The Douluo Continent stood still when the Clear Sky Clan was sealed.
"Twelve Spirit Hall elites" descended upon their mountain stronghold. No battle was fought - resistance was impossible. The legendary Haotian Hammer, feared across generations, now lay dormant under Spirit Hall's decree.
"If this had been war," the clan's last elder admitted, "we wouldn't have lasted an hour."
Word spread quickly. In the Heaven Dou Empire, Emperor Xue Ye received the reports in silence. The Star Luo Empire took immediate precautions. The Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Clan and the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan remained quiet. If Spirit Hall could destroy the Clear Sky Clan so easily, no one was safe.
At the center of it all was Qian Yusheng. Not the Pope, but something more dangerous—an unknown force Spirit Hall itself seemed to follow. His presence meant that the power structure had changed.
The Clear Sky Clan's fall was not punishment. It was a warning.
🕍Spirit Hall – Inner Sanctum
The massive obsidian doors of the Inner Sanctum parted without sound, as though the very architecture of Spirit Hall bowed to the will of its master. A lone figure stepped forward, his white cloak—stitched with silver threads that shimmered like captive moonlight—rippling behind him. The torches lining the hall flickered, casting his shadow long and imposing against the dark marble floor.
At the center of the raised dais sat the Grand Worship, Douliu, his aged fingers resting atop the skull-carved armrest of his throne. His gaze, sharp as a honed blade, followed his son's every movement. To his sides, the six highest elders of Spirit Hall watched in silence, their expressions unreadable.
Qian Yusheng bowed deeply, his cloak pooling around him like a fallen banner.
"Your Majesty. Grand Worship. Honored elders." His voice was cool, reverent, yet distant—like a winter river flowing beneath ice.
Douliu's grip tightened imperceptibly."Must you stand before us as though we are mere dignitaries, Yusheng?" The words were measured, but beneath them lay the quiet sting of a father who had not been called Father in decades.
Yusheng did not lift his head. "This hall is sacred. Here, I am not your son, nor your kin. I am mere soul master , and you are the Grand Worship. Respect demands distance."
A sigh, heavy with resignation. "So be it."
The Second Worship(Golden Crocodile Douluo)—a bear of a man with a voice like grinding stone—leaned forward, his beard streaked with silver. "And here I hoped to finally hear 'Uncle' from those lips." His tone was warm, but his eyes held something sharper. "Must you build walls where there should be bridges? When you left, we were strangers. But now… let us be family, if only in these quiet moments."
A pause. A breath. Then, softer than expected: "…Uncle."
The Sixth Worship(Jiang Jun-Fifteen Ton Douluo) a razor-thin man with eyes like a hunting hawk, cut in. "We observed your handling of the Clear Sky Clan." His fingers drummed against his knee. "Yet you left their blood where it belongs—inside their bodies. Explain."
♟️The Strategy Unveiled
Yusheng stilled, his gaze turning inward—a scholar sifting through the brittle pages of history, weighing each betrayal, each war, like verses in an unfinished epic.
"To kill them would have been simplicity itself,"he mused,"a single stroke to answer Tang Hao's crimes. But vengeance is a song that dulls with each refrain." His voice, low as twilight, carried the weight of a crown yet worn. "I am no lone blade in the dark. I will be Pope. My duty is not to my anger, but to Spirit Hall's eternity."
His hand lifted, palm open—a poet balancing stanzas, a king weighing fates.
"By shattering the main clan and lifting its sub-clans, I have turned their unity into a mosaic of hunger. The Clear Sky Clan was a mountain; now it is a hundred pebbles, each sharp enough to draw blood." A smile, thin as a crescent moon. "When the Haotian reopens its gates, they will kneel not to a legacy, but to necessity. And when they do… their teeth will have learned to bite the hand that once fed them."
The Fifth Worship(Glowing Feather Douluo) his voice silk wrapped around a dagger's edge, tilted her head. "And if they unite against us?"
"They are already dust," Yusheng replied, "scattered to winds of their own making. The sub-clans now hold the spirit veins, the trade routes—the lifeblood the Haotian once clutched like a miser. To rebel would be to starve. Men do not bite the throne that feeds them."
The Third Worship(Azure Luan Douluo),a withered figure in gilded rags, rasped like parchment crumbling. "And the world's opinion?"
"Martyrs inspire ballads,"Yusheng said. "Survivors inspire silence. The world will not mourn a disbanded clan. But had we painted the earth with their blood? Then every drop would have been a chorus for war. Now, when the Haotian strikes, they will wear the villain's cloak—not the victim's shroud."
🌸The Garden of Shadows
The Sixth worship(Jiang Jun-Fifteen Ton Douluo)'s lips curled. "You've turned their strength against them. Their own vassals now will rely on Spirit Hall."
"They will," Yusheng confirmed. "The Clear Sky Clan may still exist in name, but it no longer has power. Its students, allies, and resources are now outside its control."
A hush. Then the Grand Worship exhaled, slow as a funeral incense."You wield mercy like a sonnet,"he said. "To leave a man breathing but broken… that is art."
Yusheng met his father's eyes."No"This wasn't done out of mercy. It was done to prevent future war."
The Sanctum trembled—not with fear, but recognition. The elders traded glances, some admiring, all unsettled, as the truth settled like gilt-edged frost:
The game had been rewritten.
And Spirit Hall's victory would be a poem, not a war.