Lin Cang's thunderous roar, carrying the surging Primeval Essence of a Rank 4 cultivator, exploded across the open martial arena like a thunderclap, echoing long after.
Those White Bone Stockade disciples who had already been teetering on the edge of collapse now found their eardrums aching, their blood and qi churning.
Many crumpled to the ground on the spot, eyes filled with terror. This was the might of Rank 4—a single word could cow an army.
Yet in the face of such naked provocation and humiliation, from within those sealed white bone gates came no furious roar of outrage.
"Heh heh..."
After a long pause, an aged and raspy chuckle drifted out, as if rising from the depths of some netherworld abyss. It passed lightly through the heavy doors to reach everyone's ears.
No earth-shaking display. No hysterical rage.
Creak—
The massive white bone gates began to open with a tooth-grating grind.
A wave of yin-cold air surged forth like floodwaters breaking through a dam. The pale mist that had clung to the mountainside now seemed summoned by some unseen force, rushing madly toward the plaza. The temperature plummeted to freezing in an instant.
A gaunt figure emerged from the shadows deep within the hall, a staff of pallid white bone-spine clutched in one hand.
It was the White Bone Stockade's Patriarch: Li Mang.
With each step, his bone staff tapped lightly against the ground.
Thud.
The sound was soft, yet it seemed to strike the very pulse of the mountain itself.
With his footsteps, the earth beneath began to tremble faintly. The towering bone-spike totems surrounding them hummed with a deep resonance.
The entire Mountain-Guarding Formation stirred like a waking beast, breathing in rhythm with its master.
Lin Cang's eyes narrowed, his earlier contempt vanishing in an instant.
"Parlor tricks!"
He snorted coldly, unwilling to give his opponent time to build momentum. With a single thought, the river-like torrent of Primeval Essence within him surged forth without restraint.
"Crush him!"
His formless aura materialized in midair as an enormous black hand, radiating the tyrannical force to grind all beneath it, and slammed down toward Li Mang's head.
Facing this terrifying pressure—enough to force any ordinary Rank 3 cultivator to their knees on the spot—Li Mang's withered frame remained ramrod straight.
He did not retreat. He simply raised his Bone Spine Staff.
"Rise."
A single word, spoken lightly.
The white mist billowing behind him instantly solidified into a wall of ghostly pale bone, surging upward to meet the descending black iron hand.
BOOM—!
Two utterly different forces collided violently in midair.
There was no overwhelming dominance as expected. No one-sided crushing.
What happened instead was astonishing: Lin Cang's tyrannical aura—representing the power of a Rank 4 cultivator—was stopped dead, pushed back by Li Mang's seemingly fragile wave of yin-cold pallor!
More than that, the white mist seemed inexhaustible, pouring endlessly from the earth below, from the mountain forests, from every bone spike, gradually forming a counter-encirclement that threatened to swallow Lin Cang's presence whole.
"What?!"
Lin Cang's expression changed drastically. His feet faltered of their own accord.
In that instant of collision, he felt as though he faced not some feeble old man with one foot in the grave, but a towering, fathomless mountain!
The vast, weighty sense of power actually made him—a newly advanced Rank 4—feel suffocated.
"This Primeval Essence density... comparable to mid-stage Rank 4?! How is this possible!"
Shock roiled through Lin Cang's mind. Everyone knew that both he and Li Mang had been stuck at peak Rank 3 for years.
If Li Mang truly possessed such strength, he would have swept aside everyone around him long ago. Why wait until now?
Could he have secretly broken through too? And earlier than me?
Countless thoughts flashed through Lin Cang's mind, leaving him uncertain and alarmed.
If his opponent was also Rank 4—or even stronger—then today's "reckoning" would become a suicide mission. His entire strategy would need to be scrapped.
But in the next instant, a powerful cultivator's keen perception caught something amiss.
That force, though immense, was impure and chaotic, thick with earth qi and death qi—far more than any human's apertures could contain.
"No! This isn't your power!"
Lin Cang's head snapped up. His gaze locked onto the bone staff blazing with light in Li Mang's grip, and the wildly flickering totems all around. Understanding struck like lightning.
"You crafty old ghost! You're borrowing the terrain! Using the thousand-year accumulation of this Mountain-Guarding Formation to bluff!"
He'd seen through it.
But precisely because he had, Lin Cang's wariness only deepened. A veteran Rank 3 who could perfectly harness a protective formation and unleash Rank 4 combat power on his home ground would be an exceedingly tough bone to gnaw.
Just as Lin Cang was about to call out the deception and adjust his momentum for another assault—
"Cough cough..."
The light from Li Mang's Bone Spine Staff suddenly dimmed.
That overwhelming, all-consuming pressure that had threatened to devour everything vanished in an instant, like a kite with its string cut.
Li Mang's body swayed visibly.
He even took a deliberate half-step backward, his already gloomy complexion turning deathly pale—half genuine, half performance. But the weakness that came from forcibly wielding such enormous power was acted to perfection.
"Whew..."
He exhaled a long, turbid breath, as though that single confrontation had drained every last drop of his vital energy.
This retreat not only dispersed the murderous tension but also deftly offered Lin Cang an enormous face-saving exit.
"Patriarch Lin's divine arts are truly world-shaking. The might of Rank 4 lives up to its reputation. This old bag of bones is humbled—truly humbled."
Li Mang cupped his fists, his voice carrying the weariness of a hero past his prime, mixed with the brazen resignation of one who has nothing left to lose.
"That strike just now—without the ancestral formation protecting me, these old bones would already be dust."
Lin Cang's brow furrowed deeply. The attack he'd been building was forced back down his throat. The sensation of punching cotton was thoroughly unpleasant.
Yet he had to admit: this show of weakness restored his dignity while robbing him of any justification to strike.
"Hmph. As long as you understand, Li Mang."
Lin Cang snorted coldly, withdrawing his released aura, though the wariness in his eyes remained undiminished.
"However..."
Li Mang's tone shifted. His bone staff struck the ground heavily as he gestured toward the earth still faintly trembling beneath their feet. His gaze sharpened to a blade's edge.
"White Bone Stronghold may be poor, but these old bones are still hard."
"With this Mountain-Guarding Formation, if Patriarch Lin insists on swallowing us whole today, I'm afraid you'll crack a few good teeth in the process."
"When both sides are left battered and bleeding, who benefits? Those scavenger rogue cultivators circling like vultures? Or the Jia clan?"
These words were soft yet unyielding, striking at the heart of the matter.
He acknowledged Lin Cang's strength while revealing his own trump card. A masterstroke of veteran cunning.
"Since neither of us can truly overcome the other, rather than fighting to mutual destruction and letting outsiders reap the rewards..."
Li Mang stepped aside, gesturing with an open palm toward the still-open gates of the great hall. A smile that didn't reach his eyes spread across his face.
"Why not sit down, have some tea, and discuss this so-called 'misunderstanding'? What does Patriarch Lin say?"