The Main Reception Hall of the Azure Sword Sect was usually a place of quiet dignity and polite conversation. Today, the atmosphere was as tense as a drawn bowstring.
Sitting directly in the Sect Master's grand, carved throne at the head of the room was Elder Mo, the Sword Punisher of the Righteous Alliance. He was a severe, skeletal man with a long grey beard, wearing heavy grey robes embroidered with silver swords. His Late Nascent Soul aura leaked off him in suffocating, arrogant waves.
Standing rigidly to the side of his own throne, looking utterly miserable, was Sect Master Zhao.
Flanking Elder Mo were four elite Alliance Enforcers clad in gleaming silver armor, their hands resting menacingly on the hilts of their sabers. Outside in the courtyard, another ninety-six enforcers stood in perfect, intimidating formation.
Elder Mo picked up a delicate porcelain teacup, took one sip, and spat it directly onto the polished floor.
"Swill," Elder Mo sneered, dropping the cup. It shattered into a dozen pieces. "Is this how the Azure Sword Sect treats an Imperial Envoy? Serving me cheap mountain weeds? It is no wonder your discipline has fallen so low that you allow a woman to run rampant and a useless boy to dictate your treasury."
Sect Master Zhao swallowed hard, his fists clenched inside his sleeves. "Elder Mo, please. The tea is a special local blend. And Lord Yan is—"
"Quiet," Mo snapped, his eyes flashing with cruel authority. "I am not here to listen to the excuses of a failing sect. I am here to deliver the Patriarch's justice. Where is the Saintess and her little pet? Bring them here immediately, so they can kneel and receive the decree."
"I am afraid my knees aren't built for hard floors, Elder Mo."
The calm, incredibly relaxed voice echoed from the entrance of the grand hall.
Elder Mo's head snapped up.
Walking through the massive wooden doors was a fifteen-year-old boy dressed in flawless white robes, casually waving a paper fan. He didn't look intimidated. He didn't look scared. In fact, he was currently chewing on a piece of glowing, honey-roasted spirit boar meat.
Beside him, clinging tightly to his left arm, was Tantai Zhi.
She held the wooden tray with the rest of the breakfast meat in one hand, while her other hand rested delicately on Yan Shuo's forearm. She looked like a perfectly dutiful, incredibly beautiful young wife. But the moment her golden eyes locked onto Elder Mo sitting in the Sect Master's chair, the temperature in the massive hall plummeted by twenty degrees.
Yan Shuo swallowed his bite of meat and patted her hand gently to keep her from instantly freezing the room.
He looked at her profile as they walked down the aisle. Sometimes, his veteran brain still struggled to reconcile this majestic, world-ending goddess with the scrawny, desperate sixteen-year-old girl he had pulled out of a freezing snowbank a century ago. Back then, she had glared at the world with the fierce, terrified defiance of a trapped animal. Now, she glared at a Late Nascent Soul Grandmaster like he was an annoying insect that had landed on her husband's shoe.
She had grown up into a beautifully terrifying monster, and Yan Shuo was absolutely going to use her as a shield.
"You must be the Sword Punisher," Yan Shuo said pleasantly, completely ignoring the four heavily armed enforcers as he stopped in the center of the hall. He didn't bow. He just took another piece of meat from Tantai Zhi's tray. "I apologize for the delay. We were having breakfast. What can the Azure Sword Sect do for you today?"
Elder Mo's face darkened into a furious scowl. The sheer disrespect of the boy casually eating in front of an Alliance Envoy was an absolute disgrace.
"Insolent brat," Elder Mo hissed, standing up from the throne. He pulled a glowing golden scroll from his sleeve and unfurled it with a sharp snap. "I do not care about your breakfast. I am here by the direct mandate of the Righteous Alliance Patriarch!"
Elder Mo cleared his throat, his voice magically amplified to ring throughout the entire sect.
"For the unprovoked, malicious destruction of the Asura Vault—a sanctioned domain of the Righteous Alliance—the Azure Sword Sect is hereby ordered to pay a karmic compensation of thirty million mid-grade spirit stones! Failure to pay this tribute immediately will result in the arrest of the Saintess and her husband, who will be dragged to the Central Continent to face the grand tribunal!"
Sect Master Zhao violently flinched. Thirty million. It was a sum that could drain oceans. The entire sect's treasury didn't even hold a tenth of that.
Elder Mo rolled the scroll back up, a cruel, victorious smirk on his face. He looked down at Yan Shuo, expecting the boy to be trembling in absolute despair.
Instead, Yan Shuo just swallowed his meat, wiped his mouth with a silk cloth provided by his wife, and sighed.
"Thirty million mid-grade stones," Yan Shuo repeated thoughtfully. He tilted his head. "Do you have a detailed ledger for this debt?"
Elder Mo blinked, completely thrown off guard. "A... a what?"
"An accounting of the damages, Elder Mo," Yan Shuo said slowly, as if explaining a basic meditation mantra to a slow-witted disciple. "If you are demanding thirty million stones, I need to know the exact tally of the destruction. What exactly did my wife break?"
"She shattered the grand entrance portal! She destroyed the spatial anchors!" Mo roared, his face turning red. "She destroyed an invaluable piece of Alliance history!"
Yan Shuo snapped his paper fan open, hiding a deeply pragmatic, mocking smile behind it.
