Word Count: 3,281 Words
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"Ahem, you've misunderstood."
Xiao Yan coughed lightly and drew his gaze back. A trace of awkwardness flickered across his face. He truly hadn't been staring because of that girl's looks. With Xun Er at his side, no other woman's beauty could genuinely stir his heart.
Xun Er knew him best. A single glance was enough to tell her that what had caught his attention was something else entirely. Even so, she had not missed the way the girl's eyes swept over him the moment she arrived, and a faint wariness rippled through her chest. Her smile remained gentle and composed as she explained, "That girl is Yao Tian's younger sister, Yao Ling. Her cultivation is only at low-level Half-Saint, but her soul is different from the rest. Within the Yao Clan, she is regarded as the one most likely to cultivate her soul to the 'Emperor State.'"
"Emperor State?!" Xiao Yan's eyes widened as he stared at the blue-haired girl. If a Half-Saint possessed an Emperor State soul, how on earth was that combat strength supposed to be measured?!
He knew better than anyone how difficult it was to break through to the Emperor State. Even with the Emperor Soul Technique and a Divine Grade bloodline, he could only temporarily brush against that ethereal, illusory realm. To truly set foot inside an Emperor State soul might take who knew how many years of cultivation.
Even now, Xiao Yan had no clue how to make such a breakthrough. When it came to methods for reaching the Emperor State, he was completely in the dark. Everything he knew about that realm had come from the Hun Clan.
How to break through. What was needed. He hadn't the faintest idea.
Cai Lin and the others were just as stunned, all turning toward Yao Ling with surprise written plainly on their faces. They had each attempted the Yellow Spring Stone Tablet and undergone the trial of Yellow Spring Divine Anger. The Yellow Spring Demon Saint had possessed an Emperor State soul.
Even though that Demon Saint had died countless years ago and only a thread of remnant soul remained, he had still been able to unleash a High Tian Class Dou Technique. One could only imagine how terrifying a complete Emperor State soul would be!
Xun Er nodded gravely. "Right now, on the entire Dou Qi Continent, only two people are confirmed to possess an Emperor State soul. One is my father. The other is the current Clan Head of the Hun Clan, Hun Tiandi."
"There is a rumor that when Yao Ling was born, a very faint thread of remnant soul left behind by Emperor Yao slipped into her own soul, causing some peculiar mutation. She may well become the third person to ever possess an Emperor State soul."
Xiao Yan drew in a sharp breath. Inside the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree's memories, he had once witnessed a glimpse of the Dou God's final hours. Just the negative emotions left behind after a Dou God's death had been enough to manipulate the spiritual intelligence of a supreme divine tree like the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree. The power of a Dou God was beyond imagination!
'So this Yao Ling is that frightening...'
Yao Ling noticed Xiao Yan looking at her. Up close, she appeared remarkably young, around eighteen or nineteen years old. Instead of averting her gaze, she calmly returned his stare without flinching, studying him with a quiet, piercing intensity through her moon-bright pupils. For the briefest moment, a flash of surprise surfaced in their depths before she quickly concealed it.
She had heard Xiao Yan's name countless times within the Yao Clan before coming here. He was the man who, beneath the eyes of every Dou Di Clan, had offered a nine-colored Tier 8 Pill Beast as his proposal pledge for the hand of the Gu Clan's Divine Grade bloodline princess. To any young woman, that kind of romantic gesture was practically cheating. The young ladies of the Yao Clan had gossiped about it endlessly, whispering and fantasizing in private, secretly placing themselves in Xun Er's shoes.
But it was only on arriving here that she realized something else. This man's soul cultivation actually stood on equal footing with her own!
Among her own generation, no one had ever matched her in soul realm, not even the Young Clan Leader of the Hun Clan. And now a man from outside the eight ancient clans had stepped into that ground beside her.
Gu Qing Yang beside Xiao Yan suddenly laughed. "Ever since Brother Xiao Yan married Xun Er, the two girls receiving the most marriage proposals among the younger generation of the Dou God Clans have been the Yao Clan's Yao Ling and the Yan Clan's Huo Zhi. I hear Hun Yu and Hun Feng both sent proposals to the two clans not long ago."
Without anyone realizing it, the Purifying Lotus Demon Flame had drawn the strongest of the Dou God Clans' younger generation into a single gathering.
