By now, the circle of onlookers had thickened into a suffocating wall of humanity. Representatives of major sects mingled with rogue cultivators and lower-tier lineages, necks craning like ducks in a thunderstorm, desperate to see what fuss a young man was making over a piece of refuse.
Ling Feng lifted the object between two fingers. It was a jagged, stained piece of fired clay.
"You guys seeing this?" he asked, his voice carrying a lazy, conversational lilt that felt jarringly out of place in this ancient city. "Looks like total trash, right?"
A burly cultivator from the fringes snorted, crossing his massive arms. "Isn't it just an old eaves tile? Did the brat run out of Underworld River boats to play with, so he's picking up garbage now?"
Laughter rippled through the crowd, harsh and mocking. In the cultivation world, if it didn't shine with immortal light or hum with the Dao, it was worthless.
Ling Feng's smile widened. It wasn't the polite smile of a Daoist greeting a fellow practitioner; it was the grin of a man who knew the punchline to a joke no one else heard.
"In most people's hands, yeah, it's basically a paperweight. But in the right hands…" He twirled the tile idly, the motion fluid and relaxed. "It's a VIP ticket to a place every single one of you would sell your own grandmother to enter. And I do mean all of you."
The laughter died in their throats. Eyes sharpened, greed flickering like sparks in dry tinder.
"Ticket…?" an elder muttered, stroking his beard.
"What place is he talking about?"
"Could it be another hidden entrance to a Burial Ground? Or an Immortal Emperor's secret treasury?"
Ling Feng ignored the sudden shift in atmosphere. He turned his attention to the stall owner, a withered old man who looked like a gust of wind might scatter his bones.
"Hey, old timer," Ling Feng said, crouching down to be eye-level. "You know what this is?"
The old man hesitated, his cloudy eyes darting between the crowd and the young man. He shook his head, his voice a dry rasp. "…My ancestors said it was an heirloom passed down since the Desolate Era. But generations have passed, and no one could see its mystery. This old bag of bones can only sell it to survive."
"Mm." Ling Feng nodded, satisfied. "Honest answer. I like that vibe."
He flipped a storage pouch toward the old man. It didn't fly with the sharpness of a hidden weapon, but with a casual underhand toss. When the old man caught it, the sheer weight of the spiritual energy rolling off the pouch made nearby cultivators gasp. The density was suffocating—refined jades of the highest purity.
"That's the price," Ling Feng said. "Don't argue with me about it being too much."
The old man's hands trembled violently. He peeked inside, and his pupils shrank to pinpricks. He scrambled to his knees, bowing so deeply his forehead struck the dirt with a thud. "Little Friend… this old one… I cannot accept this much fortune…!"
"Too late, transaction complete," Ling Feng said, standing up and dusting off his jeans. "Consider it back pay for your family keeping this thing intact for a few million years."
He tucked the tile into his sleeve with the nonchalance of someone pocketing a pack of gum.
The murmurs in the crowd turned sharp, edged with malice.
"What kind of heirloom is worth that much Refined Jade?"
"He's bluffing…"
"Bluff? You saw what he did at the Heavenly Sky Plate. Would someone like that throw wealth away for nothing? That tile is a supreme treasure!"
Greed flared in countless eyes. The logic of the cultivation world was simple: the strong possessed treasures, and the weak were merely temporary custodians.
Good, Ling Feng thought, sensing the rising temperature of their avarice. Bite the hook.
He opened his mouth to taunt them further—
—and the air suddenly froze.
It wasn't a drop in temperature; it was the sensation of a blade pressing against the carotid artery of the world itself.
Sword intent descended from the heavens like a falling star. It was clean, pure, and terrifyingly merciless. The bustling street fell instantly silent. Weaker cultivators turned pale, clutching their chests as if their very souls were being sliced apart by invisible razors.
A clear, frosty voice cut through the silence, ringing from the front of the crowd.
"Cleansing Incense Ancient Sect's Ling Feng."
The crowd parted like the Red Sea. They didn't move out of respect; they moved because instinct screamed that standing in her path meant death.
