On the Great Zen Temple platform, the leading monk—Yuan Kong—pressed his palms together.
His Buddha light flickered.
"To cripple a Revolving Core genius in one strike…" he murmured, the golden glow around his body trembling for the first time. "That girl… is only Revolving Core herself?"
His voice was quiet, but on a mountain drowned in roars a moment ago, that single doubt cut deep.
Across from him, Arctic Ice Palace's elders exchanged pale looks. The chill aura around them thickened, yet for the first time it wasn't something they consciously summoned—it leaked from their own unease.
Verdant Wood Sect's patriarch swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing, throat suddenly dry.
"At this rate," Golden Bell Mountain's old bell master rasped, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepening, "how far will Divine Phoenix go in ten years? Twenty?"
His words were half awe, half dread.
On the Yin-Yang Profound Palace platform, Xing Zizzan finally snapped.
"Yan'er!"
His roar was like a broken volcano.
True essence detonated around him. Yin and yang fishes spun into being behind his back, black and white surging, Scarlet Flame threading their eyes. His aura flared so violently that Seven Profound Valley's platform guards staggered backward, their protective arrays buzzing as if a great beast had clawed across them.
He shot to his feet, one step carrying the weight of an entire fifth-grade sect's arrogance. The air warped; heat and cold twisted; a miniature Yin-Yang heaven began to condense above the platform.
In the instant before he could move—
The mountain… pulsed.
A low, demonic thrum rolled out from the stone itself.
It wasn't loud.
It was deep.
Like a heart that had always been there, suddenly deciding to remind this place it was still beating.
Around the Divine Phoenix platform, something woke.
Fine lines, almost invisible until that moment, stirred to life across the stone. Twisting demonic patterns crawled up from the platform edges—claws, fanged mouths, voluptuous silhouettes entwined in obscene embraces. The shadows thickened, stretching like ink, clutching at robes, whispering of desire and slaughter and the bliss of losing oneself.
An unclean scent crept through the air—sweet, rotting incense smeared over blood.
South Sea Demon Region's signature.
On every righteous platform, faces darkened.
"So brazen…" a Storm Valley elder spat, thunder in his eyes.
Yuan Kong's lashes lowered. His golden Buddha light recoiled from those patterns, as if disgusted. Buddhist faith was the enemy of demons; the sight of that filth wrapping itself around a lotus field made his gut twist.
On the Divine Phoenix platform, Ren's gaze dipped.
Lotus lines—his lotus lines—still flowed quietly beneath the arena, dark-rainbow patterns he'd overlaid onto Seven Profound Valley's formations long before anyone arrived. Now, those clean lines were being touched, stroked, invaded by the South Sea's demonic glyphs rising from the edges.
He felt the demonic true essence trying to slither along his work, like oil crawling across water.
He could have crushed it.
He could have raised his Art and erased every last trace of the demonic formation before anyone even realized what they were sensing.
Instead, his lips curved.
"Oh?" he thought lazily. "You crawled all the way out here and even built a formation under my feet. It'd be rude not to use you."
The demonic true essence brushed against his aura.
Heavenly Demon Lotus stirred.
Grandmist never cared about "righteous" or "demonic." It simply pulled. It tugged at everything—qi, true essence, divine power, devil power, Laws, techniques—wanting to peel them apart, digest them, reduce them to origin.
Ren loosened his control.
He allowed just enough of the demonic power to bleed into the outer halo of his lotus Dao—not enough to taint it, not enough for Grandmist to eat it clean—but enough to stain the surface.
Dark-rainbow lotus petals flickered above the obscene silhouettes, wrapping the twisting claws and indecent silhouettes in a halo of color that made them look like part of the same system. Claw shadows reached out, entwining with lotus lines. The air around Divine Phoenix's platform took on a sultry, oppressive weight, half sacred, half utterly profane.
To eyes that could see source, the demonic formation and the lotus remained separate.
To eyes that only saw form…
It looked like Ren's heaven-devouring art was an evolution—no, a terrifying cousin—of the South Sea Demon Region's dual-cultivation methods.
On a distant, shadowed platform, a South Sea Demon Region elder narrowed his eyes.
He was thin, almost gaunt, cheekbones sharp as blades. His human skin suit was flawless; his aura had been perfectly masked until this moment. Now, emboldened by centuries of lurking from shadows, he let his demonic true essence seep out, guiding the patterns he'd quietly carved into the mountain.
