The Twelfth Elder's eyes nearly split with fury. He had sent men to hold Yun Yuan back and even deployed the immortal artifact, the Heaven-Sealing Domain-Locking Banner, to seal off the Myriad Beasts Ancient Domain. Even an Immortal Venerable would need at least an incense stick's worth of time to force his way inside.
And that was more than enough time for them to kill Yun Qing ten times over!
Yet he had never imagined... Yun Qing would bring the Second Elder along in his pocket!
That outrageously ugly rag doll was a Stand-In Puppet the Second Elder had refined from a strand of his own life-bound soul essence. Ridiculous and hideous though it looked, it was actually a supreme treasure capable of bearing an Immortal Venerable's full power and divine sense!
How was that a protective artifact? It was a Dao-Protecting Immortal Venerable who could be summoned at any moment!
He had never imagined Yun Yuan would lavish so much on Yun Qing!
"We failed..." The Twelfth Elder's chest heaved violently, his lips trembling.
Yun Chi was dead, and their plot had been exposed. Even if he managed to escape today, severe punishment would await him back in the clan. The foundation his lineage had amassed over a thousand years would be utterly destroyed in his hands!
Every road led to death!
"Then-" The Twelfth Elder abruptly raised his head, terrifying madness blazing in his eyes. "Let's die together!"
His withered body suddenly swelled. Dense black runes appeared all over him, and a destructive aura erupted at the bottom of the valley as blood-red killing intent poured madly into his body.
"He's going to self-detonate!" The Second Elder's expression changed sharply. His hands formed seals, and his Immortal Venerable power became an invisible barrier, shielding Yun Qing firmly behind him.
But-
The Twelfth Elder's lips twisted into a savage grin.
The power gained by burning his soul did not become the energy of a self-detonation. Instead, it condensed into a blood-red poison thorn as fine as a hair!
The poison thorn ignored the distance between them, piercing straight through the Second Elder's barrier and shooting toward Yun Qing's brow!
"No!" Yun Yuan's pupils contracted.
The Twelfth Elder's target had been Yun Qing from the very beginning!
He had burned his soul to unleash a forbidden technique. Even if he could not kill Yun Qing, he would grievously wound his soul!
What sweeter revenge could there be than damaging a peerless genius's soul and bringing his Dao Path to a permanent halt?
"Qing, lad!" Yun Yuan roared, driving his Immortal Venerable power into a frenzy as he tried to intercept it.
But that poison thorn was too fast, too uncanny!
Yun Qing's Double Pupils abruptly contracted, and time slowed to a crawl. He could clearly see the spiteful black energy coiling around the poison thorn and sense the madness and resolve within it.
The Silent Abyss Spear hummed in his hand, dark-gold patterns flowing along its shaft, ready to meet the attack at any moment.
But in that very instant-
A spark of golden light suddenly flared deep within his forehead!
It appeared between Yun Qing's brows like a miniature sun, bearing resplendent imperial might!
Within the golden light, the faint outline of an intricate mark could be seen. It was precisely the divine power mark Yun Huang had left deep in his sea of qi!
Pfft!
The Blood-Soul Poison Thorn struck the golden light like an ant trying to shake the sun and vanished without a sound.
The backlash surged back!
"Aaaah!"
The Twelfth Elder let out a scream so shrill it no longer sounded human. Blood sprayed from all seven orifices, and his aura instantly withered.
He staggered backward, his gaunt body shaking violently. He stared fixedly at the golden light slowly fading from Yun Qing's brow, his eyes filled with disbelief.
"The Radiant Sun Seal Mark! That person's origin mark... he actually trusts and values you this much!" The Twelfth Elder's voice rasped like a broken bellows.
A terrifying thought sprouted wildly within his soul, which stood on the brink of collapse.
Why?
How exactly had Yun Qing won Yun Huang's favor? How had he made Yun Huang willing to bestow even his origin mark for protection?!
"Could it be..." The Twelfth Elder jerked his head up, a terrifying light bursting from his bloodshot eyes.
"You knew all along, didn't you?! Yun Yuan! It was you! You must have broken your blood oath and revealed the Immortal Emperor's secret to him!"
