When the eye of the clan’s protective formation was triggered, corrupt demonic energy surged into the array and clashed against its foundation. The destructive forces collided, shattering the formation and wounding all within it. The soul imprint that the current Rong Family Head had poured into the array bore the brunt of the backlash — his spirit reeled in searing agony, and essence blood laced with his true essence sprayed from his lips.

The Rong Family Head stood with his hair in wild disarray, wiping the fresh blood from the corner of his mouth. His robes hung in tatters, his eyes were shot through with red veins, and a fury beyond all reckoning twisted his face. His fingertips trembled as a roar erupted from deep within him — the roar of a savage beast.

“You treacherous wretches, you vile curs — how dare you?!”

The kill-laden roar shook the heavens. The stone door of his closed cultivation chamber exploded outward with a thunderous crack, and the clan members who had come rushing to pound on it had no time to react before the flying fragments struck them squarely, sending them spewing blood, their fates uncertain.

A figure burst forth — the Rong Family Head himself — sweeping toward the eye of the formation. But what greeted him was only an overwhelming stench of blood. Everywhere lay the shredded remains of that treacherous daughter’s self-detonated body, and the evil miasma summoned by the sacrificed spirits was ceaselessly corroding the spiritual energy of the formation’s eye.

The Rong Family Head’s eyes blazed crimson. Like a beast driven to madness, he seethed: How dare she? How could she?

Treacherous daughter. Worthless wretch. Shameless creature.

She had cast aside her own clan without a second thought.

Savage violet lightning and chaotic energy erupted from his body in crashing waves, hammering down upon the formation’s eye, bearing down against the corrupt and defiled energy.

Down the mountainside, everyone stared in horror toward the forbidden grounds. That black miasma — you would have to be blind not to see it.

Wu Youzi curved his lips into a smile and said lightly, “That is our Rong Family’s forbidden grounds. Perhaps my dear younger sister harbored some grievance in her heart and, in a moment of desperation, self-destructed to destroy the formation. What misfortune for our household — but then, a destroyed formation is a destroyed formation. That forbidden ground was never a pleasant place to begin with. It even housed a half-demon for a time.”

A sharp collective intake of breath.

The Rong clan elders erupted in furious condemnation: “Rong Qingcang, hold your tongue! The Family Head has emerged — how dare you spout such nonsense?!”

Even as they cursed, they kept shooting anxious glances toward the forbidden grounds. Why hasn’t the Family Head come yet? Come quickly and tear this unfilial wretch apart — he has pierced the heavens themselves!

By now, the Rong Family Head had been surrounded by clan members who had come seeking him in desperation, and in a few hurried exchanges they laid out everything that had transpired in recent days — especially the events of this very day. So it amounted to this: his two children had joined hands to stab him in the back.

The Rong Family Head had never imagined that in the few days he had spent in closed cultivation, the clan would have blundered into so catastrophic a disaster. Even less had he imagined that a person already crippled could still turn against him — striking him a fierce blow at the most critical moment.

But what filled him with even greater dread was the strange state Wu Youzi had revealed. Even setting aside the fact that the man now knew certain secrets — he had been crippled for over a decade. How had he recovered his strength so swiftly? Unless…

In a flash of movement, he arrived at the hidden chamber deep within the forbidden grounds. He fed his bloodline soul imprint into the door’s formation disc and entered the dry, sealed room — only to find it utterly empty. The treasures the clan had hidden away for generations were gone without a trace. In their place, painted in bold crimson characters, were the words: “Blood debts repaid in blood.”

The Rong Family Head lunged toward a long lacquered box inside the chamber and flung it open. His eyes instantly split wide with rage.

Inside the box was nothing but a layer of paper ash. From somewhere, a mountain wind found its way into the cave and swirled through the opening, lifting the ash in a spiraling cloud that scattered across the Rong Family Head’s face.

“You accursed wretch — how dare you!” The Rong Family Head drove his fist savagely into the box. Ash scattered in all directions. That had been a forbidden technique the clan had preserved for many years — a sole surviving copy, incomplete though it was, but priceless beyond measure. And now it had been reduced to a box of ash. How could he not be enraged?