She walked forward, step by slow step. Her white robes were as pristine as untouched snow, her long hair tied back with a simple, unadorned band. She held an ancient sword in her arms, treating it not as a weapon, but as an extension of her own skeleton. Her expression was calm, her eyes clear as a frozen spring in the deepest winter.
Bai Jianzhen. The Prime Descendant of the Divine Sword Sacred Ground.
The Sword Fanatic. The Sword Goddess.
The crowd's reaction was immediate and hysterical.
"Bai Jianzhen!"
"She actually came again…"
"First the Burial Ground, then the stone chest, now this place… is she here to kill him?"
Ling Feng met her gaze. He didn't flinch. He didn't circulate his energy to resist the crushing pressure. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, looking relaxed.
There was a flicker of recognition in his eyes. They had vaguely crossed paths at the Underworld River; he had seen her sword carve through a sea of corpses, and she had watched his Chaos Force rewrite the rules of the Burial Ground.
"Yo," Ling Feng said, raising a hand in a lazy wave. "White Sword Fairy. Long time no see. You looking for me, or just out for a stroll?"
Bai Jianzhen stopped exactly five paces in front of him.
She hugged her sword to her chest, her posture rigid. When she spoke, her voice was flat, devoid of ripple or emotion.
"This Bai has come to challenge you."
No preamble. No polite greetings. No accusations of morality. Pure sword logic.
Behind Ling Feng, Chen Baojiao's beautiful brows drew together, her hand instinctively drifting toward her saber. "This woman…"
Li Shuangyan's long lashes lowered slightly. She said nothing, but the air around her grew heavy with frost, her grip tightening faintly around her sleeve.
Xu Pei looked between Ling Feng and Bai Jianzhen, her heart pounding against her ribs like a trapped bird. The sword intent pressing on her skin was like ice, yet Ling Feng stood in the center of it as if basking in a warm spring breeze.
He tilted his head, looking her up and down with genuine appreciation. Not a lustful gaze, but the look of a man appreciating a finely tuned sports car.
"You picked a hell of a time," he said, chuckling. "Here I am, trying to start a little show with these greedy idiots, and you bring a whole new audience."
Bai Jianzhen's eyes did not waver.
"At the Burial Ground, your path shook even the corpse sea," she said quietly. "There, you avoided my sword. This Bai is not willing to accept that. Today, before all eyes, let us test the Dao."
"I avoided it," Ling Feng said with a shrug, "because there were too many other morons lining up to die. The corpses were already grumpy. I didn't feel like poking the bear."
He smiled, and for once, the casual veneer slipped just enough to reveal the sharp, dangerous edge beneath.
"But sure. Since you're asking so nicely, we can play."
The street seemed to hold its breath. The tension was thick enough to cut.
Bai Jianzhen slowly shifted her grip. One hand on the sheath, the other on the hilt. She hadn't even drawn the blade yet, but the sword intent surged like a tidal wave, causing the tiles on the nearby roofs to rattle.
"The wager?" she asked.
Ling Feng grinned. It was a charming, dangerous smile—the kind that broke hearts and empires alike.
"If you win," he said, voice smooth, "I'll owe you one sword. Next time you want to test something, I'll stand there and let you take a free swing at my neck." His eyes went half-lidded, his tone turning lazy. "But if you lose… you come with me."
A faint furrow appeared between her perfectly shaped brows. "Come… with you?"
"Follow me," he clarified, his tone matter-of-fact, as if inviting her to grab lunch. "Sword maid, general, future wife—I'll decide the title later. In short, you'll walk my path from today on. Don't worry about the Divine Sword Sacred Ground making a fuss; if those old geezers are unhappy, I'll go over and knock on their door. Calmly."
The street exploded into chaos.
"Madman! He's utterly insane!"
"He dares try to take the Divine Sword's Prime Descendant as a maid?!"
"Is he not afraid of their Sword Emperors?! That is a lineage with an Immortal Emperor's heritage!"
In the center of the storm, Bai Jianzhen was still. She processed the words, stripping away the insult and the arrogance, leaving only the transaction.
Sword advancement vs. servitude.
