Lin Cheng’s venomous grin faltered when Ye Chen mentioned the rogue cultivators.
The two bandits his brother had hired were notorious for their cruelty and efficiency.
To hear that they were already dead—and that this supposedly rootless waste was standing here without a scratch—sent a cold twitch through Lin Cheng’s jaw.
But the hesitation was quickly crushed by his own arrogance.
He was nineteen, backed by the inner faction, and surrounded by four capable lackeys.
He refused to believe a minor fluke in the outer arena changed the fundamental law of nature: trash remained trash.
“You killed them? You?” Lin Cheng let out a harsh, forced bark of laughter.
He drew his polished silver broadsword, the blade gleaming with a predatory light in the dim cavern.
“Do not flatter yourself, Ye Chen! They must have run into a high-tier spirit beast. But you won’t be so lucky today. Kill him! Tear his limbs off, but leave the throat intact so I can show his face to my brother!”
The four lackeys roared, channeling their unrefined Qi as they lunged forward.
Two wielded long iron spears aimed at Ye Chen’s chest.
The other two flanked him with short sabers, intending to cut off his escape.
Ye Chen stood by the edge of the Glacial Spirit Spring.
His posture was relaxed, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.
He didn’t drop into a defensive stance.
To a mind that had commanded cosmic wars, the coordinated attack of these five teenagers looked like the clumsy stumbling of toddlers.
As the two spears cut through the freezing mist, inches from his chest, Ye Chen finally moved.
He didn’t step back.
He stepped forward, right into the narrow space between the two spearheads.
His movement was so fluid, so impossibly precise, that he seemed to dissolve and reappear a foot closer.
Before the spearmen could adjust their grip, Ye Chen’s hands shot out like twin vipers.
He caught both wooden shafts simultaneously.
With a brutal twist of his wrists—backed by the immense physical power of his frost-tempered body—he ripped the weapons from their hands.
Snap!
The heavy ashwood shafts splintered under his grip.
Using the broken, pointed ends remaining in his hands, Ye Chen drove them backward with blinding speed.
Thud.
Thud.
The blunt ends struck both spearmen squarely in their shoulders, fracturing their collarbones instantly.
“What kind of monster strength is this?!” one of the saber-wielding lackeys shrieked.
His confidence evaporated as he tried to halt his charge.
“You are too slow to stop,” Ye Chen whispered.
He rotated on his heel, his grey outer robe sweeping through the air like a shadow.
His basic iron sword remained in its sheath.
He didn’t need steel to handle these flies.
He channeled a fraction of his silver Qi into his right leg and delivered a spinning sweep across the dirt.
The kick connected with the third lackey’s ribs with the force of a battering ram.
The sickening crack of multiple bones breaking echoed through the cave.
The boy flew ten yards away, crashing face-first into the freezing mud, unconscious.
The fourth lackey dropped his weapon entirely.
His knees buckled in sheer terror as he scrambled backward on his hands and knees, frantically trying to reach his teleportation talisman.
Ye Chen didn’t even look at him.
His dark, bottomless eyes locked directly onto Lin Cheng, who stood frozen at the entrance of the cavern, his silver broadsword trembling in his white-knuckled grip.
The arrogant smile was gone, replaced by a cold, suffocating dread.
“Now,” Ye Chen said softly.
His voice carried the calm, absolute weight of an executioner.
His boots clicked against the frosted stones as he approached.
“It is just you and me, Cousin. Draw your sword and show me the strength of the inner faction.”
Lin Cheng swallowed hard.
A cold sweat broke out across his neck despite the freezing temperature.
“You… you cannot kill me, Ye Chen! My grandfather is the Third Elder! If I die here, the clan will hunt you down to the ends of the earth!”
“Your grandfather is nothing but an old dog waiting for his turn to be butchered,” Ye Chen murmured, stopping five paces away.
The silver Qi within his veins throbbed with a dangerous, quiet intensity.
“In my past life, I watched empires crumble and gods bleed. Do you truly think the threat of a minor mortal clan can stay my hand?”
“Die!” Lin Cheng screamed in pure desperation.
He lunged forward, executing the Tiger’s Leap Strike—the strongest offensive stance he knew—aiming to split Ye Chen’s head in two.
Clang.
The sound of Ye Chen’s iron sword leaving its scabbard was a single, crisp note that cut through Lin Cheng’s roar.
The Shadow-Sunder Slash erupted in the absolute dark of the cavern.
There was no bright display of spiritual light, no dramatic shockwave.
There was only a vacuum of absolute silence as the clean iron blade cut through the blue glow like a hot knife through wax.
Snap.
Lin Cheng’s expensive silver broadsword was sheared perfectly in half.
The top section flew into the air and embedded itself into the cavern ceiling.
Before Lin Cheng could even look at his broken hilt, Ye Chen’s left hand shot forward, clamping around his throat like an iron vise.
He lifted the nineteen-year-old completely off the ground with a single arm, slamming his back against the stone wall.
Lin Cheng choked.
His legs kicked uselessly in the air as the silver Qi from Ye Chen’s grip flooded his system, completely paralyzing his spiritual channels.
“Please…” Lin Cheng wheezed, tears of absolute terror streaming down his pale face.
“Spare… spare me…”
“When my father’s spirit roots were broken, did your faction show any mercy?” Ye Chen asked softly.
His face was bare inches away, his eyes holding a terrifyingly stagnant depth.
“When you sent bandits to take my head, did you think of sparing me?”
With a cold, indifferent twist of his wrist, Ye Chen didn’t snap his neck.
Instead, he drove his right index finger straight into Lin Cheng’s lower abdomen—directly into his dantian.
Pfff.
A sound like a puncturing balloon echoed in the cave.
Lin Cheng let out a muffled, agonizing shriek as the silver Qi tore through his core, systematically shredding the delicate spiritual pathways he had spent years cultivating.
His energy deflated instantly, his body turning limp and hollow.
Ye Chen tossed the now-crippled youth into the dirt like a broken rag doll.
Lin Cheng lay there, clutching his stomach, weeping silently as he realized he was now a permanent waste—lower than the very mortals he used to trample.
“Go back and tell your brother that his debt is growing,” Ye Chen said, turning his back on the ruined disciples as he walked back toward the Glacial Spirit Spring to gather his things.
“And tell him I am coming to collect it very soon.”