With a casual gesture, I reached up and caught the attack in my bare hand.
The condensed dao energy that should have obliterated everything within ten miles crackled harmlessly between my fingers like captured lightning.
"This is your ultimate technique?" I asked, genuinely disappointed. "Elder Liu, I expected better from someone of your reputation."
I closed my fist, and the energy dispersed harmlessly, flowing into the environment around us.
Where it touched, flowers bloomed and trees grew taller, the excess power becoming nourishment for new life.
Elder Liu's face went ashen. "W-what are you?"
"I am what this realm needed," I replied, my voice carrying finality. "What it's always needed—someone strong enough to break the chains of stagnation and lead it toward true advancement."
All around us, the surviving cultivators were collapsing to their knees, their will to fight broken not by violence, but by the sheer overwhelming superiority we'd demonstrated.
