The midnight fog crawled over the northern ravines like a silent, frozen shroud, swallowing the jagged stone pathways of the Lin Clan’s outer perimeter.
Inside his isolated cave, Ye Chen stood by the edge of the stone platform, his hand resting loosely on the hilt of his basic iron sword.
The dense, gold-tinted silver Qi inside his lower dantian circulated with perfect fluid precision, each rotation solidifying his newly achieved Third Layer threshold.
The foundation is stable, he thought calmly.
Now I wait.
Suddenly, his eyes narrowed into dangerous slits.
His ears did not catch a sound—the wind was howling fiercely through the gaps in the rocks.
But his immense soul awareness picked up a sudden, rhythmic disruption in the local spiritual currents.
Five distinct energy signatures, he noted.
They bypassed the outer wards.
They move with the quiet, predatory speed of trained wolves.
“The Wang Clan wastes little time,” Ye Chen whispered to the dark, a cold, serene smile appearing on his young face.
“They sent their tracking dogs before the morning light could break.”
He did not retreat into the deeper shadows of the cavern.
Instead, his boots clicked calmly against the frosted stone floor as he walked out into the open air of the ravine, standing directly beneath the pale illumination of the silver moon.
Let them come to me, he thought.
The cave is a cage.
The open ground is a stage.
The fog around the rocky ledge suddenly rippled.
Five figures emerged from the mist, completely surrounding him in a flawless execution pincer formation.
They wore tight, dark-crimson leather armor that bore no clan crests.
Their faces were covered by cloth masks, but the heavy, copper smell of old blood trailing from their tunics revealed their identity instantly.
Blood-Hound mercenaries, Ye Chen thought, his eyes flickering with recognition.
Ruthless assassins who specialize in hunting young sect geniuses for the highest bidder.
In my previous life, they killed three promising disciples of the Azure Cloud Sect.
The leader of the squad stepped forward.
His eyes were cold and analytical as he looked at Ye Chen’s relaxed posture.
He radiated the heavy, suffocating spiritual pressure of the Fifth Layer of Qi Condensation, while the four assassins flanking him were all firmly established at the peak of the Fourth Layer.
“You have remarkable composure for a boy who is about to be systematically butchered, Ye Chen,” the mercenary leader hissed, drawing a long, serrated silver dagger coated in a dark, sticky poison.
He smiled beneath his mask.
“Young Master Wang Qiang sends his regards. He wants your iron arms severed first so he can grind them into dust beneath his boots.”
Ye Chen stood with his hands tucked loosely inside his deep-blue sleeves, his basic iron sword remaining quietly in its scabbard.
He looked at the five hardened killers with a profound, stagnant indifference that made the mercenaries instinctively tighten their grips on their weapons.
They think numbers will save them, he thought coldly.
They think a Fifth Layer leader and four Fourth Layer executioners are enough to kill a ‘minor inner disciple.’
“An elite vanguard of the Fifth Layer, accompanied by four Fourth Layer executioners,” Ye Chen murmured, his voice flat and cutting through the mountain chill like ice.
“The Wang Clan must be terrified of my shadow if they are willing to spend so many resources on a mere inner disciple.”
He paused.
“But you made one fatal mistake when you accepted this contract.”
“And what is that, brat?” the leader sneered, his body tensing as he prepared to strike.
“You assumed my strength was bound by the rules of this minor city,” Ye Chen whispered.
Before the final word could even leave his lips, the gold-tinted silver Qi within his veins suddenly erupted backward, creating a localized vacuum of absolute silence that caused the surrounding frosted grass to wither into ash.
“Kill him!” the leader roared.
The four Fourth Layer assassins lunged forward simultaneously from four different directions.
Two heavy curved sabers sliced toward Ye Chen’s legs.
Twin poison-coated spears thrust with blinding speed toward his throat and heart.
It was a flawless, coordinated strike that left absolutely no room for a normal cultivator to dodge or parry.
Ye Chen did not draw his sword.
He did not even shift his feet.
As the twin spearheads cut through the air, bare inches away from his flesh, Ye Chen’s hands shot out of his wide sleeves like twin flashes of silver lightning.
His bare palms clamped directly around the sharp steel tips of the oncoming spears.
CLANG!
The explosive sound of metal striking solid iron resonated across the ravine.