He synced his demonic formation with the lotus overlay, threads of power rising, intertwining, adjusting.
From the outside, it looked seamless.
It looked like proof.
Lei Jingtian seized it like a drowning man grabbing the last bit of driftwood.
"So that's it!"
His voice cracked, riding the growing unease like a whip.
He hadn't fled far—just far enough to stay clear of shockwaves. Now he pointed with a trembling hand, expression twisted between fear and triumph, spittle flying from his lips.
"No wonder your juniors have such impossible combat strength," he shouted, the roar amplified by his true essence. "You've colluded with the South Sea Demon Region!"
His finger stabbed at Ren, at the obscene silhouettes wrapped in dark lotus light.
"You're all demons wearing Divine Phoenix robes!"
The accusation rolled across the mountain like thunder.
It hit exactly where those foul patterns had just carved themselves into everyone's vision.
On Divine Phoenix's own platform, three figures moved at once.
Mu Chihuo.
Mu Yanzhuo.
Mu Qingshu.
Mu Chihuo and Mu Yanzhuo were old elders. Their phoenix robes were half a generation out of date, their Vermillion Bird auras dim, feathers frayed by time. But for decades, their words had been law on Divine Phoenix Island, their status unshakable.
Until Ren.
Mu Qingshu stood beside them, jaw tight.
Once, he had been the hope of Divine Phoenix's youth, a proud genius that seemed destined for Life Destruction and a glorious future. Then Ren had appeared—together with a swarm of disciples who walked across "genius" as if it were nothing but a stepping stone.
Ren hadn't just surpassed Mu Qingshu.
He'd stepped over him like he was a loose rock in the road.
They hated him.
They hated him for tearing the Divine Phoenix inheritance out of their hands.
For weaving lotus lines through their ancestral island.
For making their disciples follow a Dao they couldn't comprehend—one that ignored their old rules, their old authority, the way the world had "always been."
Now, seeing those demonic patterns climbing across the lotus field, hearing Lei Jingtian's cry, they pounced like starving beasts that had finally smelled blood.
"Ren!"
Mu Chihuo's beard quivered, his eyes bloodshot.
"You dare drag Divine Phoenix into demonic infamy?!"
Mu Yanzhuo jabbed a finger at him, face mottled red and white.
"You've tarnished the Vermillion Bird inheritance!" he shouted, voice cracking. "No wonder your methods are so strange!"
Mu Qingshu took a step forward, not even trying to maintain the cold elegance he once prided himself on. His finger shook as he pointed directly at Ren.
"Everyone, look at those demon patterns!" he bellowed. "This is betrayal of the South Horizon itself!"
The shout landed exactly where they aimed it—not on Ren, but on the hearts of every sect present.
On the Yin-Yang platform, the elders snapped at the opportunity as if they'd been waiting for it.
Xing Zizzan's face twisted, his hatred overflowing now that he had a "righteous" banner to wave.
"As expected from a fake 'Guest of Fire'!" he spat, the title he'd been forced to recognize now dragged through mud. "He's just a disguised demon!"
The crowd shuddered.
On Great Zen Temple's platform, Yuan Kong pressed his lips together, golden light trembling along his prayer beads.
Across other platforms, expressions hardened.
Storm Valley's elders exchanged dark looks, thunder rolling faintly under their feet.
Arctic Ice Palace's representatives became colder, the frost around them thickening until a faint rime formed on their railing.
Sunfire Sect, Verdant Wood Sect, Golden Bell Mountain, Deep Earth Sect—none of them wanted to stand beside "demonic colluders." The pressure of centuries of "righteous path" rhetoric weighed down on their shoulders.
On Seven Profound Valley's side, the weakest sect present stayed very, very quiet.
They didn't dare speak for him.
They didn't dare speak against him.
Their silence was its own tremble.
The air thickened with hostility, suspicion, fear.
Ren raised his hand.
He didn't unleash an earth-shattering technique.
He just… pressed.
Grandmist Heavenly Demon Heaven stirred.
A slice of that vast, distant Heaven descended—not fully, not enough to twist the world, just a thin veil that brushed over the mountain like a passing cloud.
Sound waves that were about to surge simply… sank.
True essence fluctuations that were on the verge of exploding stuttered and faded, like ripples swallowed by deeper water.
