The air above Backridge City shimmered with the fading echoes of clashing energies, a storm of raw power dissolving like delicate mist under the relentless sun. Xu Hao and his fellow Xuantian Sect disciples stood on the jagged, cracked cobblestones of the bustling market square, their breaths shallow, their faces alight with uncontainable exhilaration teetering on rapture.
Their eyes gleamed with reverence bordering on worship as they gazed at Qin Ting. To them, he was no mere cultivator bound by mortal limits but a deity in human form, a living tempest, a celestial force gracing their humble world.
Across the plaza, the Yuanshi Gate Sect disciples, including Song Tong, stood in stark contrast, their demeanor grim, like mourners at a funeral. Their once-proud shoulders sagged, their spirits broken like brittle reeds under a typhoon's fury.
Yan Han—their invincible champion, the radiant star of their sect's glory—lay defeated, his robes torn and his body exposed by Qin Ting's single, effortless gesture. It defied comprehension, a tear in their reality, leaving them clutching the ruins of their shattered beliefs.
From the square's splintered edges, a crowd of onlookers—weather-worn merchants, rogue cultivators in tattered robes, and townsfolk clutching their children—watched in stunned silence, their faint murmurs barely rising above the mournful wind carrying scents of blood, ash, and scorched stone.
Yan Han was no ordinary figure. Among the Eastern Wilderness's younger generation, his name was etched into legends of valor and might. Ordinary masters of the divine arts faltered in his presence, their techniques unraveling like frayed cloth before his power.
Whispers told of him clashing with a demon—a hulking, horned beast from the abyssal clans—and emerging unscathed, his blade dripping with dark ichor. His strength was a cornerstone of myth, unassailable.
Yet today, that legend crumbled. Yan Han, felled by a single finger.
"Defeated with one finger… He's beyond mortality," a grizzled spectator rasped, his voice trembling with awe and fear, his weathered hands shaking on his staff.
"Indeed," a wiry woman with sharp features replied, clutching a merchant's ledger, her knuckles white around its leather binding. "The Yuanshi Gate Sect's pride is dust now, scattered to the winds."
Nervous laughter rippled through the crowd. "Ha! Their reputation soared these past years—arrogant enough to claim the Eastern Wilderness's supreme holy land. Now? They'll be a laughingstock from here to the Emerald Peaks!"
"That Yan Han was a prodigy," a young cultivator muttered, shaking his head. "Pity he crossed blades with Young Master Qin Ting."
The words swelled into a chorus, each syllable a lash against the battered souls of Song Tong and his fellow Yuanshi disciples. Shame coiled around them like a venomous serpent, sinking fangs into their pride, poisoning their resolve. They had no defense—skill had judged them in this brutal confrontation and found them wanting.
'Who among the Eastern Wilderness's youth can stand against Qin Ting?' the question burned through every mind.
Yan Han staggered to his feet, his body streaked with crimson glistening in the sunlight. His face twisted in disbelief, his dark eyes wide as he stared at Qin Ting, searching for any hint of weakness in that unyielding figure.
"How… how can this be?" he muttered, his voice a fractured whisper barely audible over the wind. "I, too, am at the Divine Spirit Realm. A peerless talent honed by the Yuanshi Gate's sacred teachings. How is this possible?"
Qin Ting's gaze swept over him, cold as a winter gale. "You forget your place," he boomed, his voice resonating through the square like a war drum, shaking the ground. "You dare insult the Xuantian Sect with your petty arrogance. Kneel and beg for clemency, you worthless insect."
The air grew heavy, a suffocating pressure descending like an invisible mountain. Qin Ting's violet-hued aura, dense and potent, twisted the light around him into shimmering distortions. Song Tong and his companions buckled first, their knees striking the stone with a dull thud, their heads bowing in submission as the weight crushed their spirits.
Only Yan Han resisted, his body trembling as he summoned every ounce of his cultivation to defy the crushing force.
'Madness!' Yan Han's mind screamed, his eyes blazing with desperate light. Not long ago, he had forced Xuantian Sect disciples to kneel, their faces pressed into the dirt beneath his boot. Now, the tide had turned with vicious irony, burning his pride like molten iron on bare flesh.
'I cannot kneel!' he roared inwardly. 'I am a True Disciple of the Yuanshi Gate Sect—my honor is the sect's honor, its lifeblood. If I bow, our legacy becomes a jest across the Eastern Wilderness! I will not kneel!'
His meridians flared, golden light pulsing beneath his skin as he channeled his Divine Spirit Realm cultivation, a desperate bulwark against Qin Ting's dominion.
"Hmph. Stubborn, are you?" Qin Ting's lips curved faintly, a flicker of amusement in his eyes before they hardened into icy indifference. "A pity—even a celestial sovereign would kneel before me today, trembling in awe of my might."
The pressure surged, doubling in an instant, a honed blade of intent targeting Yan Han alone. His bones groaned, faint cracks splintering them like brittle porcelain. His skin split, blood seeping until he stood as a crimson silhouette, a monument to futile defiance. It was incomprehensible—a Divine Spirit Realm expert, a True Disciple forged by sacred techniques, yet he couldn't hold his ground.
