Spirit City, Library Pavilion.
Su Chen lounged in a bamboo chair, watching the Light Screen of the Eye of Omniscience. The marker representing Qian Renxue was flashing wildly at "outside the rear window of the Pope Palace's bedchamber," and the corner of his mouth curled into an amused smirk.
But he wasn't in a hurry to enjoy the show.
In the corner of the Light Screen, the red dot representing [No. 003 · Liu Erlong] was flashing at a frightening rate. Her emotional fluctuation value had already hit the red line.
"Heh. Finally about to blow."
Su Chen lightly tapped the armrest and looked away.
His gaze seemed to pierce through mountains and rivers, crossing the currents beneath Spirit City.
Heaven Dou Empire, Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan.
The night was as dark as ink, and cold wind swept through the corridors.
The private residential courtyard was as silent as the grave.
Liu Erlong carried a heavy rosewood food box, crouching low as she tiptoed across the flagstones.
Inside was a Fire Cloud Marten bone broth, simmered over a fire for three whole hours under her watchful eye.
Her eyes, usually so fiercely aggressive, now held a trace of cautious hope.
For the past few months, Yu Xiaogang had treated her like ice.
No matter how she tried to please him or lower herself, all she got in return was a firmly shut door and his cold, retreating back.
She thought it was because her temper was too fierce, because she had pressed him too hard.
Tonight, she decided to swallow her pride and be the first to lower her head.
She was still a dozen steps from the courtyard gate when Liu Erlong abruptly stopped.
The window of the main room ahead hadn't been shut properly; a gap two fingers wide remained.
Lamplight flickered inside, casting the shadows of two people pressed close together.
Liu Erlong's heart gave a jolt. She instinctively held her breath and, as if possessed, crept over to the window.
Through the crack, the sight inside struck her like a heavy hammer.
Yu Xiaogang sat upright in a chair.
Standing before him was a young, beautiful female disciple, her clothes slightly disheveled and her cheeks flushed.
Yu Xiaogang wasn't wearing his usual unchanging, icy expression.
His eyes were lowered, and he held the young woman's hands tightly in both of his. His thumb even rubbed back and forth over the back of her hand, suggestively.
"Your Martial Soul Mutation is rather unusual. Your meridians are knotted up here."
Yu Xiaogang's voice was so tender that Liu Erlong had never heard anything like it in all sixteen years. It was so sickly sweet it could have dripped honey. "Relax. Don't resist. Let me examine you carefully."
The young disciple gave a delicate little hum and leaned closer. "Grandmaster, you're so kind~"
A loud buzz filled Liu Erlong's head. The thread called reason snapped on the spot.
Sixteen years!
She had waited sixteen years, stayed by his side for sixteen years!
Even touching his hand earned her a lecture about "worldly ethics."
And now, in the middle of the night, he was "examining the meridians" of some little girl who had only just joined the clan?!
Boom!
Her furious fire-attribute Soul Power exploded in an instant! Liu Erlong lifted her leg and kicked!
Bang!
The sturdy huanghuali door and half its frame shattered into pieces! Wood splinters and a fierce gust of wind blasted into the room.
"Ah!" The female disciple shrieked in terror, fumbling to clutch at her collar as she scrambled to the corner and cowered there, shaking.
Clatter!
The rosewood food box slipped from her hands and hit the ground. The scalding meat broth splashed at Yu Xiaogang's feet, and the fine porcelain bowl shattered, spraying soup all over one of his shoes.
Liu Erlong stepped over the threshold, her eyes bloodshot as she fixed Yu Xiaogang with the stare of a bloodthirsty beast.
The terrifying pressure of a Seven-Ring Soul Sage made the entire room feel like an oven. The air grew so hot it rippled.
"Yu Xiaogang! What are you doing?!" she demanded, her voice trembling uncontrollably.
Anyone else caught in the act would have panicked.
But Yu Xiaogang didn't.
His eyelids didn't even twitch. He calmly withdrew his hands, slowly rose to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and raised his chin slightly. In an instant, he was back to his lofty, aloof, and righteous Grandmaster persona.
"Erlong, what kind of crude and uncouth behavior is this?"
Yu Xiaogang looked down at her, his eyes filled with disdain and disappointment. "I was merely providing theoretical guidance to a junior. Not only did you break into my home at night, you also destroyed my door and endangered someone. Is your heart truly so filthy and depraved?"
Would you look at that—he'd turned the whole thing around and was acting like he had every right to!
The huge crash had already roused the disciples on night patrol.
A dozen young disciples holding lanterns gathered outside the courtyard, peeking in. They saw their revered "Grandmaster" solemnly scolding the Mother Tyrant Dragon, the one person in the clan nobody dared provoke.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Liu Erlong stood frozen, her face full of disbelief.
Looking at Yu Xiaogang's sanctimonious face, which seemed to say, "I'm right, you're wrong," she felt sick.
Was this the man she had loved for half her life?
A hypocrite who spouted benevolence and morality while engaging in disgraceful affairs, then shamelessly bit back at her without batting an eye when caught!
All the years of effort and humiliation she had endured became fuel, and in that moment, the Mother Tyrant Dragon was set ablaze!
"Filthy? Depraved?"
Liu Erlong forced down her trembling and stepped forward, pointing at the disheveled female disciple in the corner. She let out a cold laugh. "You call a female disciple into your room in the middle of the night, hold her hand, and discuss her meridians? Since when did you become a doctor, Yu Xiaogang?!"
Yu Xiaogang's expression stiffened. He was just about to make an excuse.
Liu Erlong didn't give him the chance. She roared at him in a rapid-fire tirade: "Sixteen years! Yu Xiaogang, I endured the scorn of the whole world for you! I searched everywhere for medicine for you! Whenever you were in danger, I was the first to charge in. Whenever people mocked your lousy theories, I stood up for you! And what did I get?"
