The Yun family compound exhaled tension like a suffocating fog. Zhao Rui's boots crunched gravel as he strode past guards whose trembling halberds betrayed mortal terror. Through moon gate archways, the scene unfolded—Grandmaster Yun Xiong bent like storm-broken bamboo before two intruders.
The stench of rotting lotus blossoms preceded recognition. Liu Zhongnan's porcine fingers drummed an obscene rhythm on mahogany armrests, his gaze raking Sun Xiaolan's form with oil-slick hunger. Beside him, Celestial Master Jingyang of Dragon-Tiger Mountain sat statue-still, eyes slit like daggers sheathed in wrinkled parchment.
"Ah! The stray dog returns!" Liu's voice oozed across marble floors. "Come to watch your masters negotiate, mutt?"
Zhao's knuckles whitened around the Nine Heavens Thunder Lance. Dragon-scale patterns writhed beneath his sleeves, responding to restrained fury. "Negotiate?" His chuckle carried winter's edge. "I see extortion. I smell carrion."
Jingyang's eyelids fluttered—cobra considering strike angles. "Child," the Celestial Master hissed, qi condensing into tiger-stripe shadows behind his throne, "you tread where even Jian Chenghuang's ghosts fear to linger."
Tempest's Prelude
Yun Xiong's warning glance went unheeded as Zhao positioned himself between Sun Xiaolan and Liu's leer. The air thickened with ozone and desperation.
"Three days." Zhao's voice cut through the silence. "Leave. Never return."
Liu's jowls quivered with mirthless laughter. "You threaten us? This gutter maggot thinks—"
A thunderclap interrupted. The lance tip hovered millimeters from Liu's left eye, its violet arcs tattooing terror across flabby cheeks.
"Two days."
Jingyang moved.
Dance of Claw and Storm
The Celestial Master's skeletal hand blurred—a tiger-paw talisman materializing mid-swipe. Zhao's counterstroke birthed a screaming dragon of chain lightning.
Impact.
Mahogany furnishings atomized. Yun family elders dove behind jade screens as qi vortices shredded ancestral portraits. Sun Xiaolan's medical satchel spilled herbs that sprouted legs and fled.
"Fool!" Jingyang's robes billowed with summoned tempest. "You challenge Heaven's mandate?"
Zhao's golden armor coalesced—dragon scales hissing where tiger-strike energy corroded their edges. "I challenge tyrants."
Echoes of Shattered Jade
The duel escalated—
00:47: Jingyang's talismanic tigers materialized, their roars shattering stained-glass windows.01:12: Zhao's lightning spear pierced three phantasmal beasts, their death howls etching cracks in marble pillars.02:29: The Celestial Master's ceremonial sword unsheathed with a scream of damned souls, its edge thirsting for Zhao's essence.
Yun Xiong watched through tear-blurred vision as his family's millennium-old compound became a warzone. Each clash of energies erased another chapter of Yun history—the peony garden now a smoldering crater, the ancestral hall's roof beams crashing like felled giants.
Revelation in Ruins
At the battle's crescendo, Zhao's lance found purchase. Jingyang staggered back, black ichor dripping from a shoulder wound that refused to heal.
"Impossible..." The Celestial Master's whisper carried centuries of crumbling certainty. "That technique... the Eight Desolations Immortal-Slaying Art was lost with—"
"With the Yellow Emperor's fall?" Zhao finished, his armor retracting to reveal eyes blazing with captured storms. "History remembers survivors poorly, old man."
Epilogue: Scorched Earth Diplomacy
Liu Zhongnan's bladder emptied audibly as Zhao's boot pressed his throat against shattered porcelain.
"Your proposal," Zhao stated, lance tip tracing Liu's quivering chins.
"W-we withdraw! The marriage offer is—"
"All offers." The lance's hum ascended to painful frequencies. "Every contract. Every threat."
When the vermin's nod dislodged three chins, Zhao kicked him toward the gates. Jingyang departed without ceremony, his parting glare promising celestial retribution.
As dusk painted the ruins in funeral hues, Yun Xiong found Zhao staring at Sun Xiaolan's trembling hands—the healer stitching wounds on guards who'd opposed him hours prior.
"Why?" The patriarch's voice cracked. "We're just—"
"Mortals?" Zhao caught a falling cherry blossom mid-descent. "So was I, once."
Somewhere beyond the compound walls, thunderheads gathered—Dragon-Tiger Mountain's answer to tonight's humiliation. But for now, in this shattered garden, hope bloomed amidst the ashes.