The thick, toxic green fog of the Southern Swamps swirled lazily around the massive encampment of the Righteous Alliance.
Outside the swirling purple vortex of the Mystic Realm, the atmosphere was incredibly tense. Hundreds of elders from various top-tier sects sat cross-legged on their floating jade pavilions, their eyes glued to the portal.
It had only been two hours since the disciples entered. Normally, an exploration of this magnitude took at least three days.
Tantai Zhi stood at the very edge of the safety perimeter, completely ignoring the nervous glances of the elders around her. She was pacing back and forth, her crimson robes fluttering sharply with her restless Qi. She was currently holding a delicate jade plate filled with freshly peeled spiritual grapes, waiting for her husband to return.
"If he gets a single scratch on his face," Tantai Zhi muttered darkly to herself, her golden eyes narrowing at the portal, "I will boil this entire swamp."
Suddenly, the purple vortex violently rippled.
The Alliance elders instantly stood up, their eyes lighting up with greed and anticipation. Did someone secure the inheritance already?!
Three battered, miserable figures were spat out of the portal, collapsing face-first into the damp mud.
It was the Array genius from the Heavenly Array Sect, desperately dragging the two unconscious, bleeding disciples from the Heavenly Saber Sect. They were covered in soot, their pristine robes were shredded, and they looked like they had barely survived a meat grinder.
"It's Wang Ping!" an elder from the Array Sect shouted, quickly flying down from his pavilion to check on his prized disciple. "Ping'er! What happened?! Did you reach the central vault? Where is the demonic inheritance?!"
The other elders quickly swarmed around them, completely ignoring the injuries of the disciples in their sheer desperation for the treasure.
Wang Ping coughed up a mouthful of swamp water and looked up. He saw the greedy, expectant faces of his martial uncles and grand-uncles. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the terrifying, crimson-robed Saintess pacing nearby.
He remembered the bottomless, ancient abyss in Yan Shuo's eyes. He remembered the terrifying gravity array that had nearly crushed his spine into powder.
Wang Ping violently shuddered.
"Gone!" Wang Ping cried out, slamming his fists into the mud, putting on the performance of his life. "It's all gone! The central vault was completely empty!"
The elders froze. The greedy anticipation on their faces shattered, replaced by sheer, absolute disbelief.
"Empty?!" the Saber Sect elder roared, grabbing Wang Ping by the collar and hauling him into the air. "What do you mean empty?! The Heavenly Seers confirmed a massive surge of ancient Qi! Are you telling me we wasted years unsealing this ruin for nothing?!"
"I swear it on my Dao heart!" Wang Ping wept, genuinely terrified that if he didn't sell the lie perfectly, Yan Shuo would somehow reach out from the ruin and snap his neck. "There wasn't a single spirit stone left! The weapon racks were bare! The jade shelves were swept clean! Some ancient expert must have looted the Asura's Vault centuries ago!"
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the encampment.
The Righteous Alliance had poured an unimaginable amount of resources into locating and unsealing this trial ground. The thought that they had essentially broken into an empty, abandoned basement was a humiliating, devastating blow to their pride.
"Wait," an elder from the Righteous Alliance's main branch narrowed his eyes, looking around the muddy clearing. "If the vault was empty... what about the trash from the Azure Sword Sect? Where is Yan Shuo? Did the traps finally kill him?"
Tantai Zhi instantly stopped pacing.
She slowly turned her head. The air around her physically crystallized as her murderous gaze locked onto the elder who had just spoken her husband's name with such disrespect.
Before she could draw her sword and reduce the elder to ash, Wang Ping desperately shouted to answer the question.
"No! He's not dead!" Wang Ping yelled, his voice cracking. He remembered Yan Shuo's exact instructions. "He didn't even make it past the first corridor! When the traps started going off, he... he found a dark corner, curled up into a ball, and cried for his wife the entire time!"
The tension in the air instantly broke.
The devastated Alliance elders stared at Wang Ping for a moment before a chorus of loud, arrogant laughter erupted across the pavilions.
"Cried for his wife?!" the Saber Sect elder sneered, tossing Wang Ping back into the mud in disgust. "What an absolute embarrassment to the cultivation world! I knew it! Without the Saintess holding his hand, that boy is nothing but a useless, cowardly cripple!"
"To think our glorious Alliance was worried about a boy who hides in corners and weeps!" another elder mocked loudly, intentionally projecting his voice so Tantai Zhi would hear. They had lost the treasure, but completely humiliating the Saintess's new husband in front of the entire continent was a fantastic consolation prize.
Tantai Zhi didn't look embarrassed.
She looked at the portal, her golden eyes widening with pure, overwhelming distress.
"My poor Husband," she whispered, her voice trembling with genuine heartbreak. "It was too dark in there. I knew I shouldn't have let him go alone."
Right on cue, the purple vortex rippled one more time.
Yan Shuo casually stepped out of the portal.
He looked absolutely pristine. His white robes were spotless. His hair was perfectly tied. He wasn't sweating, he wasn't bleeding, and he didn't have a single speck of swamp mud on his boots. He looked like he had just returned from a highly relaxing walk in an imperial garden.
The laughing elders completely choked on their own breath, staring at him in utter confusion. He looks perfectly fine!
"Husband!"
Tantai Zhi practically teleported across the clearing. She threw her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. She didn't care that thousands of people were watching; she began frantically checking his face, his arms, and his spiritual sea for any signs of injury.
