The air on Hua Shan’s peak turned to ice. Bai Li’s words hung in the wind, a death sentence for men she had never met.
“Scouts at the Su residence?”
Lu Feng’s voice was unnervingly calm. It was not the voice of a concerned man. It was the sound of a glacier cracking, of a mountain preparing to collapse. He didn’t care for the Su family. They were insects who had buzzed around his ears for three miserable years. But they were *his* insects. Gui Ying’s spies watching them was not a threat. It was an insult.
It was a finger pointed at the Dragon Sovereign himself.
Bai Li lowered her head, the pressure from Lu Feng’s aura making it hard to breathe. “My Lord, your orders? Shall I dispatch the Dragon Guard to eliminate them?”
“No.” The word was final. “It is a feint.”
Before he could elaborate, a desperate cry echoed from the base of the mountain. A figure, cloaked in the green robes of the allied Jade Peak Sect, stumbled up the stone steps. He was covered in blood, one arm hanging uselessly at his side. He collapsed at the main gate, gasping for air.
“A message… for the Dragon… Sovereign!” he choked out, his eyes wide with terror.
Bai Li was at his side in a flash, her expression grim. She knelt, feeding a sliver of her own true essence into him to keep him conscious. “Speak,” she commanded.
The disciple’s body trembled violently. “The Iron Fist Sect… they are gone. All of them.”
Lu Feng’s eyes narrowed. The Iron Fist Sect was a stalwart ally, known for their unyielding loyalty and formidable martial arts. Their Grandmaster was only a step away from breaking through to the next realm.
“Wiped out?” Bai Li’s voice was sharp with disbelief. “By whom? The Dark Alliance’s main force?”
The man shook his head, tears of horror streaming down his face. “It wasn’t a battle… it was a harvest. We arrived to find… husks. Hundreds of them. Grandmaster Chen… his body was like dried wood, his face frozen in a silent scream. There was no blood. No wounds. Their Inner Qi… their life force… it was all just… gone.”
He clawed at Bai Li’s arm, his sanity fraying. “Black smoke still lingered in the air. A demonic energy that corrodes the soul. They whispered a name… a forbidden name… the Soul Devouring Grand Art!”
The moment the name was spoken, the air grew heavy, as if the heavens themselves recoiled in fear. Bai Li’s face went pale. That was a demonic technique from the dark ages, an art so evil it was said to have been personally erased from existence by the first Dragon Sovereign centuries ago.
Lu Feng remained motionless, his face an unreadable mask of stone. But within him, a storm was brewing. The seals on his power, the ones he had placed on himself to repay a debt to a dead man, vibrated with killing intent.
Gui Ying had not just crossed a line. He had defiled the sacred laws of Jianghu.
“He is gathering power,” Lu Feng said, his voice a low rumble. “And he uses the Su family as a distraction. He expects me to rush back to that insignificant city to protect a family that despises me. He thinks I am still the man I was three years ago.”
He took a step forward, and the very ground beneath him seemed to groan. The dying disciple stared up at him, his terror momentarily replaced by awe as he felt the oppressive, god-like aura Lu Feng was no longer bothering to conceal.
“My Lord?” Bai Li asked, her heart pounding. She knew what was coming.
“The seals are too restrictive,” Lu Feng stated, not as a complaint, but as a simple fact. “To erase a demonic art, one must wield divine might.”
He turned away from them, walking towards the highest, most desolate cliff on Hua Shan. With each step, the wind howled louder, and dark clouds began to gather in the clear sky. He did not need a ritual or a special location. The world was his altar.
He sat, legs crossed, on the edge of the precipice. He closed his eyes.
For a moment, there was silence. Then, a sound like shattering glass echoed, not in the air, but in the very soul of everyone on the mountain. An invisible barrier around Lu Feng cracked.
BOOM!
A pillar of pure, golden light erupted from his body, shooting straight into the heavens and blasting the gathering storm clouds apart. A terrifying surge of true essence, dense and ancient, flooded the entire mountain range. The ground shook violently. Trees bent to the ground, not from wind, but from pure spiritual pressure. Bai Li was slammed to her knees, gasping as the Dragon Sovereign’s unbound aura washed over her—a force so immense it felt like a physical ocean.
This was not the power of a Grandmaster. It was the power of a deity. This was the might that had unified the entire Jianghu, that had made Sect Masters and emperors bow.
Slowly, Lu Feng stood up. The golden light receded, drawing back into his body. But something had changed. His presence was heavier, colder. His eyes, when he opened them, seemed to contain the vast emptiness of the cosmos, with a faint, chilling golden glow at their center.
He had not broken all his seals. Not yet. But he had just unleashed enough power to slaughter an army.
He looked north, past the mountains, past the rivers, as if staring directly at his prey. “The surveillance on the Su family is an anchor for my attention. The massacre of the Iron Fist Sect is the lure. But the serpent’s head is not hiding.”
Bai Li looked up, her face filled with reverence and fear. “My Lord… where is he?”
“The Black Blood Abyss,” Lu Feng stated. The name alone was a place of legend, a cursed chasm from which no one had ever returned.
He took a step, appearing directly beside Bai Li as if he had teleported. The air around him warped with his power. His voice dropped to a whisper that carried the weight of ancient history.
“Gui Ying did not find the Soul Devouring Grand Art in some lost scroll.”
A terrifying realization dawned on Bai Li. Lu Feng’s eyes glowed brighter, filled with the cold light of a long-dead era.
“He is the art,” Lu Feng declared, his voice a blade of absolute certainty. “He is the last living vessel of the Demonic Sovereign I personally executed three hundred years ago.”