"I won't submit!" Yan Han snarled, blood dripping from his gritted teeth, staining his chin red as his voice rasped with defiance. "I'm an immortal—countless years of triumph stretch before me. I won't die here, not like this!"
"Senior Brother Yan! Don't kneel! You mustn't!" Song Tong's voice cracked with desperation, tears streaking his dust-smeared face, cutting pale trails through the grime, echoing the anguish of his fellow disciples. Their cries rose like a mournful dirge over the ruined square, a lament for their fading pride.
They had knelt, yes—but they were mere Outer Disciples, lowly in the Yuanshi Gate Sect's hierarchy. Their submission could be dismissed as yielding to an unstoppable force. Yan Han was different. As a True Disciple, sculpted by the sect's elders, he was their pride, their banner. Equal in rank to Qin Ting, his kneeling would fracture the sect's dignity, sparking mockery from the Frostfang Cliffs to the Emberfall Deserts.
Pain tore through Yan Han's core—his organs twisted, his veins burst, and his Dao quaked, teetering on collapse. To resist further was to court annihilation. With a guttural gasp, his knees buckled, and he crashed to the ground, dust curling into the air like a fleeting specter.
"A good dog knows when to lie down for its master," Qin Ting said, a cruel glint flashing in his eyes like lightning across a storm-darkened sky. "Now, face your retribution." His aura flared, the violet tempest striking with merciless precision.
Yan Han had no time to brace himself—he was hurled backward, crashing into a market stall with a bone-shattering crunch. His flesh tore, skin peeling to reveal raw muscle and splintered bone. His Dao Foundation—the crystalline core of his cultivation—shattered like fragile glass, its fragments dissolving into fading motes of light drifting on the wind. Blood pooled beneath the rubble in a grotesque crimson fountain.
The crowd gasped, a collective breath rippling through the square. Even the Xuantian disciples flinched, their reverence briefly eclipsed by horror at the carnage.
"An immortal you were, indeed," Qin Ting said, his voice laced with chilling mirth that sent shivers through all who heard it. "A proud Divine Spirit Realm expert who couldn't discern heaven from earth. Now, you're nothing but a defiant corpse."
His chuckle cut through the stunned silence like a blade of ice. To the onlookers, he seemed less a man and more a demon lord from the Nether Abyss—ruthless, untouchable, devoid of mercy. Humiliation, destruction, death's doorstep—Qin Ting had delivered the ultimate disgrace to an enemy cultivator before a horrified crowd.
Song Tong and his companions stared at Yan Han's broken form, their spirits collapsing, their eyes hollow, their minds adrift in despair. But Qin Ting wasn't finished. He strode toward the remaining Yuanshi disciples, kneeling or sprawled amid the wreckage, some whimpering for their fallen Senior Brother. His shadow loomed over them, dark and foreboding.
"Look at you—pathetic wretches," he spat, his sneer dripping with disdain. "Do you even deserve to call yourselves disciples of a holy land? I'll correct that mistake." With a flick of his wrist, he unleashed a wave of violet energy shimmering with malevolent intent.
The blast engulfed them, a tide of unstoppable power. Their robes disintegrated into ash, scattering on the wind. For some, their Dao Foundations—built over years of grueling meditation—crumbled like dry clay, their spiritual cores snuffed out like candles in a gale. Others clung to life, broken and prostrate. Before Qin Ting's might, they were chaff in a roaring furnace, their cries swallowed by the void.
The crowd recoiled, shock and terror surging through them. Never had they witnessed such ruthlessness from a youth of eighteen summers. Whispers stirred—what monster had the Xuantian Sect birthed? What forbidden arts had forged this unfeeling executioner?
The Yuanshi Gate Sect's defeat was absolute, its remnants strewn across the square like shattered idols of a forsaken faith. Qin Ting turned to the onlookers, his expression serene, as if he'd merely swept aside a trifling annoyance. The surviving Yuanshi disciples lay prostrate, trembling like repentant sinners before a vengeful deity.
Song Tong's whimpers rose, a pitiful squeal echoing through the silence. Qin Ting shook his head, a cold snort tinged with boredom escaping his lips, as though the carnage had barely stirred him.
"Too weak," he murmured, his voice low and disdainful. "Far too weak to spark even a flicker of excitement in my heart."
With a subtle gesture, he reined in his aura, the violet haze vanishing. The air lightened, and the crowd exhaled in collective relief, though they were never his targets.
"Let's go," he said, turning on his heel with indifference.
Neither toppling Yan Han nor reducing the Yuanshi Gate Sect to rubble stirred a ripple in his heart. To him, it was a trivial chore, a fleeting footnote in his saga of unchallenged dominance.
"Yes, Senior Brother Qin!" Xu Hao and the others snapped to attention, their eyes blazing with fervent zeal. They hurried after him, trailing like devoted acolytes shadowing a divine prophet.
Behind them, the Yuanshi Gate Sect remained—a tableau of broken glory. Some knelt in hollow silence, others lay lifeless amid the debris, their dreams of supremacy extinguished. The onlookers dispersed slowly, their minds reeling, their tongues eager to spread the tale. Word of this day would blaze through Backridge City and across the Eastern Wilderness.
And Qin Ting's name, they knew, would thunder through the land—a herald of unrivaled power, a whisper of dread lingering in the hearts of all who heard it.