"Are you hurt? Did you scrape your knee? That bug said you were crying!" Tantai Zhi fretted, her hands cupping his cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Husband! I should have destroyed the array and gone in with you!"
Yan Shuo looked over her shoulder and locked eyes with Wang Ping, who was still kneeling in the mud.
Yan Shuo gave the Array genius a very subtle, approving wink.
Wang Ping nearly threw up from the sheer terror of it. He realized right then and there that this fifteen-year-old boy was the most terrifying, manipulative monster the continent had ever seen.
Yan Shuo immediately turned his attention back to his wife. He let out a long, heavy, incredibly pathetic sigh, letting his shoulders slump as he leaned his weight against her.
"It was awful, Wife," Yan Shuo said softly, pitching his voice perfectly so the mocking elders could hear every word. "The air was completely stale. The hallways were so dark and gloomy. I didn't find a single treasure, and I bumped my elbow against a stone pillar because I couldn't see."
He gently rubbed his completely uninjured elbow. "I just wanted to come back out and have lunch with you."
Tantai Zhi's eyes filled with tears of pure, unadulterated devotion. She gently kissed his elbow, then wrapped her arm tightly around his waist to support him.
"My poor, brave Husband," she cooed softly. "You did so well. We will go home right now. I prepared your favorite lotus tea."
The Alliance elders watched the display with expressions of intense nausea. The sheer shamelessness of the boy was staggering. He was actually whining about bumping his elbow while their elite disciples were being dragged out unconscious and bleeding!
"Have you no shame, boy?!" the main Alliance elder barked, unable to hold back his disgust. "You cower in a corner while our disciples brave the traps, and then you run out crying to hide behind a woman's skirts? You are a stain on the martial path!"
Yan Shuo didn't even bother looking at the old man. He just buried his face in Tantai Zhi's soft, lotus-scented hair and let out a fake, muffled sniffle.
That was the absolute worst thing the elder could have possibly done.
Tantai Zhi stopped cooing.
She slowly turned her head. The gentle, doting wife vanished, replaced by the suffocating, bloody aura of a true yandere. The sky above the swamp instantly darkened as her killing intent violently forcefully erupted.
"A stain?" Tantai Zhi whispered.
The Alliance elder who spoke instantly felt a crushing weight slam into his chest. He staggered backward, vomiting a mouthful of blood as his Core Formation defensive aura shattered like cheap glass.
"You build a dark, dirty ruin," Tantai Zhi stated, her voice echoing with a demonic resonance that shook the entire swamp. "You force my husband to walk into it. You make him bump his elbow. And now... you yell at him?"
"S-Saintess, wait!" another elder panicked, drawing his weapon as the sheer gravity of her aura began to press the floating pavilions into the mud.
"Wife, don't kill them," Yan Shuo murmured softly against her ear. "Blood smells terrible before lunch."
Tantai Zhi paused. If her husband didn't want to smell blood, she wouldn't spill it.
But her fury had to go somewhere. She turned her blazing, murderous golden eyes toward the swirling purple vortex of the Mystic Realm.
"This ugly place scared my husband," she declared.
She raised her right hand. She didn't draw her sword; she simply condensed the absolute peak of her mortal realm Qi into her index and middle fingers. A massive, towering blade of pure, terrifying crimson light materialized in the sky above her, stretching hundreds of feet into the clouds.
"It shouldn't exist."
With a casual flick of her wrist, she brought the massive crimson blade crashing down directly onto the Mystic Realm's portal.
KRACK-BOOM!
The sound was absolutely deafening. The dimensional space itself screamed as the supreme-tier strike tore through the fabric of the portal. The ancient, indestructible array anchoring the ruin to the mortal world violently shattered.
The purple vortex collapsed inward with a massive shockwave that blew the surrounding Righteous Alliance elders off their feet, sending them tumbling through the mud like bowling pins.
In a single, effortless strike, Tantai Zhi had completely and permanently destroyed the entrance to the Asura's Vault. It was sealed forever, drifting lost in the void.
Yan Shuo hid a brilliant, highly amused smile against her shoulder.
Perfect, he thought pragmatically. Now nobody can ever go back inside to double-check if it was actually empty. She really is the best wife in the world.
The Alliance elders slowly picked themselves up from the mud, staring at the smoking crater where their multi-million spirit stone investment used to be. They were completely, utterly broken. They couldn't even yell at her. If she could slice a dimensional portal in half, she could wipe out their entire encampment with a sneeze.
Tantai Zhi completely ignored the devastated crowd. The terrifying crimson blade vanished, and she immediately turned back to Yan Shuo with a sweet, radiant smile.
"There, Husband," she beamed, dusting off his robes again. "The bad ruin is gone. It can't ever scare you again."
"Thank you, Wife. I feel much safer now," Yan Shuo said smoothly, taking her hand.
"Shall we go back to the Cloudsoaring Peak?" she asked eagerly, already forming a cloud of soft crimson Qi beneath their feet. "I will personally massage your elbow so it heals properly."
"Lead the way," Yan Shuo agreed happily.
As the two of them floated up toward the Azure Sword Sect's flying ship, leaving behind a ruined swamp, a destroyed portal, and thousands of traumatized Righteous Alliance members, Yan Shuo casually patted the pocket of his sleeve.
Inside his storage ring sat the entire wealth of a legendary Demon Lord.
Yes, he was definitely going to enjoy lunch today.