The chill wind swept through the towering pines lining the mountain road, carrying the scent of pine resin and dry earth. Chen Yun moved along the rocky path with quiet grace, his steps light, yet each motion carved space itself — a testament to his growing mastery of the Celestial Void Swift Technique.
His body, once frail and fractured, now bent the world in ripples. He was no longer just a man — he was a blade poised in silence, walking the line between shadow and sky.
Then — a scream.
Rough laughter slashed through the still air, followed by a choked sob. Ahead, a cluster of bandits surrounded a lone merchant, his clothes torn, a worn leather satchel clutched desperately to his chest. Their knives gleamed in the amber light, eyes glinting with cruel delight.
Chen Yun's pace did not falter. His crimson gaze settled on the scene, cold and calculating.
He stepped into view.
"Move. Leave him be."
The bandits turned, startled — then amused. Their leader, a broad-shouldered thug with a ragged scar slashing across his cheek, stepped forward with a sneer.
"And who're you supposed to be? Some cripple with a death wish?"
Another burst of laughter erupted around him.
But Chen Yun's face didn't change.
Instead, he raised one hand.
A single breath. A single movement.
Reality shimmered.
In an instant, the space around the bandits compressed — not with brute force, but with surgical precision. A barely visible ring formed in the air around each of their necks, no wider than a coin.
Then it snapped shut.
No time to react.
No warning.
Just a soft crack, like ice fracturing under pressure.
Their eyes bulged. Mouths opened to scream but found no breath. The spatial rings had sliced through air itself, severing the very concept of resistance.
One by one, their bodies crumpled — lifeless, limbs twisted like marionettes dropped mid-play. No blood flowed. No flesh torn. Only the quiet horror of space unmade.
The merchant collapsed, trembling violently. His eyes darted to the fallen corpses, then to Chen Yun — and held there, wide and disbelieving. A man? No — something else.
Chen Yun let his hand fall slowly. His expression didn't flicker. Cold. Still. Distant.
He turned, stepping back into the forest shadows, the void parting before him like water.
His crimson eyes glowed briefly beneath the canopy — not with malice, but with a calm, devouring resolve.
Unseen, behind a screen of underbrush, Luo Yao watched in silence.
Her body was rigid, lungs frozen mid-breath. The scene she had witnessed defied everything she thought she understood about cultivation.
No movement wasted.
No Qi flared wildly.
He had killed with the precision of a needle, not the fury of a storm — using a sliver of space and a whisper of power.
And it had been enough.
Luo Yao gripped the bark of a tree beside her, her knuckles whitening.
This isn't power…This is control.
She had seen monstrous strength before. Explosions of Qi, earth-shattering fists, elemental devastation. But this — this was something quieter, far more terrifying.
The kind of power that did not need to shout.
The kind that changed the rules.
A shiver crept down her spine.
The sect will not be ready for him…
As the last light of day vanished behind the trees, Luo Yao remained crouched in silence, the chill in her bones not from the mountain wind — but from what she had just witnessed.