A black spear pinned one of the ancient clansmen to the ground. The dark-gold shaft trembled as blood seeped out around it, sending a chill through all who witnessed it.
In the sky, a magnificent figure descended swiftly, stepping down toward the earth below. He brought with him a surge of forceful wind that sent rocks and dust flying across the crimson mining grounds, whipping up a fierce gale.
“Who is this, tired of living? How dare someone come wild in the Sacred Forbidden Zone of the Divine Beings?” These people venerated the Undying Celestial Emperor as their divine patron and were themselves descendants of the Eight Divine Generals.
“It’s actually a human! You’ve truly swallowed the gallbladder of a god to dare raise your hand in our clan’s mining grounds. We’ll use your blood to consecrate this land!” In their day-to-day lives, they had grown accustomed to looking down on everyone. Most humans had to endure their arrogance in silence. It was always they who provoked others — never had anyone dared launch such a bold assault against them.
The dozen or so men at the forefront fixed their eyes cold as ice, weapons of antiquity raised in unison toward the sky, attempting to skewer the descending figure and water the mining grounds with his blood.
Clang!
In a flash of light and shadow, Ye Fan dropped down. His right leg swept horizontally like a millstone of ages, grinding a row of weapons into iron shavings. He then soared through the air at an incomprehensible speed, stepping from one person’s head to the next.
He landed at a distance, his robes unstained by so much as a speck of dust.
Pfft!
Behind him, those dozen or so men stood wide-eyed, their faces written over with terror. Then their skulls all burst upward at once — a dozen sprays of blood erupting several meters into the air before a dozen corpses crumpled to the ground.
Further back, the few strongest among them felt their pupils contract sharply. A wave of bone-deep dread washed over them, and they stumbled involuntarily back several hundred zhang.
“The Human Emperor reigns supreme over the four seas, revered by all under heaven, worshipped by the ten thousand clans. You dare humiliate him so — you have no sense of what death means. Not one of you is leaving today!” Ye Fan’s voice was utterly frigid.
Behind him, Ji Yuande’s eyes blazed with brilliance. His son and daughter were trembling with excitement. Just moments ago, they had been humiliated beyond measure — the palm prints on their faces were still scarlet, like crimson birthmarks branded there in blood. It felt as though the very name of their ancestor had been shamed.
At this moment, the young brother and sister both clenched their fists, their bodies trembling nearly to the point of convulsion. It was as if they themselves were in the midst of that battle, as if they were the ones striking down the ancient clansmen who had insulted the Void Emperor.
“Who are you?”
Several of the ancient clansmen across the way shouted the question, their expressions ugly. For years beyond counting, they had always been the ones doing the provoking. Nothing like today had ever happened to them.
Boom!
Traces of the Dao began to appear. The void twisted as if a celestial drum were being struck, reverberating with a thunderous toll. A massive hand reached out, grasping toward the one who had achieved the Dao-Severing realm standing among them.
It had been this very ancient clansman who had raised his arm and slapped the young brother and sister across the face, leaving behind those blood-red palm prints. Ye Fan had no intention of letting him off. He wanted to drag him over.
“You dare!”
This ancient clan expert flew into a rage. At his level of cultivation — though he had been sealed away since the ancient era and only recently awakened — his true body was still vigorous and powerful, and he had always been untameable and defiant.
To think that someone now dared look down upon him this way, treating him like a chick to be plucked up — naturally, it sent fury roaring through him. He opened his mouth and spat out a cascade of rosy light. Within it was a divine drill with a spiral groove, radiating brilliant auspicious radiance as it shot toward the center of Ye Fan’s palm, attempting to pierce straight through.
However, the expected sight — blood gushing, hand bones shattering — never came. That great hand pressed forward with crushing force. The royal divine drill lost its luster, cracking apart inch by inch before falling to the ground.
Thud!
Ye Fan grabbed him by the collar and hauled him forward. His gaze was glacial, and it seemed to drop the temperature of the entire area instantly.
“You dare!”
The ancient clansman was stunned and furious. A profound sense of humiliation rose within him, and he couldn’t help but bellow aloud, struggling violently.
