The mist inside the Evil Infested Ridge was thick enough to chew on, a soupy, oppressive haze that tasted of copper and ancient rot. Visibility was strangled to less than ten meters. The air itself seemed to vibrate with a low-frequency hum—the predatory intent of Longevity Spirits and Heavenly Beasts that had prowled these grounds for tens of thousands of years.
For the average cultivator, stepping into this ridge was akin to walking blindfolded into a meat grinder. The pressure of the Grand Dao here was chaotic, a fragmented mess left behind by the falling of gods and devils, weighing down on the soul like a slab of cold iron.
For Ling Feng, it was just Tuesday.
He walked at the very front of the formation, his hands clasped casually behind his head, his posture loose and entirely unbothered. He pursed his lips, whistling a catchy, upbeat pop tune from 2020 that absolutely did not exist in the Nine Worlds. The bright, rhythmic melody clashed horribly with the terrifying, somber atmosphere, creating a surreal dissonance that made the cultivators behind him question his sanity.
Flanking him were the two supreme beauties of the Grand Middle Territory.
To his left was Su Yonghuang, her regal bearing cutting through the gloom, though her golden eyes darted warily into the shadows. To his right walked Li Shuangyan, the icy goddess whose hand rested perpetually on her sword hilt, her senses stretched taut as a bowstring.
And trailing slightly behind, still processing the earthquake that had just occurred in her life, was Chen Baojiao . The fierce princess of the Jewel Pillar Sacred School looked at Ling Feng's back with a mixture of bewilderment and complex curiosity.
Bringing up the rear were the Cleansing Incense Seven and Xu Pei . They were not as relaxed. Their knuckles were white around their weapon hilts, their foreheads beaded with cold sweat. Even with their recent power-ups, the sheer, crushing malice of the Ridge felt like a blade pressed against their throats.
Suddenly, Ling Feng stopped.
The motion was abrupt. The whistling cut off mid-note.
The group nearly collided with him, jerking to a halt. The silence that followed was deafening, amplified by the swirling fog.
Ling Feng turned around slowly, a faint, unreadable smile curling his lips. He looked past the beauties, his gaze locking directly onto Xu Pei.
"Alright, listen up. Class is in session."
"Young Noble?" Xu Pei blinked, her heart skipping a beat. Seeing that confident, easy-going smile usually warmed her spirit, making her feel safe.
But that warmth vanished instantly with his next words.
Ling Feng hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing directly into a particularly dense patch of grey fog to their left.
"There's a pack of Iron-Hide Longevity Wolves about three hundred meters that way," he said, his tone as casual as if he were pointing out a Starbucks. "About fifty of them. Ranging from ten thousand to thirty thousand years in cultivation."
The color drained from the faces of the Cleansing Incense Seven.
"Ah?" Qu Daoli gasped, his aura instinctively flaring in panic.
A thirty-thousand-year-old Heavenly Beast was a danger for cultivators of their level. Their hides were tougher than refined steel, their claws capable of shredding Heaven Mandate cultivators.
A pack of fifty? That wasn't a battle; it was a slaughter.
"Yep," Ling Feng grinned, showing too many teeth. It was a predatory expression. "Go kill them."
"What?" Qu Daoli stammered, his voice cracking. "Big Brother... there are at least fifty! Just how can we kill all of them? That is suicide!"
"Hoh?" Ling Feng's eyes narrowed slightly, his voice dropping an octave, becoming dry and sharp. "What happened to all that bravado when you took out those trashy disciples under that idiot Dao Child earlier? You were feeling pretty good about yourselves then."
He took a step toward them, his casual slouch vanishing, replaced by the imposing stature of a strict instructor.
"I didn't bring you here for a sightseeing tour. I brought you here to learn how to put sharp things into the other guy before he puts sharp things into you. You think the Grand Dao cares if you're outnumbered? You think the Heavens will give you a timeout?"
He turned his gaze to Su Yonghuang, Li Shuangyan, and Chen Baojiao. "Ladies, stay back. Unless they are literally about to die—and I mean head-detached-from-neck dying—do not interfere."
Su Yonghuang frowned, her brows knitting together. "You are throwing them to the wolves. Literally."
"Sink or swim," Ling Feng shrugged, turning his back on the disciples. "Pressure makes diamonds. Or dust. Let's see which one they are. Xu Pei, you take point. And remember..."
He glanced back at the timid girl, his green eyes softening just a fraction.