Her eyes grew redder with every word, each one dripping with blood:
"Whenever anything happened, you hid like a turtle in its shell! You thought even looking at me would stain your reputation! But now, faced with a little girl so young and tender you could pinch water from her, you're suddenly so attentive!"
His fig leaf had been ripped away in front of everyone!
The disciples' expressions changed at once, their suspicious gazes shifting between Yu Xiaogang and the female disciple in the corner.
Every word struck at Yu Xiaogang's deepest insecurities and most sensitive spots. The Grandmaster's image he had painstakingly built was collapsing in front of everyone's eyes.
Humiliated and enraged!
Yu Xiaogang's face turned the color of pig liver. He suddenly thrust a finger at Liu Erlong's nose and shouted the most heartless words imaginable.
"Enough!"
His voice was hoarse with fury. "Erlong, you're always so impulsive, so unreasonable! Do you know how suffocating your volatile temper and possessiveness without boundaries are?!"
Suffocating.
Those two words struck the courtyard like a bolt of thunder.
The entire place fell silent. The watching disciples covered their mouths in shock; none of them had imagined the "Grandmaster" would say something so heartless.
Liu Erlong felt as if she'd been struck by lightning.
She stood ramrod straight, the fury, grievance, and resentment in her heart suddenly doused from head to toe by a bucket of Ten Thousand Year Mysterious Ice Water.
First it froze, then it shattered inch by inch.
Sixteen years of humble devotion had turned into one enormous joke.
Half a second later.
"Heh... hehehe... hahahahahaha!"
Liu Erlong suddenly burst into laughter. The sound rose from a self-mocking chuckle to a desperate, chilling roar.
"How suffocating!"
Liu Erlong's eyes turned utterly cold. There wasn't a trace of affection left in them, only disgust and a chill that could freeze someone into an ice sculpture.
Her whole outlook suddenly shifted.
Boom!
The crimson flames of a Soul Sage burst skyward without restraint, instantly turning the room's screens to charcoal.
She suddenly raised her hand and slammed it down on Yu Xiaogang's most treasured writing desk.
Bang!
The desk, along with the drafts covered in his bullshit theories, was crushed into a rain of splinters by her violent Soul Power!
The female disciple in the corner rolled her eyes and fainted on the spot.
The hot blast drove Yu Xiaogang back several steps. He slammed into the wall, his face white as paper.
"Yu Xiaogang, you'd better remember this." Liu Erlong turned away, not even willing to spare that piece of trash a glance.
"From this day on, we're through. We'll never see each other again, in life or death!"
After throwing those words at him, Liu Erlong strode out of the room.
The disciples in her path were so terrified by the murderous aura of "get in my way and die" surrounding her that they scrambled aside on hands and knees.
She was on a rampage.
A quarter of an hour later, Liu Erlong returned to her residence.
She didn't cry. Her gaze was frighteningly clear. As she went to pack her things at the desk, her eyes caught on a gold-embossed scroll lying on top.
It was the urgent letter the Spirit Hall had sent to the major clans that evening.
Liu Erlong broke the seal.
<Ceremony Invitation for the Establishment and Selection of the Holy Son>.
The letter announced that the Spirit Hall had established Su Chen as its Holy Son and invited the major clans to Spirit City three months later to attend the ceremony.
This was Bibi Dong's legal proof, forced through to establish Su Chen's identity beyond dispute—and her trump card for silencing the old men in the Worship Hall.
Looking at the Spirit Hall's seal, Liu Erlong gave a cold laugh. "The Spirit Hall's Holy Son? Interesting."
She tucked the scroll into her arms.
Just what she needed: somewhere to go.
Spirit City was practically made for her.
Liu Erlong turned and invoked her highest elder authority, kicking open the door to the private treasury behind her residence.
It held the resources belonging to her branch of the clan.
Without the slightest hesitation, she swept half the top cultivation resources into her storage ring—Ten Thousand Year Soul Bones, Top-grade Spirit Grass, high-level Soul Tools—as casually as if she were sweeping away trash.
If you were going to cut ties, you had to cut them cleanly. She wouldn't leave those useless idiots so much as a single hair!
The enormous commotion drew several clan elders.
"Elder Erlong! What are you doing?!" a red-robed elder shouted sternly.
Liu Erlong whipped around. Yellow, yellow, purple, purple, black, black, black—seven Soul Rings exploded into view, and the crimson phantom of a Fire Dragon roared behind her, as if ready to devour anyone in its path!
"I'm taking what belongs to me. Get lost!"
Liu Erlong's voice cut like a knife, charged with ferocious violence.
The elders were so stunned by the way she looked ready to fight to the death that they exchanged glances, none of them daring to step forward.
Late that night, a black carriage stopped in the clan's plaza.
Liu Erlong nimbly jumped onto the carriage and seized the reins. Under the elders' shocked and conflicted stares, she snapped the reins hard.
"Hyah!"
The wheels crushed through the night like an arrow loosed from a bow, charging straight out through the towering stone gate of the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan without looking back.
She didn't turn around. Not even once.
The instant the carriage's rear wheels crossed the clan's boundary, the last thread of attachment she felt for the past was crushed beneath them.
At that very moment, deep within Liu Erlong's Sea of Divine Consciousness, an immense and bizarre Soul Shock suddenly erupted!
A cold, imposing mechanical voice, devoid of all human emotion, boomed inside her mind:
[Ding! Target 'Liu Erlong' has reached 100% emotional collapse. All past bonds have been severed!] [Absolute binding conditions met!] [No. 003 God-Level More Children More Blessings System officially activated and bound!]
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