She stared at him for a long moment, gauging the depth of his confidence.
Then, she nodded once.
"Very well," she said. "If this Bai loses, I will follow you."
No hesitation. No attempt to bargain. A sword never stepped back before a bet, and a true seeker of the Dao did not fear the consequences of defeat.
Li Shuangyan's heart sank very faintly. She is just as crazy as the Young Noble.
Chen Baojiao's eyes narrowed, then curved into a dangerous, competitive smile. Interesting.
Xu Pei swallowed hard, her palms sweating.
Ling Feng exhaled slowly, his shoulders easing as if a weight had been lifted.
"Alright then," he said. "I like straightforward people. No bullshit double-talk. In that case, do me a favor."
He lifted his right hand and crooked a finger at her.
"Bring out your strongest sword," he said softly. "No holding back. I want the kind of attack that would normally make people cry for their ancestors. I'll crush it head-on."
Such arrogance should have sounded unbearable. It should have been the boasting of a frog in a well. Yet when Ling Feng spoke, there was no bluster—only a calm certainty, like someone describing the weather.
Bai Jianzhen's lashes lowered. The air around her began to warp.
"…As you wish."
Clang.
Her sword left its sheath.
There was no dazzling, multicolored light. No roar of dragons or phoenixes. The world simply… thinned. Everything unnecessary was cut away by the sheer purity of her intent, leaving only her, the blade, and the line it would carve through reality.
"The Mad Sword," someone whispered, throat dry with fear. They remembered the stories: at the Burial Ground, her sword had split mountains of corpses; even the pride of Supreme Royal Nobles shriveled before this level of dedication.
Across the plaza, on the rooftop of a distant inn, a young man clad in ornate, celestial armor watched. His eyes were narrowed slits of venom.
Young King Nantian.
He had cloaked his presence with supreme treasures, layering protections to hide from spiritual perception. The Heavenly Bird's Life Ring circled his wrist like a halo of pale, ghostly light. The Fragmented Realm Spatial Disk hovered in the void behind him, vibrating silently, ready to tear open space at a thought.
Across his knees, hidden behind an illusory curtain, rested the Sky Shaking Truncheon.
He watched Ling Feng with a killing intent so dense it almost dripped like black tar.
"…This brat must die," he whispered, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Today. Right now."
In the original timeline, he had underestimated Li Qiye once. That mistake had bled out onto the Underworld River, costing him face and blood. Now, facing Ling Feng—an anomaly even more lawless and unpredictable—he did not dare to attack openly.
He would be the oriole behind the mantis. He would wait for Bai Jianzhen's sword to clash, for the world to shake, and in that split second of chaos, he would strike.
Back on the street, Bai Jianzhen took a breath.
Her sword rose.
That simple motion made heaven and earth tremble. The ambient spiritual energy of the city was forcibly dragged into her blade.
Sword intent surged, not as scattered killing light, but as a singular, focused will. It rose from the ground, pierced the clouds, and then condensed back down into a single stroke, pointed straight at Ling Feng's heart.
Countless cultivators felt their knees weaken, collapsing to the ground under the sheer pressure.
"Such sword intent…" an ancestor from a minor sect gasped. "This is no longer the level of Royal Nobles. This is already touching the border of Enlightened Beings… She is a monster!"
Ling Feng's expression did not change. He stood with his feet shoulder-width apart, hands loose at his sides.
Up close, he could feel it more clearly: the pure, stubborn desire of a person who had given her entire life—every breath, every heartbeat—to the sword. There was no scheming here. No political maneuvering. Only the simple, binary question: Can this sword cut you?
"…Yeah," he muttered under his breath, a fond smile touching his lips. "This is why I like sword idiots. You guys are simple."
The sword light fell.
It did not howl or scream. It simply appeared—a vertical line that seemed to divide reality itself, erasing all color from the world. In that instant, many onlookers felt as if their souls were pinned to a chopping block, awaiting execution.
Li Shuangyan's pupils shrank. Chen Baojiao's heart lurched. Xu Pei instinctively took half a step forward to shield him—then stopped, because Ling Feng moved.
