The sealed settlement room was thick with the scent of peach blossoms and the suffocating tension of a reversed ambush.
Su Mei, the beautiful Heavenly Fox cultivator, pressed her back tightly against the mahogany table. She looked at the fifteen-year-old boy standing in front of her as if he were a living nightmare.
"Help you?" Su Mei swallowed hard, her voice trembling. "Lord Yan, there are four Nascent Soul Grandmasters waiting in the clouds! They control the Heavenly Net Array! It's a continent-grade siege formation! How can we possibly break it?!"
Yan Shuo didn't look worried. He didn't even look slightly troubled. He casually inspected his fingernails.
"You are thinking like a righteous disciple, Miss Su," Yan Shuo said, his voice carrying the calm, terrifying authority of a veteran warlord. "You think breaking a net requires a bigger sword. But why would I bother cutting the net when I can just pull the ground out from under the fishermen?"
He held out his hand, palm up.
"Condense the Soul-Binding Thread," Yan Shuo ordered.
Su Mei didn't dare hesitate. She bit her lip, channeled her Yin Qi, and spat out a microscopic, glowing pink thread. It hovered over her palm, practically invisible to the naked eye. This was the magical tether the Alliance intended to use to paralyze Yan Shuo's soul from miles away.
Yan Shuo reached out and casually pinched the thread between his between two fingers. He didn't let it touch his spiritual sea; he just held it suspended in a tiny pocket of his golden Foundation Establishment Qi.
"The Golden Dragon Pavilion is a very impressive building," Yan Shuo murmured, looking up at the ceiling of the floating, nine-story pagoda. "A structure made entirely of pure spiritual gold and jade must weigh at least a weight of fifty thousand tons. Tell me, Miss Su. How exactly does this monstrosity stay afloat?"
Su Mei blinked, completely confused by the sudden change in topic. "It... it sits on a massive, supreme-tier Levitation Array in the basement. The array core is powered by thousands of high-grade spirit stones."
Yan Shuo smiled. It was a dark, brilliant smile that made Su Mei's blood run cold.
"Perfect," Yan Shuo said, handing the glowing pink thread back to her. "Here is your new task. I want you to take this Soul-Binding Thread down to the basement, and I want you to tie it directly to the center of the Levitation Array's power core."
Su Mei stared at the thread, her brain struggling to process the command.
"Tie it to the power core?" she echoed. "But... the Grandmasters are going to cast the Soul Lock spell on this thread the moment your ship takes off! The spell is designed to instantly freeze a cultivator's meridians! If they cast it on the power core..."
Her voice trailed off. Her pink eyes widened in absolute, mind-shattering horror as the realization finally hit her.
If four Nascent Soul Grandmasters poured all their power into a spell designed to instantly freeze the flow of Qi, and that spell hit the Pavilion's levitation core... the array wouldn't just stall. It would completely, violently shut down.
A fifty-thousand-ton solid gold pagoda, currently floating a hundred feet above the city plaza, would drop out of the sky like a rock.
"The impact will trigger a massive seismic and spiritual shockwave across the entire city," Yan Shuo explained smoothly, tucking his hands back into his sleeves. "It will completely scramble the local ley lines. The Heavenly Net Array in the clouds relies on those ley lines to stay anchored. When the building drops, the net will short-circuit, and the Grandmasters will suffer a catastrophic backlash."
Yan Shuo tilted his head, his eyes gleaming with pragmatic amusement. "They want to freeze my foundation? Let them freeze their own treasury instead."
Su Mei was completely speechless. It was a plan of absolute, terrifying genius. It required no fighting, no grand martial arts, and no direct confrontation. It used the enemy's own trap to destroy their wealth, break their ambush, and completely cripple their Grandmasters in a single, effortless stroke.
This was the mind of a true Demon Lord.
"You have exactly ten minutes to tie the thread to the core and evacuate the building before I get on my ship," Yan Shuo said, turning toward the mahogany doors. He paused, glancing back over his shoulder. "If you try to warn them... well. My wife is very fast with her sword."
"I won't say a word!" Su Mei bowed so fast she nearly hit her head on the table. "Thank you for sparing my life, Lord Yan!"
Yan Shuo simply smiled, dispelled the pink isolation array with a wave of his hand, and pushed the doors open.
The terrifying, ancient mastermind instantly vanished. The lazy, pampered, soft-rice eating husband slipped back into place.
He strolled out into the bustling jade plaza, casually snapping his paper fan open.
Tantai Zhi was waiting for him near the grand fountain. She hadn't just rented a carriage; she had apparently bullied a local merchant into handing over his personal, extravagant sky-chariot pulled by two majestic, glowing-white Pegasi.
The moment she saw him, her golden eyes lit up. She hurried over, carefully inspecting his white robes for any wrinkles.
"Husband," she breathed a sigh of relief, looping her arm tightly through his. "Did it take long? Did the accountants try to overcharge you? I can still go inside and have a word with them."
"No need, Wife. They were incredibly accommodating," Yan Shuo smiled warmly, gently patting her hand. "In fact, I think the Golden Dragon Pavilion is about to experience a massive drop in their prices. Let's head back to the ship. I'm ready to go home."
Tantai Zhi beamed, helping him into the plush, silk-lined sky-chariot as if he were made of fragile glass. "Whatever Husband wants."
High above the Golden Dragon City, completely hidden within the thick, swirling white clouds, four figures sat cross-legged in a massive circle.
These were the four Nascent Soul Grandmasters of the Righteous Alliance. They were old, powerful, and radiated a suffocating pressure that made the surrounding air warp and distort.
In the center of their circle floated a massive, glowing bronze compass—the control core for the Heavenly Net Array.
