"Which blind fool was that?"
"Can't you see the Ye Clan is handling business? If you don't want to die, get lost!"
Ye Li didn't even turn around as he barked, swinging his right palm behind him. Gale Wind tore through the air in its wake.
His Fourth Realm cultivation burst forth at full force, and blood-colored Baleful Intent even shimmered along the edge of his palm. This was the Ye Clan's secret Heart-Shattering Palm, which had once shattered the heart meridians of a cultivator at the same realm on the spot.
And yet—
Smack!
Ye Li's vicious grin froze on his face.
He heard the crisp crack of his bones splintering, one joint after another, starting at his fingertips.
The cracking didn't stop. Like firecrackers going off, it raced up his arm, and in an instant the flesh and bones of his entire right arm were crushed into powder by some terrifying force.
Ye Li didn't even have time to scream before a hand covered in Black Iron Scale Armor clamped around his throat, lifting his two-hundred-pound body as easily as a chick.
His legs kicked wildly in the air on instinct, while his left hand clawed frantically at the hand gripping him like an iron vice.
But the hand that could once split stone monuments and shatter boulders now felt like nothing more than a tickle. It couldn't even leave a scratch on the other party's armor.
Seeing this, the Ye Clan cultivators were just about to rush to his aid when the whole world abruptly sank beneath them.
"Boom—"
An invisible pressure crashed down like the sky collapsing, and countless fragments of bluestone burst from the street.
The Ye Clan members, along with the cultivators watching nearby, were struck as if by lightning. Their bodies slammed uncontrollably into the ground.
Blood mist burst from their knees, and their faces scraped bloody streaks across the stone slabs.
The entire marketplace fell silent. Only the steady succession of cracking joints broke the stillness.
"S-Sir, spare me!" Realizing something was wrong, Ye Li began to beg for mercy. His face had turned purple where he was being choked, but he still struggled to force the words out. "This humble one failed to recognize Mount Tai..."
He no longer looked arrogant and defiant. All that remained was fear and disgrace.
His plea fell silent, but the guard before him still wore a face cold as ice.
The guard's gaze merely swept over Qin Wangchuan—
The five-year-old child was looking elsewhere. He hadn't even spared Ye Li a glance.
Seeing this, the guard immediately tightened his grip.
Crack!
Ye Li's neck was crushed, and he died in agony.
Blood gushed from his seven orifices, yet under the pressure filling the sky, it hung strangely suspended in the air, transforming into countless Blood Beads.
In the final instant before his consciousness faded, he was still wondering: Was this an assassination aimed at me? Or an attack on the Ye Clan?
But the next moment, Ye Li's unfocused pupils suddenly contracted.
Through his blurry vision, he saw a five-year-old child standing indifferently before the Little Blind Girl, with another Black Armor Guard standing respectfully behind him.
So... that's how it is...
Only then did he understand: the Peerless Expert who had crushed him with a casual move was merely a follower of this Young Master.
It wasn't a vendetta. It wasn't an attack.
A powerful figure had simply stepped on a noisy ant while passing by.
"W-Who are you people, exactly?!" the Ye Clan Guard kneeling on the ground stammered, shouting as he struggled to resist. "My Ye Clan has a Quasi-Saint Old Ancestor holding down the fort!"
A Quasi-Saint could barely be considered a Great Power in the Upper Thousand Provinces.
After advancing further and becoming a Saint, one could establish a Holy Land and gather disciples from across the Immortal realms.
He had thought invoking that name would at least intimidate them a little, but he seemed to have forgotten—
This was the Ten Directions Immortal Court.
The two seemingly ordinary guards standing before him, along with the numerous Shadow Guards behind them, were all at the Twenty-First Realm: the Quasi-Emperor Realm.
If the Great Emperor Dharma Body weren't inconvenient to bring along—
Then the ones accompanying Qin Wangchuan would not be at the Twenty-First Realm, but the Twenty-Second Realm, the Great Emperor Realm!
It wasn't that Quasi-Saints were too weak. It was that the Qin Clan was too powerful!
