Dust Settled

On the square before the Yin Clan ancestral temple, more than a hundred thousand Yin Clan members widened their eyes in unison.

Countless Yin Clan members cried out in alarm. Even the elders and grand elders of the Yin Clan standing before the ancestral temple were left dumbfounded in disbelief. Even Yin Tianjue failed to react for a moment—at the Yin Clan's Martial Arts Grand Tournament, someone had actually dared to ambush a Juvenile taking part in the tournament? Where had he found such courage?

Yin Jiwu did exactly that, his face twisted with rage!

When he saw his son, Yin Xuejiao, who had placed all his hopes on making an outstanding showing to secure his position in the Lineage and perhaps rise even higher, knocked from the sky by Yin Xuege like a corpse, Yin Jiwu completely lost his reason!

Three months ago, Yin Xuejiao, who had just broken through to become a Star Warrior, had been defeated by Yin Xuege, who was still an ordinary Juvenile. That had already humiliated Yin Jiwu terribly. Yin Jiwu had even indulged Yin Xuejiao in using a mission from the External Affairs Hall to send Yin Xuege into a deathtrap!

Yet that damned bastard had actually returned from the Great Berlin City-State alive and kicking! Not only had he survived, he had also subdued a powerful follower from the Silver Wolf Clan. That was royal blood from the Werewolf Clan! The strength of that foul-mouthed man named Wumu was even a great deal higher than Yin Jiwu's. At the very least, Yin Jiwu had suffered setbacks at Wumu's hands during several tests of strength!

What Yin Jiwu found even more impossible to accept was that Yin Xuege was actually a Sunwalker? A Sunwalker, said to possess the unfathomable potential and monstrous aptitude of the Blood Demon Clan? Watching Yin Xuege receive all kinds of generous treatment and enjoy all kinds of privileges, Yin Jiwu was so jealous his eyes nearly turned green!

If he could endure all of that, then being excluded from this year's ancestral worship ceremony had finally driven Yin Jiwu completely mad! All along, Yin Jiwu had been one of the outstanding direct descendants of the Yin Clan's fourth generation. He possessed considerable influence within the Yin Clan and wielded tremendous practical authority. He had always believed that, at the very least, he could become a figure like Yin Tianjue in the future!

Yet he had actually been excluded from the list of those attending the ancestral worship ceremony! There was no doubt about it—everything was because of Yin Xuege!

And now Yin Xuege was about to obtain the Blood Spirit Sword, the sword Yin Tianjue had worn for three hundred years and which had afterward been nurtured in the Blood Transformation Pool, a restricted ground of the Lineage! Within the Yin Clan, this sword held a status comparable to the private imperial seal of a mortal emperor. It possessed extraordinary influence and symbolic significance! It was essentially safe to say that whoever obtained this sword would become the future heir of the Yin Clan!

His own son was falling from the sky like a tattered sack of flesh, spraying blood everywhere. As long as Yin Xuege defeated his final opponent, Yin Xueao, he would take control of the Blood Spirit Sword! It was practically foreseeable that from this day onward, Yin Xuege would soar within the Yin Clan. His status would rise with the tide, his authority would grow greater, and his strength would become more formidable. Father and son, Yin Jiwu and Yin Xuejiao, were bound to be trampled beneath his feet, never able to rise again.

Thus, when Yin Xuege's heavy punch sent Yin Xuejiao flying, Yin Jiwu, whose mind had been burned away by rage, completely forgot where he was and utterly disregarded the occasion. He spread his Natal Bat Wings, raised a vicious gale, and appeared behind Yin Xuege in an instant.

It was the same palm strike that had heavily injured Yin Xuege in the Children's Hall that day. Yin Jiwu's right palm swelled to more than twice its original size, becoming scarlet and nearly translucent. Within the demonic palm that glimmered with a faint red light, an Archaic Demonic Script the size of a fist flickered. It represented the meaning of "corrosion," granting Yin Jiwu's palm extraordinary corrosive power and sustained damage.

The entire arena erupted in uproar. Just as Yin Jiwu's right palm was about to strike the back of Yin Xuege's heart, Yin Xuege already sensed the bone-chilling aura behind him. His right leg whipped up like a spring, and his heavy foot lashed into Yin Xueao's lower abdomen, kicking him nearly a hundred meters away.

