Inside the opulent banquet hall of the Zhao estate, the air was thick with the scent of expensive wine and spiritual incense. Zhao Yan sat at a table of carved sun-stone, his previous anger at the pavilion replaced by a smug, oily charm as he leaned toward the Princess of the Great Solaris Kingdom.
He regaled her with exaggerated tales of his family's influence, his eyes gleaming with ambition as he tried to secure a deeper connection with the royal bloodline. The laughter of nobles and the gentle music of lutes created a scene of perfect, undisturbed prestige, with Zhao Yan convinced that his "Shadow Hounds" would soon return with the head of the arrogant boy in white.
The atmosphere of refined elegance was shattered when a disciple from the Soul Tablet Hall burst through the heavy vermillion doors, his face ashen and his breathing ragged. In his panicked sprint, he collided with a pedestal, sending a priceless,
thousand-year-old celadon vase crashing to the floor in a spray of ceramic shards. The music stopped instantly. "Patriarch! Young Master!" the disciple shrieked, falling to his knees as he trembled violently.
"The Shadow Squad... the tablets of all thirty members... they shattered simultaneously! Not a single one remains! The Shadow Hounds have been completely annihilated!"
The Zhao Family Head, Zhao Chen, slammed his fist onto the table, the wood splintering under his fury as the Princess looked on with a cold, judging gaze. Feeling his family's "face" being dragged through the dirt in front of royalty, his eyes turned a murderous shade of crimson. Without a moment's hesitation,
he stood and bellowed for the family's military might to mobilize. He immediately dispatched a high-level pursuit team consisting of ten elders: nine of whom were seasoned Golden Core experts between levels 2 and 3,
led by a fearsome Great Elder at the Peak Golden Core realm. He ordered them to bring the boy back alive so he could personally skin him in the city square.
This sudden mobilization showcased the terrifying depth of the Zhao Family's foundation; while they were only a 9th-tier family, they boasted a staggering total of twenty Golden Core elders,
a number that rivaled many small sects. However, their true trump card—and the reason they held so much sway in Solar City—remained hidden in the forbidden depths of the estate: their Sole Ancestor, a monstrous figure at the Nascent Soul Level 4 stage.
As the elders blurred into the night-like streaks of golden light, the Zhao Family Head remained standing in the hall, his heart pounding with a strange, underlying sense of dread he couldn't quite explain.
Lin Feng found a secluded spot near the outskirts of the city, where a massive, ancient willow tree draped its emerald branches over the still waters of a crystalline pond.
Sitting cross-legged upon the mossy roots, he closed his eyes to enter a state of deep meditation, focusing entirely on the turbulent Qi within his meridians. Using the Eternity Divine Technique for the first time in a real slaughter had left his spiritual sea roiling; the technique's profound nature was like an endless ocean,
and he needed to harmonize its rhythm with his own heartbeat. As he breathed, the surrounding spiritual energy began to swirl gently around him, drawn in by the sheer gravity of his Nascent Soul Level 4 cultivation, creating a peaceful vacuum that separated him from the chaos of the outside world.
Deep within his consciousness, Lin Feng visualized the invisible sword intent he had unleashed in the alleyway, refining it from a raw explosion of power into a singular, razor-sharp thread. Every time he recalled the sensation of the strike, the "Butterfly" of his intent seemed to undergo a metamorphosis, shedding its rough edges and becoming more ethereal and absolute.
The willow leaves above him began to tremble, not from the wind, but in resonance with the sharpening aura radiating from his body; some leaves were even sliced cleanly in half as they drifted through the air near him.
He wasn't just recovering his strength; he was tempering his soul, turning the gentle senior brother of the Eternal Sect into a blade that could sever fate itself, all while the soft ripples of the pond reflected a face that grew increasingly calm and focused.
The stillness of the pond was shattered as the ten Zhao elders descended like golden streaks of light, surrounding the ancient willow tree with their auras flaring. They looked at the seated youth in his plain white robes and began to laugh, their voices dripping with disdain and arrogance.
"So this is the 'monster' who killed our Shadow Hounds? A mere brat playing at being a hermit?" the Great Elder sneered, while the others joined in, hurling insults at his lineage, his sect, and his supposed cowardice. They mocked him for sitting still, calling him a "cripple frozen in fear" and a "dead man who doesn't know he's already in his grave."
Yet, Lin Feng remained as motionless as a statue, the insults sliding off him like water off a lotus leaf, his eyes still closed in a state of perfect, terrifying calm.
Suddenly, the air grew heavy, and a soft shring echoed through the clearing as Lin Feng slowly unsheathed his Xuan-grade sword. As the cold steel caught the moonlight, he finally spoke, answering their previous insults one by one with a voice like cracking ice.
With every sentence he uttered, he took a step or made a slight flick of his wrist; before the echoes of his words could even fade, a Golden Core elder would fall.
One by one, the level 2 and 3 experts were silenced—some clutched their throats as invisible gashes appeared, others were split in half before they could even raise their weapons. In less than a minute, nine powerful cultivators lay dead on the mossy ground, leaving only the Peak Golden Core Great Elder standing alone, his face drained of all colors.