“I don’t dare?” Ye Fan gave a cold sneer, released him, and then delivered a resounding open-handed slap. Crack! The man was sent flying, a long trail of blood spraying from his mouth.
Thud!
Before he even had the chance to fall, Ye Fan’s great hand shot forward again, snatching him out of the air and clamping around his collarbone, hoisting him upside down.
“Let me go!” the ancient clansman roared with rage. His body erupted with searing violet light as he desperately activated a forbidden technique, deliberately injuring himself — shattering several of his own bones to release his latent potential — hoping to destroy Ye Fan’s hand.
“Even a grain of rice tries to outshine the sun!”
A cold sneer curled at the corner of Ye Fan’s mouth. He tossed the man into the air, then brought his palm crashing down like driving a ball into the ground, the impact sending bones cracking and blood pouring from the man’s mouth and nose.
Of course, this was the result of Ye Fan holding back. Had he not, there would have been no intact body left to speak of — nothing but a pile of pulp and bone fragments.
A few paces back, the remaining ancient clansmen went cold all over. That was a Dao-Severing expert — and in front of this man, he was as helpless as a scarecrow, to be beaten however his captor pleased.
“Seizing you — what is there to fear?” Ye Fan said coldly, grabbing hold of him once more. No matter how desperately the man thrashed, it was useless.
This time, Ye Fan dragged him over as one would drag a dead dog, then gave a forceful squeeze. The man’s bones nearly snapped from the pressure, letting out a gruesome series of crunching sounds.
Thud!
Ye Fan threw him heavily down before the Ji Family’s portion of the mining grounds. No one knew how many young disciples of the source-extraction teams were watching, all of them dumbstruck. Who was this person? How could he suppress a Dao-Severing expert of the ancient clan so thoroughly?
“You dare humiliate the Void Emperor? Now it is time to pay for your crimes.”
A flame of anger burned within Ye Fan. Ji Ziyue and Ji Haoyue were both bound to him by close ties. Seeing their younger cousins humiliated like this had genuinely ignited his fury.
He kicked the man up in a high arc, sending him landing in a parabolic curve right before the young brother and sister, and said: “The palm he left on your faces — you can now return it.”
Ji Yuande’s eyes shone with a complex brilliance, uncertain and stunned. The man before him was far too powerful. Just who was he, to come forward and stand up for them like this?
As for the pair of young siblings — they were even more overcome, both desperate to know the identity of this mysterious figure. When they looked down at the man on the ground, every muscle in their bodies tensed, the urge to strike nearly overwhelming.
“It’s alright. Go ahead,” Ye Fan said with a gentle smile.
Thud!
The older brother could contain himself no longer. He instantly sent a kick flying, launching the Dao-Severing expert dozens of zhang through the air, where the man rolled like a broken gourd.
Crack!
The young girl reached up and touched the bloody print on her own face, then raised her hand and delivered a slap of her own — a ringing open-handed blow straight across the face of this ancient clan powerhouse, leaving a flush of red across his cheek. It was pure, incandescent rage!
“What are you? You insult our ancestor the Void Emperor — if he were still alive, not even the emperors of the ancient eras would dare speak so insolently!”
The two young siblings had been swallowing their grievances to the breaking point. Tears rimmed their eyes. Now the older brother swung his palm, the younger sister raised her jade foot, and the sounds of strikes rang out one after another.
The ancient clan powerhouse had bones of iron, but he couldn’t hold back from coughing up mouthful after mouthful of blood — not from injury, but from sheer, explosive rage. To think that he, a dignified Dao-Severing expert, was being slapped and kicked by two young juniors. His lungs felt ready to burst.
In the distance, the other ancient clansmen erupted into an uproar, roaring with fury. Ye Fan’s earlier flurry of moves had been too swift for them to intervene. Now, seeing two young Ji Family children treating one of their powerhouses this way, their anger finally boiled over.
A group of them surged across the boundary, charging forward. A great battle seemed unavoidable. Ye Fan’s expression was calm and cold as he stepped forward, extending a single finger. A torrent of resplendent sword-wave energy expanded outward.
