"Your Excellency need not struggle any longer! Only by handing over the Method of Five Qi Towards the Origin now can you possibly avoid becoming withered bones..." Dongfang Qionghao said blandly, his tone brimming with arrogance. "Otherwise, there is only one road: death!"
Wenqu laughed aloud. Raising a hand, he pointed at the blooming bamboo flowers and the rolling deathly aura, saying in a clear voice, "Though bamboo flowering signifies the bamboo's death, it also marks the birth of bamboo flowers, and likewise the sprouting of new bamboo! We Confucian cultivators value a breath of living vitality and cultivate the power of life! You fail to understand the truth, straying into a crooked path. Your eyes see only death while ignoring life! How could such deathly aura possibly trap this old man?"
As he spoke, Wenqu opened his mouth and expelled a mouthful of life qi, tempered a thousand times over within his middle dantian. "Whoosh..." Like a spring breeze caressing one's face, layer upon layer of bright green spread throughout the entire space. Within that bright green aura, all the deathly qi seemed to boil, bubbling up. Yet in but a moment, every bubble fell into those pale yellow bamboo flowers. The flowers vanished, revealing thumb-sized bamboo shoots one after another!
"Hiss..." Seeing the bamboo shoots appear and Wenqu's large hand regain its vitality, while both newly sprouted shoots and withered bamboo flowers crumbled wherever that hand fell, Dongfang Qionghao could not help sucking in a cold breath. He knew that he had truly underestimated Wenqu's Confucian cultivation divine abilities!
"Alas..." After his surprise, Dongfang Qionghao sighed again. He reached into his robes and took out an ancient, unadorned ruler, saying, "In truth, this old man truly did not wish to come to this step..."
As he spoke, Dongfang