Breaking through to Xiantian, suppressing the imperial court

So be it. I can't hide it any longer.

This was most likely the martial world striking back against secular royal authority.

There was no telling how long this assassination plot had been in the making.

Plans could not keep up with change.

In an instant, Chen Du's Houtian Perfection aura erupted, sending a wave of air sweeping outward from him in every direction.

Several princes' eyes widened,

Prince Qi abruptly turned his head,

Prince Yan's hand froze in midair, gripping his saber,

The crown prince's expression changed drastically.

For a moment, everyone turned toward the seventh prince.

The good-for-nothing who had been confined for four years,

The scholar prince who knew nothing but reading.

The seventh brother whom every prince had thought they could bully at will,

Had somehow become a Houtian Perfection expert without anyone noticing!

It was so shocking that it made them look like clowns.

Before the three assassins lunging at him could react, Chen Du rose and activated the Wisdom King Vajra Art. He stepped forward, leaving an afterimage behind as his true body appeared before a Houtian assassin.

He struck with one palm, planting it against the man's chest. Dark-gold force passed through his body, and the assassin flew backward before he could even scream.

A single, fatal blow!

Chen Du withdrew his hand and turned to the two remaining assassins, his gaze as calm as if he were looking at two dead men.

The hall fell deathly silent. Every eye was fixed on the young prince in the moon-white brocade robe.

Only one question remained in everyone's mind: how was this possible?

At that moment, the battle was still in utter chaos.

The strongest Houtian experts were all besieging the secret guards protecting the emperor.

In an instant, a veteran Houtian Perfection expert broke away from the fighting and attacked Chen Du.

The pressure on the emperor's secret guards abruptly eased, but no one felt relieved.

Every gaze followed the figure darting toward the lowest seat.

The crown prince's and Prince Qi's guards were still several zhang away, and Prince Yan was even farther off.

No one could block this attack for him.

Chen Du smiled. In four years at Qianchuan Hall, he had read through its entire collection and created dozens of martial arts, but he had never truly fought anyone.

He had killed those two with one palm strike apiece just now; it had hardly counted as a warm-up.

The one before him, however, seemed to be a genuine Houtian Perfection expert, a veteran assassin who had clawed his way through mountains of blades and seas of blood.

Evenly matched, fighting to the death—he had waited far too long for an opponent like this.

In an instant, the two figures collided.

Chen Du pushed the Wisdom King Vajra Art to its limit. Dark-gold patterns flowed beneath his skin, and the three vajra seals on his arms blazed brilliantly.

His opponent used some kind of vicious palm technique, and wherever its wind passed, the air took on a sickly sweet stench.

Three exchanges,

Ten exchanges,

Thirty exchanges.

Hall pillars snapped beside them, and floor tiles shattered beneath their feet.

No one could intervene. A duel between Houtian Perfection experts was already beyond the reach of the hall's first-rate guards.

But as the fight went on, the assassin sensed something was wrong.

His opponent was changing. It was not his moves that were changing, but the man himself.

At first, he had merely countered each move as it came, but with every exchange, his strikes grew a fraction more precise, his openings one fewer.

The martial arts that had once been awkward and unpracticed were coming together at an incredible speed under the crushing pressure of life and death!

Chen Du's comprehension seemed to have been set ablaze. Four years of learning, a thousand martial skills—all of them came alive in that moment.

They were no longer lifeless things, mere talk of war on paper, but had become part of his every punch, every palm strike, every movement.

His vital energy surged through his meridians like thunder. The pool of liquid true essence in his dantian began to spin, faster and faster, more and more fiercely, as though something dormant were awakening.

And Chen Du seemed finally to have found what had been missing, the thing he had been unable to find for the past four years.

An ancient poem said: what one gains from books always feels shallow; to truly understand, one must put it into practice.

Their palms met, and Chen Du retreated half a step.

The assassin was just about to pursue him when Chen Du suddenly stopped and closed his eyes.

The fight to the death was still going on, and he had closed his eyes?

Then Xiantian qi exploded from Chen Du's body.

In an instant, a wave of air swept through the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Every candle flame went out at once, only to be rekindled the next moment by a golden light from an unknown source.

The light came from Chen Du. Every inch of his skin was glowing.

And this time, the golden light suffusing his body was clear and luminous as colored glass!

The phantom of the Immovable Wisdom King slowly took solid form behind him, with three heads and six arms, vajra scepters and lotus wheels revolving in alternation, his face commanding awe without anger.

At the Houtian realm, true qi liquefied.

At the Xiantian realm, true essence became protective qi that could be projected a hundred paces and resonate with heaven and earth!

He had crossed that threshold. In a fight to the death, amid flashing blades and sword shadows, he had relied on one exhilarating battle to forge all he had learned in four years into a single whole. Through battle, he had comprehended the Dao and broken through to Xiantian.

The assassin froze in place, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints.

He looked at the young prince before him, at the Xiantian golden light covering his body. His lips moved several times before he managed to force out a few words: "You... were using me to practice your saber?"

Chen Du opened his eyes, stepped forward, and vanished from where he stood.

The next instant, the Ming King Vajra Palm was pressed against the assassin's chest.

This strike was utterly different from those before it. Xiantian protective qi clung to his palm, golden light flickering around it. The strike came down with the force to split mountains and sunder the earth.

The assassin flew backward, smashing through half the hall doors and crashing onto the square, where he lay motionless.

Inside the Hall of Supreme Harmony, a deathly silence reigned.

The courtiers forgot to rise,

The envoys forgot to flee.

The sixth prince sat collapsed on the floor, the corners of his mouth still twitching.

Prince Yan's face was even paler than it had been during the assassination attempt.

The emperor looked over from behind the twelve strands of his ceremonial crown, his ever-calm gaze changing for the first time.

The seventh prince, whom everyone had silently sentenced to death four years ago, now stood in the center of the great hall.

The Xiantian golden light around him had not yet fully faded,

And several drops of blood had spattered his moon-white brocade robe; it was impossible to tell whether they belonged to the assassins or to him.

The imperial guards in the hall were kneeling all across the floor, none daring to raise his head.

Now, everyone's gaze was fixed on Chen Du.

The courtiers forgot to get up from the floor, and the envoys forgot to straighten their disheveled robes and hats.

The princes wore ugly expressions,

Xiantian was a realm that existed only in legend.

A Houtian Perfection expert was already a grandmaster of the jianghu, but a Xiantian expert could disregard a thousand troops and ten thousand horses, taking a general's head from the midst of an army as easily as reaching into a pocket.

A hundred thousand border troops were no more than a paper wall before a Xiantian expert.

The seventh prince had not even reached thirty. A Xiantian expert so young was without equal in the Xuanye Realm's history of nearly three hundred years.

Among the delegation, several of the older envoys had already knelt, bowing to Xiantian.

In the Xuanye Realm, Xiantian experts were living legends in their own right. Whichever country they visited, they would be accorded the same honors as a sovereign.

Today, they had witnessed the birth of a Xiantian expert with their own eyes—an event momentous enough to be recorded in a nation's history.

Chen Du raised his head and calmly swept his gaze across everyone in the hall. "Anyone who makes another move dies!"