"When I say you can do it, you literally won't fail. Now go."
For a heartbeat, there was only hesitation. The fear of the ancient beasts paralyzed their limbs. But then, they looked at Ling Feng's broad back. They remembered the miracles he had worked. They remembered how he had stood against the Heavenly Prince for them.
He believes in us.
The disciples exchanged a look. The fear didn't vanish, but it was replaced by a grim, desperate resolve.
"Kill!"
With a roaring battle cry that sounded more like a scream of terror turned into aggression, the Seven and Xu Pei charged into the mist.
Seconds later, the world exploded into violence.
ROAR!
The guttural howls of the Iron-Hide Longevity Wolves shook the trees. The sickening sound of claws rending bark and the clang of metal striking indestructible fur echoed through the clearing.
Ling Feng didn't watch. He leaned back against a dead, blackened tree, crossing his arms and picking at his ear with his pinky finger.
"So, Baojiao," he said, his voice cutting through the sounds of mortal combat nearby. "Have any expectations you want to tell me about? People seem to really treat this place as a huge deal."
Chen Baojiao stood frozen, staring at him. Her fiancé had just been disposed of, and now she was watching a man discuss expectations while his disciples were fighting for their lives ten meters away.
"You are... a strange man, Ling Feng," she admitted, her voice trembling with a mix of awe and confusion. "How can you be so... so..."
"Fun? Relaxed? Not walking around with a stick up my ass?" Ling Feng offered, translating the idiom loosely. "Like I always tell the crew, y'all need to learn how to chill. Stress causes wrinkles. You're too pretty for wrinkles."
Su Yonghuang and Li Shuangyan narrowed their eyes at him. The sheer dissonance between his flirtatious tone and the bloody screams in the background was maddening.
Ignoring their glares, Ling Feng's emerald eyes swept over Chen Baojiao's figure. He wasn't looking at her curves—though he certainly appreciated them—he was looking through them. The Chaos Force allowed him to see the flow of energy, the structure of the Grand Dao within her.
"Speaking of stress," Ling Feng noted, his voice turning analytical. "Your foundation is a hot mess. That 'Jade Pillar' technique your clan forces you to practice? It's trash tier. Literal garbage."
Chen Baojiao stiffened, defensiveness flaring in her eyes. "It is the supreme art of the Jewel Pillar Sacred School! It complements my—"
"Your Physique?" Ling Feng finished for her, cutting her off with a wave of his hand. "Yeah, I know. But that art? It's trying to suppress the physique, not guide it. It's like putting regular unleaded gas into a Ferrari. You're burning your own blood to fuel the engine. Keep that up, and you'll burn out before you hit the Sovereign realm."
Chen Baojiao bit her lip, silence falling over her. She knew he was right. Every time she cultivated, she felt a burning pain in her meridians, a sign that her technique was clashing with her innate constitution.
But hearing a stranger diagnose it so casually—comparing her cultivation to whatever a car—was jarring.
Suddenly, a high-pitched scream cut through the conversation.
"Ahhh!"
It was Xu Pei.
Through the shifting mist, the scene became clear. The Alpha Wolf—a monstrosity the size of a carriage, its fur shimmering with a dark, metallic luster—had swatted Xu Pei's sword aside. It loomed over her, jaws dripping with saliva, eyes glowing with sadistic intelligence.
Xu Pei had fallen back, scrambling in the mud. The beast lunged, aiming for her throat.
Clang!
Li Shuangyan's sword rattled violently in its sheath, an inch of cold steel exposing itself as she prepared to execute a deathly strike to save the girl.
"Don't," Ling Feng commanded.
He didn't shout. He didn't raise his voice. He simply dropped a single syllable that carried the weight of a mountain.
Li Shuangyan froze. Her instincts screamed at her to move, but the pressure emanating from Ling Feng pinned her in place.
"She needs this," Ling Feng said, his eyes cold and unyielding.
In the mud, Xu Pei stared death in the face. She could smell the rotting meat on the wolf's breath. Time seemed to slow down. The terror that had gripped her heart was absolute. 'I'm going to die, she thought. Big Brother isn't stepping in. He's going to let me die.'
Despair clawed at her throat.
But then, a memory surfaced. The way Ling Feng had looked at the Heavenly Prince. The way he had laughed at the heavens. The way he had told her, You literally won't fail.
A spark of indignation ignited in her chest.
Why was she always the weak one?