He didn't summon a treasure. He didn't activate a Merit Law.
He raised his right hand.
Just one finger.
He pointed it at the descending sword that could split the heavens.
"Break."
No shouting. No circulation of grand Dao laws. Just a single word, spoken as if he were lazily correcting a child's math homework.
Red Chaos Emerald Trait: Absolute Force.
Chaos Force—red, violent, and alien—surged along his fingertip like an invisible tide. It wasn't spiritual energy; it was raw, unadulterated power from a dimension beyond the High Heavens. It didn't interact with the Dao; it bullied it into submission.
Bai Jianzhen's sword intent crashed into that fingertip.
For one breath, the world held.
Then—
"—!?"
Gasps burst from countless mouths.
The sword light shattered.
It didn't crack, or bend, or deflect. It simply stopped existing. From the tip backward, the energy disintegrated like a watercolor painting left out in a hurricane. The peerless sword strike that should have terrified Royal Nobles collapsed like fragile glass against his finger.
Bai Jianzhen's body jolted as if struck by lightning. Her steps slid back half a zhang, her boots carving grooves into the stone. Faint color left her face. Her Dao Heart—which had never wavered even in front of corpse seas and Heaven's might—trembled for the first time.
This… is not a gap of one realm, she thought dazedly, her grip on her sword shaking. This is… an ocean versus a drop of water.
On the rooftop, Young King Nantian struck.
The Fragmented Realm Spatial Disk flared, opening a crack in space right beside Ling Feng's ear—a black mouth of the void that could swallow a Tetra-War Bronze Chariot whole.
At the same instant, the Sky Shaking Truncheon plunged down through the rift. It was wrapped in terrifying Emperor aura, a murderous crushing weight locked onto Ling Feng's skull.
It was a perfect ambush. A kill shot.
Many experts never even saw the attack clearly. One moment, Ling Feng was standing in the street flicking away a sword; the next, the truncheon and the spatial fissure were already upon him, erased from the causal sequence by the disk's distortion.
But Ling Feng had felt Nantian the moment he arrived. His Cyan Chaos Emerald mastery over space and time gave him perception that transcended the normal flow of events.
He didn't even turn his head.
He lifted his left hand.
Another finger.
He flicked it toward the empty air, casually, like flicking a mosquito away from his ear.
Cyan Chaos Emerald: Spatial Drift.
A tiny point of Chaos-condensed force slipped into the edge of the spatial fissure Nantian had opened. It didn't fight the rift; it rode the curve of space, hijacked the tunnel, and shot straight back up the connection, bypassing all distance instantly.
In Nantian's eyes, there was only victory. The truncheon was inches from Ling Feng's head.
Now—you die—I will wash away my Kingdom's shame—
Then, something tapped his chest.
It was a gentle sensation.
The Heavenly Bird's Life Ring howled, trying to flare to life. The Fragmented Realm Spatial Disk shook violently, attempting to warp space to protect its master. Protective treasures stacked upon protective treasures—all refined by the Southern Heavenly Kingdom over countless generations—ignited at once.
They might as well have been made of wet tissue paper.
The finger force wrapped around them like a lazy wave washing over sandcastles. It ignored the concept of defense entirely. It pierced every defense, slipped between every layer of reinforcement, and entered his heart.
Young King Nantian looked down in disbelief.
A tiny hole, the size of a coin, bloomed in the center of his chest. No blood spilled. Everything inside—heart, lungs, meridians—had simply been erased.
"…Im…possible…" he whispered, blood frothing at his lips.
His body swayed.
Far below, the Sky Shaking Truncheon lost its guidance. It crashed into the street, missing Ling Feng by inches, carving a massive crater and sending shockwaves rippling outwards—but the force stopped two paces from Ling Feng, dissolving against an invisible barrier of Chaos energy.
On the rooftop, Nantian fell.
By the time his body hit the tiles, he was already a corpse.
The Fragmented Realm Spatial Disk spun once in the air, buzzing as if confused by the sudden loss of its master. It shrank to a flicker of light and tried to shoot toward the horizon—only to be snatched out of midair by a casual gesture of Ling Feng's hand.
