The chipped Dao sword came down fast, aiming right for the space between Wuji's neck and collarbone.
Elder Zhao wasn't messing around. He didn't monologue. He didn't hesitate. He just put his entire body weight into a downward execution strike, fully intending to separate the young demon lord's head from his shoulders and present it to the Orthodox Alliance before the tea in the courtyard got cold.
Adrenaline pumped so hard through Wuji's dying brain that the world dragged into a brutal, agonizing crawl.
He saw a single drop of fresh blood detach from the tip of Zhao's blade. He watched it fall through the freezing air of the chamber. He heard the heavy fabric of Zhao's purple robes snapping from the force of the swing.
Wuji couldn't move. The Seven-Step Soul Rot had locked his joints into place. He was basically a spectator in his own assassination.
Then, something massive crashed into the depths of his mind.
It wasn't a voice. It wasn't some cute, highly-energetic fairy guiding him through a tutorial. It felt like a skyscraper made of solid obsidian had just dropped into the center of his consciousness. The impact sent a shockwave through his ruined nervous system, briefly overriding the burning agony of the poison.
In the pitch-black void of his spiritual sea, a colossal stone monument ripped through the surface of the water.
The Destiny-Devouring Karma Lotus Stele.
Lines of glowing, blood-red text began to scroll across the ancient stone, feeding data directly into his visual cortex. It was cold. It was analytical. It was beautiful.
[HOST DETECTED. IDENTITY ALIGNED: MO WUJI.]
[CRITICAL WARNING: LETHAL TOXIN PRESENT. ESTIMATED TIME OF DEATH: 4.2 SECONDS.]
[INITIALIZING KARMA LOTUS INTERFACE...]
Wuji stared at the descending sword in the real world while simultaneously processing the data dump in his head. Back on Earth, he handled multi-million dollar corporate mergers over breakfast. A little hostile takeover by a magic stone tablet wasn't going to break his focus.
[SCANNING IMMEDIATE THREAT...]
[TARGET: ZHAO KUO. SECT ROLE: THIRD ELDER.]
[CULTIVATION BASE: CORE FORMATION REALM, EARLY STAGE.]
[DESTINY VALUE: 15 (TRIVIAL NPC).]
Wuji almost laughed out loud, but his throat was still full of coagulated blood. Fifteen points. Zhao thought he was a mastermind orchestrating the fall of a demonic empire, but to the universe, he was just a disposable pawn. A trivial speedbump.
The system kept feeding him data. It highlighted Zhao's body in a faint, wireframe overlay, pinpointing structural flaws.
[WEAKNESS DETECTED: FRACTURED THIRD RIB ON THE LEFT SIDE. UNSTABLE QI FLOW IN THE RIGHT BICEP DUE TO PREVIOUS COMBAT INJURY. OVER-COMMITTED STANCE.]
This was the ultimate cheat code. The Karma Lotus didn't just give him power; it gave him the absolute truth of the battlefield. It stripped away all the mystical garbage about cultivation and martial arts and turned fighting into pure, ruthless math. Wuji loved math. You could always trust math to break someone's bones.
"Don't fight it, boy," Zhao grunted, his face contorted with the effort of the swing. The blade was inches away now. "The pain will be over in a second. You can curse me in hell."
Wuji didn't care about cursing him. He needed a solution, and he needed it exactly right now.
[SYSTEM PROMPT: HOST LACKS SUFFICIENT QI TO EVADE. POISON HAS CORRUPTED 89% OF MERIDIANS.]
[CALCULATING SURVIVAL PROTOCOL...]
[SOLUTION FOUND: EMERGENCY OVERRIDE. SACRIFICING RESIDUAL YIN ENERGY TO IGNITE THE YANG SEA.]
[WARNING: THIS PROCESS WILL INFLICT SEVERE TISSUE DAMAGE. PROCEED?]
Wuji didn't even hesitate. He sent a hard mental YES to the system.
Pain was just a signal. Death was a permanent failure. He would take the pain.
[OVERRIDE ACCEPTED. UNLOCKING TWIN SOUL PHYSIQUE: EXTREME YANG PHASE.]
The change was instantaneous and utterly violent.
Deep inside his spiritual core, a dormant volcano suddenly erupted. The system violently suppressed his Yin meridians, shoving all of his remaining life force into the Yang pathways. It was like swapping out a broken four-cylinder engine for a military jet thruster while the car was still driving down the highway.
Searing, impossible heat exploded outward from his heart.
The Seven-Step Soul Rot, a poison designed to slowly freeze and rot spiritual energy, met the purest, most concentrated form of Extreme Yang fire. The poison didn't just burn. It vaporized.
Wuji let out a harsh, guttural exhale. Steam literally hissed from between his teeth.
The heavy, leaden feeling in his muscles vanished, replaced by an explosive, terrifying pressure. The intricate tattoos covering his chest and arms—dormant lines of ink—suddenly flared to life. They didn't just glow. They crackled. Real voltage hummed just beneath his skin, demanding to be let out.
Zhao saw the steam. He saw the sudden shift in Wuji's posture. A flicker of doubt crossed the Elder's face, but it was way too late to pull the swing back. The heavy Dao sword cleaved through the air, carrying enough force to split a boulder in half.
Wuji didn't scramble backward. He didn't roll off the bed. He didn't even blink.
He just brought his right hand up.
The movement was completely casual. Fluid. He looked like a guy reaching across the table to grab a menu, not a dying teenager defending against a Core Formation expert.
CLANG.
The deafening sound of metal striking an immovable object echoed through the stone isolation chamber. It sounded like a heavy church bell cracking down the middle.
The kinetic energy of the swing stopped completely. Dead in its tracks.
Zhao's arms jolted violently from the recoil. He stumbled forward, nearly losing his footing on the slippery, blood-stained floor. He stared at his weapon, his jaw dropping slightly.
Wuji sat perfectly still on the edge of the frost jade bed. He had caught the descending blade exactly three inches from his own neck.
He wasn't holding the flat of the blade between his palms. He wasn't gripping the hilt.
Wuji had simply pinched the razor-sharp edge of the steel between his index and middle finger.
The sheer physical impossibility of it broke Zhao's brain for a second. The Third Elder yanked upward, trying to free his sword. The blade didn't budge a single millimeter. It was like trying to pull a crowbar out of solid, hardened concrete.
"You..." Zhao breathed, the arrogant confidence completely draining from his voice. The guy finally realized he had walked into a slaughterhouse, and he wasn't the butcher.
Wuji slowly tilted his head up. The cynical, mocking smile had vanished, replaced by an expression of pure, predatory emptiness.
The black lightning tattoos on Wuji's right arm pulsed. Thick, jagged arcs of dark electricity erupted from his skin, crawling up his forearm and wrapping around his hand. The black sparks jumped from his fingers directly onto the steel of Zhao's sword, hissing and spitting like angry vipers.
The metal of the sword immediately began to glow red-hot where Wuji was touching it.
Wuji stared dead into Zhao's terrified eyes. He didn't give a speech about loyalty. He didn't yell about betrayal. He just let the silence and the crackling lightning do all the heavy lifting.
He squeezed his two fingers together.