Why did she have to be protected?
No.
The spark became a flame. The flame became an inferno.
Inside her Inner Void, the trace of Chaos Energy Ling Feng had gifted her—that alien, emerald lightning—woke up. It responded to her desperation. It didn't follow the gentle, flowing laws of the Violent Cloud Chant. It hijacked them.
"Violent Cloud Chant!" Xu Pei screamed, her eyes snapping open, glowing with a faint green light.
She didn't dodge. She lunged forward.
She drove her fist straight into the open maw of the lunging Alpha Wolf.
BOOM!
It wasn't a cultivation impact. It was a kinetic detonation. The Chaos Energy acted as a force multiplier, ignoring the defensive laws of the wolf's iron hide.
The result was gruesome and spectacular. The Alpha Wolf's head didn't just snap back; it disintegrated. Bone shards, brain matter, and teeth exploded outward like a watermelon smashed by a sledgehammer. The headless body of the massive beast carried on for a split second due to momentum before crashing heavily into the mud, sliding to a halt at Xu Pei's feet.
Silence descended on the clearing.
The rest of the wolf pack froze, their primitive instincts screaming that the hierarchy had just been violently rewritten.
The Cleansing Incense Seven stared at their gentle, timid junior sister, who was now standing panting over the corpse of a beast that should have eaten her alive.
Then, the bloodlust took them.
"Kill them all!" Qu Daoli roared, his fear replaced by a savage adrenaline. "For the Cleansing Incense Ancient Sect!"
"Skin them alive!"
The tide turned instantly. Emboldened by the impossible kill, the disciples fought with a ferocity that bordered on madness. They weren't fighting like orthodox cultivators anymore; they were fighting like a pack of wolves themselves.
Minutes later, the last wolf whined and collapsed.
Ling Feng pushed himself off the tree and began a slow, rhythmic clap.
"Not bad," he called out, walking into the carnage. "Solid work, team. You guys flailed around like headless chickens for the first minute—seriously, your footwork was embarrassing—but you stuck the landing."
He stopped next to Xu Pei, who was staring at her blood-soaked hands in disbelief. He reached out and patted her head, ignoring the gore.
"Told you," he winked. "Now, strip them. Marrow, bones, blood, Life Rings. Take it all. We don't waste loot in this house. The house needs resources."
As the disciples began the gruesome task of butchering the beasts, harvesting the valuable materials with a newfound, greedy efficiency, Ling Feng turned back to Su Yonghuang.
"We need to make a detour," he said, his tone shifting. The playfulness was gone, replaced by the calculating look of a predator planning a heist.
"A detour? The treasury is deeper in," Su Yonghuang noted, confused.
"Treasures are cool, but staff is better," Ling Feng said cryptically. "We need a pharmacist. An alchemist. Someone to cook up pills so I don't have to waste my time stirring pots."
"Do you have a candidate in mind? Here? In the ridge?"
"Oh yeah," Ling Feng grinned. "A frog. A very tricky frog that likes to hide."
Minutes later, they moved deeper into the ridge. The pressure of the Grand Dao grew heavier, weighing down on the souls of everyone present.
Even Su Yonghuang, with her formidable cultivation, felt the strain.
But Ling Feng walked as if gravity were merely a suggestion. The Chaos Force within him didn't resist the Grand Dao; it existed outside of it. It was like a submarine moving through water—sealed off, self-contained, and utterly unaffected by the pressure outside.
Ling Feng halted near a swampy, desolate area. The water was black and stagnant, bubbling occasionally with noxious gas. To the naked eye, it was empty. To the Divine Sense of a cultivator, it was just mud and gloom.
But Ling Feng wasn't using eyes, and he wasn't using Divine Sense.
Inside his Inner Void, the Yellow Chaos Emerald [Mastery: Mind/Energy] pulsed once.
An invisible radar swept out from him. It didn't scan for spirit energy; it scanned for intent. It bypassed the stealth formations, the spatial folds, and the ancient concealment arts of the Emperor's Domination world. It sought out a specific energy signature—ancient, alchemy-flavored, and distinctly cowardly.
Found you, Ling Feng thought, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips.
He turned to a patch of empty air hovering above a particularly foul-smelling mud pool.
"Alright, Kermit. Come on out. I know you're there."
The group looked at him, bewildered. There was absolutely nothing there.
"Are you... speaking to the mud, Young Noble?" Chen Baojiao asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.
