Chapter 16

Chapter 16: The Night Of Annihilation, A Stunning Display! The Guardian King Is Dead?

【Others saw this and grew deeply envious, working even harder to curry favor.】

【But within just a few days, a great fire broke out in the room of the one who had won the bid, burning him to ashes.】

【That 10,000-tael silver note appeared inexplicably in your coin pouch.】

【You found this utterly baffling yourself.】

【But funds were tight, so you pocketed it.】

【3 days later, your Flame Wood Blade Art stepped into the 3rd layer.】

【This time, no new special effect emerged.】

【1 month later, the Flame Wood Blade Art reached the 4th layer, and the speed of your blade swings surged severalfold.】

【The 4th layer was the Grand Mastery realm; above it was only the 5th layer, Perfection.】

【This time, a new special effect finally appeared.】

【Flame Wood Blade Art Lv4 (301/500). Special Effects: Blade Flame, Extreme Speed.】

【1 and a half months later, your Flame Wood Blade Art finally reached Perfection.】

【Flame Wood Blade Art Lv5 (750/750). Special Effects: Blade Flame, Extreme Speed, Flame Net.】

【In roughly 2 months total, you had cultivated a Spirit Grade high-tier blade art to Perfection.】

【By anyone else's measure, this would be utterly inconceivable.】

【Even with a Yang-attribute Sacred Grade cultivation art as your foundation, the groundwork of the Wind-Cleaving Blade Art, and a monstrous tag like 【Hard Work Always Bears Fruit】, it would still be near impossible.】

【So the question remained—how exactly did you pull it off?】

【The answer: hard work!】

【It was your sweat that forged the harvest you now held.】

【In the meantime, your Soul-Severing Finger Art had quietly advanced to the 2nd layer, gaining a new special effect:【Bone Rot】.】

【Over the following month, you devoted yourself fully to the Soul-Severing Finger Art, pushing it all the way to the 4th layer, Perfection.】

【It gained yet another special effect:【Flame Toxin】.】

【Cultivating martial arts was far more grueling than cultivating a standard art.】

【After 3 months of high-intensity martial arts training, you specifically sought out a few of the Golden Flowers from the Intoxicating Fragrance House to help you unwind.】

【But unexpectedly, on the night of the 3rd day of your rest—】

【Over 1,000 black-clad figures silently encircled the entire Guardian King's Manor under the cover of a rainy night.】

【By the time the manor's guards noticed something was wrong, the place had already been sealed off as tightly as an iron barrel.】

【Dian Cheng-feng shouted out a warning of enemy attack, jolting many within the manor—including you—from their sleep.】

【You threw on your outer robe and stepped outside, only to find that the black-clad figures had already pushed their way into the manor.】

【The manor's several hundred guards were barely holding their ground.】

【But those black-clad figures were all Innate Realm martial artists, among them dozens of Purple Mansion Realm martial venerates and over a dozen Mystic Core Realm true martial venerates.】

【The manor's guards falling was only a matter of time.】

【Dian Cheng-feng told you to flee through the underground passage, taking Divine Physician Elder Chen with you.】

【Elder Chen was also an Innate Realm powerhouse—he could tend to your injuries and, at a critical moment, serve as a shield. You agreed.】

【Yet before the 2 of you could even enter the passage, a thunderous boom erupted from below.】

【The underground tunnel had been destroyed by a traitor within the manor!】

【"Young Master, this old servant takes his leave ahead of you!"】

【Divine Physician Elder Chen offered that single apology, then burrowed underground and fled using an earth-escape art!】

【What the hell……】

【You nearly cursed aloud.】

【The earth-escape art was one of the 5-element escape arts—at the very minimum, one had to break through to the Mystic Core Realm and condense mystical power before it could be used.】

【This old schemer had carried himself at no higher than the Innate Realm all this time, never drawing attention to himself—and yet he turned out to be a Mystic Core Realm Martial Venerate!】

【You had been planning to bring him along in your escape, yet he had gone and left you behind, fleeing on his own.】

【All those years of good food and fine drink, lavished on him.】

【And he threw away every shred of conscience!】

【Over a dozen black-clad figures had already closed in on you, blades at the ready.】

【You had no choice but to draw the Blazing Flame Blade and fight them with everything you had.】