It was no different from a real surging tide — blazing and overwhelming. It was sword energy made manifest, unleashing an indiscriminate attack upon all who had crossed the boundary. Swaths of crimson light erupted as a mist of blood filled the air.
It was a slaughter. There was not a shred of suspense. Over sixty people were reduced to blood and fragments of bone. Nothing could withstand the sweep of that sword wave — all it touched shattered upon contact.
Even the Ji Family members were stunned into silence. Ji Yuande murmured to himself: “Even if Haoyue returned, even if Ziyue appeared — neither of them could match this level of combat power.”
As for the young brother and sister, tears were still in their eyes. The Ji Family’s pair of supreme prodigies had departed, and the two of them missed them terribly — those were the older siblings they had admired and adored most of all.
On the ancient clan’s side, there was dead silence. All of them had been frightened into stillness. Just who was this person?
“Are you the madman who appeared at the Fire Spirit Ravine?”
A figure approached from afar. This mining area had two Dao-Severing experts guarding it, and this was the second one — likewise a descendant of the Eight Divine Generals. In ordinary times, he regarded himself as vastly superior to most. Now, having witnessed such a crushing defeat, the shock within him could only be imagined.
Clang!
The dark-gold spear still embedded in the earth radiated brilliant immortal light. Driven by Ye Fan’s divine consciousness, it tore itself from the ground on its own, transforming into a streak of dark radiance that pierced through nine layers of sky — then reversed and plunged back down.
Pfft!
Blood erupted several zhang high as the black spear tore through his body, carrying him flying hundreds of zhang away before pinning him to a massive stone stele. He died on the spot.
The entire section belonging to the ancient clan immediately erupted into chaos. One Dao-Severing expert was being held down and slapped senseless; another had just been cut down in such fashion — how were they to resist?
The remaining clansmen attempted to flee, but Ye Fan had no intention of giving them the chance. He joined two fingers into a blade and swept them forward, like a wave of black ink rolling outward, instantly swallowing everything ahead.
Pfft. Pfft. Pfft…
Blossoms of blood bloomed one after another. Ye Fan struck with full force — a sweep that covered hundreds of li — cutting down every last soul before him in one clean stroke. Like rotten wood and withered weeds before a great wind: no suspense whatsoever.
Afterward, he seized the spear and soared into the air, pushing deeper into the territory, overturning the Celestial Emperor’s Son’s grounds entirely. A single strike reduced the land to ash and cinders.
In the end, he swept away every rare treasure from the source reserve vault. The crystalline source stones piled up like a small mountain — an extraordinarily abundant haul.
When Ye Fan returned, the young brother and sister were quite decisive. With a sharp motion, they severed the head of the Dao-Severing expert and then hacked it into several pieces — as one might quarter a watermelon.
“Aaaaah…”
The sealed divine consciousness within screamed, filled with unwillingness and humiliation, its expression grotesque. Ye Fan read through the memories stored in its sea of consciousness, then delivered a single palm strike to shatter it, reducing it to drifting ash.
“Is the Ji Family’s situation really this dire?” Ye Fan asked with some measure of sympathy, posing the question to the father and his two children.
“Not entirely,” Ji Yuande sighed. “They don’t dare stir up trouble in the Southern Region — it’s only here, in this neighboring source mining area, that they come to make trouble and provoke us.”
Over these many years, not all of the ancient clans had been hostile toward humanity. A considerable portion were actually rather amicable, acknowledging that the ten thousand clans should coexist.
However, there was also a faction of the ancient clansmen who were exceptionally radical — eager to wipe out every last human being.
With so many clans, each holding different views, the relationships between them were intricate and tangled beyond easy summary.
The father and his children asked Ye Fan for his name three times over, but to no avail. As they watched his silhouette disappear at the far edge of the horizon, Ji Yuande murmured with deep feeling: “Haoyue. Ziyue. Can you two ever return in this lifetime?”
He was the biological uncle of Ji Haoyue and Ji Ziyue. Both of them had often chased at his heels when they were young. Blood runs thicker than water — his love for those two was boundless. Now, seeing a junior-generation Dao-Severing expert of such invincible power, his heart overflowed with a torrent of emotions, and his thoughts turned to the two supreme prodigies of the Ji Family.
