Chapter 83: Destroying Elder Bai Mo’s Cultivation!
"You..." Elder Bai Mo shrieked, his voice echoing through the deafening silence of the hall. "You are that outer city rat I gave Bai Qingyue to! How dare you show your face in here!"
The moment those words left Elder Bai Mo’s lips, a wave of bewildered murmurs rapidly rippled through the elders scattered across the floor.
The person Elder Bai Mo gave Bai Qingyue to? What in the heavens is he talking about?!
The inner circle exchanged frantic glances at each other. The history of that disgraceful event was known to all of them, but connecting it to the person currently sitting on that throne was a leap of logic that broke their minds. Months ago, following the disastrous secret realm expedition that left their most promising Saintess crippled both physically and in her cultivation, Patriarch Bai Changkong had made a cold decision. He had specifically assigned Elder Bai Mo the unsavory duty of finding someone—anyone—who would be willing to accept Bai Qingyue so that the clan could officially cut all karmic bonds with her. It was a ruthless maneuver to spare the illustrious Bai clan the lingering public ridicule of housing a crippled Saintess.
The Patriarch’s strict condition was that the man who took her in should at least be a cultivator, but absolutely had to be an outsider with no ties to the three major powers of Azure Cloud City: the Bai, the Xu, and the Wang clans. Finding such a person was a difficult task, as barely any independent cultivator in the city possessed noteworthy cultivation prowess or the resources to care for a high-maintenance cripple.
Eventually, Elder Bai Mo had proudly reported that he had found a lowly, impoverished Qi Condensation cultivator in the outer-city slums who was desperate enough to take her in exchange for a pathetic sum of 200 spirit stones. They had laughed about it. They had toasted to washing their hands of a useless burden.
But now, staring at the entity seated upon the throne, Patriarch Bai Changkong’s mind reeled.
How did a Nascent Soul expert get tangled in all of this?! The Clan Head kept his wide, bloodshot gaze locked onto Lin Yuan, his heart pounding against his ribs like a war drum. Wait... if what Elder Bai Mo is saying is actually true... if this monster is the same person who took her... then this man is indeed married to Bai Qingyue! He has come to seek revenge for her sake! He truly dares to step into our estate to personally settle her karma!
The mind-shattering horror of the situation finally dawned on the Patriarch. They hadn’t just discarded a crippled girl; they had handed her directly to a sleeping dragon who had now awakened to burn their entire world to ash.
As the realization paralyzed the entire hall, Lin Yuan remained entirely unfazed by Elder Bai Mo’s screaming. He casually raised the cup to his lips and took another slow, deliberate sip of the tea.
Placing the empty cup back onto the side table, Lin Yuan finally stood up from the throne. His black-and-white Daoist robes settled immaculately around his tall frame. He took a single step forward and simply reached out with his index finger, lightly tapping the tip of the flying sword that was still suspended mid-air right in front of his face.
Tink.
With that singular, effortless touch, the flying sword completely shattered into countless fragments that rained down upon the floor.
"Pfft—!"
Elder Bai Mo instantly coughed up a mouthful of blood. Because his divine sense had been imbued within the flying sword to control its trajectory, the instantaneous destruction of the artifact caused a severe backlash that tore directly through his Sea of Consciousness. He collapsed back onto his knees, clutching his head as a blinding migraine nearly robbed him of his vision.
Before Bai Mo could even draw a breath to recover, Lin Yuan stretched out his right arm.
An overwhelming attractive force erupted from Lin Yuan’s palm. The force violently yanked Elder Bai Mo off the floor, dragging the elder through the air until his throat slammed directly into Lin Yuan’s grip.
Lin Yuan lifted the struggling elder effortlessly, his purple eyes burning with judgment.
"Since you love to ridicule people for being weak and beneath you," Lin Yuan said, his voice dropping to a low whisper that echoed in the very marrow of every elder present. "Since you possess the cruelty to toss your very own blood aside the exact moment she becomes a burden... then I will make you exactly what you hate the most. A cripple."
As Lin Yuan spoke, he slowly raised his other arm, bringing his palm toward the center of the struggling Elder Bai Mo’s chest, right where his dantian resided.
"No! Stop! Senior, I beg you, stay your hand!"
Suddenly, Patriarch Bai Changkong violently pushed himself up from the floor, entirely ignoring the searing pain. He threw himself forward and began to violently kowtow to Lin Yuan.
"Senior, please, I beg of you, do not cripple Elder Bai Mo’s cultivation!" the Clan Head pleaded, his voice breaking with sheer desperation. "At this very moment, he is at an absolutely critical point in his cultivation! He has spent the last seventy years gathering his foundation and is almost close to forming his Golden Core! If he succeeds, the Bai clan will add yet another Core Formation expert to its strength, allowing us to finally keep our ground against the Wang and Xu clans!"
