The Silver-Winged Flying Swordfish cut through the clouds like a living arrow, its powerful fins beating a silent, steady rhythm. Li Yu stood on the platform on its back, the wind whipping past him, his gaze fixed on the distant, familiar peaks of the Green Mountain Sect. He was returning from his latest trip to Sunken Treasure City, a journey that had become a cornerstone of his quiet, explosive growth.
This trip had been particularly fruitful. He had acquired a rare, deep-sea coral for his master and had a long, insightful conversation with Old Man Jiu, the master alchemist, about the nature of soul-tempering herbs.
On his return journey, as he was flying over a dense, ancient forest known for its rich spiritual energy and dangerous beasts, that his spiritual sense, a constant, passive net, suddenly flared with a warning. He looked down, his eyes narrowing.
In a large, shattered clearing a thousand feet below, a fierce fight was raging. A group of seven cultivators, their robes a simple, unmarked green, were surrounded by a force of at least twenty black-robed cultivators. The green-robed group was clearly on the losing end. They were fighting back-to-back in a desperate, bloody struggle, but they were being systematically overwhelmed.
"An ambush," he noted, his eyes narrowed. "The black-robed cultivators are moving with a ruthless precision. They are not common bandits."
His immediate instinct was to urge the Swordfish to fly faster, to leave this unexpected trouble far behind. This was not his business, and his core principle was to avoid conflict.
But at the exact moment his gaze fell upon the battle, one of the black-robed cultivators, a man with a hawk-like gaze and a powerful spiritual sense, looked up. Their eyes met across the thousand-foot distance. The man's face contorted in a snarl of fury. He shouted, his voice carrying a clear, killing intent. "Witness! Kill him!"
There was no time to flee, no chance to alter his course. Five of the black-robed cultivators immediately broke off from the main fight and shot into the sky, their swords and spirit arts blazing with power.
Li Yu let out a quiet, frustrated sigh. "So much for avoiding trouble," he said to the empty air. "It seems trouble has found me."
The five attackers, all at the Second or Third Stage of Qi Condensation, sneered as they approached. They saw a single, young disciple on a fast-moving beast. To them, this was a simple cleanup job.
Li Yu's eyes went cold. He had wanted to remain hidden. But these people had seen him. They had targeted him. They were loose ends that could expose his presence here. In the vast, empty sky, with no one else to see, his caution demanded not suppression, but absolute, overwhelming annihilation.
"Crimson," he commanded through his spiritual link.
With a furious, draconic roar, the Koi's Sanctuary opened a pinprick portal, and the massive, jade-scaled form of his Rank 4 Marsh-Drake appeared in the air beside the Swordfish. Crimson, enraged at the sudden attack on its master, immediately spewed a torrent of corrosive, black venom.
The leading black-robed cultivator, his face a mask of shock at the sudden appearance of such a powerful beast, threw up a hasty Qi shield. But as he did, Li Yu moved.
He did not feign weakness. He unleashed the full, terrifying might of his Ninth Stage Qi Condensation foundation. His aura, which had been a calm pond, erupted into a raging, abyssal ocean. The pressure alone caused the five attackers to falter, their expressions turning from arrogance to pure terror.
He activated the «Abyssal Dragon's Shadow». He did not stumble or sway. He vanished. One moment he was on the Swordfish, the next he was a phantom, a ripple in space that appeared directly in the midst of the five attackers.
Before they could even react, he struck. His hands formed the first seal of the «Deep-River Seal». He did not use a fraction of his power; he used its full, crushing weight. He executed five palm strikes in the space of a single breath, his movements a blur of silent, deadly grace.
Crushing Current.
Each strike was a sentence of death. The first four disciples didn't even have time to scream. The impossibly heavy, dense True Qi bypassed their defenses and shattered their Qi Cores and internal organs from the inside out. They fell from the sky like broken dolls.
The final attacker, the one whose shield had been corroded by Crimson's venom, stared in soul-shattering horror as his companions were annihilated in an instant. He opened his mouth to scream, but Li Yu was already before him, his eyes as cold and deep as the abyss.
Li Yu's hand closed around the man's throat. Vortex Grip. A spiraling, crushing force of Qi erupted, and the man's neck snapped with a sickening crunch.
The battle, from start to finish, had taken less than three seconds. It was a silent, brutally efficient massacre.
Li Yu stood in the empty sky for a moment, his expression cold and pragmatic. He stripped the storage rings from the five falling corpses with a wave of his spiritual energy before their bodies even hit the forest canopy.
Down below, the remaining black-robed cultivators and the besieged green-robed group all stared up in shock at the sudden, violent turn of events. They had seen their companions fall from the sky, but the speed and efficiency of the slaughter was beyond their comprehension.
Li Yu looked down at the main battle. He was now fully committed. There could be no witnesses.
"Crimson, descend," he commanded, his Ninth Stage aura still blazing.
The great drake roared and plunged towards the ground like a jade meteor, crashing into the flank of the black-robed cultivators. Li Yu followed, landing softly on a high branch of a shattered tree, his expression cold and detached.
