— Mo Xingyao study —
Wei Chen arrived at Mo Xingyao's study and saw her munching on sunflower seed–like snacks while looking at him with clear skepticism.
"So? What did you get in that one hour in your room? Don't tell me you just went to take a nap," Mo Xingyao asked, sounding annoyed. From the report she received from her hidden guards, this guy went into his room and didn't even step out until nearly an hour later before coming straight here.
Seeing the doubt and suspicion in her eyes, Wei Chen couldn't help but want to laugh. He knew exactly what this girl was thinking, and he also knew that plenty of hidden guards were stationed outside his room, secretly watching his every move.
Wei Chen smirked. "What if I really went to my room to take a nap? Maybe I just wanted some beauty sleep before meeting you."
Hearing the words beauty sleep, Mo Xingyao couldn't help but scoff, though a small snicker escaped her lips. This guy was such a joker.
She quickly composed herself and returned to business.
"So, Wei Chen, what do you want to use as collateral worth thirty million spirit stones?" Mo Xingyao asked.
Wei Chen didn't say anything. He simply took out a bundle of cloth and placed it on Mo Xingyao's desk.
Seeing the plain, unadorned bundle sitting there, Mo Xingyao glanced up at Wei Chen, who wore a solemn expression as if he were reluctantly parting with a precious treasure.
Without a word, she took the bundle and slowly unwrapped it to reveal what was inside.
After a brief moment, a gleaming light reflected off a metallic surface and caught her eyes. The source of that reflection was a shard… a metallic shard. No, to be exact, it was a broken piece of a sword.
Mo Xingyao felt the shard's surprising weight; for its size, it was unusually heavy. Just from the weight alone, it felt as though she were holding the entire sword rather than a fragment of it.
"What is this? A sword shard?" she muttered with a frown.
"What kind of sword shard is this? Even if it were from a blade forged from Heavenly Fire Black Ore, its fragments wouldn't fetch a price anywhere near thirty million spirit stones," Mo Xingyao said critically.
She was right. Heavenly Fire Black Ore was an extremely rare material, considered one of the best for forging swords. It was renowned for amplifying qi and its near-indestructible durability. It was said that once fully tempered, even a full-power strike from a Void Refining expert wouldn't leave a dent.
"You don't sense anything from this sword shard?" Wei Chen asked.
"Sense what?" Mo Xingyao replied, her beautiful brows furrowing.
Wei Chen shook his head and said, "This shard contains a supreme secret of the Sword Dao. I got it from a secret realm a long time ago. That realm was unstable, filled with devastation and remnants of a massive battlefield. This shard was lying right at the center, as if countless armies had fought over it."
Hearing that, Mo Xingyao still looked doubtful. She didn't sense anything special from the sword shard. If Wei Chen had said he picked it up from a junkyard instead of a secret realm, that would have sounded more believable.
She gave him a look and stated bluntly, "Are you trying to fool me with some random junk and tell me it's a heaven-defying treasure? Let me guess, the reason I can't sense anything from it is because my Dao isn't profound enough or my cultivation isn't high enough to comprehend it, right?"
'I hate a perceptive brat like you!' Is what Wei Chen thought. But on the surface, he kept his calm smile and scoffed.
"Don't be ridiculous. Do you think someone like me would do such a thing?" he said, pretending to be offended.
Mo Xingyao didn't respond….
She just stared at him….
Stared at him like one would stare at a sly dog pretending to be innocent after chewing up her shoes.
Then she broke the silence. "You do remember that I'm the head of one of the largest auction house chains and business groups in the realm, right?"
She was clearly giving him a chance to come clean. Mo Xingyao had dealt with countless scammers trying to sell her worthless junk since she was a child. What Wei Chen was doing now was like reading a book in front of its author.
Wei Chen caught the hint, but decided to be shameless anyway. What could she really do to him? At worst, he'd run away and pray to never meet her again.
He was already at the mid-stage of the Core Formation Realm. The strongest aura he could sense in this entire building belonged to the bodyguard girl standing beside Mo Xingyao, and he was confident he could outrun her if needed.
