Unrivaled Under Heaven, Suppressing the Yun Family
He had reached Xiantian Peak. It was time to set out.
He went to take leave of his mother.
Consort Xian now lived in Fengyi Palace, where people attended to her daily needs. When she saw him, she put down her needlework and asked how long he would be gone.
Chen Du said he wasn't sure. It might be a long time.
Consort Xian was silent for a moment. She straightened his collar and said only four words: "Come back safely."
Chen Du turned and left without looking back.
He left the imperial city and passed through nine gates, his horse's hooves striking the flagstones as he headed south.
The clamor of the capital gradually receded behind him, becoming a hazy gray outline on the horizon.
News traveled faster than he did.
He had barely left the city gates when a spy carried the news into the imperial study.
The emperor was reviewing memorials. After hearing the secret report, his brush paused for an instant, then resumed its strokes. "Let him go," he said mildly.
The spy withdrew.
The emperor put down his vermilion brush and gazed at the blue sky outside the window, a faint light in his eyes.
Perhaps his son might even break through the Xiantian realm!
He truly looked forward to seeing this son break through the Xiantian realm.
He left the capital region, crossed Zhili, and entered Jiangnan.
Chen Du did not ride a horse. With the true essence of Xiantian Peak circulating, the Flying Bird Body-Flicker Technique was no longer a movement technique, but true wind-riding.
His toes skimmed the tips of the grass, and he was already dozens of zhang away.
He spread out his spiritual power, taking in every stirring within several li through his sea of consciousness. Even the flow of underground rivers three zhang beneath the earth was clear to him.
He didn't mind using means of travel either. When he came to a river, he took a boat; when he came to a mountain, he used vines. He rode a horse where there was an official road and traveled atop leaves where there was none.
He crossed three prefectures in a single day, twice as fast as an eight-hundred-li express dispatch.
His route was simple: the Hanging Temple in the Western Regions, Yandang Mountain in Jiangnan, and the Seeking Sword Pavilion. He didn't want to miss any of them.
He didn't want to miss a single one of the Xuanye Realm's three great Xiantian martial arts.
Over the past few years, he had read every martial arts text in Qianchuan Hall, but knowledge gained from books always felt shallow.
Those martial arts factions whose legacies stretched back centuries were bound to have their own distinctive methods.
Even if he couldn't borrow their sect-guarding ultimate arts, simply observing their martial arts legacies up close would be the best nourishment for his comprehension in creating techniques.
Jiangnan, Yandang Mountain.
The Yun Family Manor was built against the mountainside, its tiers of pavilions and towers half-hidden among clouds and mist, ablaze with light in the night.
In the council hall, all the Yun Family's important figures had gathered. The atmosphere was so heavy it seemed ready to drip.
The family head, Yun Xiaotian, sat at the head of the hall. A message sent by carrier pigeon from the capital lay open before him, the sealing wax on its bamboo tube still warm.
The letter contained only a few words: the seventh prince had left the capital, his destination unknown.
The letter had already passed through the hands of the Yun Family's core members, and every face was grim.
"A Xiantian has entered the world! Who knows how much upheaval he'll cause in the martial world."
Yun Xiaotian spoke slowly.
The hall fell deathly silent.
When news of the Hundred Nations Assembly had reached Yandang Mountain three years ago, the Yun Family had been shocked as well.
After all, the world had gained another Xiantian expert, and he was such a young prince at that.
"Any news from the third prince?"
An elder of the second branch asked.
Yun Xiaotian shook his head.
Prince of Qi Su Yuanli was a nephew of the Yun Family through his mother, and the family's greatest source of support at court.
But over the past three years, whenever Su Yuanli mentioned his seventh brother, his voice carried a deep sense of helplessness and apprehension.
"If he really comes to Yandang Mountain, what do we do?" a younger member of the family couldn't help asking, his voice trembling despite himself.
"What are you afraid of?" The third elder, Yun Tieshan, slapped the table, his voice so loud that it shook a few wisps of dust from the beams. "So what if he's a Xiantian? With eight hundred years of foundations, would our Yun Family fear a mere wet-behind-the-ears brat?"
"Third Uncle, he isn't a wet-behind-the-ears brat," Yun Mubai, the Yun Family's eldest son, said calmly from his seat below.
He was the most outstanding disciple of the Yun Family's current generation. Not yet forty, he had already reached the Middle Acquired Stage, and was widely acknowledged as the person in the next generation most likely to break through to Xiantian.
He looked at Yun Tieshan, his tone neither servile nor overbearing. "When he first entered the Xiantian realm a few years ago, he was only in his twenties, not yet thirty. That means he may well have advanced further in the past few years. What reason do we have not to fear him?"
Yun Tieshan was momentarily at a loss for words. He gave a heavy snort but offered no rebuttal.