Qin Wangchuan remained calm and finally spoke. "Leave no one alive."
Perhaps his voice was still childish, or perhaps it was simply his nature.
He spoke softly, but to the enemy, his words sounded like the voice of hell.
"A Quasi-Saint Old Ancestor?" At the order, the guard turned to the man and curled his lips in mockery.
He slowly raised a hand and casually flicked his fingertip—
Pfft!
The Ye Clan Guard who had spoken didn't even have time to scream before his head burst apart. His remaining body crumpled like sludge into the pool of blood.
"A mere Quasi-Saint doesn't even deserve the chance to carry our Young Master's shoes!" another guard sneered. "Even Saints—or Great Saints—are nothing but slightly larger ants."
With that, a thought flickered through his mind.
The dozen or so Ye Clan Guards suddenly collapsed as though every ounce of strength had been drained from their bodies.
Their bodies seemed unharmed, but their Divine Souls had been extinguished in an instant. They had no chance to be reborn through reincarnation.
If not for the need to show consideration for His Highness the Young Master, not even their corpses would have remained. They would have been reduced to clouds of blood.
The people sprawled on the ground in the marketplace trembled at the sight. They hurriedly pressed their foreheads to the ground and began to pray.
Too powerful!
This wasn't a gap in strength. It was a crushing from a different dimension!
"Next..." Qin Wangchuan said, his gaze falling on the girl still kneeling on the ground.
Though Ye Jianwei couldn't see, she could hear the crisp cracks of breaking bones and smell the thick stench of blood.
She bit her lower lip hard. The words "I'll buy you," spoken beside her ear, had sounded so close—yet she feared they were another hallucination.
Just like on those nights when hunger gnawed at her, and she would hear her mother calling to her.
She hoped it wasn't a hallucination.
Because then she would have money to bury her mother.
Clever from a young age, Ye Jianwei knew full well that these people might belong to a world entirely separate from her own.
But she had no choice.
"P-please buy me!" Almost on instinct, Ye Jianwei suddenly knelt forward. "Just five hundred Spirit Stones is enough! I'll work for five years... no, ten years! I'm very capable!"
Her trembling voice carried the despair of staking everything on one last chance, like a drowning person grasping at the final piece of driftwood.
Qin Wangchuan stood silently before the straw mat, the hem of his Black Brocade Robe brushing its edge.
He looked at the blind girl who would one day become the Zither Heavenly Emperor, kneeling on the ground like a beggar.
A finger protruded from beneath the straw mat beside her—that was her mother's final resting place.
When Ye Jianwei's forehead touched the ground, she suddenly caught the scent of crisp cedar.
There wasn't a trace of powdery perfume. It was as clean as fresh snow in a mountain stream, yet somehow it brought a warmth to her limbs, long chilled to the bone, that she hadn't felt in ages.
She loved the scent.
As she was thinking this, the dull thud of bags hitting the ground suddenly sounded beside her—
Qin Wangchuan lifted his hand, and the two guards behind him understood at once, tossing down bag after bag of Spirit Crystals.
"These are Spirit Crystals, several times more valuable than Spirit Stones. They're enough to buy your whole life."
The boy's voice was lovely, like clear spring water and falling dew.
It brought with it a dreamlike unreality.
Ye Jianwei's fingertips trembled. But when she touched the heavy bags of Spirit Crystals, she jerked her hand back as though burned.
"Y-Young Master..." Her voice was hoarse, her fingers unconsciously clutching the hem of her clothes. "I... I'm not worth this much."
She had heard of Spirit Crystals. They were something even the Ye Clan Patriarch coveted.
If she were anyone else, she would already have been wild with joy.
But all she felt was fear—
What right did a blind girl who couldn't even afford to bury her mother's remains have to such generosity?
With dirt-stained fingertips, she gently pushed the bags of Spirit Crystals back. Lowering her head, she spoke so softly her words nearly vanished in the wind. "I don't want Spirit Crystals. I only... I only want the Young Master to help me bury my mother. After that, one meal a day is enough. My life... belongs to you."
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