Unlike the excitement and astonishment gripping the others, Bai Jing and her two companions felt only a chill crawling up their spines as they watched Lu Sheng approach. The carefree atmosphere from moments ago had evaporated without a trace. The image of that muscular brute being cleaved cleanly in two still lingered vividly in their minds. Even Bai Jing and Quan Huan—strongest among them—knew they would not have survived had those sabers been aimed at them.
“Sect Master Lu… do you really want to start a war with my Ashoka Manor? Are you representing the Shangyang Family, or is this the Crimson Whale Sect’s stance?” Bai Jing stepped back twice, her voice grim.
Lu Sheng advanced like a moving mountainside, both sabers clenched in his hands. Every step he took sank deep into the soil, the thick grass folding beneath his weight as if turning into a swamp.
“Stance? None of that matters.” He raised a saber, inner Qi coiling around the blade like invisible fire. “What matters now is— all of you must die.”
BOOM!!
Lu Sheng disappeared from sight. His towering, muscular body burst forward with a speed so violent and sudden that none of the three—even with their eyes fixed on him—managed to react.
BAM! BAM!!
Quan Huan and the other emissary were struck almost simultaneously. The twin sabers whirled like fan blades, snapping their necks with a sickening crack and sending their bodies rolling across the forest floor. Blood sprayed out in arcs, staining the ground a deep, vivid crimson.
Lu Sheng’s figure materialized in mid-air above Bai Jing. His three-meter frame loomed over her, blotting out the sky as his shadow engulfed her completely. In the next breath, both his palms descended from left and right, poised to crush her skull like a ripe watermelon.
Even with her accelerated healing, once the black membrane shattered, her defenses would collapse. Under the blaze of Lu Sheng’s incendiary inner Qi, the only ending awaiting her was to be burned into nothingness.
“Peacock Swallow!!” Bai Jing screamed, acting on instinct. Her body twisted and warped into a white bird half a person tall, narrowly slipping past Lu Sheng’s descending palm.
BOOM!!
The ground where she had stood erupted into a gaping crater. Clods of soil shot into the air, only to be scorched into black dust by the searing Qi that engulfed everything nearby.
“NO! YOU CAN’T KILL ME!!” Bai Jing shrieked hysterically as she shot into the sky with every ounce of strength she had left.
But she barely made it a few meters before Lu Sheng closed the distance. His clawed hand clamped down on her leg, and with a brutal yank, he hurled her back to the earth.
BAM!
A heavy thud echoed across the clearing. Only half of the bird’s leg remained in Lu Sheng’s grasp—the rest had been crushed into pulp upon impact. In the large crater below, blood, torn flesh, and soil mixed into a grotesque smear.
Lu Sheng tossed the mangled bird leg aside and strode toward the two remaining emissaries struggling to regenerate—Quan Huan and a middle-aged woman.
“Sect Master Lu! Sect Master Lu! Let’s talk this out—talk this out!” Quan Huan’s already pale complexion drained further, turning the color of snow. “Our Ashoka Manor has no feud with you. There’s no need, no reason to kill us all. If it pleases you, I—I’m willing to give you my entire stash of treasures. Gems, gold, silver, rare relics… I’ll give them all to you, all…”
Before he could finish, his form blurred into a streak of black shadow as he made a desperate dash for escape.
SPLAT!
But he barely covered any distance before Lu Sheng overtook him. One stomp drove him into the ground, crushing his body to pieces in an instant. No chance to recover—he was obliterated completely.
Despair clouded the eyes of the middle-aged woman—the last survivor. Without hesitation, she drew a knife and drove it into the spot between her brows. Her body instantly dissolved, collapsing into a bubbling puddle of pus and slime.
“Resorting to tricks?” Lu Sheng remarked with a note of amusement. He stepped onto the writhing puddle and unleashed his inner Qi. The goo hissed violently as it burned, the woman’s faint, pitiful screams echoing from within until nothing remained but blackened ash.
She had intended to feign death, never imagining her deception would be exposed so easily. In the end, she was incinerated alive without even a chance to resist.
With the four emissaries now erased, Lu Sheng finally turned toward Li Shunxi’s group. His massive frame shrank rapidly, muscles contracting until he returned to his normal size.
“Sorry to keep you waiting. Let’s continue. Where were we again?” he said, glancing at the old master Zhang Wuya, whose jaw hung slack in disbelief.
The difference in power was simply overwhelming. Lu Sheng’s explosive speed made fleeing impossible at close range; anyone who entered his grasp died on the spot. The sheer disparity rendered most of the emissaries’ techniques useless—they were crushed before they could even react. Only someone like Bai Jing, who had reflexes sharp enough to trigger a life-saving transformation within a heartbeat, managed to escape instant death.
Everyone stared in stunned silence at the man who had moved with such terrifying agility despite his hulking form. But their astonishment lasted only seconds—the same few seconds Lu Sheng needed to annihilate them all.
Guan Nian swallowed hard, staring at the bare-chested Lu Sheng as he approached. Inwardly, he cursed the old fogeys in the intelligence department for being utterly useless.
According to their reports, Lu Sheng was nothing more than a pure martial arts practitioner. But what kind of ordinary martial artist could crush a Double-Veined Ashoka Manor Emissary to death with a single stomp like the man now walking toward him?
But after a moment of reflection, Guan Nian found himself silently grateful for Lu Sheng’s decisive, explosive intervention. Without him, they might have all ended up captured—or dead.
“Thank you for coming to our aid, Sect Master Lu…” Guan Nian quickly cupped his fists.
Li Shunxi followed suit, his expression a mix of awkwardness and disbelief.