There was no question about it now. With his current strength and standing, Xiao Yan had stepped fully into the highest stratum of the Dou Qi Continent.
Xiao Yan heard those words and let his gaze drift briefly over Yao Ling before returning to Xun Er. A faint smile tugged at his lips. "Still not as good-looking as Xun Er."
Yao Ling's eyes widened the instant she heard those words, and the cold, distant mask she wore cracked for a brief moment. Heat climbed her cheeks. Shame and indignation churned in her chest. Her lips parted on a sharp retort, only for her to swallow it back down.
That mouth of yours would be better off stitched shut!
They had not exchanged so much as a single word, and he had already turned aside to weigh her against another woman in front of her, and arrived at a verdict!
To a girl who had been praised as a peerless beauty since childhood, it was nothing short of an insult!
"You are the Xiao Yan rumored to have refined a Tier 9 Treasure Pill?"
A skeptical voice cut into the moment.
Xiao Yan's eyes shifted to Yao Tian beside Yao Ling. The Yao Clan's overall strength was only on par with the Shi Clan, perhaps stronger than the Ling Clan, though in an actual fight they were not necessarily superior to the Shi Clan either. What truly added weight to the Yao Clan was the prestige of their alchemists.
What the Yao Clan boasted of most loudly was never battle strength. It was alchemic talent. Yao Tian, said to be capable of refining a Tier 9 Treasure Pill before the age of forty, was the standard the clan had been trumpeting for years.
And now an outsider had appeared, younger than Yao Tian and capable of refining the same grade of pill. That was the one thing the Yao Clan could least accept.
The Yao Clan had always looked down on the alchemists of the Dou Qi Continent. They considered themselves the orthodox line as inheritors of Emperor Yao's legacy, while every other alchemist was third-rate at best, unworthy of being mentioned in the same breath. They held their own Medicinal Ceremony and never set foot in the Pill Gatherings hosted by the Pill Tower.
Xiao Yan understood the Yao Clan's temperament all too well. He smiled faintly. "I refined my Tier 9 Treasure Pill under the eyes of countless witnesses. Unlike you, who is only 'rumored' to be able to refine one."
Little Fairy Doctor covered her mouth to stifle a laugh. Zi Yan burst into open guffaws, planted her hands on her hips, and tilted her head back with a cold sneer. "Xiao Yan refined his without a single failure, using only one set of ingredients, right in front of everyone. You? Who knows how many times you failed and how many sets of materials you burned through just to squeeze out a single pill. A 'rumored' Treasure Pill Guru, nothing more."
In her heart, Zi Yan had long since pronounced Xiao Yan the strongest alchemist alive. As the Dragon Emperor of the Ancient Void Dragon Tribe, she could personally guarantee it!
Cai Lin let a cold, mocking smile touch her lips as she looked toward this so-called Treasure Pill Guru.
Dozens of skeptical eyes converged on Yao Tian. His face turned ashen. His fists clenched, and his teeth ground hard enough to threaten to crack, yet he could not refute a single word. Because the rumor of his refining a Tier 9 Treasure Pill was, in truth, heavily watered down.
He had refined one. That much was real. But the pill had been jointly forged with Elder Yao Wangui, who stood beside him now. Yao Tian's role had been little more than that of an assistant. Afterward, Yao Wangui had handed over all of the credit to him to build up his reputation.
The truth was that the Yao Clan's alchemy had already fallen far short of its ancient height, when their alchemists had stood proud above every other alchemist across the Dou Qi Continent.
These days, the Yao Clan had only two genuine 9th-tier alchemists. The rest all suffered from poor success rates. One was Supreme Elder Yao Wanhuo, who could refine Tier 9 Treasure Pills with a fifty to sixty percent success rate, though if he attempted Tier 9 Mysterious Pills the rate dropped to around ten percent. The other was Clan Head Yao Dan, a true Mysterious Pill Guru. His success rate for Tier 9 Mysterious Pills sat at forty to fifty percent, an impressive figure by any measure.
But that was all. The entire Yao Clan was, beyond any doubt, sliding into decline. As their Dou God Bloodline thinned generation after generation, their alchemic talent grew weaker with it. They had been forced to push Yao Tian to the forefront simply to declare to the world that the Yao Clan had not yet fallen, and that successors still walked among their younger generation.
