Blood-Red Adept was a genuine Ninth-Layer Golden Core cultivator. He had already reached the Ninth-Layer Golden Core a hundred years ago.
He came from a small Emergence from Dust family with fewer than a thousand members in total. His father had been the family's sole Emergence from Dust cultivator.
He rose all the way to Peak Emergence from Dust by the age of two hundred, an astonishing talent indeed.
He could not compare to Yan Yuxi, who had reached the Ninth Layer of Emergence from Dust in her sixties, but he was far stronger than Guan Hongxiu or Nie Chifeng. Those two had the backing of the Four Great Sects and had only begun considering Core Formation in their two hundreds, yet they were already considered outstanding within their sects.
Yet Blood-Red Adept had come from nothing more than a small family and still achieved this. He truly was heaven-blessed.
But his brilliance eventually provoked someone he should not have provoked—someone did not want to see a Golden Core family emerge.
Although Blood-Red Adept's cultivation was high, perhaps due to his inheritance, he did not possess many impressive techniques. His combat strength was not particularly high, and he was beaten into severe injury before fleeing.
Then they went to his family, intending to use the lives of his relatives to force him to show himself.
As mentioned before, there was not really any hostage strategy on the Kunhao Plane. That idiotic notion had only been instilled by Hollywood. The common understanding here was—never mind threats against your family; only by surviving could you continue your family line.
The continuation of the family was the fundamental pursuit. Everything else was false.
At the same time, if the family faced a threat that was not too serious, one still had to do