Using the recoil from that kick, Yin Xuege turned in midair. Faint blood-colored mist coiled around his body, and his eyes transformed into an eerie dark cyan. Within his pupils, a deep silver glimmer flickered faintly. That silver light, like ghost fire, sent a sudden chill through Yin Jiwu's heart when he saw the change in Yin Xuege's eyes!

A pair of faint crimson, translucent bat wings abruptly spread from Yin Xuege's back. Amid the countless shocked screams of the Yin Clan members, his Natal Bat Wings were wrapped in a mass of blazing blood-colored flames. The wings, with a span of more than three meters, trembled lightly. Yin Xuege instantly dragged several hazy afterimages behind him and dodged Yin Jiwu's ambushing palm like a ghost.

The Archaic Demonic Scripts representing "speed" and "wind" flashed across Yin Xuege's Natal Bat Wings and vanished. A howling gale suddenly surged around him, and dozens of horn-shaped whirlwinds, each more than ten meters tall, erupted from the ground. Caught off guard, Yin Jiwu was swept into two of them. His palm had missed, and he had already lost his balance; when the whirlwind suddenly caught him, his body began to sway wildly through the air beyond his control.

Yin Xuege threw his head back and roared. His flying speed suddenly multiplied several times, to the point that even the experts of the Yin Clan's "Wu" generation could no longer determine where his body was. Countless afterimages appeared and vanished within the gale. Yin Xuege drew the soft sword hidden in his belt and lightly flicked it with his right hand. Countless palm-sized arcs of sword light tore through the air, sweeping toward Yin Jiwu with shrill cries.

Drops of blood sprayed continuously from Yin Jiwu's body. At that moment, Yin Xuege perfectly displayed the sword techniques taught by the stewards of the Children's Hall. The soft sword was like a mad venomous snake, darting in and out around Yin Jiwu's joints, tendons, and other vital points. Countless tendons were severed, countless joints were hacked into a bloody mess, and large blood vessels were sliced open, sending fountains of blood gushing from Yin Jiwu's body.

Yin Jiwu let out a pained roar, his howls mingled with confusion and boundless terror.

He could not understand why Yin Xuege had Natal Bat Wings. Even more incomprehensible was how an eleven-year-old Juvenile like Yin Xuege could possess such terrifying strength! What he feared was that the boundless pain had finally extinguished his rage. He suddenly understood what he was doing and how foolish his actions had been.

Sword light shot toward him from all directions. Acting on instinct, Yin Jiwu waved his right palm wildly. He had already heard the sharp whistles released by the elders before the ancestral temple—whistles of fury pushed to the extreme. They were like countless awls stabbing into Yin Jiwu's ears at once, making his eardrums ache and nearly shattering his internal organs.

With a loud bang, Yin Jiwu's wildly swinging right palm struck Yin Xuege squarely in the chest!

Looking at Yin Jiwu's bewildered face, Yin Xuege lowered his voice and sneered. "You and your son are finished!"

Yin Jiwu's palm no longer held much force, but Yin Xuege cleanly bit through his own tongue, opened his mouth, and sprayed out a bloody arrow before crashing heavily backward. The soft sword in his hand flew dozens of meters away as well, making him look as though he had suffered a severe injury and could no longer grip the hilt.

You and your son are finished!

Only Yin Xuege and Yin Jiwu had heard those words. Yin Jiwu understood what Yin Xuege meant. Precisely because he knew what lay behind those words, terror and an empty sense of defeat suddenly flooded his heart. His reason, which had just returned under the torment of pain, was once again ground away by fear and frustration. Like a madman, he dragged his heavily injured body forward, spread his bat wings, and charged at Yin Xuege.

"I'll kill you! You damned bastard, I'll kill you!" Yin Jiwu slowly reached Yin Xuege, then raised his right palm and prepared to strike his heart! He had truly developed murderous intent. He was determined to shatter Yin Xuege's heart and kill him completely!

But he had already lost his chance. The elders and grand elders of the Yin Clan had simply never imagined that anyone would be so bold and deranged as to behave this way during the sacred Clan Martial Grand Ceremony. That did not mean, however, that the Yin Clan's elders were all useless parasites who held office without doing their jobs!

With an extremely grim expression, Yin Tianjue appeared behind Yin Jiwu like a ghost. He seized Yin Jiwu by the throat, lifted him into the air, then smashed him heavily onto the arena stage. Yin Jiwu let out a miserable howl as his body crashed into the stage. The enormous impact blasted the skin across his entire body apart, and great swaths of blood sprayed around him like blooming flowers.