Lei Jingtian's next shout came out as a strangled croak.
Mu Chihuo's raised arm trembled, but no words emerged.
Even Yuan Kong's mantra froze halfway through his heart.
Everywhere, there was silence.
Ren's smile returned.
It wasn't gentle. It wasn't overtly cruel either. It was simply… amused. A man watching insects finally crawl out of a rotten plank he'd suspected was hollow for a long time.
He looked at Mu Chihuo, Mu Yanzhuo, then Mu Qingshu.
No anger.
No visible killing intent.
Just a mild, almost curious interest.
"I was wondering when you three would finally crawl out from under your rock," he said, tone light, relaxed. "Glad you saved me the effort of exposing you."
He tilted his head, dark eyes narrowing just a fraction.
His next words fell like a blade laid across a neck.
"Now," Ren said, voice turning flat—cold steel under velvet, "die by your saintess' hand."
Gasps rippled through the Divine Phoenix ranks, even though no sound should have existed under his heaven.
Sound was suppressed.
Shock still spread.
Mu Qianyu's breath caught.
Ren turned his head.
The mocking curve at the corner of his mouth softened. The edge melted. He looked at her the way a man might look at the woman he'd chosen to stand at his side on a battlefield and beneath phoenix trees alike.
"Qianyu," he murmured, his voice pitched low, intimate, yet somehow everyone felt that line sink into their bones. "Burn the trash for me."
Her heart shook.
For an instant, the mountain vanished.
She was young again, shoulders aching under the weight of Divine Phoenix Island's future. Bending her back beneath old elders' expectations. Bowing where she disagreed. Swallowing dissatisfaction in silence. Walking a narrow path between filial duty and a suffocating tradition that strangled every spark she nurtured.
Then another memory layered itself over that one.
The last four months.
Ren's lotus lines sinking into Divine Phoenix's roots, burning away hidden rot she hadn't even known was eating at their foundations.
Ren guiding her through Life Destruction's heavenly reformation—not with detached instructions, but with a firm, steady hand at her back. When her mortal body shattered and divine flesh reformed, it was his Dao imprinted beneath her Vermillion Bird flames.
Ren kissing her under phoenix trees bathed in sunset light, not caring about watching eyes, not caring about propriety. Only caring that she stopped walking alone.
Now, he was handing her this choice.
Not as Sect Master.
Not as a man who controlled her Heaven.
As the man who had chosen her as his saintess.
Mu Qianyu's phoenix eyes cleared.
She stepped forward.
No grand proclamation.
No wild aura surge.
Her expression sharpened, as precise as a Vermillion Bird's beak.
She lifted her hand.
Three threads of flame appeared between her fingers.
They were thin—so thin they were almost invisible. No roaring sea of fire, no long buildup of power. Just three faint, crimson strands suspended in the air, each as slender as a single hair.
They moved.
To the mountain's countless watching eyes, they might as well have already arrived before she moved.
Mu Chihuo, Mu Yanzhuo, and Mu Qingshu's Martial hearts screamed.
At the scent of death, all pretense shattered.
They burned their blood essence in a single, frantic breath.
Vermillion Bird cries echoed weakly behind them as phantom shadows took shape—three incomplete Vermillion Birds formed of scarlet light and desperation. Revolving Core phantom shadows surged, their cores spinning wildly. Life-long protective treasures flared around them—a phoenix-feather cloak, a scarlet bell, a jade mirror etched with ancient flame sigils. Runic shields slammed into place, piled atop each other like barriers raised by a man drowning in his own fear.
Decades of conservative accumulation exploded at once.
It didn't matter.
Those flame threads weren't ordinary fire.
They carried the weight of Mu Qianyu's re-forged Life Destruction body.
They carried the compression of Heretical God Seeds for Fire, Wind, and Thunder, the way each circulation of true essence passed through those Seeds and came out sharper, more violent, more refined.
They carried the guiding lattice of Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent, folding the shortest path between her will and their throats.
They carried the insight she'd carved into herself with Lantern-Heart Flame Diagram—comprehension of fire not as mere heat, but as a Law that could devour, purify, transform.
Every wisp of true essence inside those threads had been purified, tempered, stripped of waste.
They slipped into the elders' defenses like needles sliding into damp paper.