"I'm speaking to the coward hiding in the dimension fold," Ling Feng replied loudly, crossing his arms. "Come on out! I have a job offer! Free flies! Unlimited pond water!"
Silence. The wind howled mournfully.
"Playing hard to get? I hate that game," Ling Feng sighed, shaking his head. "Why does everyone in this universe have to be so difficult?"
He extended his right hand toward the empty space.
The air around his fingers began to warp. It didn't shimmer like heat haze; it cracked. The space within the ridge groaned as something alien forced its way in.
[Green Chaos Emerald: Chaos Control - Spatial Grip]
He didn't freeze time. He grabbed space itself.
Ling Feng clenched his fist as if gripping an invisible throat and pulled.
RIIIIIP!
The sound was nauseating, like thick canvas being torn apart by a giant. The concealment formation didn't just fail; it shattered.
From the void, a stone object tumbled out. It looked like a toad-like statue, ancient and weathered. As it fell, it flailed its stone limbs in a panic, trying to bounce away, its movements blurring as it attempted to shift coordinates and vanish back into the safety of the void.
It was the Myriad Heavenly Cauldron, the legendary item that possessed its own sentience and mastery over alchemy, an item that even Immortal Emperors would covet.
"Oh no you don't!" Ling Feng barked.
He snapped his fingers.
[Green Chaos Emerald: Space Lock]
A cube of emerald energy materialized around the frog instantly. The air inside the cube turned solid. The stone frog slammed into the invisible wall with a dull thunk, sliding down the side of the energy barrier like a cartoon character.
The frog trembled, frantically pushing against the green walls, but it was useless. This wasn't a seal formed by Dao Laws that could be unraveled; it was absolute spatial lockdown.
"Calm down, will you? I'm not here to hurt you... well, mostly," Ling Feng said casually, walking up to the floating green cage. He peered at the stone frog like a curious child looking at a bug in a jar. "Thankfully, you're not one of those spirits that can talk. Dealing with a chatty rock would be annoying."
The frog froze. It stared unblinkingly at Ling Feng. Its stone eyes, usually filled with the arrogance of an ancient being, were now filled with confusion. It tried to sense Ling Feng's cultivation.
It sensed... nothing.
No Life Wheel. No Fate Palace. No Dao.
Just a terrifying, abyssal ocean of green energy that felt older, hungrier, and more chaotic than the Heaven's Will itself.
Ling Feng lowered the cage until he was eye-level with the terrified antique.
"Look, here's the deal, froggy," Ling Feng said, his voice smooth but laced with steel. "I'm building a sect. We need pills. You have the recipes. You're coming with me."
The frog trembled again, shaking its head defiantly. It was a divine object! It would not submit to a mere mortal!
"Listen," Ling Feng leaned in, his green eyes glowing. "I just ripped you out of a dimensional fold with my bare hand. I'm not using Dao Laws. I'm using physics that you can't even comprehend. You can either sit in this swamp for another million years waiting for a 'Destined One,' or you can come with me, witness the rise of the greatest sect in history, and maybe—just maybe—I'll let you evolve."
He let a tiny spark of Chaos Energy leak from his fingertip and pass through the barrier. It touched the stone skin of the cauldron.
Zzzzt.
The frog shivered. It felt the raw potential of the energy. It was intoxicating. It was dangerous. It was... pure. It was energy that bypassed the restrictions of the Heavenly Dao.
Ling Feng chuckled lightly. "So, are we doing this? or do I have to turn you into a really heavy paperweight for my desk?"
The frog grumbled, shifting its weight. It looked at the swamp, then at the crackling emerald energy. Slowly, reluctantly, it nodded.
"Good choice," Ling Feng grinned.
He snapped his fingers, dissolving the cage. Before the frog could change its mind, he grabbed it by one of its stone legs and simply shoved it into his Inner Void.
Xu Pei, who had been watching this surreal interaction with her mouth open, stepped forward. "Young Noble... that was...a frog?"
Ling Feng dusted off his hands. "A special frog. As I said, it's just a new vending machine for us. We'll set it up in the alchemy lab when we get back. It can crank out Physique Pastes for you guys."
He turned to the group, his energy high. "Alright, let's keep moving! Operation: Loot Everything is still in effect. I want this ridge stripped bare before lunch!"
With the confident stride of a man who owned the world, Ling Feng led his awe-struck sect deeper into the swirling, poisonous embrace of the Evil Infested Ridge.