Ye Fan took up his spear and continued on his way. Alone, he charged into the next stronghold held by the Celestial Emperor’s Son, and another round of slaughter began — a merciless sweeping advance.
He drove forward relentlessly, rooting out stronghold after stronghold belonging to the Celestial Emperor’s Son, wiping out vast numbers of the Eight Divine Generals’ descendants — exterminating them clean.
On this single day, news spread swiftly to every corner of the world. The Eastern Desolation trembled. The world was shaken. The four seas quaked violently. All five regions erupted into an uproar. The entire world was stunned!
Ye Fan had become a demon sovereign of his age — cold and pitiless — pressing the Celestial Emperor’s Son to show himself, determined to cut him down.
Never had a single day been this turbulent. Discussion erupted everywhere. Every person was speculating as to who had gone to such lengths — who would dare make such a grand move against the Celestial Emperor’s Son?
The iron-and-blood killing continued. Ye Fan fought without pause, sweeping across the land. In the span of a single day and night, he overturned eighteen of the Celestial Emperor’s Son’s most important strongholds in the Eastern Desolation!
His body was dotted with bloodstains. His spear had drunk deeply of enemy blood. He had no idea how many people he had killed — he was drenched entirely in a murderous aura.
“All these years, the Celestial Emperor’s Son has reigned supreme over the Eastern Desolation, looking down upon all beneath heaven while the heroes of the world retreated before him. Just who is this person? Can he truly be this bold?”
“This individual… is truly a divine being. To stand alone against the descendants of the Undying Celestial Emperor — a clash of dragon and tiger is inevitable.”
Ye Fan’s sweeping advance over a day and night, toppling eighteen strongholds — the news struck the world like a thunderclap, leaving everyone speechless.
The masses had assumed that overturning a few locations would already be remarkable. No one had imagined it would come to this — such ferocious, relentless slaughter in all directions, reducing eighteen sites to scorched earth and cutting down every lord within them.
In a single day and a single night, he had nearly upended the heavens over the Eastern Desolation entirely.
The entire world erupted. These results left people gaping — they could scarcely believe it. Was this the reincarnation of a war god? In one day and one night, he had swept across the whole of the Eastern Desolation.
Afterward, people tallied the figures. While not every one of the eighteen strongholds had hosted a Dao-Severing expert, taken together, there had been thirteen of them.
That number sent chills through all who heard it. Blood had filled the sky. The raw, blood-soaked truth laid bare before the world just how terrifying this campaign had truly been — thirteen Dao-Severing experts slain in a single day and night!
As for the ancient clansmen of other cultivation stages — they were beyond counting. Across all eighteen battlefields, blood drenched the earth and shattered bone lay scattered in every direction — a scene too horrific to behold without flinching.
A single night that shook the heavens. This was a raging wave crashing over the world, stirring all things. The thunder of his might resounded across all under heaven. Every last cultivator was watching. It was all too shocking — too inconceivable.
“Just who is he?”
“This person seems to have appeared out of nowhere — with no past to speak of. How did he simply materialize, wage a blood war across all eight desolate regions in a day and night, and stand without equal beneath heaven? What is his identity?”
This was the question that all the world wanted answered.
This mysterious and invincible expert had drawn the attention and speculation of every soul alive. None could determine his origins.
“Why did Ye Fan strike so early?”
“Why so sudden? Why did Ye Fan unleash such thunderous power without warning — sweeping away so many of the Celestial Emperor’s Son’s forces?”
At that moment, even those who knew Ye Fan’s identity — Li Tian, Dongfang Ye, Li Heishui, and the others — were baffled, unable to figure out why he had moved before the time was right.
“Hurry and notify the Sacred Emperor’s Son — tell him to come out of seclusion. A storm is coming. The great decisive battle has begun ahead of schedule!”
“Exactly. Let the battle begin. Mobilize our forces. Be ready to provide support at any moment. Ignite everything!”
Ye Fan’s assault had far-reaching implications. The decisive confrontation with the Ancient Emperor’s Son might come ahead of schedule. It set winds stirring in all ten directions, and the whole world braced, waiting.