The phoenix cloak flared, runes screaming—then unraveled at the Law level as Phoenix Flame Martial Intent devoured it from within.
The bell shook once and cracked, its sound choked off, silence taking its place.
The jade mirror lit up with a thousand tiny suns, then shattered into dust without reflecting anything at all.
Their burning blood essence only made it worse.
The more power they pulled, the more fuel she had.
The flame threads touched their chests.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, the three of them saw them clearly.
They saw the shadow of a Vermillion Bird inside each strand, wings spread, eyes merciless.
Then the world turned red.
They didn't burn.
They became fire.
Bodies, bones, meridians, dantians—their entire existence was seized, broken down, fed into Mu Qianyu's flame. Human flesh and phoenix-inherited bloodline both dissolved into pure, rippling crimson light.
No screams emerged.
Her flames had already erased their throats, their tongues, the vibrations of their voices before they could form.
A breath later, three human-shaped pillars of fire collapsed into drifting ash.
The Divine Phoenix elders vanished.
Their robes vanished.
Their treasures, their phoenix insignias, the identity they'd clung to for decades—everything disintegrated, leaving only three faint, blackened scorch marks on the platform.
Sound crept cautiously back into the world.
The mountain held its breath.
Even after the overwhelming displays they'd already seen today—even after Heavenly Demon Lotus, Heaven-Piercing Martial Intent, shocking duels that tore apart "common sense"—this cut deeper.
Before everyone's eyes, Divine Phoenix Island had just publicly executed two of its own elders and one of its groomed geniuses.
Not in secret.
Not in some quiet back hall.
Here.
Under the gaze of the South Horizon.
And no one could say a word.
Ren's aura still pressed gently on their voices, reminding them that raising their tongues against his decision would be… unhealthy.
"This… this is…" someone whispered on the Great Zen Temple platform, Buddha light shaking. "To cut off the rotten flesh this decisively…"
Yuan Kong's fingers tightened over his prayer beads.
"This man," he thought slowly, eyes drifting from the disappearing ash to Ren's relaxed figure. "His methods are ruthless. But that ruthlessness is pointed inward as well as outward."
On Divine Phoenix's platform, embers from Mu Qianyu's flames drifted upward like tiny phoenix feathers.
Ren's eyes softened.
"That's my saintess," he said.
His voice was soft enough that only those closest truly heard, but everyone saw the look in his eyes.
Possessive.
Proud.
Warm.
Mu Qianyu lowered her hand, flame threads dissipating into nothing. The tremor in her heart settled into something fierce and steady.
She had killed elders who had wronged her island.
Ren had simply given her the moment.
Before the crowd could even begin to process the weight of what had just happened, Ren turned away, the movement smooth, almost lazy, as if he'd merely finished a minor chore.
He lifted his hand.
Pointed.
His finger aimed at the Yin-Yang platform—not at Xing Zizzan, but at the shadowed corner where the South Sea Demon Region elder hid among their entourage.
The demonic patterns writhing around Divine Phoenix's platform flared brighter.
Shadow claws stretched hungrily toward Ren's extended finger, as if recognizing their true master.
The South Sea elder's heart seized.
He felt that finger like a blade pressing against the soft flesh under his jaw.
Ren didn't look at them.
He looked back over his shoulder at Mu Yuhuang.
"Yuhuang," he said lightly, as if he really were just asking her to pour him a drink. "Kill these dipshits."
The entire mountain went dead silent again.
Mu Yuhuang's phoenix eyes gleamed.
For so many years, she had walked a razor edge.
As Divine Phoenix's Sovereign, she carried a fourth-grade sect's pride on her shoulders while standing between the righteous alliance formed by Great Zen Temple and the wild, ravenous insanity of the South Sea Demon Region.
Smile at the Great Zen Temple's monks, accept their lofty moral lectures, bow just enough not to offend.
Pretend not to see the South Sea's grasping hands at the edges of the region, swallow their provocations because Divine Phoenix had been declining, because her island could not afford a frontal war.
Bend. Bend. Bend.
Now, the man she had voluntarily handed Divine Phoenix's future to was telling her, in front of all of them:
You don't have to bend anymore.
Her lips parted.
"Divine Phoenix Island does not collude with demons," Mu Yuhuang said.
Her voice was ice over flame—cold as winter wind, hot as a sun burning behind clouds.
"We burn them."
The last word fell.
