Chương 125: Chapter 14: The Fall of Tiandaozi

"Die!" Tiandaozi roared, his eyes flashing with a sadistic, vengeful joy. He splayed his fingers and unleashed a devastating downward palm strike, aiming to crush the life out of the intruder once and for all. From his fingertips, incandescent golden radiance erupted, manifesting a surge of spiritual power as violent and relentless as a crashing tsunami.

The sheer pressure of the atmosphere suggested that if this blow landed, the burly man beneath him would not only be reduced to a pulp of shattered bone and mangled flesh, but his very Primordial Spirit would be obliterated. He would be denied even the mercy of reincarnation, erased from the annals of existence forever. Yet, in that heartbeat of impending doom, the burly man looked up. His lips curled into a sliver of a frigid, mocking smile.

His eyes, once wide with feigned panic, were now as deep and impenetrable as the midnight sea—calm, calculating, and predatory. There was no trace of the previous desperation. Instead, he watched Tiandaozi with the supreme confidence of a veteran hunter watching a prize beast blunder directly into a hidden snare. This sudden transformation struck Tiandaozi like a physical blow. First came a jolt of alarm—the man's sudden composure sowed seeds of doubt in his mind.

Then came a wave of incandescent fury; he felt insulted by the sheer arrogance in the stranger's gaze, as if the man were looking down upon him from a great height. Finally, Tiandaozi's heart hardened into a cold sneer. He convinced himself this was nothing more than a desperate bluff, a final, pathetic attempt to scare him off and preserve a worthless life.

"Bluffing coward! I have dominated the cultivation world for a lifetime. If I were fooled by such a transparent trick, I would have lived my years in vain!" Tiandaozi's voice was a jagged edge of contempt. His golden palm whistled through the air, now less than fifty yards from the man's head. In half a breath, the target would be nothing but dust.

"To make an enemy of the Qingyan Sect is to embrace your own funeral!" Thirty yards! At that precise moment, the burly man's hand blurred. He flicked an object into the air—a sphere of obsidian darkness no larger than a child's fist. It possessed no aura, no spiritual ripple, and even under the scrutiny of Divine Sense, it appeared to be nothing more than a common, mundane pebble found on a roadside.

"Playing at ghosts and gods!" Tiandaozi's Divine Sense swept over the object, and finding nothing threatening, his confidence surged. His face contorted into a ghoulish grin as he slammed his palm down with even greater ferocity. This was the full-force strike of a Golden Core cultivator, a blow capable of flattening even a chunk of Profound Iron Essence into a thin wafer. However, the moment the golden light touched the black sphere, the object shuddered violently.

A plume of black mist, so frigid it seemed to freeze the very air, billowed out. To Tiandaozi's horror, his protective spiritual shield offered no resistance; the mist ignored the laws of cultivation, permeating his defenses in an instant.

"Something is wrong!" The moment his hand made contact, a primal chill surged from the depths of Tiandaozi's soul. The hairs on the back of his neck stood like needles, and a suffocating sense of mortal peril gripped his heart. Though his reflexes were honed by centuries of battle, the black mist was faster, coiling inside his shield like a nest of vipers.

"Skreee... Skreee... Skreee!" Ear-piercing, wretched wails suddenly filled the sky, a cacophony of the damned. Inside Tiandaozi's spiritual shield, the darkness became absolute, an opaque void that hid the unfolding horror from the onlookers. Only Tiandaozi felt the true terror. He watched, paralyzed, as the black mist coalesced into dozens of spectral, obsidian skulls. Each wail they emitted was a direct assault on his consciousness.

Even with his cultivation at the Middle Stage of the Golden Core, the sheer density of the spiritual attack caused his body to seize and his True Essence to stagnate, freezing in his meridians like slush. If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"SCREE!" With a synchronized, bone-chilling shriek, the spectral skulls unhinged their jaws and dived into Tiandaozi's body. They were intangible, treating his flesh and bone as if they were mere smoke. They bypassed his physical form entirely, manifesting directly within his sea of consciousness. There, they fell upon his Primordial Spirit, their phantom teeth tearing and gnashing at his very essence with ravenous hunger. For a cultivator, physical wounds could be mended with pills and time.

