After the college entrance examination, my identity as a Mahayana Immortal Venerable could no longer

Lu Yuan stood in the void.

A bluish-green light slowly danced along the hem of his down jacket. The torrential rain, within a meter of him, seemed to crash into an invisible wall, turning into a mist finer than a hair.

Elder Lei's jaw muscles tensed abruptly. His teeth ground together, producing a sickeningly sharp grinding sound.

He stared at the young man in mid-air who hadn't even fully activated his protective aura. The veins on the back of his hands bulged out like a bunch of wriggling earthworms.

The thirty-six lightning pillars that the Ancient Martial Arts Alliance had painstakingly built, along with the newly gathered thunderclouds, were torn in two by the opponent's bare hands. This completely exceeded the upper limit of his understanding of martial arts over the past hundred years.

"What are you standing there for!"

Elder Lei suddenly turned his head and roared at the array master holding the detonator below the stage.

"Detonate! Detonate all three tons of explosives underneath! I refuse to believe he's some kind of divine being!"

The array master's hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold the remote control.

He looked up at Ye Qingcheng, who was still tied to the bronze pillar, then at Lu Yuan in mid-air, and pressed the red button with a trembling thumb.

Click.

A crisp mechanical sound rang out in the downpour.

Immediately afterwards, a muffled rumble echoed from beneath the entire Royal Martial Arts Arena.

This is a full three tons of high explosives. Even a multi-story building could be razed to the ground in an instant.

The white marble paving stones on the square looked as if someone had kicked them hard from underneath.

Tens of thousands of stone slabs, each weighing several hundred kilograms, instantly defied gravity and were propelled into the air by the violent shockwave. A blinding orange-red fireball, carrying temperatures of several thousand degrees, devoured the thirty-six bronze pillars on the arena with overwhelming force.

The hundreds of internal energy martial artists below the stage didn't even have time to run away.

A dozen or so people who were nearby were directly hit by the shockwave. Their internal organs were instantly shattered into a mess inside their chest cavities, and they were thrown dozens of meters away like broken sacks, crashing into the Royal Square wall and turning into a pile of mud.

The deafening explosion set off the alarms throughout the entire Beijing defense zone.

A second before pressing the detonator, Elder Lei had already pushed his peak-level Qi to its limit, and his whole body shot out like a cannonball, landing steadily on a stone lion a hundred meters away.

He stared intently at the mushroom cloud rising into the sky.

His chest heaved violently.

"Even if you were a god, you'd be blown to pieces in the center of three tons of high explosives."

Elder Lei tore open his sleeve, which had been ripped by the shockwave, and snorted coldly.

"What kind of ridiculous supernatural techniques are these? They're all just empty show in the face of modern weaponry..."

He hadn't finished speaking.

The sound was as if something had forcibly cut off it in the throat.

The smoke and fire had not yet dissipated.

A sudden gust of evil wind swept out from the epicenter of the explosion.

No. That wasn't the wind.

It was a solidified, azure true essence.

This surge of true energy was like an invisible, gigantic hand, violently pressing all the still-burning flames, billowing smoke, and the countless fragments of white marble falling from the sky back to the ground.

My vision became clear again.

Elder Lei's eyes widened little by little, and the corners of his eyes tore open, oozing two glaring lines of blood.

The once massive martial arts arena has been transformed into a giant pit more than ten meters deep.

But right in the center of the giant pit.

There stood a solitary bronze pillar, its surface completely untouched.

Ye Qingcheng was still chained to that pillar. Not even a single strand of her hair was singed.

Lu Yuan stood right in front of her.

There wasn't a speck of dust on that ordinary black windbreaker.

The explosion that had just occurred, enough to level half a block, seemed to him like a slightly larger firecracker during the Lunar New Year. He didn't even move a step; he simply used a single hand to create a protective shield of true essence, creating an absolute vacuum within a three-meter radius around Ye Qingcheng.

"Did you mess it up?"

Lu Yuan turned around.

From a distance of 100 meters, their gazes were fixed on Elder Lei standing on the stone lion.

"Three tons of explosives are certainly enough to make a sound. But didn't you set up a minefield?"

Lu Yuan raised his hand and pointed to the tattered clouds overhead, which he had torn apart and were now being tossed about again by the intense heat of the explosion.

