"It worked! Hahaha! We did it!"
Amid the cheers, they all flew toward the formation and immediately saw Grandmother lying on the ground.
Yang Ruying gave a look, and one of his subordinates went over to inspect her before reporting, "She's fine, just unconscious. She was probably too close to the formation and couldn't withstand the power leaking out."
Yang Ruying nodded and casually ordered someone to drag her aside and tend to her.
Then he looked at the activated formation before him, feeling its incomparable power as though he could already see his future soaring straight into the clouds.
"Heh." He was ecstatic, jubilant, and even a little arrogantly proud. "What Mahayana Stage cultivator? Nothing special. Even if she underwent a drastic change in temperament and found the nerve to kill people and flip the table, her brain was still the same old brain. I merely used a small trick and took her down with ease."
At this point, Luo's Father and Luo's Mother were also extremely excited, cursing from the side.
"Go on, hit me again! Go on, slap me again if you dare! Pah! You deserved it!" Luo's Father cursed. "You unfilial thing, you should die!"
Luo's Mother joined in as well. "Hmph, dying so easily was letting her off too lightly!"
After they finished cursing, the two of them sidled up to Yang Ruying, their faces becoming incomparably fawning.
"Immortal Master, now that the plan has succeeded, does that mean we also..." Luo's Father asked carefully.
"Mhm. Although Grandmother was the key in the end, even without merit, you still put in effort. So rest assured—under the guarantee of our Heavenly Profound Immortal Sect, no one will come looking for trouble with you again from now on," Yang Ruying said.
Luo's Father and Luo's Mother were instantly overjoyed. Just as they were about to offer their thanks, a voice rang out.
"So that's how it is. The mastermind behind this was the Heavenly Profound Immortal Sect."
Everyone present froze. Instinctively, they searched for the source of the voice, and when they discovered it had actually come from within the formation, their scalps went numb.
Then, under their gazes, a speck of white light suddenly appeared within the formation. The next instant, it expanded in a flash, transforming into a streak of sword light that severed the formation's pillar of light cleanly in half.
Chu Lu's figure emerged from the formation. Raising his sword high, he shouted in a deep voice, "Phoenix Arrives!"
Mahayana Stage spiritual power, Mahayana Stage cultivation arts, Mahayana Stage sword techniques—the incomparable force surged fiercely outward.
The formation's power and the heavenly phenomena stirred by the Ten-Direction Flawless Immortal-Locking God-Extinguishing Grand Formation shattered with a thunderous crash beneath that single sword strike.
The dark clouds scattered across the sky, and everything returned to how it had been.
Everyone stared in shock at Chu Lu as he slowly walked out of the formation, their minds utterly blank.
Yang Ruying was the first to react. He pointed at Chu Lu with a trembling hand, his thoughts racing.
The formation passed down by the Old Ancestor could not possibly be wrong. As long as she stepped into it unguarded, she would certainly die. But she stepped in and didn't die, which meant...
"Y-you weren't fooled?" Yang Ruying said. "You entered the formation deliberately! You wanted to lure us out!"
"That's right." Chu Lu nodded slightly. "Finding you one by one would have been too troublesome. It was better to let you come out yourselves."
"But... but why?" Yang Ruying looked utterly unable to accept it.
Nor could he accept it. He had expended so much effort on this plan; everything had clearly been proceeding smoothly, so how had it failed?
Where, exactly, had things gone wrong?
He demanded, "You were close to your grandmother. She was the only one who treated you well. How could you suspect her!?"
"Honestly, your plan was quite good. First, you brought my parents here and tried the hard approach. When you found that didn't work, you immediately dragged Grandmother out to play the good person and tried the soft approach." Chu Lu explained, "Using both soft and hard tactics really was difficult to withstand. Unfortunately, you made one enormous mistake."
"What was it?"
Chu Lu looked at Grandmother. "This one wasn't suited to playing the good person."
Yang Ruying looked bewildered.
As Chu Lu recalled the story Luo Qingdie had told him, anger still burned in his heart.
"You chose her only because you found out she seemed to treat me rather well. But did you know she once intended to kill me twice? Once when I was born, and once when I was five." Chu Lu said.
