Lang Jiuchuan’s divine soul had suffered a tremendous blow. She crashed to the ground — and even that was not the end. For in the moment the Rong Family Patriarch’s breath ceased, the restrictive force erupted from his body and transformed into a golden dragon shadow, suffused with imposing might and an ice-cold killing intent. It lunged directly at Lang Jiuchuan’s own divine soul. Its speed and power far exceeded the imagination of everyone present.

The cultivation needed to set such a restriction was surely beyond the Foundation Establishment stage — for this was no ordinary technique. Whatever had placed it had a level of attainment that already surpassed that threshold by a considerable margin.

Domineering and ferocious, the dragon shadow tracked the familiar probing consciousness back to its source. This was a force bent on executing the one who had dared to look — to destroy her body and soul alike, leaving nothing behind.

Spit.

Before Lang Jiuchuan could react, she was struck again. She vomited another mouthful of essence blood — and this time, the blood appeared to contain glittering golden particles of light. The faces of those around her changed drastically.

This was the mark of a wounded divine soul.

Lang Jiuchuan’s entire body trembled. Within her spiritual platform and soul sea, it was as though an enormous hammer had crashed down again and again, and a tearing pain spread through every inch of her being. Her already-incomplete soul let out a wailing moan, reverberating and ringing, on the verge of leaving her body and dissolving entirely.

And that force, having struck once without any pause, continued forward with the intent to crush all resistance, pressing on toward the core of her divine soul.

In that moment of extreme peril.

“Live.” Wu Youzi’s spirit flashed forward, throwing himself in front of Lang Jiuchuan, driving himself into the path of that invisible force. At the same moment, he detonated the last remnant of that strange power that lingered within his own spirit.

Boom.

The two forces collided, producing a deep and heavy explosion.

Lang Jiuchuan’s consciousness began to fragment. Her lips trembled faintly, but not a single word came out. All she could do was watch helplessly as Wu Youzi’s spirit scattered into countless points of light in mid-air and dispersed.

She had never had the chance to tell him the truth.

Had he already come to feel it no longer mattered?

Wu Youzi had absorbed that blow, yet the restrictive force still had one last thread of power remaining. Narrowing her eyes, Lang Jiuchuan strained to look — there seemed to be something within it akin to dragon energy and the power of national fortune. This was no trifling thing, and her heart sank heavily with the realization.

Having survived against all odds and come this far — and now this, coming to kill me?

She summoned the Dizhong. Disregarding the dissolution of her divine soul, she poured her Dao energy into it and struck hard against that force with all she had. Dragon might against heavenly might — which of the two was heavier?

Simultaneously, Jiangche let out a roar. The kingly aura of his fearsome, murderous nature combined with the Dizhong’s strike and launched itself against that restrictive force together.

Rumble.

Beneath the colossal impact, the earth and mountains trembled. Trees were felled. The forest tilted. Shattered stones flew in all directions.

Lang Jiuchuan’s complexion was ashen. Blood seeped from all seven of her facial orifices. Her vision went black. Her divine consciousness was like paper torn apart — instantaneously reduced to fragments. Her awareness rushed down into a boundless darkness, and her body fell limply backward.

The combined force of everyone together had just barely been enough to dispel that power.

And in the instant before her consciousness dissolved entirely, she still remembered to glance toward the Rong Family Patriarch’s physical body — watching his spirit float out from his corpse, and before he could react to anything, be struck by the residual shockwave of that overwhelming force and scatter into smoke. Her lips pulled slightly at the corner.

That was taken care of.

As she fell, two silhouettes arrived like spectral shadows at terrifying speed.

Fuqi interposed himself in front of Lang Jiuchuan. The reverberating shockwave of that vast power struck his spirit body and left him momentarily drained. A’Piao, meanwhile, erected around her an intricate, ghostly realm thick with spectral energy — one capable of sealing away all vital aura — encompassing her entire person within it.

“Move.” A’Piao swept Lang Jiuchuan up, called to Fuqi, and with the power of a ghost, forced open the Yin Road and stepped into it.

“You go ahead,” Jiangche said, casting a look down at the Rong Family Patriarch’s remains on the ground. Uneasy, he swelled with murderous energy, exhaled a blast of tiger’s breath from his mouth, and let it fall onto the body. It ignited immediately.

