Chapter 50: Return
Within Lin Yuan’s home, outside was a graveyard, with the lifeless bodies of four Core Formation experts laying there.
Inside, the atmosphere was suffocating, as Bai Chen sat slumped against the base of the wooden bedframe, his chest heaving with uneven breaths. His right arm hung completely useless at his side, where the late-stage elder had effortlessly snapped it. Gritting his teeth against the blinding waves of agony, Bai Chen raised his trembling left hand. He pressed his fingers against his shattered shoulder, desperately pouring spiritual qi into the wound, attempting to stabilize and stop the internal bleeding.
Sitting on the edge of the bed above him was Bai Qingyue.
The once-peerless First Miss of the Bai Clan looked down at her cousin, her face stained with tears that refused to stop falling. Her delicate hands were clenched into tight fists upon her lap. She stared at her own legs—legs that could not support her weight, legs that had refused to carry her out the door when her cousin was being battered half to death trying to protect her.
"I am useless," Bai Qingyue whispered, her voice trembling, breaking the heavy silence of the room. "If only I could still cultivate... if only I could just stand and walk, I could have helped you. I could have fought beside you, or at least drawn them away. But I can do nothing but hide behind a curtain while you bleed for me."
"Cousin, please," Bai Chen grunted, a sharp hiss of pain escaping his lips as his spiritual qi painfully knitted a torn blood vessel together. "You do not need to fight. My life is dedicated to protecting you. Lord Lin left me here for exactly this purpose."
But Bai Qingyue violently shook her head, the trauma of the sudden attack stripping away the serene peace she had cultivated over the last few weeks.
"My Husband array saved us, but at what cost?" she cried softly, her eyes clouded with a suffocating despair. "He crippled the Xu Clan’s Dao protector for me, and in return, they sent their inner circle to butcher us. Now four of their elders lie dead in our courtyard. The Xu Clan will not stop. They will unleash their full fury. Maybe... maybe everyone at the main estate of the Bai Clan was right all along."
She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. "I am broken. I am a cripple. I just bring misfortune and death everywhere I go now. I have now dragged him into my cursed fate, and I have dragged you down into the mud with me."
Bai Chen stopped channeling his qi. He ignored the searing pain in his arm and looked up, his eyes burning with care.
"You must never say that!" Bai Chen stated firmly, his voice surprisingly strong despite his injuries. "You are not a curse, Cousin Qingyue. You are the pride of our generation! The Bai Clan abandoned you because they are blind fools who only value power, but Lord Lin sees your true worth. Everything is alright. His spell has purged the immediate threat. Master will return, and when he does, no one in this city will ever dare to look at you with malice again. Everything is alright..."
As those desperate, comforting words left his lips, the ambient air inside the bedroom suddenly ceased to exist.
It was not a gradual shift. It was instantaneous. A heavy and suffocating thunder aura violently filled the entire area, descending upon the courtyard as if an earth-shattering mountain had just been dropped from the high above.
"Gah!" Bai Chen cried out. He was immediately slammed face-first into the wooden floorboards, his 9th level Qi Condensation cultivation utterly useless against a pressure that felt like it had multiplied by a thousand.
On the bed, Bai Qingyue was pushed back against the headboard, struggling to draw a single breath as the air grew impossibly thick, reeking of impending doom.
’What now?’ Bai Chen’s mind screamed, panic clawing at his throat. ’What new calamity awaits us? Has the rest of the Xu Clan already arrived?’
Refusing to let whoever was outside reach his cousin, Bai Chen bit down on his lower lip until it bled. Drawing upon sheer willpower, he dragged his battered body across the floor. He crawled out of the bedroom, crossing the main hall, and forced himself out onto the porch.
The moment he stepped outside, the thunder aura buckled him down even more. It was so oppressive that the wooden planks beneath his knees groaned and began to splinter.
Through blurred vision, Bai Chen stared up into the night sky, his mind racing to identify the source of this absolute suppression. He could recognize the spiritual pressure specifically as a thunder aura only because of a singular, terrifying memory from his youth.
Once, many years ago, when he was just a nobody sweeping the grand halls, a diplomatic banquet had been held between the Bai Clan and the Xu Clan. It was there that he had felt the aura of the Thunder Lord, Patriarch Xu Canghai. It was a chaotic, violent, and highly aggressive presence that made the air crackle and mortals weep in fear.
But this... this thunder aura was entirely different.
It was infinitely more terrifying, yet paradoxically, it was incredibly calm. It did not roar or thrash like a wild beast. It flowed with the absolute authority of the Heaven itself. It felt as though he were standing at the edge of a peerless river—one that carried both absolute destruction and the pure creation of new life. It was a perfect paradox of nature.
The sheer profundity and weight of the aura invading his senses were too much for his injured body to bear.
Cough!
Bai Chen violently coughed up a mouthful of blood, his body trembling under the spiritual pressure.
There was no surviving this calamity!
His vision darkening, Bai Chen clenched his intact left fist, digging his fingernails into his palm. He had failed. He could not protect her. With a silent, desperate prayer to the heavens to spare his cousin’s soul, Bai Chen closed his eyes, bracing his body for the absolute worst.
One breath passed. Then two.
The pressure remained absolute, yet the killing blow did not fall. Instead, the heavy thunder aura seemed to gently part around the ruined porch, forming a localized safe haven that eased the crushing weight on his chest.
"You have done well, Bai Chen."
The voice was incredibly calm, and impossibly familiar, yet it carried a new depth that vibrated directly within Bai Chen’s soul.
Bai Chen’s eyes snapped open.
Hovering mere inches above the courtyard was a splendid figure. It was Lin Yuan, but he had undergone a look change that rendered him slightly unrecognizable.
His tall and slender posture radiating the effortless dominance of a true sovereign. He was clad in an elegant black-and-white Daoist robe, the fabric embroidered with golden patterns that pulsed with starlight-like energy. His previously hair was now ethereally long, flowing freely in the night breeze, gathered at the crown in a dignified style while a few loose strands framed his sharp features. His eyes—once a dangerous, glowing crimson—were now a deep, crackling purple.
He looked like a young immortal who had descended from the higher realms, perfectly harmonized with the peerless thunder aura radiating from him.
But as Bai Chen stared in absolute, dumbfounded awe at his Master, his gaze slowly drifted to the right.
Floating obediently beside Lin Yuan was a sphere of lightning. It functioned as a transparent cage. Trapped inside the sphere, his face pale and twisted in absolute despair, was an older man. His cultivation was completely shattered, his aura barely registering at the Foundation Establishment realm.
Bai Chen’s mind immediately short-circuited. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
He recognized that face from the grand banquet all those years ago. It was the absolute ruler of the Xu Clan.
It was Xu Canghai!