“…Brother Lu.” The words felt strange on his tongue. Somehow, the familiar address no longer suited the man before him. Lu Sheng’s strength was too overwhelming. What they considered a lethal catastrophe had been little more than child’s play to him. The gap between them was so vast that Li Shunxi could no longer bring himself to speak to him as an equal.
“Don’t mention it. We just need to hold up our ends of the deal.” Lu Sheng waved dismissively. He had also taken the opportunity to test the power granted by his recent breakthrough—both his strength and destructive force had grown immensely.
And this was only with Yang Extreme Mode activated. He had not even needed to exert his full strength to obliterate four Ashoka Manor Emissaries. The divide between each stage in the Bind realm truly was a massive chasm.
Among the four, Bai Jing’s level was comparable to the umbrella girl he had encountered not long ago. Yet even she had been unable to use half her abilities before being forced into retreat by her life-saving secret art—only to die with bitter regret moments later.
“Brother Lu, you’re different from us. As the representative of the Shangyang Family, haven’t you had dealings with Ashoka Manor before? Then why did you…” Li Shunxi asked, bewildered.
At his question, Guan Nian and the others all nodded vigorously.
Unlike them, Lu Sheng belonged to the forces of the Shangyang Family, a group that maintained cooperative ties with Ashoka Manor. Even if his transaction with the Martial League had been exposed, there was no need for him to sever ties so violently by killing four emissaries. With his status and backing, Lu Sheng had been in no danger at all.
That had been Lu Sheng’s initial thought as well. But the moment the silent murderous intent from the four emissaries locked onto him, he realized immediately that they hadn’t come solely for Li Shunxi—they had come for him too.
In other words, he had only two choices: do nothing, or, if he acted, finish it completely. And so he moved without hesitation, killing them before they could adjust to the power and speed granted by his Yang Extreme Mode.
After all, they had tested him once already. And Ashoka Manor had even eaten his own trusted aide right before his eyes, then had the audacity to ask whether it bothered him.
It was a blatant slap to his face.
Sooner or later, he vowed, he would drag that Officiator down from his seat and hack him into minced meat.
As for the threat of retaliation, he had already decided how to respond. The enemy had already come knocking; he would be a fool to sit around and wait.
“Naturally, I’ve got my reasons for doing so. Since this rendezvous has been discovered, let’s make haste and leave,” Lu Sheng said.
“Very well then. This is the original copy of the manual you requested,” Zhang Wuya said as he hurried forward, handing over a metal box. Then he produced a yellowed booklet from his robes and pressed it into Lu Sheng’s hands. “This is the original copy of a manual this old man has cherished for many years. I offer it to you, Sect Master, as gratitude for your aid today.”
Lu Sheng nodded and accepted them. Then he joined the group in supervising the transfer of the grain.
That part of the forest, where the exchange was taking place, remained untouched by the earlier battle. With the reassurance of the three Crimson Whale Sect Elders, the handover proceeded smoothly.
In fact, most of the people there had no idea their sect master had just fought a deadly battle. All they heard were a few loud thuds in the distance—noise that ceased after only a few seconds.
“Brother Li, about those people from Ashoka Manor—I’m counting on you to keep this a secret,” Lu Sheng reminded him.
“That’s of course!” Li Shunxi replied earnestly.
Guan Nian and the others wore grim expressions. If not for the traitor who had exposed their location and guided Ashoka Manor straight to them, Lu Sheng would never have needed to intervene. He had turned against Ashoka Manor solely to save their lives. For them to do anything that might cause him to be hunted would be the height of ingratitude.
“Don’t worry, Sect Master Lu. No one apart from those present today will ever know what happened here. I, Guan Nian, swear upon my life!” Guan Nian declared, thumping his chest.
Lu Sheng simply nodded.
“Very well then, we’ll part ways here. If there’s a chance in the future, let’s work together again.”
“Farewell, Sect Master Lu!” Guan Nian and the others cupped their fists.
Lu Sheng slipped on a jacket over his bare torso. Under the lingering haze of disbelief clouding Li Shunxi and his group, he led his men swiftly back toward the Crimson Whale.
To Li Shunxi, everything that had unfolded tonight felt unreal.
First, a traitor had emerged among them, fleeing after assassinating one of their own. Then came the sudden assault by four high-ranking Emissaries of Ashoka Manor.
And just when he had resigned himself to dying tonight, the true monster hidden behind Lu Sheng’s calm façade had revealed himself—slaughtering four elite Emissaries in a completely one-sided massacre.
Each of those emissaries was a Bind realm expert of at least the Double-Vein level. Yet they were cut down within mere seconds—like vegetables on a chopping block—without even a chance to display their techniques.
But Li Shunxi knew better than to believe the emissaries weak. The truth was far simpler: Lu Sheng was terrifyingly strong. So strong, in fact, that their abilities seemed laughably fragile in comparison.
Before this transaction, he had once witnessed the power of an Ashoka Manor Emissary firsthand. No matter how many times the man was “killed,” he never truly died. Even when his head had been severed, he simply reattached it. When his body was smashed apart, it regenerated fully within breaths. Nothing short of completely obliterating nearly his entire body at once could stop such a creature.
Moreover, every Emissary of Ashoka Manor had originated from shapeshifting demons, each possessing their own strange, unique abilities. There was simply no reliable way to guard against creatures like them, and killing one was notoriously difficult.
As long as an opponent lacked the strength to shatter their black membrane, any injury inflicted upon them would mend in an instant. And aside from overpowering it with an even stronger black membrane, there was no known method to break through it.
The black membrane was more than a toxic defensive layer coating the body—it was a formless force woven through every inch of their flesh. Unless that force was destroyed first, all attacks merely damaged the surface, never reaching their core.
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