As though clutching his last straw of salvation, he shrieked piercingly, "Otherwise, with this boy's peerless talent, becoming an Immortal King before twenty, he should be too proud even to spare anyone a glance! Why would he constantly bow and scrape, bend over backward to please the Young Lord, and coax him into trusting him so completely?!"
The Second Elder's expression darkened. "Twelfth, stop spewing such bloody slander! I have never broken my blood oath!"
"It must have been you!" The Twelfth Elder looked utterly crazed, his withered claw pointing at Yun Qing. "You must have hinted at it through some covert means! How else can this be explained?! I will take this before the Elders' Council! Yun Yuan, you defied the Ancestral Oath, and your crime deserves death!"
Before his words had even faded, his remaining power surged wildly. Ignoring the grave injuries from the backlash, he continued burning his remaining lifespan, seeking to unleash a secret art and forcibly trace fragments of cause and effect!
He would "illuminate" whether Yun Yuan had ever revealed the secret to Yun Qing!
The secret art's radiance enveloped everyone. It was not an attack, but pure investigation and tracing!
The Second Elder roared, his Immortal Venerable power erupting as he moved to forcibly interrupt it.
A sudden change occurred!
The Radiant Sun Seal Mark between Yun Qing's brows seemed to have been stirred by blocking the Blood-Soul Poison Thorn and had yet to settle completely. Drawn by the secret art's uncanny power, it actually flickered for an instant!
Deep within Yun Qing's soul lay the secret he had glimpsed through the Soul-Tracing Secret Rite and his Double Pupils-that Yun Huang was a Reincarnated Immortal Emperor-
Under this unexpected resonance, a sliver of that secret was forcibly pried open!
Through the secret art's feedback, a series of blurred yet staggering images entered the Twelfth Elder's divine sense:
An endless, shattered Immortal Court, falling stars, collapsing laws. A peerlessly aloof imperial figure stood atop the ruins, the corpses of countless gods and devils beneath his feet.
The imperial figure looked back. Within his pale-gold eyes lay a loneliness that ten thousand ages could not thaw and weariness etched into his very bones...
Along with a trace of cold scrutiny toward all things.
At the edges of those blurred images, the Twelfth Elder "saw" more fragments of information that made his soul tremble.
Yun Qing had long known that Yun Huang was a Reincarnated Immortal Emperor!
He knew far more than they had imagined! He knew Yun Huang's experiences in his previous life, his temperament, and even... the knot in his heart!
"So that's it... so that's it!" The Twelfth Elder threw back his head and laughed, his laughter brimming with mockery and madness.
"You 'saw' it yourself! Those eyes of yours... what a Chaos Dao Embryo! What a pair of Primordial Double Pupils! To think they could pierce such heavenly secrets!"
He abruptly turned and fixed Yun Qing with a deathly stare, his voice like a cold wind from the Nine Nether depths:
"No wonder you could coax him into trusting you so completely! You knew his true origins all along, knew his weaknesses all along! All your deference, your consideration, your act as an elder brother... it was all calculation! All acting!"
"Yun Qing, oh Yun Qing, you're the one who hid himself deepest! If the Young Lord learned that the 'elder brother' he trusted so much had ulterior motives from the very beginning, what would he do?!"
At last, Yun Qing's expression changed.
A rare trace of gravity and sharpness flashed deep within his Double Pupils.
Things... had slipped somewhat beyond his control.
He had never expected the Twelfth Elder's final, desperate secret art to resonate accidentally with the Radiant Sun Seal Mark and glimpse the secret buried deepest in his heart!
"Second Elder!"
He had to be killed immediately!
But-
Buzzz-!!!
The space throughout the Myriad Beasts Ancient Domain began shaking violently without warning!
The thousand-foot black banner planted at the formation's core, said to be capable of sealing heaven and locking down a domain, let out a mournful cry as cracks spread across its surface!
An invisible giant hand tore the forbidden artifact apart from outside with utterly overwhelming brute force!
A supreme will that towered above all things descended with a thunderous crash, carrying boundless fury like the celestial river pouring down from the nine heavens!
The blood-red mist dispersed, the crimson moonlight lost its color, and countless demonic beasts prostrated themselves, trembling.
Time and space froze.
A figure appeared silently in midair.
Black robes like night, golden eyes like ice.
Yun Huang...
Before you continue