His face — already aged and haggard from the formation’s backlash — contorted into something monstrous with fury. Those eyes of his, habitually deep and imposing and filled with the hunger for control, were now laced with veins like spider silk, churning with shock, rage, violence, and a trace of pain almost too faint to perceive.

In his entire life he had fathered only two children. And now they had conspired together to stab him in the back. The clan’s honor, power, and reputation that he had painstakingly built over so many years — all of it had been destroyed in an instant by their hands.

The Rong Family Head was consumed by hatred.

The ferocious surge of emotion flooded his chest. His throat turned sweet, and he vomited another mouthful of dark blood.

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. Within them: only cold, ruthless ferocity. Not a sliver of warmth remained.

What has abandoned me cannot be called back.

The treacherous daughter had been foolish enough to self-detonate her own bloodline to draw corrupt energy into the formation against him — surely that too was the unfilial son’s doing. After all, these were absolute secrets known only to the Family Head and the future heir. Rong Huanxuan was still young; he had never told her. Only that unfilial son — back when he had harbored no suspicions — had been kept privy to all of the Rong Family’s affairs.

And now that son had used Rong Huanxuan against him, turning her very bloodline into a lethal blow against both him and the clan. What was he trying to accomplish? He was trying to destroy the Rong Family.

The Rong Family Head had long known this son harbored rebellion in his bones. Were it not for having only one son, he would never have let him live.

But now — that unfilial son had committed an unforgivable crime. He had betrayed his clan. He had betrayed his own father. There was no longer any reason to spare him.

Besides, the man did not wish to live himself.

To betray the Rong Family — even a blood son could not be allowed to remain after such a thing.

The Rong Family Head flashed out of the hidden chamber and appeared above the clan’s main square, his gaze sweeping over the assembled guests. When it landed on the Holy Maiden, his eyes narrowed slightly. Then his gaze settled on Wu Youzi.

In that single glance, the Rong Family Head was nearly overwhelmed by the ferocious hatred blazing in those eyes. The way Wu Youzi looked at him — it was the frenzied, all-consuming desire of a man who had already cast everything away and wanted only destruction.

The Rong Family Head’s pupils contracted. Fury quickly stained both his eyes. He forcibly suppressed the absurd, aching sense of being stabbed in the back by his own kin, and turned his gaze back to the guests assembled below.

Their eyes were filled with anger, contempt, and suspicion. The questioning voices reached his ears like needles boring into his eardrums, each one driving pain through his very spirit.

On that day long ago, when he had cut off his own kin in the name of righteousness — had it not been for the sake of the Rong Family’s century-spanning reputation? He had sacrificed even that, cutting off the weak to preserve the strong, retreating in order to advance.

And yet — what had come of it?

He had not hesitated to cripple his own daughter with his own hands. He had spent untold effort concealing secret after secret. And all of it had been torn open by his own biological son in so brutal and absolute a manner — heedless of his ancestors, heedless of the clan’s name, stripping it all bare in front of everyone, telling every cultivator in the orthodox path that the Rong clan of the mystic lineage was nothing but demons in righteous disguise, their crimes exposed for all to see.

The more the Rong Family Head dwelt on it, the more violently the savage aura roiling from his body surged. To be stabbed through and through by his own flesh and blood had brought him to the very edge of losing control. What a fool he had been — he had spent his entire life scheming, confident he could control everything, that he could make the Rong Family flourish under his leadership and stand at the absolute pinnacle. And yet he had never once imagined he would be brought so low in so absurd a fashion.

His cold, vicious gaze swept over Wu Youzi — who looked half-crazed, his eyes lit with the elation of revenge — then shifted to Lang Jiuchuan, who stood still among the crowd below, eyes like ice.

Yes. This demon woman. She had been the one to kill Zhengyang Zi before all of this. No wonder he had searched in vain for Zhengyang Zi’s soul — it had been in her hands the entire time, kept there for precisely this moment.

And so it was she who had found Qingcang first. They had “recognized” each other?

The Rong Family Head stared fixedly at Lang Jiuchuan, his mind rapidly piecing together the full picture. Who had ignited Qingcang’s madness? Her. The disaster that had fallen upon the Rong Family — just as he had feared — she had come at last, bearing a blade that cut true.

“Good,” the Rong Family Head ground out from between clenched teeth. “Very good indeed.”