"Ah, I see. But there is a slight flaw in your heavenly mandate, Elder Mo," Yan Shuo said, his voice entirely smooth and reasonable. "The Asura Vault belonged to the ancient Asura Demon Sect, which was wiped out three thousand years ago. According to the Heavenly Dao Edicts—Volume Four, Section Twelve, penned by the First Alliance Patriarch himself—any unclaimed ancient ruin belongs entirely to the cultivator who breaks its core formation."
Yan Shuo lowered his fan, his dark eyes locking onto the furious Elder.
"The Righteous Alliance never broke the core formation of the Asura Vault. You simply pitched a glamorous tent over the entrance and extorted toll fees from weaker sects to let them go inside and die," Yan Shuo stated clearly. "By the laws of the Alliance, you held no ownership over the ruin. You were merely trespassing."
The grand hall went dead silent.
Sect Master Zhao's jaw dropped. The four enforcers looked at each other in utter confusion. The boy had just quoted three-thousand-year-old Alliance law flawlessly from memory.
"Therefore," Yan Shuo continued cheerfully, "my wife did not destroy Alliance property. She simply kicked down an ancient stone door that belonged to the earth. And honestly, a solid stone door of that size, carved from standard profound rock... is worth about five low-grade spirit stones."
Yan Shuo reached into his sleeve. He pulled out exactly five dull, low-grade spirit stones and casually tossed them onto the polished floor. They clattered noisily, rolling until they hit Elder Mo's boots.
"There is your karmic compensation, Elder Mo," Yan Shuo smiled warmly. "Keep the extra. Now, if your inquiry is concluded, please step down from Sect Master Zhao's chair. You are leaving wrinkles on the silk cushions."
Tantai Zhi let out a soft, melodic giggle, burying her face against Yan Shuo's shoulder. She didn't fully understand the complex legal argument, but seeing her husband completely humiliate an arrogant old man with just words made her heart skip a beat.
Elder Mo stared at the five cheap stones sitting by his boots.
His face went from red to purple, and finally to a terrifying, deadly white. His authority as the Sword Punisher was absolute. Nobody, not even rival sect leaders, dared to speak to him with such blatant, mocking disrespect. And a fifteen-year-old boy had just treated him like a mortal beggar.
"You court death!" Elder Mo bellowed.
He didn't draw his sword. He didn't need to. He simply unleashed the full, unadulterated, crushing pressure of a Late Nascent Soul Grandmaster, aiming it entirely at the boy in white.
A massive, invisible wave of spiritual gravity exploded outward. It was heavy enough to crush a Core Formation expert's meridians to dust. Sect Master Zhao cried out, falling to his hands and knees as the residual pressure hit him. The wooden pillars of the grand hall violently groaned, splintering under the sheer force.
Tantai Zhi's giggle instantly vanished. Her eyes flashed with pure, apocalyptic murder. She dropped the wooden tray of food and moved to step in front of Yan Shuo to block the pressure.
But Yan Shuo gently squeezed her arm, holding her in place.
Let him try, Yan Shuo thought, a dark thrill running through his veins.
The invisible wave of Nascent Soul pressure slammed directly into Yan Shuo's chest.
If he still had his golden Foundation Qi, his bones would have instantly shattered. But he didn't. Hidden beneath the fake golden illusion was the Abyssal Star-Core.
When the terrifying, crushing spiritual pressure hit Yan Shuo, the black hole in his dantian simply opened its metaphorical mouth.
Slurp.
The Abyssal Core effortlessly, violently swallowed the Nascent Soul pressure whole, absorbing the kinetic energy and converting it into a gentle, warm breeze that merely fluttered Yan Shuo's white robes and perfectly styled hair.
Yan Shuo didn't take a single step back. He didn't sweat. His breathing didn't even hitch.
He just stood there, looking completely, utterly bored.
Elder Mo froze. The remaining air in his lungs vanished in a gasp of sheer, mind-bending horror.
His full-powered spiritual suppression... had done absolutely nothing. The boy had absorbed it as casually as drinking a cup of tea. It defied the very laws of the Heavenly Dao for a youth to withstand a Grandmaster's aura without an ancient, supreme-tier defensive artifact. Yet, the boy hadn't activated a single array!
"Is there a draft in here?" Yan Shuo asked mildly, snapping his fan shut.
He looked up at the horrified Elder Mo, his dark eyes suddenly entirely devoid of warmth. The lazy, pampered boy vanished, replaced by the suffocating, ancient presence of a warlord staring down a dead man.
"You really shouldn't raise your voice or throw your Qi around like that, Elder Mo," Yan Shuo said, his voice dropping into a terrifying, icy whisper.
Yan Shuo took half a step back, gesturing lazily toward the woman standing beside him.
"My wife has a bit of a temper."
Elder Mo blinked.
He didn't even see her move.
In the time it takes a spark to fly off a flint, a flash of blinding crimson light illuminated the grand hall.
A terrifying, agonizing chill erupted on Elder Mo's neck.
He looked down. Tantai Zhi was standing directly in front of him, having completely bypassed the four elite enforcers. Her gorgeous, flawless face was inches from his, her golden eyes swirling with a violent, unhinged madness.
The cold, crystallized edge of her crimson sword was resting directly against his throat, already drawing a thin, incredibly bright line of blood.
"You tried to hurt him," Tantai Zhi whispered. The sound of her voice made the blood in Elder Mo's veins physically freeze. "I am going to cut you into so many pieces that your own soul won't recognize you."