Her Life Destruction cultivation stirred.
It wasn't a simple surge of true essence.
It was as if an ancient Vermillion Bird that had perched quietly within her dantian for centuries finally opened its eyes.
Boom—
The mountain shuddered.
Yuan Kong's breath hitched. For a terrifying heartbeat, the abbot of Great Zen Temple felt as if an invisible hand had pressed against his throat and the space around his heart at the same time, squeezing both shut.
Beside him, the other abbots' faces flushed red, then white. Buddha lights flickered as they instinctively tried to mobilize Buddhist arts to resist that aura.
It didn't help.
Mu Yuhuang stepped out.
She didn't leap.
She didn't explode forward.
She simply took one step into the air.
The world made room.
Flame blossomed behind her—Vermillion Bird wings spreading wide in silent majesty. This was no longer the half-illusory phantom the South Horizon knew as "Divine Phoenix Sovereign."
Every feather was condensed to the limit. Each barb was clear, each edge razor-bright. The bird's eyes shone with clarity and cruelty, the arrogance of a divine beast that had ruled the skies long before these sects ever named themselves "righteous."
Along those wings, along each feather's spine, dark-rainbow lotus lines flowed like ink. Grandmist wove through Vermillion Bird fire; Heavenly Demon patterns threaded through an imperial bloodline, binding them into something sharper, heavier, more frightening.
The South Horizon's heaven and earth recoiled.
On every platform, people felt their true essence circulation stutter.
Revolving Core experts felt their meridians clench.
Xiantian elders blanched, as if they'd been plunged into the deep sea.
On their own platforms, Mu Fengxian, Mu Bingyun, Mu Qingyi—all at Life Destruction themselves—watched quietly, phoenix eyes bright.
They could feel it clearly.
This was not the old Mu Yuhuang.
This was Mu Yuhuang reforged beneath Ren Ming's guidance.
Mu Yuhuang lifted her hand.
Slender fingers curled inward—not into some elaborate mudra, not into an impressive-looking seal. Just… a simple grasp, as if she were closing her hand around an invisible throat.
Her gaze swept calmly across the mountains.
She saw Xing Yan, still half-crippled from Mu Xiaoqing's ruthless strike.
She saw Xing Zizzan, eyes bloodshot, anger twisting his features.
She saw the remaining Yin-Yang elders and disciples, some puffed up with panic-driven bravado, others already trembling.
She saw the shadowed South Sea Demon Region elder, demonic qi leaking from his pores now that fear had cracked his disguise.
Her lips parted.
"Kneel."
A single word.
It rolled across the mountains like an imperial edict, like the decree of a Heaven that acknowledged no peers.
She didn't shout.
She didn't need to.
The command carried three thousand years of Divine Phoenix inheritance, the authority of a Life Destruction sovereign whose Dao had been reforged under a Heaven that tugged at all others.
The Vermillion Bird phantom cried.
Grandmist-laced Vermillion Bird flame fell from the sky.
It did not descend like rain or meteors.
It came down like a curtain—a piece of heaven that detached itself, turned into crimson-gold fire, and decided it was done pretending that things on the ground mattered.
The first to be swallowed was Xing Yan.
Already half-crippled by Mu Xiaoqing's sword, his meridians torn and true essence in chaos, he barely had time for his pupils to contract.
"Ah—"
His scream cut off halfway.
The Vermillion Bird flame seemed almost gentle as it touched him.
No grotesque melting.
No drawn-out agony.
The instant it brushed his skin, the flame sank in, erasing every last thread of his true essence, severing his connection to Yin-Yang Power at the root. For a heartbeat, his outline flickered, yin-yang light struggling desperately to circulate one last time.
Then the flame tightened.
He vanished.
Not as ash.
Not as scattered bones.
Nothing.
The spot he had stood upon was left empty, clean, immaculate. Only a single ember drifted lazily in the air where he'd been, then faded.
On the Yin-Yang platform, Xing Zizzan roared.
"Yan'er!"
His life's foundation exploded.
A 1st-stage Life Destruction aura surged to the extreme. Yin-Yang true essence burst forth in twin pillars of black and white threaded with Scarlet Flame, creating a miniature heaven around his body. Phantoms rose—a rotating Yin-Yang diagram, a blazing sun, a cold moon.
Life force burned.