If not for Yao Dan, that genuine Mysterious Pill Guru, the Yao Clan's count of 9th-tier alchemists would not even match the Pill Tower's.
Their rise had come from bloodline. So had their fall. Once the Dou God Bloodline began to wither, they no longer even knew how to cultivate true alchemic talent, and that was what had carried them, step by step, into the decline they wore today.
As for Xiao Yan, his public identity was the Pill Gathering champion, a true son of the Pill Tower. His master was the cast-off the Yao Clan had discarded, and at such a young age, he had refined a Tier 9 Treasure Pill within the Small Pill Tower beneath the gaze of countless witnesses. He would almost certainly become a Mysterious Pill Guru in the years to come.
This was a direct blow to the Yao Clan's so-called status as the orthodox alchemy lineage. Once they were no longer the strongest alchemy force, they would very likely lose the protection of the other Dou God Clans.
For now, the Gu Clan, Lei Clan, and Yan Clan all still sought them out to refine pills, granting them considerable assistance. Some inheritance sites even dispatched experts to safeguard their alchemists.
But if the Pill Tower became the strongest, and Xiao Yan could refine Tier 9 Mysterious Pills, the result was obvious. The Yao Clan would become the second Xiao Clan, carved up and divided among the rest.
Yao Wangui swept his gaze across the surrounding Dou God Clan experts. A glint flickered in his eyes, and a faint smile touched his lips.
"I recall your master is Yao Chen, isn't he? Speaking of which, although that Yao Chen possessed a lowly Dou God Bloodline and was expelled from the clan by my hand for his offenses, he did receive some of my clan's alchemy inheritance in his youth."
Quite a few of the assembled experts exchanged peculiar looks at those words.
With a single sentence, Yao Wangui had claimed that Xiao Yan's alchemy was so formidable only because he had obtained a sliver of the Yao Clan's inheritance through Yao Chen. He had attributed every one of Xiao Yan's achievements to their clan's legacy in one breath!
In other words: without the Yao Clan, he could never have reached where he stood today.
Forget Xun Er and Cai Lin and the other women, even Hun Mie Sheng let a faint scornful smile cross his face at such shameless rhetoric.
He had seen people bask in reflected glory before, but never anyone this brazen. As the Hall Chief of the Hall of Souls and one of the Hun Clan's senior figures, he knew very well what terrifying heights Xiao Yan's alchemy had reached. This was an alchemist even Hun Tiandi regarded highly, a figure who stood on equal footing with Hun Huzi himself.
Yao Chen, in his youth, had been despised for his lowly bloodline and finally driven out under false charges. Far from receiving the Yao Clan's core inheritance, he had likely been forced to beg for even the scraps at the periphery. His alchemy had been almost entirely self-taught, hammered out on his own in the world beyond the clan's gates.
And Xiao Yan was Yao Chen's disciple on top of that. With so many layers of separation between them, did Yao Wangui truly have the gall to make such a claim?!
Yao Tian straightened his back and lifted his chin, a thin laugh escaping him. "Hehe, since you obtained my Yao Clan's inheritance, you do count as qualified to participate in the Medicinal Ceremony. When the time comes, I'll see with my own eyes whether you're truly as incredible as they say. Speaking of which, that dead master of yours never held the status in the Yao Clan to even be worthy of—"
The last word never left his mouth. A black shadow tore through space and appeared before him in an instant. Xiao Yan stood there, eyes cold as winter steel, staring straight into Yao Tian's face. Those black-pearl pupils mirrored Yao Tian's terror back at him. He had not expected Xiao Yan to explode into motion without the slightest warning!
"Brat, curb your arrogance!"
Xiao Yan's speed was frightening, utterly without prelude. The strike came so abruptly that even Yao Wangui, an early 4-star Dou Saint, was caught off guard. He hurled out a massive hand to intercept the blow.
BOOM!
Xiao Yan's fist drove forward. The terrifying power of an early 3-star Dou Saint detonated through the air, and a crushing weight slammed into Yao Wangui's palm, jolting his heart. 'So heavy!'
BOOM! BOOM!
Two tremendously powerful forces collided. A shockwave erupted outward and hurled Yao Tian backward, blood spraying from his lips as he tumbled away.
"Early 3-star Dou Saint?!"
"Holy crap! Brother Xiao Yan, you—!"