"Patriarch," one of the Grandmasters reported, his eyes closed as he extended his spiritual sense downward. "The Azure Sword Sect's flying ship is powering up its propulsion arrays. They are preparing to leave the city."
The Patriarch of the Alliance, a severe-looking old man with a long white beard, sneered coldly.
"The boy actually thinks he can just walk into our city, completely humiliate us at our own auction, and fly away?" the Patriarch scoffed. "Arrogance. Today, we will show the Saintess that even a goddess must bow when her mortal weakness is held at sword-point."
He raised his hand, his Nascent Soul Qi flaring to life.
"Prepare the Soul Lock," the Patriarch commanded. "The moment that ship clears the city's restricted skies, we activate the tether. It will instantly paralyze the boy's meridians. The Saintess will panic, and we will strike."
The three other Grandmasters nodded simultaneously. They raised their hands, channeling their immense, ocean-like spiritual power directly into the bronze compass. The compass began to hum violently, linking with the invisible Soul-Binding Thread they believed was currently attached to Yan Shuo's soul.
Down below, the Azure Sword Sect's grand flying ship slowly ascended, breaking past the highest towers of the city.
Inside the main cabin, Yan Shuo was comfortably lounging on a silk cushion. Tantai Zhi was sitting beside him, happily pouring a cup of warm, finest lotus tea.
"They are clear," the Patriarch declared, his eyes snapping open, blazing with lethal intent. "Now! Freeze the boy!"
"SOUL LOCK!" the four Grandmasters roared in unison.
They slammed their palms down, unleashing a massive, synchronized burst of freezing, paralyzing Nascent Soul Qi directly through the spiritual tether. The power was so intense it could have instantly stopped the heart of a Core Formation expert.
The freezing energy rocketed down from the clouds, completely bypassing the flying ship, and slammed directly into the basement of the Golden Dragon Pavilion.
It hit the massive Levitation Array core like a localized blizzard.
The intricate, glowing runes of the power core instantly flashed a blinding, chaotic white, and then completely, utterly died.
The Grandmasters in the clouds felt a strange, massive resistance on the other end of their spell.
"What is this?!" one of the Grandmasters gasped, sweat pouring down his face. "His soul is impossibly heavy! I can't pull him out of the ship! It feels like... it feels like I'm trying to lift a mountain!"
"Don't hold back!" the Patriarch roared, completely misunderstanding the situation. "The Saintess must have given him a defensive artifact! Force it!"
They poured every single drop of their Nascent Soul power into the tether, pulling with all their might.
Down in the city, the fifty-thousand-ton golden pagoda groaned.
Without the Levitation Array supporting it, gravity violently reasserted its dominance.
CREAK... SNAP!
The Golden Dragon Pavilion didn't just fall. Because the Grandmasters were actively pulling on the tether connected to its basement, the entire massive, nine-story golden pagoda was violently yanked sideways out of the sky.
It plummeted the hundred feet to the ground like a meteor made of solid money.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
The impact was apocalyptic. The deafening crash echoed across the entire continent. The white jade plaza shattered into millions of pieces, throwing a massive cloud of dust and debris hundreds of feet into the air.
The sheer kinetic force of the fifty-thousand-ton impact sent a violent, physical earthquake ripping through the city streets. The spiritual shockwave was even worse. The sudden destruction of the city's largest energy core sent a tsunami of chaotic Qi exploding outward, completely scrambling the local ley lines.
Up in the clouds, the Heavenly Net Array instantly short-circuited.
The glowing bronze compass hovering between the Grandmasters violently cracked, unable to handle the sudden backlash of the destroyed ley lines.
SHATTER!
The compass exploded like a bomb.
"GAAAH!"
The Patriarch and the three Grandmasters screamed in agony. The catastrophic backlash of the broken array slammed directly into their spiritual seas. They were violently thrown backward through the clouds, violently vomiting mouthfuls of blood, their Nascent Souls severely wounded by their own trap.
"The building!" an elder choked out, clutching his bleeding chest, his eyes wide with absolute horror as he looked down at the city. "Why did the Golden Dragon Pavilion just collapse?!"
They were completely, utterly baffled. They had tried to paralyze a fifteen-year-old boy, and somehow, they had just destroyed their own merchant guild and nearly killed themselves in the process.
Meanwhile, safely above the chaos, the Azure Sword Sect's flying ship smoothly sailed toward the horizon.
The massive crash down in the city caused a faint tremor to rattle the ship's windows.
Tantai Zhi paused mid-pour. She looked out the crystal window, her golden eyes blinking in mild surprise as a huge plume of dust rose from the center of Golden Dragon City.
"Oh my," Tantai Zhi murmured, tilting her head. "Husband, look. That loud, ugly golden building just fell over and smashed into pieces."
Yan Shuo casually leaned over, looking out the window with a perfectly neutral, mild expression. He took the cup of tea from her hand and took a slow, satisfied sip.
"Well, look at that," Yan Shuo said softly, shaking his head. "They really must have used terrible mortal craftsmanship to build that place. Good thing we left when we did, Wife. It could have been very dangerous."
"Extremely dangerous," Tantai Zhi agreed seriously, immediately wrapping her arms around him to protect him from the distant dust. "The Central Continent is full of scams and cheap buildings. I will never let you go to an auction again."
"I think that's a very wise decision," Yan Shuo smiled warmly, resting his chin on her hair.
He looked back out the window, his eyes catching the faint, dispersing magical light of the broken Heavenly Net Array in the clouds. He let out a quiet, relaxed sigh.
His pockets were full of priceless treasures, his enemies had literally crushed themselves under the weight of their own greed, and he hadn't even broken a sweat.
Being a soft-rice eating Demon Lord was truly the greatest life a man could ask for.