He turned the disk over once, whistling low.
"Heavenly sovereign truncheon, longevity ring, spatial disk." His tone was mild, almost bored, as he collected the loot falling from the void. "Southern Heavenly Kingdom really does treat their little prince well. Too bad he had more money than brains."
He flicked the disk into his sleeve, right next to the eaves tile.
The street was deathly silent. Not even the wind dared to blow.
Everyone felt as if they had watched a fever dream: Bai Jianzhen's terrifying sword, shattered by one finger. Nantian, the peerless young king who could shake one hundred miles with a swing of his truncheon, killed by another.
Two fingers.
One breath.
Two top-tier geniuses, treated like unruly children.
Bai Jianzhen slowly steadied herself. She inhaled deeply, forcing her chaotic blood energy to settle.
She looked at her sword, then at Ling Feng. Her breathing was calm, but her eyes… her eyes finally showed something other than ice. There was a fire there now. A realization of how vast the sky actually was.
"There was a second killing move," she said quietly, her voice carrying in the silence. "In that instant, while facing my strongest sword, you had the room to spare to kill another person."
Ling Feng shrugged, dusting off his hands. "Rat on the roof. Had to flick it before it got annoying. Multitasking isn't that hard."
He met her gaze directly, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement.
"So," he said. "Are you going to be a sore loser? Or are you paying up?"
Bai Jianzhen's fingers tightened around her sword hilt until her knuckles turned white.
She sheathed the blade. Snick.
Then, she bowed.
It was not a deep, groveling bow, but for someone like her—who bowed to no one, not even Royal Nobles or Enlightened Beings—it might as well have been kneeling.
"From today on," she said, her voice clear, ringing down the street like a bell, "this Bai will follow you."
No stuttering. No shiftiness. The moment she spoke, some invisible knot in the air settled. The Divine Sword Sacred Ground's Prime Descendant had voluntarily placed herself at his side.
The whispering began at once, louder this time.
"He… he actually did it."
"Divine Sword's Bai Jianzhen, becoming his follower..."
"Is Cleansing Incense actually an Imperial Lineage in disguise…? How can they produce such a monster?"
Chen Baojiao clicked her tongue, crossing her arms.
"This sword maniac," she muttered, though a smirk tugged at her lips. "She really did it without blinking. Just sold herself off like that."
But when she looked at Bai Jianzhen's bowed head, there was no hostility in her fox-like eyes—only a hot, competitive spark.
"Hey, White Sword Fairy," she called out, her voice teasing but sharp. "Since you're joining us, you're the junior for now. This princess will not yield her position easily."
Bai Jianzhen glanced at her. Her expression remained unreadable.
"…Positions are meaningless," she stated flatly. "Only the sword matters. If you are weak, I will not look at you."
"So arrogant." Baojiao smirked, her Supreme Physique humming with challenged excitement. "I like it. Try not to fall behind."
Li Shuangyan exhaled slowly, hiding the subtle release of tension behind her veil. Her gaze lingered on Ling Feng's back—mysterious, tyrannical, yet strangely relaxed.
"Welcome," she said quietly to Bai Jianzhen. "Young Noble is… troublesome. It will not be a peaceful path."
Bai Jianzhen's eyes softened by a fraction as she looked at the icy beauty.
"If the road of swords were peaceful, it would be meaningless," she replied.
Xu Pei bowed deeply, her face flushed with excitement and awe. "Bai Fairy… from today, please guide this Xu Pei as well."
Ling Feng watched them interact with a small, satisfied smile. This was what he wanted—not just strength, but life. Personality.
"Alright, alright, group hug later," he said, clapping his hands. "Introductions can wait. For now…"
He turned his head back to the ring of cultivators surrounding them.
Greed still burned in their eyes—mixed now with palpable fear, but not erased. They had just watched an eaves tile draw out Bai Jianzhen, witnessed Young King Nantian's death, and yet the words still echoed in their greedy hearts: Ticket… Goose that lays golden eggs…
Human greed was a snake that would try to swallow an elephant. No one wanted to turn away.