Shi Ran looked down at him, his expression utterly devoid of pity. "Because you were in my way."
He could have ended it then and there. He could have crushed the old man's Nascent Soul, just as he had with the first. But that was too merciful.
He wanted them to suffer. He wanted them to feel a fraction of the helplessness he had felt for seventeen years.
He turned his back on the dying ancestor and began to walk out of the grotto, leaving the old man to drown in his own blood, his Nascent Soul slowly dissipating. He would live for another ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. Ten minutes of agonizing terror.
As he emerged from the grotto, the two Golden Core guards at the entrance saw the blood on his hands and their eyes widened in alarm.
"Disciple Shi, what happened?!"
Shi Ran waved his hand. Two bolts of compressed golden energy shot out, piercing their foreheads before they could even draw their weapons. They collapsed to the ground, dead.
He made his way towards the Sect Master's hall, his pace unhurried. He walked down the center of the main path, his true cultivation base now on full display.
The overwhelming spiritual pressure of a Peak Nascent Soul expert rolled off him in waves, a suffocating tsunami of power that announced his arrival.
Disciples and elders in his path froze, their faces turning pale with shock and terror. They fell to their knees, their bodies trembling uncontrollably under the sheer weight of his aura.
"A Nascent Soul expert!"
"Who is that?!"
"It's… it's Shi Ran! The alchemist!"
The confusion and disbelief were palpable. But it didn't matter. He was a god walking among mortals and their comprehension was irrelevant.
He reached the grand doors of Yao Guang's hall. He kicked them open. The iron reinforced doors were blasted off their hinges, flying across the hall and embedding themselves in the far wall with a thunderous crash.
Yao Guang was sitting on his throne, a look of pure astonishment on his face. He had felt the spiritual pressure, but he couldn't believe its source.
"Shi Ran…?" he stammered, his mind refusing to accept the reality before him. "How…?"
Shi Ran walked slowly into the hall, his footsteps echoing like a death knell. The mask was gone. The seventeen years of feigned obedience, of hollow deference, had been burned away, leaving only the pure essence of his hatred. His eyes were the eyes of a demon, burning with a cold fire.
"Do you know," Shi Ran began, his voice a terrifying growl, "what it feels like to spend seventeen years serving the man who butchered your parents?"
Yao Guang's face went white. The blood drained from his features. "What… what are you talking about?"
"The Green Valley region," Shi Ran continued, his voice dripping with venom as he took another slow step forward. "A pair of rogue alchemists. Shi Jian. Liu Mei. They had a talented son. A son they were going to bring to the Chen Family. Does that refresh your memory, Master?"
Yao Guang leaped to his feet, his fear instantly replaced by a cornered beast's fury. "You know! That old fool… he told you!" He no longer bothered with pretenses. "It doesn't matter! So what if I killed them? They were insects who stood in the way of my ambition! And you… you were my greatest creation! I gave you a home! I gave you a purpose! Everything you have, you owe to me!"
"You gave me a cage," Shi Ran snarled. "And you owe me a blood debt."
Yao Guang, a proud Peak Golden Core expert, unleashed his ultimate technique, a massive fireball that roared across the hall.
Shi Ran simply raised his hand. He exerted his spiritual pressure and the fireball, a technique that could have incinerated a lesser master, simply… snuffed out, as if it were a candle in the wind.
Yao Guang's eyes widened in terror.
Shi Ran was on him in an instant. He didn't kill him. That would be too kind. He began a brutal dismantling.
A punch to the shoulder shattered Yao Guang's arm. A kick to the knees broke both his legs. He pinned the screaming man to the floor, his foot on his chest.
He leaned down, his face inches from Yao Guang's.
"Did you enjoy it?" he whispered, his voice a chilling hiss. "When you killed my father, did he beg? When you cut down my mother, did she cry?"
He tortured him. He asked him for every single detail of that night seventeen years ago and with every answer, he would break another bone, rupture another meridian.
He made Yao Guang relive his crime, forcing the screaming man to recount every moment of his parents' final moments.
Finally, when Yao Guang was a broken wreck, his cultivation crippled, his body shattered, Shi Ran granted him his end.
He placed his hand on the man's head and unleashed a torrent of raw spiritual energy, wiping his very soul from existence.
He stood up, his robes spattered with his enemy's blood. The vengeance was complete. But the rage, the seventeen years of suppressed hatred, was not sated. It was a wild beast that had finally been let out of its cage and it was starving.
He walked out of the ruined hall and into the sunlit courtyard, where hundreds of disciples and elders were gathered, frozen in terror by his spiritual pressure.
He looked at their faces… the core disciples who had enjoyed the fruits of his labor, the elders who had turned a blind eye to his suffering, the entire rotten system that had been built on his parents' bones.
He saw only extensions of Yao Guang. He saw only the disease. And he was the cure.
A guttural roar of pure rage tore from his throat.
And then, the bloodbath began.
It was a storm of unrestrained violence. He moved through the sect like a phantom of death.
A single wave of his hand sent a dozen disciples flying, their bodies mangled and broken.
A glance from his eyes caused a Golden Core elder's soul to freeze and shatter.
He killed indiscriminately. He tore through the training grounds, the dormitories, the alchemy chambers. He slaughtered the core disciples who had looked down on him.
He slaughtered the elders who had praised his "diligence." He slaughtered the outer disciples who had never even spoken his name. He slaughtered the servants, the guards, the very spirit beasts in their pens.
No one was spared. The air filled with screams, with the smell of blood and burning buildings.
The pristine sect was transformed into a vision of hell. He was a force of nature, a hurricane of vengeance that could not be stopped.
The seventeen years of silence, of obedience, of suppressed fury, were unleashed in a single cleansing fire.
He was erasing the stain of his own suffering from the face of the world.