Protective artifacts he'd hoarded for decades flared to life—armor woven from Yin-Yang silk, an ancient pagoda treasure, a mirror carved from some strange Profound Province jade.
All at once, he dragged every card he had onto the table.
The Vermillion Bird flame did not slow.
It descended, talons spread.
His world of yin and yang met the curtain of fire.
For a single moment, there was resistance.
Black-white diagrams turned.
Scarlet Flame coiled.
Countless layered arrays spun up between him and the sky, each created by a man who had lived a life of calculated risk, a man who believed his painstaking preparations would always give him one more road.
Then Mu Yuhuang's Vermillion Bird fire brushed his Laws.
The lotus lines along each feather shone.
Grandmist whispered.
It did not shatter his Laws head-on at first.
It reminded them.
The delicate balance that was the heart of his yin and yang—the perfect alternation between extreme and return, between life and death, between hot and cold—was quietly tugged.
Black and white hesitated.
The distinction between them blurred.
The Scarlet Flame that had once bridged and balanced them suddenly lost its footing; its role stopped making sense.
His entire cultivation, founded on the separation and harmony of yin and yang, trembled.
The foundation cracked.
The Vermillion Bird flame slid through his defenses as if they'd never existed.
Xing Zizzan had time to feel his Life Destruction true essence rupture. He understood, with a clear, ice-cold horror, that the decades of effort he'd poured into his Dao were being peeled apart.
Then he joined his nephew.
His scream never fully formed.
The Vermillion Bird snapped its beak shut.
The 1st-stage Life Destruction master, Palace Lord of a fifth-grade sect's branch, a man the South Horizon had bowed to, vanished in a single breath.
The remaining Yin-Yang elders and disciples finally broke.
Some tried to flee, turning their backs and throwing themselves toward the edges of the arena.
Some summoned sect treasures in panicked haste, layering shields and barriers, their hands fumbling over arrays they'd practiced a thousand times in calm halls, now choking in fear.
Some threw themselves in front of others—sons trying to shield fathers, junior disciples trying to shield elders out of the reflex of being told "respect your seniors" their entire lives.
It didn't matter.
The Vermillion Bird flame wasn't a wildfire.
It was a judgment.
Under Mu Yuhuang's hand, thin strands of flame peeled away from the main curtain. Each was guided not just by her will, but by the subtle pull of Heavenly Demon Lotus, by Ren's Heaven tugging at the guilty threads of karma.
They threaded through gaps, sliding past talismans, ignoring frantic movement. Each strand found a target—an elder who had allowed demonic formations into their sect's arrays, a disciple who had happily participated in Yin-Yang's most depraved "training," a protector whose hands were stained with Divine Phoenix blood.
Flame sank in.
Then flared.
Elder.
Disciple.
Protector.
In the time it takes a man to draw three breaths, Yin-Yang Profound Palace's presence on this mountain—its elites, its Young Master, its pillars—emptied.
The South Sea Demon Region elder didn't wait.
He was already moving the moment Xing Yan vanished.
Demonic true essence roared through his veins, tearing aside the mask he'd worn.
His human guise peeled away as scales erupted across his skin, twisted horns jutting from his brow. His eyes turned a deep, feral scarlet. Shadow formations bloomed around his feet, a demonic array opening like the jaws of a beast, trying to drag him out through the cracks between worlds.
Vermillion Bird fire caught his ankles.
For a heartbeat, his demonic aura roared in full, the stench of centuries of sin boiling into the air.
Then his body broke apart.
Not cleanly.
Not mercifully.
He shattered into a thousand crimson motes, each one a fragment of demonic will howling defiance, greed, lust, madness.
The Vermillion Bird inhaled.
The motes vanished into its wings, leaving nothing behind.
Silence surged up from the mountain's bones.
Under Mu Yuhuang's hand, a fifth-grade sect's elites, a South Sea Demon Region emissary, and the Young Master that countless South Horizon powers had courted with flattery—all of them had been erased in heartbeats.
Even more than the brutality, it was the ease that made everyone's blood run cold.
Yin-Yang's Xing Zizzan was no nameless elder.
He was a genuine 1st-stage Life Destruction powerhouse. In the South Horizon's common sense, a man like that was a small "heaven" unto himself, someone who could roam freely, someone that even Great Zen Temple treated with caution.
Just now, he'd been slaughtered as casually as a chicken.