The Su family home was gone. The luxury cars, repossessed. The bank accounts, frozen solid. Their social standing had evaporated overnight, like dew under a scorching sun. The moment the world learned that the Hua Shan Sect had knelt to Lu Feng, every business partner, every fair-weather friend, had severed ties. The Su family, once a second-rate power clinging to the coattails of giants, were now less than nothing. They were a stain.
Madam Su, her face pale and haggard, wore a dress that was worth a fortune yesterday but looked like a cheap rag today. She led the remnants of her family—a dozen cowering relatives—not to a corporate headquarters, but to the most opulent estate in the entire city, a place they wouldn't have dared to even drive past a week ago. The Azure Dragon Villa.
They didn't get past the gate.
Two guards stood there, motionless as statues. But their eyes… their eyes held the chilling stillness of predators. A faint, almost invisible aura of killing intent leaked from them, making the air thick and hard to breathe. It was the byproduct of true essence, refined on a hundred battlefields. The Su family felt like mice before twin tigers.
"We are here to see Lu Feng!" Madam Su announced, forcing a bravado she did not feel. "I am his mother-in-law!"
The guards didn't even blink. Their gaze passed right through her, as if she were a ghost.
Humiliation burned in Madam Su’s cheeks. She, who had commanded servants and sneered at billionaires, was being ignored by common gatekeepers. Her son, Su Wei, stepped forward. "Don't you know who we are? Let us through! That trash Lu Feng owes us everything!"
One of the guards slowly turned his head. His eyes were completely black, devoid of emotion. "One more word," the guard said, his voice a low growl, "and I will tear out your tongue."
Su Wei stumbled back, tripping over his own feet, his face as white as a sheet. The killing intent wasn't a threat; it was a promise.
Just then, the grand gates swung open silently. A woman emerged, walking with the fluid grace of a celestial being. She wore silver-white armor that seemed to shimmer, and the divine sword at her hip pulsed with a faint light. It was Bai Li, the War Goddess. Her beauty was so breathtaking it was terrifying, her presence so immense it dwarfed the entire villa behind her.
She stopped ten feet from them, her cold eyes sweeping over the pathetic family. Her gaze was one of utter contempt, the look a dragon might give an insect before crushing it.
"Bai Li… General Bai…" Madam Su stammered, her arrogance completely shattered. Before this woman, she felt like a speck of dust. "We must see Lu Feng. It's a family matter."
Bai Li let out a short, sharp laugh, a sound like cracking ice. "Family?" Her voice dripped with poison. "The Sovereign has no family. He has followers, he has enemies, and he has annoyances to be swept away. Which one are you?"
Desperation clawed at Madam Su’s throat. She fell to her knees, the gravel biting into her skin. The other Su family members, seeing her collapse, quickly followed suit, kowtowing on the dirty road. It was their final, most desperate gamble.
"Please!" Madam Su wailed, her voice cracking. "We were wrong! We were blind! I was a terrible mother-in-law! I know that now! Lu Feng, please, just help us! For Xue Yao's sake!"
Xue Yao stood behind them, frozen. She didn't kneel. She couldn't. Her body was rigid with a regret so profound it felt like a physical poison consuming her from the inside. She watched the man she had divorced, the man she had called useless trash for three years, become a figure so high she couldn't even see his shadow. The divorce papers she had thrown in his face now felt like burning embers in her memory.
"The Sovereign is busy," Bai Li said, already turning to leave. "He is contemplating the fate of the Jianghu. He has no time for the croaking of frogs in a dried-up well."
"No! Wait!" Madam Su crawled forward on her hands and knees, grabbing the hem of Bai Li's armor. "Please! Just let us see him!"
Bai Li glanced down at the hand touching her, her eyes flashing with a murderous light. "Remove your filthy hand, or lose it."
Madam Su snatched her hand back as if burned. Just as all hope seemed lost, a voice echoed from within the villa. A voice that was neither loud nor soft, but carried an absolute authority that silenced the wind itself.
"Let them in."
It was Lu Feng.
Bai Li bowed her head respectfully. "My Lord." She stepped aside, and the path was clear. The Su family scrambled to their feet, hope igniting in their eyes, and rushed into the courtyard.
There he was. Lu Feng sat casually at a stone table, sipping tea. He wasn't wearing dragon robes or a crown. He was in simple black clothes, the same kind of unremarkable attire he’d worn for three years while washing their dishes and mopping their floors. But the aura around him was different. It was vast, ancient, and heavy. He was the center of the world, and everything else was merely in orbit.
He didn't look at them. He just continued to sip his tea, his focus on the steam rising from the cup.
Madam Su, emboldened by his command to let them in, rushed forward and fell to her knees before the table. "Lu Feng! My boy! I knew you wouldn't forget us!" she sobbed. "We made a mistake! A terrible mistake! Please, you are the Dragon Sovereign! You can restore our family with a single word! Just one word!"
Lu Feng placed his cup down with a soft click. The sound echoed in the dead silent courtyard like a clap of thunder. He still didn't look at them. He just stared at a single fallen leaf on the stone paving.
Xue Yao watched him, her heart being squeezed in a vise. This was the man she had lived with for three years. How could she have been so blind? That silence, that indifference she had mistaken for weakness… it was the calm at the eye of a hurricane. It was the patience of a god.
"Lu Feng, I am still your mother-in-law!" Madam Su pressed, desperation making her reckless. She reached out and grabbed the hem of his trousers, just as she had done to Bai Li. "By law! By tradition! You have a duty to—"
He moved. It wasn't fast. He simply raised his hand. An invisible pressure, a wave of pure, condensed Inner Qi, slammed down on Madam Su. She was thrown back five feet, landing in a heap, gasping for air as if she had been crushed by a mountain.
Finally, Lu Feng turned his head. His eyes, deep and cold as the abyss, met hers. There was no anger. No hatred. There was nothing. Just pure, chilling emptiness.
"You came here to beg," he stated, his voice flat.
"Yes! Yes! We're begging!" another uncle cried out, prostrating himself fully on the ground.
Lu Feng's gaze drifted over them, the kneeling, pathetic figures who had once made him kneel. A flicker of a memory crossed his mind—a rainy night, when Madam Su had thrown a bowl of rice on the floor and told him to eat it like a dog.
He looked at Madam Su's tear-streaked, desperate face.
"I seem to recall you telling me that only dogs beg on the street," he said, his voice quiet, yet every word was a hammer blow to their souls. "Tell me, Madam Su… do you hear yourself barking?"
The world shattered. Madam Su's eyes went wide with shock, then rolled back in her head as she fainted dead away. The other Su family members froze, the insult so profound it bypassed shame and went straight to soul-crushing terror. Xue Yao let out a choked sob, the sound swallowed by the suffocating silence. Their ruin was complete.
Lu Feng rose from his seat, turning his back on them as if they were nothing more than overturned furniture. He was done.
At that exact moment, Bai Li strode forward, her expression urgent and grim. "My Lord, a message from the Western Territories."
Lu Feng paused, his back still to the wreckage of the Su family. "Speak."
Her voice was low, laced with disbelief and a deep chill. "The entire Hua Shan Sect… every man, woman, and child… has been annihilated overnight."