Ren—! Stop! If you slaughter them all here—"
The sword-lines fell.
There was no grand spectacle.
No rivers of blood.
No limbs flying.
The lines simply appeared at the center of each forehead.
Ouyang Shenxiu's eyes widened.
For a heartbeat, the world slowed for him.
He saw Acacia Peak, shattered.
He saw disciples kneeling in terror.
He saw the faces of women the faction had forced into its ranks, veils hiding eyes full of hatred and numb resignation. He saw clans ruined for refusing marriage proposals. Small kingdoms crushed because they had dared to say "no" to Acacia Faction's demands.
He saw the path he had walked, step by step, convinced that the strong had the right to take what they wanted.
He tried to speak.
No sound came.
The light in his eyes went out.
With a soft, almost inaudible sound, his skull cracked along an invisible seam.
Blood and brain matter did not spill.
They were instantly burned to ash by Fire and erased by Thunder along the cut—Heaven-Piercing's compressed Laws devouring everything. His head turned to powder, scattering like gray sand in the mountain wind.
Ouyang Boyan's head exploded in the same silent fashion.
Ouyang Boxu's carefully cultivated arrogance—gone.
Ouyang Wenzong's painstakingly nourished cultivation—gone.
The other remaining Xiantian Elders of Acacia Faction, whose names had struck fear into the South Horizon Region for decades, followed.
One breath.
Nine heads.
Turned to drifting dust.
No corpses.
No graves.
Only a faint, chilling emptiness where their auras had once been.
On Acacia Peak, every Ouyang clansman felt their knees weaken.
Some fell from the sky outright, panic scrambling their meridians as they barely managed to arrest their fall above the shattered stone.
"Gr–Grandfather…"
"Uncle… Elder…"
Voices trembled, broke, choked on tears.
Ouyang Ming's vision blurred.
His fingers scrabbled in empty air, as if trying to grab hold of something already gone.
All his life, he had believed that as the chief disciple of Acacia Faction, he would one day succeed Shenxiu.
That he would inherit the Sovereign's mantle.
That he would stand at the top of the South Horizon Region, commanding respect from every country beneath Seven Profound Valleys, looking down on people like Qin Ziya, on small kingdoms like Sky Fortune.
Now—
His Sovereign was a broken body in a crater.
His Great Elder and Xiantian Elders were drifting dust.
The lineage that had supported his arrogance his entire life had been severed in the space of a few breaths.
Ren's gaze slid toward Ouyang Dihua.
The man who had once walked into Sky Fortune Kingdom as if he were descending from the heavens, smiling gently as he placed a collar around Bai Jingyun's neck in the name of "engagement."
Now—
Ouyang Dihua's shoulders shook uncontrollably.
His eyes were wide, bloodshot, fixed on the crater where Shenxiu lay dying and the spot where his fellow elders had vanished.
His entire body trembled as if he were freezing.
"You… you…" he stammered.
Every word tasted of ashes.
The unshakable faith he had once had in "Acacia Faction," in "Seven Profound Valleys," in "Sovereigns" and "Great Elders" had been shredded to ribbons.
The pillars he had leaned on—
Gone.
The names he had relied on—
Turned to dust.
Now, when he looked at Ren, there was no longer a trace of arrogance in his gaze.
Only naked, animal terror.
Ren's expression did not change.
He extended his hand.
A thin thread of True Essence wrapped around Ouyang Dihua's body, lifting him off the ground like a dead chicken.
Dihua's lips moved soundlessly.
He had too many words.
Complaints.
Denials.
Regrets.
Excuses.
None of them left his mouth.
Ren's eyes were calm.
"The height of your despair," he said softly, "still isn't enough to balance what you tried to do."
His voice was relaxed, almost gentle.
That gentleness made the words colder.
He flicked his fingers.
Ouyang Dihua exploded into a fine blood mist.
No bones fell.
No fragments of flesh dropped to the ground.
No trace remained.
Only a faint metallic tang spread through the air before being devoured by the vortex of Ren's aura and dispersed.
Within Ren's True Essence barrier, Bai Jingyun's fingers trembled.
She watched every detail.
The man who had once used her family.
The man who had treated her as a bargaining chip, as currency to purchase favor from Acacia Faction.
Gone.
Completely gone.
Her chest tightened.
All the suffocating weight of those days—of being led like livestock toward a cage disguised as a wedding—surged up in her throat.
Then… loosened.
In that instant, it was as if an invisible set of chains—cold, iron, rusted—snapped around her shoulders and fell away.
She exhaled slowly.
The breath left her like fog rising from a frozen river in early spring.
Her shoulders, always held with a certain controlled stiffness, relaxed by a fraction.
In the barrier, Ren glanced sideways at her.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a breath across distance and projection.
His gaze was calm, steady, carrying no triumph and no gentleness he needed to put into words.
He did not speak.
He did not need to.
Her gaze lowered.
Her lips moved.
"…Thank you," she whispered, voice barely audible even to herself.
Ren's mouth curved.
Not in a wide grin, not in mocking humor.
Just a small, real smile that touched his eyes for a heartbeat.