The Great Elder stood frozen, his heart hammering against his ribs as he stared at the carnage around him. He couldn't understand what was happening; his senses told him this boy was young, but his power felt like an abyss.
"Who... who are you?" he stammered, his voice trembling with a terror he had never felt in his long life. "What sect do you belong to? The Zhao family... we can give you anything! Just tell me who we have offended!"
He looked around frantically for an escape, but the very space around the pond seemed locked by Lin Feng's presence. The realization that he had brought his brothers to their deaths based on the whims of a spoiled young master filled his soul with a bitter, freezing regret.
Lin Feng finally looked the elder in the eye, his expression devoid of any heat or anger. "You are not even qualified to know my name," he said softly, his voice carrying the weight of a final judgment. As he spoke, he channeled the Eternity Divine Technique into the willow tree behind him.
Thousands of emerald leaves detached themselves from the branches, swirling around Lin Feng in a magnificent, glowing green vortex of sword intent. With a gentle wave of his hand, the vortex expanded outward with the speed of a lightning strike.
The leaves passed through the Great Elder's body like a million tiny blades, shredding his cultivation and his life in an instant. The elder fell backward into the dirt, his eyes wide open and glassy, frozen in an expression of absolute horror.
After the silence returned to the pond, Lin Feng walked calmly among the corpses. With a practiced motion, he collected the spirit pouches from each of the ten elders, adding their collective wealth to his own.
He knew that by killing these elders, he had essentially declared war on the Zhao family's foundation, but as he felt the secure weight of the butterfly pendant in his robes, his heart remained untroubled.
In the dimly lit strategy hall of the Zhao estate, Zhao Chen sat at the head of a long obsidian table, deep in discussion with the nine remaining elders. The atmosphere was one of cold ambition rather than mourning; the earlier loss of the Shadow Hounds was already being calculated as a necessary sacrifice for a much greater prize.
"The Princess has already returned to the Royal Capital," the Patriarch remarked, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light. "If we can prove our absolute loyalty by suppressing the recent unrest in the border cities, we can leverage our influence to secure a marriage alliance between Yan'er and the royalty. With the Great Solaris Kingdom's bloodline merged with our own, we will no longer be mere subordinates—we will be the power behind the throne."
The elders nodded in greedy agreement, mapping out the political maneuvers needed to trap the royal family in a debt of gratitude.
The sound of shattering glass suddenly echoed as the heavy doors were thrown open once more. The same disciple from the Soul Tablet Hall stumbled in, his face ghostly white and his eyes rolling in his head with sheer madness. Before he could even speak, a series of muffled pops could be heard from the hall behind him—the sound of ten high-grade life tablets bursting simultaneously.
"Patriarch... the Great Elder... and the nine pursuit elders... their souls... they are all extinguished!" In a fit of uncontrollable, volcanic rage, Zhao Chen didn't even let the boy finish; he lashed out with a palm strike of concentrated Qi, turning the messenger into a red mist that splattered against the strategic maps on the wall.
An utter, suffocating silence fell over the remaining nine elders. The realization hit them like a physical blow: their family's martial foundation had been halved in a single night, leaving the Zhao clan crippled and vulnerable in a kingdom that only respected the strong.
Current Family Status,
With the loss of the pursuit team, the Zhao Family is now in a state of total crisis.
Remaining Strength: 9 Golden Core Elders and the Nascent Soul Ancestor.
Their hope for a royal marriage is crumbling as their weakness is exposed.
Driven by a mixture of cold desperation and frantic rage, Zhao Chen bypassed the inner courtyards and descended into the depths of the family's forbidden area, a place shrouded in ancient, soul-chilling arrays that even the Golden Core elders dared not approach.
At the heart of this subterranean abyss stood a massive, grotesque monument—a statue of a Nether Bat carved from obsidian, its wings outstretched as if to smother the very light of the world. Before this unholy altar sat the Zhao Ancestor, a sinister figure whose skin was as pale as parchment and whose breath carried the faint scent of decay.
The air in the chamber hummed with a dark, extraterrestrial energy, revealing the family's ultimate betrayal: they had long ago discarded their loyalty to the Blue Star and the Great Solaris Kingdom, secretly defecting to the service of the predatory Nether Bat race in exchange for forbidden power.
The Ancestor did not open his eyes as Zhao Chen knelt, trembling, to report the annihilation of their elite forces. The dark Qi radiating from the Nascent Soul Level 4 cultivator flickered like a dying candle, pulsating in sync with the stone bat's hollow eyes.
This secret alliance was the true foundation of the Zhao family's arrogance; they weren't just seeking a marriage with the Solaris royalty for prestige, but were preparing a vessel to infiltrate the kingdom's core for their extraterrestrial masters.
As the news of the white-robed youth's interference sank in, the Ancestor's shadow stretched across the walls, morphing into the shape of a leathery wing. The "Perfect Dao" they sought was paved with the blood of their own kind, and now, threatened by a nameless sword cultivator, the Ancestor prepared to unleash a power that was no longer entirely human.