Chapter 42: Xu Canghai
Below young miss of the Xu Clan, the slums of the outer city gave way to the sprawling majesty of the Xu Clan estate. The compound was a fortress of wealth and power, featuring numerous pavilions, roaring waterfalls, and grand gates forged from profound-grade iron.
She then crashed directly through the outer defensive wards, her clan token flashing wildly to prevent the automated arrays from incinerating her. Ignoring the shocked shouts of the peripheral guards, she tumbled off her sword, scraping her knees against the walkways, and scrambled frantically toward the central palace.
She burst through the heavy doors of the Patriarch’s grand cultivation chamber.
Inside, the air was thick, and sitting cross-legged upon a raised dais carved entirely from a single piece of thunder-wood was the Xu Clan Head, Xu Canghai.
He was a terrifying figure, radiating the absolute pressure of a late-stage Core Formation expert. As the heavy doors slammed open, the ambient lightning circulating around his body violently hissed, retracting into his pores.
Xu Canghai slowly opened his eyes, arcs of blue electricity dancing across his irises. When he saw his daughter—sprawled on the floor, her makeup ruined by tears and snot, trembling like a beaten dog—he did not rush forward to comfort her.
Instead, a deep frown marred his imposing features. He reacted exactly as the ruthless patriarch of a top cultivation clan should.
"What is the meaning of this disgraceful display?" Xu Canghai’s voice boomed, echoing with the rumbling of a gathering storm. "You are a direct descendant of the Xu bloodline! Get off the floor. Stop whimpering like a beggar and speak!"
The young miss opened her mouth, but the words refused to form. Every time she tried to speak, the image of that massive Eye flashed in her mind, alongside the lifeless corpses of Elder Mo and the others. Her throat constricted. Her teeth chattered so violently that she bit her own tongue, drawing blood.
"I... I..." she choked out, pointing a trembling finger toward the outer city. "Dead... all dead..."
"Who is dead?" Xu Canghai demanded, his patience instantly evaporating. His late-stage Core Formation aura flared, pressing down upon the room to force her into compliance. "Where are the five elders I sent with you to retrieve Tianyang’s attacker? Where is the house?"
The oppressive pressure of her father’s aura, combined with the lingering psychological trauma of that Eye, proved too much for her fragile mind. Realizing her voice had completely failed her, she frantically slapped her spatial ring.
A geen jade slip materialized in her shaking palm. With a desperate surge of her remaining spiritual qi, she forcefully inscribed the exact geographical coordinates of Lin Yuan’s home into the jade.
She crawled forward, extending her trembling hand, and offered the jade slip to her father.
The moment Xu Canghai’s fingers snatched the slip from her grasp, the young miss let out a final, hollow gasp. Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she collapsed completely unconscious upon the floor, her mind forcefully shutting down to protect itself from the overwhelming terror.
Xu Canghai did not spare his fallen daughter a second glance. He pressed the jade slip against his forehead, his Divine Sense rapidly scanning it.
The outer city slums? the Clan Head thought, his dark eyebrows knitting together in furious confusion. Five Core Formation elders were dispatched to a dilapidated outer-city shack to apprehend a rogue cultivator. And she returns claiming they are dead? Impossible.
But the patriarch of the Xu Clan was not a man who left things to chance. If his elders had been delayed, he needed to know why. If they had truly fallen, he needed to know who dared to cross his clan.
Xu Canghai formed a rapid, complex series of hand seals, his fingers blurring into afterimages.
"Manifest!" he commanded.
CRACKLE!
A blinding surge of blue and purple spiritual lightning erupted from him. The lightning coalesced in the center of the grand chamber, rapidly taking the shape of a humanoid figure. This was a high-tier reconnaissance spell: the Thunder-Forged Sentinel!
With a single thought from Xu Canghai, the thunder puppet shot out of the palace windows.
Moving with the literal, terrifying speed of lightning, the puppet tore across the sky of Azure Cloud City, leaving a crackling blue contrail in its wake. In a matter of seconds, it crossed the vast distance between the inner-city estate and the coordinates etched into the jade slip.
The thunder puppet arrived above the dilapidated courtyard, hovering silently in the air. Through the puppet’s eyes, Xu Canghai observed the scene.
