The opening scene reveals the story of Yao Lao, alarming the Soul Emperor.

That was a restriction personally set up by the Soul Emperor.

The golden Bagua pattern rapidly unfolded in the depths of his eyes, and the trajectory of the black lightning was broken down into clear energy threads.

Rapid, domineering, heavy footsteps came from outside the door, without any announcement.

The heavy mahogany door frame creaked under its own weight, and then the two wooden doors burst open, sending wood chips mixed with broken bluestone bricks crashing in.

The hawk trembled and lowered its body, letting the flying splinters cut several gashes into its black robe.

An old man with a hooked nose, wearing a dark red robe, stepped across the mess, his feet treading on broken bricks. With each step, his hard-soled leather shoes crushed the rubble into powder.

The old man's name was Hunwu.

Special Envoy of the Heavenly Gang Hall, with a cultivation level of six-star Dou Zong.

He stopped in the center of the room and looked around. The aftershocks of the energy storm that the formation had used to kill the four pavilion masters still lingered in the air.

The Soul Crow scrutinized the lingering soul within the barrier and let out a few rough laughs.

"They made quite a commotion."

He turned his head and his gaze fell directly on Hun Yu, who was sitting in the chair.

He scanned the area from top to bottom twice, but found no fluctuations in battle aura, indicating a severe depletion of qi and blood.

The edges of that spotless white robe were still stained with dried blood droplets from when he coughed earlier.

"I stumbled upon a dying old man who was launching a sneak attack using a broken array plate whose secrets I had no idea about."

Hunwu raised his chin, and the fat on his face twitched twice as a result.

"So, they're already putting on airs in the branch hall?"

He stretched out his right hand, his five fingers pointing into the air.

"The clan leader has given a death order. The Heavenly Gang Hall is taking you, this ignorant exiled disciple, back to your ancestral home to acknowledge your ancestors."

Hunyu leaned back against the wooden armchair, the white feather fan in his right hand resting on his kneecap, his posture unchanged.

He glanced sideways at the dark gold scroll that the eagle held high above its head, a black arc of lightning leaping and darting along the edge of the scroll.

"I'll go with you if you want."

Hunyu tapped the fan ribs twice slowly with the pad of his right index finger.

"The scroll is sealed with lightning; you untied it and handed it to me yourself."

The brief sounds echoed through the dilapidated house.

Hunwu's right arm, which was raised in mid-air, suddenly stopped, and his facial features immediately contorted.

Even powerful branch hall masters would have to respectfully serve tea and water and lead the way when they see the special envoy of the Heavenly Gang Hall. Today, however, he was given the order by a useless member of a collateral branch who didn't even have any cultivation.

"You think you're worthy of my service?"

Hunwu suddenly clenched his right hand, his five fingers forming claws. A violent battle aura, black and red, swirled rapidly in his palm, compressing into an inverted cone-shaped vortex in a short time.

He took a big step forward with his left foot, and his right hand ruthlessly tore through the air currents, grabbing straight down at Hun Yu's right shoulder. The trajectory of his attack blocked all escape routes and blind spots in the surrounding space.

The rules of the Heavenly Gang Hall are extremely simple: crush half of the target's collarbone and energy channels with a single claw, and carry the body back to report, leaving the target no chance to fight back.

A gust of wind whipped up the long hair that hung down beside Hunyu's ears.

Wu Ying knelt on both knees, most of his face pressed against the cold, rough floor tiles, his back teeth grinding together as he clearly saw Hun Wu's fierce starting stance.

But he couldn't even squeeze out a single word of protest. The consequences of provoking the Heavenly Gang Palace envoy were far worse than dying on the spot. He could only place all his bets on the gentleman who had tricked and killed the Starfall Pavilion's Dou Zun.

The cyclone, carrying strong winds, roared closer, crossing the spatial distance to within less than half a foot of Soul Feather's shoulder.

Hun Yu did not step aside. His right wrist began to rotate from bottom to top, and the white feather fan held between his fingers also rose upwards, though not quickly.

As the fan ribs gradually rose higher, the thickness of the air in this enclosed space underwent a qualitative change, and the laws of heaven and earth, which had just completed the massacre and were still not yet returned to nature, found an outlet to vent their pent-up energy.

He forcibly separated and gathered the oppressive aura of the Eight Trigrams Formation hidden here, relying entirely on the power of Qimen Dunjia to borrow the power of heaven.

The top of the closed fan precisely met the wrist joint that the Soul Crow was reaching out to.

There was no earth-shattering clash of fighting spirits, nor did it emit the slightest dazzling light.

The only sound was a brief sound when the fan bone and the wrist bone of the Soul Crow came into physical contact.

Click.

The bones shattered, cleanly and decisively.

The arrogance on Hunwu's face didn't even buy him time to replace it. The inverted cone vortex that had gathered in his palm was forcibly crushed by the laws of heaven and earth the moment it was touched by the fan bone, and vanished on the spot.

The irresistible shock force traveled along the meridians of Hunwu's wrist, causing his entire right forearm to fold completely backward, defying the natural structure of the human body.

Before the neural sensory system could transmit the pain to the brain, the arm was rendered useless and lost sensation, dangling limply on the outside of the shoulder.

The side room, filled with dust and debris, was eerily quiet at this moment, with only the faint thuds of flesh being pulled and writhed.

The eagle, which was already lying on the ground, began to tremble erratically. He had just turned his head slightly and witnessed the whole thing.

A six-star Dou Zong, whose body was overflowing with Dou Qi, used a simple, folded feather fan to deliver a fatal strike, resulting in a severed arm.