【Their eyes gleamed with contempt.】

【Who didn't know that the 3rd-Generation Heir of Guardian King's Manor was a hopeless cultivation failure?】

【Did he really think that wielding a Spirit Grade top-tier divine weapon would let him hold off over a dozen Innate Realm experts?】

【2 words: dream on!】

【But the moment they drew near, you unleashed a single slash that sent 99 arcs of flame blade energy erupting outward, forming a 【Wildfire Flame Net】 that blanketed a radius of 100 meters—and those dozen-odd black-clad figures were incinerated to charcoal amid screams of agony!】

【This gave everyone else on the battlefield a tremendous shock.】

【No one had expected that this supposed cultivation failure would turn out to be a master—and then some.】

【Even Dian Cheng-feng's pupils contracted sharply. This was a Perfection-tier Flame Wood Blade Art—and you had actually cultivated it to completion. That single strike of yours was fully on par with a 7th-Tier Innate Realm all-out blow.】

【At the same time, you were breathing in great heaving gulps.】

【Devastating as that strike was, its cost was equally immense—it had consumed an eighth of your Golden Crow Martial Force in an instant.】

【And that was only because your Cinnabar Field had reached the Postnatal Peak Realm, giving you 10 times the capacity of an ordinary martial artist.】

【Had you not reached the Postnatal Peak Realm, that single strike would likely have drained you completely.】

【After that, you became entangled with the remaining black-clad figures in a fierce melee.】

【Whenever a Purple Mansion Martial Venerate tried to close in on you, the manor's guards would throw themselves forward to block with all their might.】

【It seemed the guards Dian Cheng-feng had trained were truly and utterly loyal.】

【But where were your 4 Elite Shadow Guards?】

【Your 4 Elite Shadow Guards were all Purple Mansion Realm peak-tier cultivators, with the strongest among them reaching even Mystic Core Realm Martial Venerate.】

【They had been personally handpicked by the Old Master from a million-strong Guardian Army—the most loyal existences to the Zhao family in all the world.】

【At a moment this dire, where had they gone?】

【Surely they hadn't defected?】

【You figured they had most likely seen that your life was not yet in immediate danger, and thus had not yet made their move.】

【In the span of a single incense stick, over 100 black-clad figures had fallen beneath your blade.】

【Your Golden Crow Martial Force had also been mostly depleted.】

【Yet still, there was no hope of breaking through the encirclement.】

【At that point, you could not suppress your fury any longer and roared: How dare you lay hands on Guardian King's Manor—are you not afraid of my grandfather's retribution?!】

【The dozen-odd Mystic Core Realm Martial Venerates erupted into laughter at that.】

【The lead black-clad martial venerate sneered: "That old thing perished on the battlefield yesterday. Do you really intend to frighten us with a dead man?"】

Reading up to here, Zhao Jin's expression shifted to one of utter disbelief.

Zhao Shi-zhong was the Guardian King—one of Great Qian's pillars, a half-god standing on the very edge of the Dao Embryo Martial God Realm.

A powerhouse of that caliber… had actually fallen??

Zhao Jin's first instinct was that it was impossible.

This was a lie the black-clad figures were telling.

To kill a half-god the likes of Zhao Shi-zhong, several cultivators of the same tier would need to act in concert.

Or a Martial God would have to intervene personally!

But a conflict of that scale would already constitute a nation-annihilating war—a conflict to the absolute death with no turning back.

Great Qian's national power exceeded Di Nation's by no small margin.

Did Di Nation truly have the gall to trigger a nation-annihilating war?

And yet there was one question that gnawed at him.

If Zhao Shi-zhong were not dead, how would these mysterious black-clad figures ever dare to come and assault Guardian King's Manor?

Whether Zhao Shi-zhong had died or not, you couldn't say for certain—but something had definitely gone wrong.

And these black-clad figures had managed, right here in Capital City, to mobilize a force of this overwhelming magnitude.

What was the Capital Garrison, the Iron Blood Guard, the Six Gates Office—what were all those forces doing?

How had they not detected even the faintest sign of this?

Zhao Jin found it utterly inconceivable.

And throughout this prolonged battle, not a single official force had appeared.

Zhao Jin could not help but suspect: this catastrophic assault aimed at exterminating his entire family had been launched by the imperial court itself!