Bai Changkong kept his head pressed to the floor, humiliation and panic streaming down his face. "We know you are here to punish us! We know it is for how we treated Bai Qingyue, and yes, we absolutely deserve your wrath! We are entirely willing to do anything to make amends—we will empty our treasuries, we will cede our spiritual veins to you, we will grovel at her feet! But please, I beg of the Heavens, do not destroy Elder Bai Mo’s cultivation!"
Hearing the pathetic, desperate plea, Lin Yuan paused. His hand hovered an inch away from the terrified elder’s chest. (A/N: Readers, NO, Lin Yuan isn’t sparing his cultivation)
Out of sheer curiosity, Lin Yuan utilized his divine sense to directly probe Elder Bai Mo’s cultivation, peering deeply into his dantian.
Indeed, a dense, swirling vortex of highly compressed Qi was rapidly congealing at the very center of his spiritual sea. It was taking the shape of a sphere. The Clan Head was indeed telling the truth; with just a few more months of secluded cultivation, Elder Bai Mo would absolutely break through and successfully forge a Golden Core, stepping into the realm of true experts.
Lin Yuan retracted his divine sense, looking at the Patriarch and the hyperventilating elder in his grip.
A cruel, razor-sharp smile slowly curved upon Lin Yuan’s lips.
Oops. My bad
CRACK-BOOOM!
Without a moment of hesitation, Lin Yuan channeled the absolute, destructive essence of Thunder. A violent, concentrated burst of purple lightning erupted from his palm and shot directly into Elder Bai Mo’s chest.
The lightning violently detonated inside the elder’s dantian. The premature, half-formed Golden Core— the culmination of seventy years of blood, sweat, and resources— shattered like a fragile glass struck by a sledgehammer. The highly compressed Qi violently scattered, ripping through the man’s meridians and setting Elder Bai Mo’s cultivation instantly back to the earliest stage of Foundation Establishment.
"GAAAAAHHH!" Elder Bai Mo unleashed a blood-curdling shriek of pure agony, his body convulsing violently in Lin Yuan’s iron grip.
"You bastard!!"
Watching everything unfold, Patriarch Bai Changkong completely snapped. His despair instantly morphed into suicidal rage. He shouted, attempting to summon his remaining energy to attack once more.
But Lin Yuan simply narrowed his eyes.
BOOM!
Lin Yuan released the full, suffocating weight of his Nascent Soul aura once again. The pressure crashed down like a falling continent, violently slamming the Clan Head back onto the floor before he could even rise to his knees. The impact was so severe that Bai Changkong’s ribs cracked, and he coughed up a massive, continuous stream of blood, entirely pinned and helpless.
Turning his attention back to the man in his hand, Lin Yuan was not finished. Dropping a cultivator’s realm was a punishment, but it was not true crippling.
Lin Yuan’s hand morphed into a claw of crackling purple energy. He brutally plunged his fingers directly into Elder Bai Mo’s spiritual center.
"No—!" the elder weakly gasped.
With a sickening, tearing sound that echoed horrifically throughout the grand main hall, Lin Yuan violently ripped out Elder Bai Mo’s spiritual roots.
It was a literal, spiritual evisceration. The foundational leylines that allowed the man to absorb the ambient Qi of heaven and earth were completely severed and pulled out by the roots. The elder’s entire cultivation foundation instantly collapsed.
The severe backlash was immediate. Because his physical body had relied on his cultivation to sustain its vitality for over a century, the complete removal of his spiritual roots caused his mortal shell to rapidly reject its own existence.
Lin Yuan carelessly tossed the man aside like a broken doll.
Elder Bai Mo crashed onto the floor, literally unable to ever have the ability to cultivate again. Before the horrified eyes of the inner circle, the once-proud elder began to rapidly wither. His skin lost all its luster, wrinkling and sagging as he became incredibly fragile and weak. His hair turned a stark, dead white and began falling out in clumps. He was shrieking on the floor, clutching his ruined chest and coughing up massive amounts of blood as his extended lifespan violently caught up to him all at once, transforming him into a dying, mortal old man in a matter of seconds.
The hall was filled only with the agonizing wheezes of the ruined elder and the terrified breathing of the pinned Patriarch.
Lin Yuan casually wiped a drop of the elder’s blood from his Daoist robes. He looked down at the Clan Head, his purple eyes devoid of any mercy.
"Now," Lin Yuan announced, his voice carrying the absolute authority of a sovereign. "It is time for the Bai clan to hear my terms."