"What?!"
Chu Lu continued, "There was a folk belief that if you gave birth to a daughter and raised her to adulthood, the female ghosts wishing to reincarnate would think your family was easy to bully and come reincarnate into your home as well. The result would be more and more daughters. So, if you wanted a son, you had to kill the newborn daughter at the front gate to frighten off the female ghosts."
Yang Ruying stared in shock. "Huh?"
"I survived partly because that folk belief was no longer very popular at the time, and partly because my parents thought raising an older sister first would allow her to take care of her younger brother later, saving them effort." Chu Lu continued. "But when I was five, because my mother still hadn't conceived a second child, she brought up the idea again. This time, my parents were eager to give it a try. If she hadn't gotten pregnant in time, I would already have died at the front gate."
Yang Ruying: "..."
Chu Lu continued, "Most of her later care amounted to nothing more than a few sarcastic remarks. She had simply been too vicious in the past, so in her old age, she wanted to earn herself a good reputation. Asking me to believe that such a person would unconditionally trust me and risk herself to save me was far too difficult."
Yang Ruying looked completely shattered. "Eh? Th-this, wait, doesn't that mean no one in your entire family ever liked you? Everyone wanted nothing more than to kill you? How could something like that exist in this world?!"
Before Chu Lu could say anything, Luo Qingdie erupted in his mind. "Nonsense! Impossible! How could no one like me! Of course there was someone. He, who... huh?"
Luo Qingdie's voice suddenly filled with confusion.
Oh no, she realized it.
Luo Qingdie's voice grew weaker and weaker. Finally, she asked Chu Lu, "Chu Lu. It's so strange. It seems like no one in this world likes me..."
Yeah. Otherwise, how would you be the female lead of an angst novel?
But he did not dare say that aloud. Instead, he comforted her, "Don't talk nonsense. I like you."
Yet those words seemed a little too forced, and they did not comfort her. Luo Qingdie fell silent.
Seeing this, Chu Lu could only hope inwardly that she would sort herself out.
At this moment, Yang Ruying was still shouting in despair, saying things like, "What kind of family is this?" and "Even a jinx wouldn't be this unlucky," making Chu Lu increasingly furious. He simply raised his hand and cut him down with one stroke.
Seeing Yang Ruying, their pillar, die violently, his subordinates were terrified and scattered like birds and beasts. But Chu Lu merely swung his sword a few times and killed them all.
Only Luo's Father and Luo's Mother remained. When they saw Chu Lu walking toward them, they immediately kowtowed and begged for mercy.
Chu Lu looked at them, originally intending to kill them with a single sword strike.
But before acting, he suddenly remembered the despondent Luo Qingdie. After hesitating for a moment, he changed his mind.
"How about this? I'll give you a chance." Chu Lu said. "I'll ask you two questions. As long as you answer them correctly, I'll spare you."
"Alright, alright, alright." The two hurriedly nodded.
"First question: do you know what you did wrong?" Chu Lu asked.
The two immediately nodded like pecking chickens. "We do, we know we were wrong."
"Then where were you wrong?" Chu Lu asked.
"We shouldn't have listened to the Heavenly Profound Immortal Sect. We shouldn't have helped them kill you," Luo's Father said.
"Right, right. We shouldn't have sided with outsiders," Luo's Mother added.
"What else?" Chu Lu asked.
"Huh? There's more?" The two looked baffled.
"What about falsely accusing me of stealing my younger brother's opportunity, treating me like an outsider to guard against, and constantly drawing my blood?" Chu Lu asked.
Even while kneeling before Chu Lu's sword, even with corpses strewn every which way around them, even with their lives hanging by a thread, Luo's Father and Luo's Mother still had stubbornness written all over their faces when they heard that question.
Luo's Mother even said aggrievedly, "But everyone does that. Isn't that how everyone raises daughters? What did I do wrong?"
Chu Lu sighed. "Wrong answer."
A short while later, Chu Lu left Qingyun City.
As for the mess scattered across the ground, others could handle it.
He looked into the distance and muttered, "Heavenly Profound Immortal Sect, was it?"
"The weather has turned cold. It's time to wipe out an entire clan."
Before you continue