Where's Lei?

Elder Lei's legs began to tremble uncontrollably.

The martial arts dignity he had built up over a century was shattered in this moment. But he was unwilling to accept it. He was one of the five reclusive elders of the Ancient Martial Arts Alliance, and he still held onto his last trump card.

"Don't be so arrogant!"

Elder Lei suddenly bit his tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the hand seals forming the array.

"Even if it costs me my old life, I'll drag you down with me! Heavenly Thunder Pillar! Gather your power!"

He is burning his own peak-level essence.

The insulated copper wires on the surface of the thirty-five bronze pillars in the deep pit, which had been blasted and were now leaning precariously, suddenly emitted a blinding blue light. He forcibly extracted the residual lightning energy inside the pillars and channeled it along the earth's veins to the stone lion beneath his feet.

A bolt of blue lightning, as thick as a bucket, shot up from his arm and into the sky, attempting to reconnect with the thunderclouds.

Lu Yuan looked at Elder Lei's desperate posture.

He sighed.

"The battery is leaking, but they're still stubbornly holding on."

Lu Yuan casually drew a talisman in mid-air with his finger.

There were no unnecessary movements, nor any lengthy incantations.

The Mahayana teachings state that when words are spoken, the Dharma follows.

"Lei Lai."

Boom!

This is not the blue artificial lightning we saw earlier.

A bolt of lightning, several meters thick and exuding an eerie purple hue, struck straight down from the heavens without any warning, ignoring the distance in space.

The purple lightning bolt was not aimed at Lu Yuan at all.

Instead, it was Elder Lei raising his hands, attempting to draw in the lightning.

Real lightning and static electricity drawn down by copper wires are on completely different levels.

Elder Lei didn't even have time to scream.

Purple lightning pierced through the top of his head.

His proudly displayed Transcendent Qi couldn't even withstand half a second of this heavenly lightning.

Crackling sound.

A flash of lightning streaked across the sky.

The stone lion, about two people tall, stood a hundred meters away, along with Elder Lei standing on it.

It vanished in an instant.

All that remained was a pool of charred remains, billowing black smoke. A night wind blew, and the human-shaped ash fell in a flurry, quickly washed away by the torrential rain.

The remaining four reclusive elders, who had been hiding in the shadows, had all gone mad.

They originally planned to wait for Elder Lei to use the Heavenly Thunder Formation to weaken Lu Yuan, and then join forces to reap the rewards.

As a result, the person only uttered one word, and the heavenly lightning directly turned Elder Lei into ashes.

What's the point of fighting?!

Four figures emerged from the surrounding ruins almost simultaneously, running off in four different directions: east, west, south, and north.

The speed at which a Grandmaster of Transcendent Realm flees for their life is so fast that ordinary people can only see a series of afterimages.

"We're already here. Why run away?"

Lu Yuan stood in front of the bronze pillar at the bottom of the giant pit without even turning his head.

He simply raised his right hand and made a loose clenching motion in the air with his five fingers.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

The four directions: east, south, west, and north.

Four old monsters at the peak of the Transformation Realm had just darted out less than 500 meters.

The body froze in mid-air.

Then it felt like my torso was being gripped tightly by four invisible hydraulic clamps.

The dull, explosive sounds of flesh being squeezed and bursting echoed through the night sky.

Four reclusive elders, all over a hundred years old and whose mere stomp could cause an earthquake in the Chinese martial arts world, didn't even get a chance to beg for mercy before exploding into four thick clouds of blood mist in mid-air.

Severed limbs and fragments of internal organs slammed onto the hoods of the surrounding armored vehicles.

The entire room fell silent.

It wasn't that no one wanted to speak, but rather that the remaining dozens of internal energy martial artists were all deprived of their ability to breathe by this indiscriminate crushing force.

Some people's knees buckled and they knelt in the muddy water, yellow liquid flowing down their trouser legs and onto the ground. Others covered their mouths tightly, afraid of making the slightest sound and attracting the attention of the demon.

Lu Yuan ignored these ants.

He turned around and looked at Ye Qingcheng, who was chained to the pillar.