Enraged, Yin Tianjue struck. The blow shattered every bone in Yin Jiwu's body and severed all his nerves and tendons. Even the heart—the only truly fatal vital point for the Blood Demon Clan—was shaken by dozens of hidden injuries. Without a long period of recuperation, along with a great deal of blood to replenish him, Yin Jiwu's injuries would be extremely difficult to heal.

"You damned thing!" Yin Tianjue made no attempt to conceal the fury and killing intent in his heart. Two bloody flames spurted from his eyes, extending more than a foot. He stared fixedly at Yin Jiwu for a long while before slowly nodding. "If your father had any son other than you, you useless wretch, I would tear out your heart right now!"

"But although death may be forgiven, living punishment cannot!" The nail of Yin Tianjue's right index finger lengthened with a crisp series of ting ting sounds until it was more than a foot long. He lightly drew it across Yin Jiwu's chest, exposing his feebly beating heart.

Yin Tianjue gently swept his right palm over Yin Jiwu's heart. Yin Jiwu's body suddenly began to convulse violently. He let out a hoarse, desperate scream, and two streams of blood tears suddenly rolled from his eyes.

A mass of silver-cyan Essence Blood, the size of an infant's head, appeared in Yin Tianjue's palm. Judging from its color, Yin Jiwu had clearly reached the peak of Viscount-level strength and was only one step away from entering the ranks of the Counts. Yet this mass of Essence Blood contained at least half of all his Essence Blood. In other words, Yin Tianjue had stripped away half of Yin Jiwu's strength!

This mass of Essence Blood represented at least twenty years of Yin Jiwu's painstaking cultivation.

Yin Xuege lay on the ground, boredly biting through his own tongue and continuing to spray out blood mouthful by mouthful. The Blood Demon Physique had one drawback: wounds on the tongue healed far too quickly. The instant he spat out a mouthful of blood, the wound on his tongue had already recovered completely. Yin Xuege had to endure the pain of biting through it again before he could produce fresh blood.

Watching Yin Jiwu have half of his Blood Demon Essence Blood forcibly extracted by Yin Tianjue, Yin Xuege felt a surge of satisfaction.

What kind of person was Yin Tianjue? With one glance at Yin Xuege, he saw through his little trick. He kicked Yin Jiwu away, then gently weighed the infant-head-sized mass of Essence Blood in his hand.

The square fell utterly silent. Countless Yin Clan members stared at the ball of Essence Blood in Yin Tianjue's hand, their faces flushed red with suppressed excitement. This was half of Yin Jiwu's Natal Essence Blood. Any Yin Clan member who obtained it could carefully absorb and fuse with it, thereby gaining all the power contained within.

If it were given to a Juvenile, then after transforming his body and expanding his life origin, this mass of Essence Blood should be enough to propel him directly into the ranks of low-level Barons. It was a true ascent to the heavens in a single step, and could save a Juvenile decades of arduous cultivation!

The passionate pursuit of a powerful being's Natal Essence Blood was a racial instinct engraved deep in the soul of every Yin Clan member!

Yin Tianjue naturally knew what the Essence Blood in his hand represented. He cast a cold glance over all the clansmen below, then walked slowly to Yin Xuege's side. He grabbed the blood-spitting Yin Xuege, lifted him up, and stuffed the infant-head-sized blood sphere into his mouth.

The blood sphere looked small because Yin Tianjue had used his own power to compress it as much as possible. This was half of Yin Jiwu's Essence Blood. It was impossible for it to contain only so little.

As soon as the blood sphere entered his mouth, it rapidly transformed into great streams of heat that flowed downward. Yin Xuege's body was like a dried-out sponge, frantically devouring the Essence Blood entering it. His face flushed again and again, and his body began to swell faintly. His originally well-proportioned figure soon became no different from a ball.

This was not Farnburg's twenty drops of Essence Blood. When Farnburg had given his Essence Blood to Yin Xuege, every drop had been sealed by powerful restrictions, allowing Yin Xuege to absorb the energy of only one drop at a time. This time, however, it was half the Essence Blood of a powerful expert who had already stepped one foot into the ranks of the Counts, and the energy of all that Essence Blood erupted simultaneously.

Yin Xuege's body rapidly expanded as vast blood energy surged through him, stimulating his heart to beat at high speed.

For any other Yin Clan member, absorbing all the mighty energy contained in this Essence Blood would have required several months of closed-door cultivation. But Yin Xuege had fused with Farnburg's twenty drops of Essence Blood. He had not used them to recklessly increase his strength. Instead, he had used most of their energy to expand his life origin and forge a solid foundation for his body.