Without meditating and channeling energy, he directly invoked residual laws across different levels to injure a Dou Zong. The common sense that had been operating in the Dou Qi Continent for millions of years shattered into countless fragments deep within the eagle's brain.

He looked at Hunyu, who was sitting unharmed and upright in front of him, then slammed his forehead against the floor tile with a thud, pressing it firmly against the stone slab and refusing to move an inch.

They've chosen the right master.

Hunwu's entire body was uncontrollably forced backward, his left hand grabbing his dislocated and broken right arm hanging there, his originally dark red cheeks instantly turning a purplish-red color.

Hun Yu then bent down and raised two slender fingers to reach for the dark gold scroll that was half-suspended in the air.

The black lightning bolt sensed a living being touching it and frantically spread and climbed along the metal edge, determined to melt the toucher's fingers. A faint golden light slowly emerged from the tip of the Soul Feather. The two energies clashed and killed each other, dissolving completely without causing the slightest ripple.

He effortlessly detached the urgent decree from the petrified eagle's hand, then casually tossed it aside, sending the dark gold scroll slamming against the mahogany table on his left and rolling forward two or three times.

The movements were so fluid and careless that they lacked any of the solemnity expected of treating this as a clan leader's decree.

The scroll stopped to the right of a teacup that was missing half a rim.

Hun Yu reached out and steadily lifted the cup to his chest. He puffed out his cheeks and blew on the half-floating, withered tea leaf on the rim of the cup. Then, he slowly and deliberately put the completely cold, astringent tea into his mouth.

He lifted his eyelids again, his two golden pupils locking onto the unsteady Soul Crow in front of him.

The Bagua base, outlined and reassembled by intricate golden light, spun and flipped wildly deep within the pupil.

The disheveled appearance of Hunwu, with twitching hands and sweat dripping from the sides of his nose, was completely reflected in the chassis.

"A dignified six-star Dou Zong walks with his foundation completely hollow, his Qi Sea depleted and scattered like a pile of loose sand."

He pressed his wrist down and put the teacup back in place, the ceramic cup bottom tapping against the solid wood tabletop with a soft sound.

"You've donned a dark red robe bestowed by the Heavenly Gang Palace, and spent years plundering the people's wealth from various lower-level branch halls, haven't you used all that amassed to fill this decaying, out-of-touch shell of yours?"

A few straightforward and calm words hit Hunwu's ears, precisely striking at the old man's deepest, most hidden sore spot.

The blue veins on Hunwu's forehead and neck bulged out one by one, one of his arms was crippled in public, and his past was exposed in front of him by this low-ranking member of a collateral branch. This shattered the dignity he had built up in the Heavenly Gang Hall for decades.

He completely abandoned the rules about bringing a living body back to report, determined to vent his anger by dismembering the person before him inch by inch.

"I'll skin you alive!"

The distorted roar, like that of an old duck, burst from the depths of his throat and shattered the last remaining row of roof tiles. His left hand was raised high above his head, and the vast, six-star battle qi that had been hidden within him at its peak surged forth unleashed.

A dark red, fire-attribute stream of light spiraled upwards from the left shoulder, filling the several-dozen-square-meter room with crimson light. The scorching heat, intense enough to distort the space, dried the moisture on the table.

The broken chair legs and wooden door inside the house instantly burned to ashes.

Unable to withstand the pressure, the hawk, which had been lying down, was thrown out by the sweeping airflow and its back became firmly embedded in the load-bearing wall of the house.

This destructive tidal wave, capable of ravaging the mind, had already encircled Hunyu's physical body. Hunwu strode forward, his palm, carrying the destructive power of life, aimed a heavy blow at Hunyu's face.

The heatwave dried the blood from Hunyu's lips.

He sat firmly in the chair frame, not even considering standing up to escape. His fingers intertwined, spinning the white feather fan around his fingertips, the attack less than three feet away.

This energy, capable of dissolving fossilized metal, was completely ignored.

"On the seventh day of the month, the Heavenly Gang Palace sent a special envoy to the Northwest to handle the handover. Instead of taking the official road directly, the envoy detoured for hundreds of miles through the desolate wilderness and entered the territory of the Black Corner Region."

His clear, resonant, and steady voice spread throughout the scorching, hollow room filled with red light, without a single stumble.

"Near the territory of the Qianyaofang branch, the special envoy gathered his confidants to carry out a double-cross, intercepting and stealing the seventh-tier Heavenly Sea Black Gold Cauldron that the caravan was escorting back."

The white feather fan held straight up in the air, blocking in front of him.

"That thing is currently buried deep in a sealed cellar, about ten feet down in the middle of the Dry Bone Mountain Range, in the third large poisonous cave."

The raging wind and scorching heat completely froze the space.

The large clusters of flames suspended in mid-air stopped rolling and undulating.

The left arm, imbued with fighting spirit, hung stiffly in mid-air, the tip of the palm only a fist's distance from Hun Yu's nose.

The flickering firelight illuminated that pale face devoid of any emotion, showing no sign of him activating any fighting techniques or utilizing any unfathomable laws of heaven.

One sentence extinguished all murderous intent.

How could such a shocking secret be so thoroughly and meticulously uncovered by this good-for-nothing who never leaves his house?

Hunwu's face was completely drained of color, and beads of sweat splattered heavily onto the broken bricks on the ground, following the deep furrows of his aged face.

He stood frozen in place, his eyes fixed on the feather fan that had stopped the immense force.