Inside, the silence following Su Ranyue’s declaration gave way to sharp inhalations from the orthodox patriarchs, their faces setting into rigid hostility. The Grand Formation sealing the Zenith Summit arena pulsed with a sickly crimson light, no longer merely holding, but actively struggling against an external, overwhelming pressure. “A demon! A demon of the highest order!” bellowed Elder Yufan of the Obsidian Spire, his voice cracking with righteous fury. He was the first to draw his weapon, a gleaming jade saber that hummed with condensed Qi. “This groundskeeper, this… Mo Qianshu, he has deceived us all! His disciple is clearly infused with a forbidden dao, a corrupting influence!” Around him, other elites echoed his outrage. Swords, staves, and arcane talismans materialized, each radiating a potent aura that spoke of millennia-old lineages. The inquisitors, who had previously swept the arena with their karmic mirrors, now pointed accusing fingers at Mo Qianshu, the very man they had dismissed as an irrelevant nobody just moments prior. Mo Qianshu, hunched in his corner, watched a dozen elders advance with drawn blades. Above the dome, the Nine-Yuan Annihilation thunderheads gathered, pinpointing his coordinates. Su Ranyue’s well-meaning rant had stripped his cover bare; his karmic ledger flared like a beacon before the celestial arbiters. If he twitched so much as an eyebrow in self-defense, or let an ember of his true cultivation show, the tribulation would drop like an iron mallet and erase him from existence. “Demonic scum! To dare defile the Zenith Summit with your foul presence!” snarled Elder Jinrei from the Golden Scale Sect, lunging forward with twin falchions that cast an amber arc toward Mo Qianshu’s chest. Mo Qianshu felt his very essence tremble. This was it. The moment of truth. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t resist. He had to embody true irrelevance, ultimate passivity. He had to do *nothing*. He squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a pathetic squeak, and instinctively covered his head with his hands. In a desperate, split-second improvisation born of pure terror and a lifetime of calculated apathy, he blindly flung the half-eaten, slightly moldy apple core he had been gnawing on, aiming vaguely in Su Ranyue’s direction. It was a reflex born of panic, tossing away rubbish before impact. Yet as the core slipped from his fingertips, an infinitesimal droplet of his sealed origin essence hitched a ride onto the discarded fruit—an unthinking attempt to shed any shred of weight drawing tribulation down upon his skull. The gesture was so petty and devoid of martial will that the celestial canopy barely registered its departure. Su Ranyue, hovering above the flagstones with heightened spiritual senses, tracked the arc of the tumbling core. It was coming towards her. Not with malice, not with purpose, but with the casual indifference of something tossed away. To her, however, it was a transmission, a profound instruction from her glorious, mysterious master. “A worthless trinket!” Elder Jinrei roared, his twin blades inches from Mo Qianshu. “Die, demon!” But before the blades could connect, the world shuddered. Outside the arena, the heavens split. The churning red clouds discharged a violet column thicker than a mountain ridge, scorching the firmament as it plummeted directly toward Mo Qianshu’s cowering figure. Just as the jagged violet forks tore through the fractured crimson barrier, Su Ranyue lunged. Her gaze locked onto the rotting apple core. Before the stunned assembly, and to Mo Qianshu's mounting dread, the discarded fruit flared, a gentle luminescence swelling from its bruised skin into a brilliant, warm radiance. Breaching the shattered canopy of the Grand Formation, Su Ranyue shot skyward into the gloom, a silhouette rising against heavenly wrath with the glowing scrap of compost hoisted high, ready to parry the Nine-Yuan Annihilation tempest head-on.

The Apple Core Transmission