At this moment, Yin Xuege's life origin was like a gigantic lake, while the energy contained in half of Yin Jiwu's Essence Blood was like a turbulent river pouring into his body. Yet it did not exceed the limits of what his body could contain. After standing on the arena stage and deeply breathing in and out for a while, Yin Xuege's swollen body returned to normal at a speed visible to the naked eye!

Yin Tianjue and the other elders of the Yin Clan all raised their brows. Yin Xuege's performance had truly exceeded their expectations!

Yin Tianjue had forcibly poured half of Yin Jiwu's Essence Blood into Yin Xuege's body partly to test Yin Xuege's talent and potential. He knew that a Sunwalker's talent should be extraordinary. According to Yin Tianjue's estimation, if Yin Xuege could completely fuse with Yin Jiwu's Essence Blood within three days, that would already be an astonishing level of aptitude!

But—Yin Xuege had returned to normal in only a quarter of an hour!

Yin Tianjue stared blankly at Yin Xuege for a long while. Then he suddenly threw his head back and laughed, vigorously rubbing Yin Xuege's still-spread Natal Bat Wings! The Natal Bat Wings, which had originally spanned no more than three meters, had expanded to roughly four meters after Yin Xuege completely devoured half of Yin Jiwu's Essence Blood.

Natal Bat Wings with a span of four meters were practically at the level of a Blood Demon Count!

"Wonderful beyond words!" Yin Tianjue suddenly burst into loud laughter. He smacked Yin Xuege's shoulder several times, then began shouting furiously.

"Yin Jiwu is utterly absurd—a muddleheaded and useless fool! A man like that actually held an important position in the family's Blood War Hall! Effective immediately, strip Yin Jiwu of all his positions in the main family. Confine him to reflect on his mistakes, and let him properly recover from his injuries while he's at it!" With his very first sentence, Yin Tianjue cast Yin Jiwu into the cold palace! To the brutally realistic and cold-blooded Blood Demon Clan, this order was tantamount to destroying everything belonging to Yin Jiwu and his sons.

"Yin Xuege!" Yin Tianjue gave a heartfelt exclamation of praise. "Good lad, what a good lad! Hmm, let him take up the position of Chief Steward of the Blood War Hall. He may be young, but he can be tempered through experience. Double the guards at his side. Select some girls of a suitable age from among the Blood Servants to attend him. As for all his Attendants, double them as well!"

Yin Tianmie flashed onto the arena stage. Without wasting words, he directly handed the Blood Spirit Sword to Yin Xuege.

"Go back and nurture it with your own Essence Blood. This is the incantation for refining the Blood Spirit Sword. Follow it and subdue it!" Yin Tianmie's eyes narrowed into slits. He made no attempt to hide the delight and excitement in his heart. No matter what had happened in the past, Yin Xuege was a direct descendant of his Xuan Yin Palace branch of the Yin Clan. That was an unchangeable fact!

Yin Tianjue smiled and nodded at Yin Xuege, then turned to look at the clansmen below the arena.

"This year's Clan Martial Grand Ceremony has, without a doubt, been won by Yin Xuege. None of you will have any objections."

"Everyone, under the supervision of the clan elders, swear a blood oath forbidding the disclosure of anything related to Yin Xuege."

"His age, his Sunwalker talent, and the fact that he has awakened his Natal Bat Wings—every one of these is a top-level secret of our Yin Clan. Each of you must swear a blood oath. Whoever dares reveal even a single related word will have their soul incinerated by Blood Flame and be scattered, body and soul!"

The elders of the Yin Clan flew into the sky one after another, simultaneously spreading their Natal Bat Wings, each with a span of more than ten meters.

A terrifying aura blanketed the entire arena. None of the Yin Clan members dared show the slightest negligence. They knelt on the ground one after another, pierced their chests, extracted their Essence Blood, and swore the harshest blood oath.

Yin Tianjue smiled in satisfaction, then gently patted Yin Xuege's shoulder.

"After the midnight blood banquet, come find a few of us old fellows at the Heaven and Earth Tower. There's something good waiting for you. You can take the opportunity to earn some merit and gain some experience."

Yin Xuege's heart leapt with joy. He then bowed deeply to Yin Tianjue and Yin Tianmie.

Our fellow Xuege is getting stronger and stronger! Give us some recommendation votes to show your support! (To be continued)