Zhou Kang," she said, her voice cutting through the yard like frost. "You are just an outer field servant. A month ago, you wouldn’t even be qualified to wipe the mud off my boots. Get off this property."
Zhou Kang blinked, then his ugly laughter became even louder. "Oh! The fallen phoenix still thinks she has wings! Look at you, Ye Xinyang. Your core is literal garbage now. You’re nothing but a broken doll given to the lowest slave in the mountains. You want me to leave? How about I take you to my shack instead? I can treat you a lot better than this trash servant can."
He reached out his hand, completely ignoring me, and stepped toward Ye Xinyang.
He didn’t see my foot move.
Immortal Sovereign Phantom Step.
The air didn’t ripple. There was no loud wind. To Zhou Kang and his men, it looked like I simply disappeared from where I was standing. In the absolute blink of an eye, before his hand could even get close to Xinyang, I was standing directly in front of him, my chest inches from his face.
Zhou Kang froze, his eyes widening in shock as his hand grabbed empty air. "What the—"
Before he could finish the word, I reached out, grabbed his wrist with my new, clay-dense grip, and twisted it downward.
Zhou Kang let out a high-pitched, screaming howl, his knees hitting the dirt instantly from the agonizing pain. I didn’t stop. I brought my knee straight up into his chin, knocking his head back and sending him crashing onto his back in the gravel. He rolled around, clutching his broken wrist, his face covered in blood and dirt.
The three cronies behind him stopped laughing. Their jaws dropped. They looked at Zhou Kang on the ground, then looked at me. I hadn’t used any spiritual energy. There was no glowing light. It was just pure, impossible speed and raw, heavy physical strength.
"You... you trash..." one of the lackeys stammered, raising his wooden club with trembling hands. "What did you do to Senior Brother Zhou? You’re just a servant!"
Behind me, Ye Xinyang stared at my back, her breath completely hitched in her throat. She was a former top cultivator; she knew what high-level martial movements looked like. What I had just done didn’t look like a basic outer sect skill. It looked clean, effortless, and terrifyingly fast.
From inside the doorway, the wheelchair rolled forward. Mo Ran sat there, her hands tightly gripping the rims of her wheels, her eyes locked onto me with a mixture of absolute shock and disbelief. Beside her, Gu Qinghan leaned against the doorframe, her blindfolded face tilted down toward the groaning Zhou Kang.
"His footsteps didn’t make a sound," Gu Qinghan whispered into the quiet yard, her voice shaking slightly. "He didn’t just run. He... he wasn’t there, and then he was. Lu Chen... what kind of monster are you?"
I didn’t answer them. I took one step forward toward the three trembling disciples.
They flinched, dropping their wooden clubs onto the stones out of pure fear.
"Pick him up," I told them, my voice completely flat and devoid of emotion. "Take him back to the outer hall. Tell whoever sent him that the fields will be tilled when I feel like doing it. If anyone else comes to this shack to talk to my wives, they won’t leave with just a broken wrist."
The three lackeys didn’t say a word. They scrambled forward, grabbed the screaming Zhou Kang under his arms, and dragged him away down the rocky mountain path as fast as their legs could carry them.
The yard became completely silent again. The morning sun was fully up now, casting long shadows across the dirt.
I turned around and looked at the four girls.
Mo Ran was staring at her own hands on her wheelchair, then up at me, her stubborn pride completely shaken. Chu Ning’er was peeking from behind the door, her eyes round with awe. Gu Qinghan remained perfectly still, listening to the calm, unchanging rhythm of my heart.
And Ye Xinyang just stood there, her arms slowly dropping to her sides. The deep fear that she had been carrying since the day her core was smashed seemed to lighten just a fraction. She didn’t trust me completely yet—the world had been too cruel to her for that—but as she looked at the blood on the gravel, she knew one thing for sure.
The trash boy they had married wasn’t a slave. He was a wall standing between them and the rest of the world.
"You’re going to get us all killed," Mo Ran muttered from her chair, though her voice didn’t have any venom left in it. It just sounded small. "The outer elders will come next."
"Let them come, don’t worry about them when I am here... Just trust me ," I said, picking up the dropped wooden clubs from the dirt to use for firewood. "You should go back inside now. The wind is picking up."