Even if the body was destroyed, a Golden Core master could survive as a spirit, potentially seeking a new vessel through possession. But a wound to the Primordial Spirit was a death sentence. Even those with god-like powers could rarely recover if their soul was shredded.

"ARGHHH!" A blood-curdling scream erupted from the black fog, causing the hearts of every spectator to skip a beat. A wave of profound dread washed over the crowd as they turned their gazes toward the pale, middle-aged man. Their eyes were no longer filled with pity, but with a burgeoning, terrified respect. A hundred yards away, the pupils of Qingxiaozi and Dan Chenzi contracted sharply. They stared at the stranger, a flicker of deep wariness passing between them.

But then, before the eyes of the entire assembly, the burly man's features began to ripple and warp. The coarse skin smoothed, the stature shifted, and the middle-aged facade melted away like wax in a fire, revealing the sharp, youthful countenance of a different man entirely.

"Reyn!"

"Disciple Reyn!"

"Martial Uncle Reyn!" The cultivators of the Xuanxiao Sect cried out in a mixture of shock and ecstatic relief as they recognized the young man standing in the center of the storm. Among the crowd, two men felt their blood run cold: Mo Yu and Duan Zhonghua. Their eyes bulged, filled with an uncontrollable horror.

"So this is the famous Reyn of the Xuanxiao Sect!"

"The rumors said he joined the sect only a year ago... that he is a High-tier Grade 3 Alchemist with the combat power of a Foundation Establishment cultivator. I didn't believe the tales, but seeing this... his power is far beyond the rumors!"

"Half a month ago, he slaughtered the elders of the Jinshan Sect for threatening his clan. He is clearly a man of iron and blood. We must be extremely cautious—never, under any circumstances, provoke this man." The burly man had indeed been Reyn, hidden beneath the effects of a Transformation Pill. After leaving the cave, he had realized he didn't know the exact location of the Qingyan Sect.

He had used the pill to change his appearance and waited patiently for the throngs of curious cultivators heading toward the conflict. He had blended in with the crowd, eventually arriving with the bald elder to set this very trap.

"Disciple Reyn pays his respects to the Sect Master and my honored Master!" Reyn bowed deeply toward the two elders, his voice steady. Then, he gestured toward the convulsing shadow in the sky.

"Sect Master, please take this opportunity to strike! Execute this old ghost Tiandaozi now!" Qingxiaozi's eyes lit up with a brilliant, predatory light. With his experience, he saw exactly what was happening: Tiandaozi's Primordial Spirit was shattered, and his spiritual energy was in total disarray. At this moment, even a lowly Qi Condensation disciple could likely end him.

By offering the finishing blow to the Sect Master, Reyn was giving him the chance to claim the glory and establish absolute dominance for the sect. Qingxiaozi looked at Reyn with newfound appreciation, the last lingering trace of wariness in his heart finally dissolving into pride. He exchanged a quick, knowing glance with Dan Chenzi, then blurred into motion, appearing instantly at Reyn's side. Reyn stepped back respectfully, maintaining his humble posture.

Seeing that the Sect Master accepted the gesture, he felt a weight lift from his shoulders.

"Sect Master, please cleanse the world of this man and uphold the majesty of our Xuanxiao Sect!" Reyn shouted, his voice ringing across the battlefield.

"Sect Master, strike him down! Uphold the majesty of the Xuanxiao Sect!" The disciples of the Xuanxiao Sect followed suit, their faces flushed crimson with excitement, their voices uniting into a thunderous roar. Qingxiaozi's weathered face trembled with emotion. The two sects had been locked in a bloody struggle for over a millennium. Today, the Qingyan Sect would finally fall by his hand. His name would be etched in the annals of the Xuanxiao Sect's history in bold, golden strokes.

"Tiandaozi, we have fought for a lifetime, but in the end, you are the one who falls!"

"Today, I send you to the yellow springs!" With a ruthless glint in his eyes, Qingxiaozi summoned his Vulture-Beak Spike. With a flick of his wrist, the artifact transformed into a streak of lethal light. Pfft! The treasure pierced through the black mist with clinical precision, erupting out the other side in a spray of crimson gore. To the Divine Senses of everyone present, the once-mighty aura of Tiandaozi flickered like a candle in a gale before being snuffed out entirely.

Tiandaozi, the Great Elder of the Qingyan Sect and a formidable Middle Stage Golden Core cultivator, was dead.