Unknown to Wei Chen, under Yin Lan's mask, her eyes had changed. When she looked at the sword shard, there was both alarm and awe in her gaze. Slowly, she closed her eyes as if trying to sense something deeper.
Then, within her mind, an image appeared, an indescribably powerful immortal, a being thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of times stronger than her sect's patriarch, Mo Jue. He stood alone against an endless army of immortal cultivators.
Under the vast heavens, a colossal golden wheel, larger than any mountain peak she had ever seen, even greater than the Sky-Severing Sword Peak in the Sky-Severing Demon Valley, loomed behind him. Compared to that wheel, even a mighty mountain was like a grain of sand beside a cartwheel.
Surrounded by myriad cultivators from both human and demon races, the immortal did not flinch. He raised his sword… and in a single, peerless strike, thousands of sky-shattering immortals and demons were engulfed in fear and slain beneath his merciless blade.
An unparalleled sword strike.
Yin Lan wanted to see more, but suddenly, her spiritual sea trembled violently. She was forced to cut off the vision. The epiphany was so powerful and profound that it shook her very foundation.
A trace of blood dripped from beneath her mask, alarming Mo Xingyao.
"What happened, Sister Lan!?" Mo Xingyao asked in a panic. But then she noticed that Wei Chen was still in the room.
Though she often joked around and acted casual, Mo Xingyao was still the daughter of a patriarch from a powerful demon sect and the leader of a vast business conglomerate like the Thousand Treasure Hall.
To her, Wei Chen was still an outsider, useful, yes, but still an outsider.
"Alright, I'll accept this as collateral. You may go and do as you wish. I won't keep you," Mo Xingyao said curtly, waving her hand as if shooing a stray dog.
Wei Chen knew she was trying to shoo him away. He had no idea what had just happened, but this was his chance to leave, so he took it.
Putting on a pained expression, he looked at the sword shard reluctantly before nodding.
"Then… I'll leave this shard with you. When I come up with thirty million to repay you, and if… by some chance… you lose it, you can consider it a betrothal gift from me," Wei Chen said with a grin.
As usual, he was just spewing BS. In case she ever did lose it, she might feel a bit guilty and let him off the hook. After all, thirty million spirit stones was no joke.
In his previous life, his total net worth had been around twenty million U.S. dollars. If one spirit stone were equivalent to one dollar, he still wouldn't have earned enough in his entire life to pay her back. And from what he'd seen so far, one spirit stone was worth far, far more than a single US dollar.
After Wei Chen left, Mo Xingyao quickly helped Yin Lan sit down on her personal cultivation cushion and removed her mask.
Under the mask, she saw Yin Lan's pale face, blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Her body temperature was rising rapidly, and despite her efforts to control her foundation, she was struggling to stabilize it.
"Sister Lan! Sister Lan!" Mo Xingyao called out anxiously, but it was useless. Yin Lan was caught in the middle of a life-and-death struggle. Her foundation was cracking, beginning to crumble.
It was like a building foundation bearing too much structural weight, once the cracks appeared, everything began to collapse. If she couldn't mend enough of her cracked foundation, Yin Lan would be crippled.
And this time, it was far worse than someone shattering her dantian. That kind of injury could still be healed; at worst, she would lose her cultivation and have to start over.
But this… this was a collapse from within, from the very core concepts and principles of her Dao path. It was like an incompetent engineer stacking too much weight on an unstable foundation that built on soft, shifting ground where even a little pressure could create a sinkhole.
This went beyond re-cultivation. She would need an entirely new perspective on her cultivation path. Otherwise, she could forget about ever advancing beyond the Core Formation Realm because of the "sinkhole" now forming in her Dao path.
What happened to Yin Lan was beyond her capabilities to handle!
Seeing this, Mo Xingyao couldn't help but grit her teeth and take out a blood-colored communication jade.
"Father! Please help me! Sister Lan! Sister Lan!" Mo Xingyao shouted desperately, not hesitating to use the one-time-use communication jade she had been saving for emergencies to call her father for help.