Everyone present knew Yun Mubai was telling the truth.
In eight hundred years, the Yun Family had produced three Xiantian experts, and every one of them had broken through after the age of fifty.
The seventh prince, meanwhile, had broken through to Xiantian a full twenty years earlier than the youngest Xiantian in the Yun Family's history.
He wasn't a genius. He was a monster.
After a long silence, Yun Xiaotian suddenly rose.
He said nothing, merely turning to look at the high wall at the front of the council hall.
A sword hung on the wall.
Its scabbard was the color of aged bronze, densely engraved with the names of generations of Yun Family ancestors.
The writing in the topmost row had already blurred. It was the name of Yun Potian, the first ancestor of the Yun Family, an Xiantian Peak expert who had founded the Yandang Yun Family eight hundred years ago.
Yun Xiaotian reached out, took down the sword, and turned to face the clansmen filling the hall.
The sword remained sheathed, but everyone instinctively sat up straight.
It was the Yun Family's Ancestral Sword, which only the family head of each generation was entitled to touch.
According to the family genealogy, each of the Yun Family's three Xiantian ancestors had, before death, transformed his lifetime of cultivation into a strand of sword intent and infused it into the sword.
Over eight hundred years, it had accumulated three strands of overwhelming sword intent, each equivalent to a full-force strike from a Xiantian expert.
"If he comes," Yun Xiaotian said, holding the sword horizontally before him, his voice not loud but every word resounding, "then let him try the sword intent passed down through eight hundred years of our Yun Family's legacy. So what if he's Xiantian Peak? Could he possibly withstand the full-force strikes of three Xiantian ancestors?"
Before he had finished speaking, a voice suddenly came from outside the door, unhurried yet clear in the ears of everyone present.
"I have come only to see the Yun Family's Xiantian ultimate art. Might that be possible?"
Yun Xiaotian's grip on the sword abruptly tightened. The expressions of all the Yun Family experts in the hall changed at once.
There were twelve guards outside, all of them first-rate experts or better. Yet the voice had traveled through the courtyard, along the corridors, and through the tightly shut doors, and those guards outside had given no warning at all.
All the doors of the council hall burst open. Eight vermilion doors struck the walls together with a single muffled crash.
Night wind swept in with the mountain mist, making all the candle flames in the hall shrink by a third.
A figure emerged from the darkness.
He wore a moon-white robe, with a slender frame and a face impossibly young. He looked like a scholar in his early twenties at most.
His footsteps were light, making almost no sound on the flagstones, but with each step, the hearts of everyone in the hall gave a violent thump.
A young disciple was the first to recover.
His surname was Yun and his given name Shaoqing. He had the fiercest temper among the Yun Family's younger generation. His cultivation at the Peak Stage of the first-rate level already set him apart from his peers, and he was used to strutting around Yandang Mountain as he pleased. How could he bear such provocation?
With a clang, Yun Shaoqing drew his sword and pointed it straight at the newcomer. "Who are you? This is a restricted area of the Yun Family! How dare an outsider like you trespass without permission!" he shouted.
The newcomer stopped and gave a soft laugh.
Then the pressure descended.
It was the pressure of Xiantian Peak, not the kind of aura a Houtian expert produced that merely made people feel oppressed, but a nearly tangible pressure bearing down like Mount Tai.
The second-rate and first-rate experts couldn't hold out for even a single breath. Their knees buckled, and they fell straight to the ground.
The faces of the early Houtian elders turned deathly pale, and their bones creaked under the pressure. In less than three breaths, they too fell to their knees.
Yun Tieshan roared, trying to hold out as his Middle Acquired Stage true essence erupted at full force.
But before that all-encompassing pressure, it was like a small torch struck by a great wave, snuffed out in an instant. He fell to one knee, a thread of blood seeping from the corner of his mouth.
Yun Xiaotian braced himself on the Ancestral Sword and managed not to kneel, but his legs were already trembling slightly.
Yun Mubai gripped the edge of the table with all his strength. Veins bulged on his skin, but in the end he could not hold out and slowly sank to one knee.
Throughout the hall, not a single person remained standing.
The newcomer stood in the center of the council hall, his moon-white robes stirring without wind.
He looked around, his calm gaze sweeping over the Yun Family experts kneeling across the floor before settling on the Ancestral Sword in Yun Xiaotian's hand.
Of course he recognized the sword. It was recorded in Qianchuan Hall's register of martial world weapons: the Yun Family's Ancestral Sword, passed down for eight hundred years, infused with sword intent by generations of Xiantian experts, and reputed to be capable of slaying a Xiantian.
"My name is Su Yuanzheng, seventh in the family," Chen Du said, a faint note of helplessness in his voice. "I'm the seventh prince you were just talking about."