Voices were approaching. Jiangche slipped into the forest, suppressing his aura, and stared through the gaps between the trees with the watchful eyes of a predator.

It was the Holy Maiden and her companions who caught up, and upon seeing the devastation around them, their expressions grew grave.

The Daoist Master of the Eight Directions approached the burning corpse. Catching a glimpse of a robe corner in the flames, he said: “This is likely the Rong Family Patriarch’s end.”

Tantai Diji regarded the remains with cold eyes. “Cause and consequence never fail.”

The Daoist Master of the Eight Directions looked toward her. “You should send word to the National Preceptor. Both the Rong Family’s patriarch and heir have perished. The true line of descent almost certainly cannot bear the weight of leadership on its own. The Rong Family is in chaos — this is no ordinary matter.”

More importantly, the young woman with the surname Lang was anything but ordinary herself.

And beyond that, the fall of the Rong Family’s main line of descent meant more than just disorder — it was the sign of total ruin. Without a strong figure at the center, the Rong Family was nothing but a pile of loose sand. In time, they would simply fade away into the long river of history.

In other words, the roster of Xuan clan great families had just grown one name shorter.

Tantai Diji said with calm detachment: “I know what I’m doing.”

The Daoist Master of the Eight Directions surveyed the surroundings, speaking with a weighted gravity: “The Rong Family Patriarch had reached Foundation Establishment himself, and yet he fell here. That young Daoist friend of ours — truly one must not underestimate the young. If it had been the same back then as it was at the beginning…”

Tantai Diji gave him a single, expressionless glance. The Daoist Master of the Eight Directions instantly closed his mouth.

“Return to the Pomegranate Garden.” She turned and walked away.

The fate of the Rong Family Patriarch left her without a shred of sorrow. It was nothing more than the working of the heavenly Dao and the reckoning of karma. An impure Dao would always invite backlash in the end — such was each person’s own cause and consequence.

Once they had gone, Jiangche watched until the Rong Family Patriarch’s body had fully become a charred ruin, then leapt and departed.

Elsewhere, in another corner of the world, the man in robes embroidered with sun, moon, and stars felt a line of dark blood slip from the corner of his mouth. His hand clenched. Whatever he was thinking, his expression was complex and unreadable.

Gradually, everything returned to stillness. Some clan members crept up to the restricted grounds, trembling with unease. When they found the charred remains on the ground, they wailed and wept in grief — and in confusion and helplessness. Without the guiding hand that had been the backbone of their clan, they no longer knew which road lay ahead. But it was certain to be a road full of thorns.

The earth-shaking changes that had come to pass within the Rong Family that day could not be concealed at all. Word spread quickly. Some came to take advantage in the chaos, others kicked them while they were down, others gloated, and still others broke into open applause.

Without the Dao, few will follow — the arrogance with which the Xuan clan Rong Family had conducted itself in the past was known to all. Now that they had fallen in a single day, naturally there were those who came to watch the spectacle with laughter.

And within the Rong clan itself, once it had lost its patriarch and even its young heir — once even the retainer elders had walked out or fled — the clan elders finally gathered their wits and thought to check the treasury. When they managed to open it with their combined efforts, they were stupefied. Had thieves swept through this place? Otherwise, how could it be so empty that not even a single protective talisman remained?

“It must have been that wretched Rong Qingcang,” one elder raged, cursing: “How dare he! How can he face the ancestors of the Rong clan!”

Panic spread through the crowd.

The protective clan formation had been destroyed. Spiritual energy no longer gathered. The family treasury had been cleaned out as thoroughly as if it had been set on fire — not a trace of any foundation remained. What future was there to speak of?

In a single night, they had been cast down from their high and lofty place in the clouds and thrown into the mud below. The swiftness of the fall felt like a dream, too surreal to be real.

And still it was not over. In the Rong clan’s ancestral hall — a place of utmost importance — there was suddenly a tremendous explosion. Flames burst from the ancestral hall and, like a fire dragon, instantly devoured the entire building.

Every Rong clan member stared in rigid, petrified silence at the blazing inferno. The ancestral hall — the ancestral hall was burning. Was this the ancestors manifesting their wrath, rebuking the clan for its sins?

“O ancestors,” one elder cried, staring into the fire of the ancestral hall. He let out a single anguished wail — then fell straight backward, stiff as a board, and breathed his last.