Gu Qing Yang, Hun Feng, Huo Zhi, and the experts of the Lei and Shi Clans all stared with eyes wide, utterly refusing to accept what Xiao Yan's cultivation had become.
"My... this... damn it all..." Gu Qing Yang's entire worldview was crumbling around him. He had only just managed to claim a sliver of advantage by obtaining a Bodhisattva Seed and having a Yao Clan alchemist refine it into a Bodhisattva Pill, breaking through to Dou Saint. Relying on his Grade 9 Dou God Bloodline, he had received the clan's top-tier inheritance, his cultivation soaring by the day, and yet he stood at only late 1-star Dou Saint.
Back then, his cultivation had been far above Xiao Yan's. Even before the Bodhisattva Ancient Tree, he had been considerably stronger! And now he had been overtaken by this much?!! Are you playing with me?!
Fist still trailing the last wisps of force, Xiao Yan's eyes turned colder still. He did not spare Yao Wangui a single glance. His gaze remained locked on the retreating Yao Tian.
Zzzt! Zzzt! Zzzt!!
Silver lightning crackled to life across his body. A sharp whoosh split the air, and a silver-lightning soul clone stepped out of him in the same heartbeat.
Thunder rumbled. The bolt of a figure shot straight toward Yao Tian. Forged from perfected Heavenly State Spiritual Strength, the Three Thousand Lightning Illusionary Body, and the Nine Dragon Lightning Flame, this clone wielded power nearly identical to the main body. Both were early 3-star Dou Saints.
"Perfected Heavenly State Spiritual Strength!!" Hun Feng was on the verge of losing his mind. Is your surname Hun or Xiao?! Even as the Divine Grade bloodline Young Clan Leader of the Hun Clan, his own Spiritual Strength had only reached late Heavenly State!
"Xiao Yan! Stay your hand!" Yao Wangui roared, but Xiao Yan's expression remained as cold and detached as stone. With a single twist, he reversed his grip, seized Yao Wangui's forearm in a backhanded clamp, and held fast. The older man could not tear himself free.
Just as the clone's fingers closed in on Yao Tian's throat, a slender blue-haired figure flashed to his side. Yao Ling raised her hands and wove a seal, those lovely eyes narrowing to a sharp focus, and a vast soul imprint of perfected Heavenly State crashed forth to meet the clone.
"Tch!"
BOOM!
The second Xiao Yan answered in kind, unleashing a soul slash of his own. Two streams of perfected Heavenly State soul force collided head-on. The violent recoil stalled the clone for a single heartbeat, and that heartbeat was all Yao Tian needed to slip beyond reach.
Yet trapped at such close range between the shockwaves of two perfected Heavenly State souls grinding against each other, Yao Tian still suffered grievously. A mouthful of blood burst from his lips, and his face twisted into something savage as he glared at Xiao Yan.
Yao Wangui finally wrenched himself free of Xiao Yan's grip and planted himself between Xiao Yan and the pair behind him, his stance heavy with vigilance. Inside, he was reeling. This brat's strength is actually not beneath my own!!
There was a whole star of difference between them! A full star's gap at the Dou Saint level!
"Xiao Yan, want us to step in?" Zi Yan asked, a grin tugging at her lips.
Xiao Yan slowly shook his head. He had no intention of fighting the Yao Clan to the death here and now. He could sense that this stretch of space lay under the watchful gaze of many supreme experts from the Dou God Clans, and the Yao Clan's elders were among them. The only reason none of them had acted was the pact binding the Dou God Clans.
But if he truly began a slaughter, they would intervene without hesitation to save their own.
"Who the hell do you think you are? A mere alchemist propped up by his own bragging, and you imagine yourself qualified to pass judgment on my master?" Xiao Yan's eyes bored into Yao Tian, his voice cold. "If you weren't a member of the Yao Clan, you'd already have died a hundred times over."
His gaze drifted then to Yao Ling at Yao Tian's side. She had not spoken a single word from the beginning, and yet it was not the higher-cultivated Yao Tian who unsettled him. It was this girl, whose cultivation sat well below his own.
Her Spiritual Strength could actually match his. That was far too absurd!
Yao Ling studied Xiao Yan in return. She knew her brother's proud, dismissive nature all too well. In a sense, he had brought this upon himself. Yet no matter what, he was still her brother. She couldn't simply stand by and watch him be killed!