What he saw was a dilapidated house, nothing of note, and also the Eye of Heavenly Retribution that had massacred his men was nowhere to be seen, having seamlessly retreated into the void the moment Lin Yuan’s enemies were purged.
Then, the puppet’s gaze drifted downward to the mud of the alleyway.
Back in his cultivation chamber, Xu Canghai’s breath hitched. A tremor of genuine shock rippled through his body, causing the thunder-wood dais beneath him to groan.
There, lying in a heap in the filth, were his five elders. Elder Mo, a man who had cultivated alongside Xu Canghai for over two centuries, was dead. There were no scorch marks. There were no severed limbs. There was no evidence of a massive, heaven-shaking battle that should have leveled the entire city block.
They had simply been killed.
Who did this? Xu Canghai roared internally, his eyes turning bloodshot with grief and absolute fury. What kind of hidden monster is sheltering in this slum?!
He commanded the thunder puppet to sweep the area. It bypassed the unconscious, bleeding body of Bai Chen and completely ignored the terrified woman hiding inside the house. Mortals and low-level cultivators could not have accomplished this.
The puppet’s senses locked onto the shattered Rain Blade embedded in the mud and the lingering traces of an intent that had once powered the barrier.
It was a distinct, undeniable spiritual signature. It was the lingering aura of Lin Yuan.
The thunder puppet extended a crackling hand, forcefully extracting a wisp of that lingering aura, before instantly dissipating. The gathered energy and the stolen aura shot back across the city like a returning boomerang, crashing directly into Xu Canghai’s outstretched palm inside the clan estate.
Xu Canghai stared at the wisp of energy writhing in his hand. The hatred radiating from his body was so intense it began to crack the floor.
"You dare slaughter the pillars of my clan, you nameless rat?" Xu Canghai whispered venomously. "I will hunt you to the very ends of the Nine Provinces. I will extract your soul and burn it in the clan’s furnace for ten thousand years!"
Xu Canghai bit the tip of his thumb, drawing a drop of rich blood. He pressed his bleeding thumb against the wisp of Lin Yuan’s aura and began to weave an ancient sea.
This was the supreme tracking art of his lineage.
"Third Art of the Five Thunder Arts!" Xu Canghai bellowed, his voice echoing with the wrath of the heavens. "Heavenly Lightning Soul-Seeking Hex."
BOOM!
A terrifying pulse of deep purple lightning exploded from Xu Canghai’s body, diving directly into the ethereal plane of souls. Using the captured aura as a compass, the hex cast a massive, invisible net across the entire region, searching with precision.
Miles away, high above the untamed wilderness, Lin Yuan was soaring through the sky.
Having just formed his flawless Golden Core and survived a palm strike from an eccentric Nascent Soul monster, he was in remarkably high spirits. He was flying, combining it with his immortal cloud step, as his physical form a blur of mist as he rapidly closed the distance back home. He could already picture Bai Qingyue’s beautiful smile when he returns.
Suddenly, a profound alarm blared within his Sea of Consciousness.
It felt as though a massive spike of purple lightning was attempting to violently brand his soul. The invasive, terrifying pressure of the Heavenly Lightning Soul-Seeking Hex locked onto him with the force of a falling mountain.
The sheer, unexpected violence of the tracking spell directly clashed with him. Because he was mid-flight, fully channeling his qi into his movement art, the sudden spiritual intrusion caused a violent, catastrophic misfire in his meridians.
Lin Yuan’s Immortal Cloud Step shattered instantly.
He stumbled violently in mid-air, losing his balance. The backlash of the conflicting spiritual energies surged up his throat.
Cough!
Lin Yuan violently coughed out a mouthful of blood, the droplets scattering into the wind. He rapidly stabilized his descent, forcing his Ancient Beast Body to absorb the kinetic shock as he slammed his feet, skidding to a halt high above.
He wiped the blood from his chin, his crimson-lit pupils narrowing into dangerous, glowing slits as he looked toward the horizon. The invasive spiritual lock was still clinging to his aura, heavy and suffocating, reeking of late-stage Core Formation lightning.
"Which terrifying monster has come to find me?" Lin Yuan whispered, his body boiling with anticipation and cold rage.