The immense physical force of his Asura Iron Flesh did not just stop the thrusts—the raw density of his fingers completely crushed the reinforced spiritual steel of the spearheads, snapping them into jagged fragments under his bare grip.
Impossible, the spearman on the left thought, his eyes wide with terror.
He caught my spear with his bare hand!
Before the two spearmen could process the sheer shock of having their high-grade weapons destroyed by raw skin, Ye Chen twisted his wrists with brutal velocity.
Using the broken steel fragments remaining in his palms, he drove them backward with pinpoint accuracy.
Thud.
Thud.
The jagged metal pieces pierced directly through the leather armor of both assassins, crushing their chests and shattering their internal structures instantly.
They collapsed onto the stone ledge without a single groan, their lifeforce evaporating into the cold dirt.
“What kind of monster physique is this?!”
One of the saber-wielding assassins shrieked, his confidence turning into pure panic as his horizontal blade slammed harmlessly against Ye Chen’s thigh, leaving nothing but a faint white mark on his jade-like skin.
“Your steel is too soft to cut my path,” Ye Chen said softly.
He rotated on his heel, his deep-blue robes sweeping through the mist like a shadow.
He delivered a swift, brutal palm strike directly into the third assassin’s face.
The concentrated layer of his silver Qi exploded inward upon impact, systematically fracturing the boy’s skull and sending him flying ten yards over the edge of the ravine, his body disappearing into the dark abyss below.
The fourth assassin lost his resolve entirely.
He dropped his saber and frantically reached into his tunic to trigger his teleportation talisman.
“You are entirely too slow to escape,” Ye Chen whispered. This story is hosted at g.com.
He stepped forward, his arm blurring as he drove the heel of his palm directly into the assassin’s diaphragm.
The shockwave of silver Qi systematically shredded the delicate channels feeding his dantian, leaving him a collapsed, weeping heap in the dirt, entirely stripped of his cultivation.
In less than ten breaths, four hardened Fourth Layer killers had been systematically dismantled.
Only the mercenary leader remained standing at the edge of the clearing.
The leader’s serrated dagger trembled violently in his white-knuckled grip.
His face was completely pale beneath his cloth mask as a primal, suffocating terror filled his soul.
This is not a boy, he thought, his mind racing.
This is not a cultivator.
This is a monster.
“You… you are not human,” the leader stammered, his knees shaking as he felt the vast, ocean-like density of the silver Qi vibrating around Ye Chen’s frame.
“Your cultivation… it is not the Second Layer… You are a monster!”
Ye Chen calmly walked toward the trembling vanguard, his boots clicking rhythmically against the stone tiles.
He did not draw his iron sword—he did not need steel to collect this debt.
“Go back to the Wang Clan,” Ye Chen said, his dark, ancient eyes locking onto the leader’s gaze, chilling him to the very marrow of his bones.
“Tell their elders that their contract has failed. And tell them that when the Great City Tournament begins… I will personally clean their entire lineage from the records of this city.”
With a sudden, effortless flick of his fingers, Ye Chen did not strike to kill.
He unleashed a sharp thread of silver Qi that severed the tendons in the leader’s right wrist, forcing the serrated dagger to clatter uselessly onto the ground.
The mercenary leader shrieked in agony, clutching his bleeding hand as he turned and fled frantically into the thick mountain fog, running for his life.
Ye Chen stood alone on the stone ledge, the cool night wind fluttering his moon-silk robes.
He calmly wiped a single speck of dust off his shoulder, his face perfectly serene, his breathing completely steady.
The wolves sent their dogs, he thought coldly.
And the dogs have been broken.
He looked toward the distant lights of Nine Star City, where the Wang Clan’s pavilion glowed faintly in the darkness.
The grand stage is drawing closer.
And the Sovereign’s shadow is about to turn the upcoming tournament into a true slaughterhouse.
Author’s Note:
The Blood-Hounds came for his head.
They left with broken weapons and shattered pride.
Ye Chen didn’t even draw his sword — again.
The Asura Iron Flesh is becoming a legend in Nine Star City.
But the Wang Clan will not stop here.
They will escalate.
And the tournament is only weeks away…
Comment below: Should Ye Chen destroy the Wang Clan before the tournament, or wait and humiliate them publicly?