The sudden, powerful assault threw the ambushers' formation into chaos. But just as the tide of the battle was about to turn, a new, terrifying pressure descended upon the clearing.
"Incompetent fools," a cold, ancient voice echoed from the depths of the forest. "You cannot even handle a simple cleanup."
A figure emerged from the trees. It was an old man, his face a mask of withered, wrinkled flesh, his eyes glowing with a faint, malevolent red light. His aura was a vast, deep, and terrifying sea of power that dwarfed everyone present. He was a mid-stage Foundation Establishment expert.
He simply waved his hand. A massive, invisible hand of pure spiritual pressure slammed into the clearing. The surviving green-robed cultivators collapsed, their Qi sealed, their bodies paralyzed. Crimson let out a defiant roar, but the pressure crushed it to the ground, its powerful Rank 4 body cracking under the strain.
Li Yu felt the pressure wash over him. It was an absolute, irresistible force. Everything was way too fast for him to process, his body naturally activated his «Tidal Aegis Art» and «Abyssal Leviathan Physique» to their absolute limits, the spiraling currents of Qi beneath his skin meeting the crushing force. His bones, as hard as a leviathan's, groaned under the strain. His organs, fortified by the Kraken's Heart, trembled violently.
The gap between realms was immense. He was holding on, but he could feel his defenses beginning to buckle, the pressure threatening to crush him into a paste.
The old man's red eyes fixed on him, a flicker of surprise in them. "A peak Qi Condensation brat with a truly monstrous physique. You are still standing? Impressive. But it makes no difference. I will enjoy refining your body."
He raised his hand again, intensifying the pressure. Li Yu couldn't process what was going on, the pain and pressure were too much for him. A wave of blackness washed over his vision. His consciousness, battered by the overwhelming force, began to fade. He was going to die.
But in the deepest part of his soul, in the crimson-gold sanctuary of his spirit, something ancient and proud felt the imminent death of its host, its partner. And it would not allow it.
As Li Yu's consciousness teetered on the edge of oblivion, the Koi's Sanctuary trembled. A presence of such profound, ancient, and absolute coldness awakened that the very air in the clearing began to freeze. The crushing spiritual pressure that was about to kill Li Yu simply vanished, negated by a higher, more absolute authority.
A swirling, vortex-like portal of crimson-gold light, opened in the air in front of the collapsing Li Yu. From it, a wave of absolute darkness poured out, solidifying in an instant.
It was Khaos. It was no longer a fist-sized crab. It was a mountainous behemoth, its obsidian carapace blotting out the sun, its colossal pincers casting a shadow of death over the entire clearing. It had emerged in its true form.
The old man paused, his spell half-formed, his face contorting from confusion to pure, soul-shattering terror. "What… what in the heavens is that?"
He never got an answer.
Khaos, its cold, dead eyes fixing on the old man, slowly raised one of its colossal, crystalline pincers. The space around the pincer began to warp and distort. A terrifying, silent energy, a power that was not of this world, gathered at its tip. It was the silent, all-consuming energy of the void.
A beam of pure, absolute blackness, a line of perfect, silent annihilation, shot from the pincer.
The old man's eyes widened in pure terror. He threw up every defensive barrier he possessed, his Foundation Establishment aura flaring like a dying sun.
But it was useless. The black beam touched his shields, and they did not shatter. They simply ceased to exist. The beam touched his body, and he did not explode. He did not scream. He was simply… gone. Erased from the world, with only his storage ring left, it seemed like Khoas knew needed to be kept
Khaos did not pause. Its massive form flickered, moving with a speed that defied its colossal size. It appeared in the midst of the stunned, black-robed cultivators. Its pincers, now moving in a blur of black light, were not cutting or stabbing, it was crushing. Anything touched by its claw just disappeared.
In the space of two seconds, every single one of the remaining ambushers was dead.
The clearing fell into a profound, terrifying silence.
Khaos stood in the center of the devastation for a moment, its cold, dead eyes sweeping over the unconscious survivors. Then, with a flicker, its massive form dissolved back into a stream of void energy and flowed back into the tiny portal, which snapped shut.
Li Yu gasped, his consciousness returning as the pressure vanished, just in time for him to see Khaos crushing the remaining group. He stood, his body trembling, his mind reeling from the sheer, absolute power he had just witnessed. He hadn't been in many fights, especially ones with high level cultivation. He couldn't react or do anything, thankfully Khaos saved him.
He looked at the empty clearing, at the broken, unconscious forms of the green-robed cultivators. He took a deep, shuddering breath. He had survived. He had to clean this up however.
He recalled Crimson, who was looking at the spot where Khaos had been with a deep, instinctual fear, and sent it back to the sanctuary. He then gathered the storage rings from the dust where the black-robed cultivators had been.
He then gathered the five unconscious survivors of the green-robed group.
He asked Khaos to create a small cave for him a bit away to hide inside for the time being with the survivors.
A moment later, a section of a large, stone cliff face silently imploded, leaving behind a deep, dark, and perfectly hidden cave. Li Yu moved the five unconscious cultivators inside, laying them out carefully.