The woman's white robe was stained dark red with blood. The three piercing nails were stuck in vital acupoints, and the surrounding flesh had begun to turn black.

Lu Yuan stretched out his hand, his Mahayana stage true essence enveloping his fingertips.

No tools were used. I simply pinched the bone-piercing nail on the Qihai acupoint.

Pull it outwards.

puff.

A stream of foul-smelling black blood gushed from Ye Qingcheng's wound.

Ye Qingcheng convulsed violently in pain, but she bit her pale lips tightly and didn't even let out a muffled groan.

Lu Yuan didn't stop moving.

The second one, the third one.

He casually tossed three long, green-glowing steel nails into the muddy water at his feet, making a clanging sound.

The steel chains binding Ye Qingcheng's limbs were snapped by Lu Yuan with a single hand. It was as easy as tearing a few mushy noodles.

Losing her support, Ye Qingcheng fell forward.

Lu Yuan did not help her up.

Just as Ye Qingcheng's knees were about to slam into the mud, she forcibly mobilized the last bit of true energy that had just been restored within her body to stabilize her stance.

She knelt down, her forehead pressing heavily into the cold muddy water.

Their posture was so humble it was practically invisible.

"Qingcheng is incompetent. She made the master rush here overnight to clean up this mess."

Her voice was hoarse, but the awe and fervor in her tone were more intense than a torrential downpour.

After the ordeal at Panlong Mountain, and witnessing tonight Lu Yuan casually crush five Transcendent Realm elders, this once-proud number one genius of the ancient martial arts world has had his Dao heart shattered beyond recognition.

She only believes in one principle now.

Being able to serve as a dog for such a being is the greatest blessing of her life.

Lu Yuan looked down at her.

The pure azure true essence of the Mahayana stage flowed through the air and directly into the top of Ye Qingcheng's head.

The three acupoints pierced by the bone-piercing nails stopped bleeding and scabbed over at a visible speed. The toxins and impurities remaining in her body were forcibly cleansed by this domineering true energy and expelled through her pores.

Ye Qingcheng could clearly feel that she had been stuck at the peak of the Transcendent Realm for five years.

At this moment, there were signs of loosening.

"Get up."

Lu Yuan withdrew his hand, his tone indifferent.

"Your life is something I'm keeping as a watchdog. A few mortals nearing their graves aren't even worthy of being used as bargaining chips."

Ye Qingcheng stood up and wiped the mud off her face.

She turned her head and glanced at the internal energy martial artists kneeling on the ground around her, trembling.

"Master, what should we do with these people?"

Ye Qingcheng's eyes turned cold, and a broken knife she had picked up from the ground appeared in her hand. With just a word from Lu Yuan, she wouldn't hesitate to kill all those who had just been watching the show.

"A bunch of useless cowards who only do things for money. Killing them would be too dirty for my hands."

Lu Yuan didn't even glance at those people.

He suddenly frowned.

The divine sense of the Mahayana stage had already spread out and covered an area of ​​a hundred miles when it descended upon the capital.

Just moments ago, when Elder Lei detonated the explosives and the earth's veins trembled violently.

Deep beneath the capital city, he detected an extremely disgusting aura.

This aura was very well hidden. If it weren't for the earth's ley lines causing a slight leak, even he would have almost missed it.

Lu Yuan was all too familiar with this smell.

The dark red aura of blood was mixed with the spatial fluctuations unique to interdimensional teleportation arrays.

This is the same aura from the Sirius Star Region that he smelled at the blood-red altar on the seabed of the East China Sea. Moreover, this aura also contains a faint trace of the scent of a mutated Yin Corpse that has been artificially fed.

Lu Yuan's molars emitted a faint grinding sound.

The pipe in the East China Sea has just been pulled out.

There was another one buried underground in the capital.

Moreover, this pipe is located precisely at the convergence point of the capital's earth veins. These extraterrestrial scum are planning to treat the entire dragon veins of China like a buffet.

Lu Yuan turned his head and looked at Ye Qingcheng.

"In the capital city, where is the most yin energy, a place that the living cannot enter?"

Ye Qingcheng was stunned for a moment.

She quickly went through the power structure and top-secret files in the capital in her mind.

"If it's a place with the heaviest yin energy..."

Ye Qingcheng's expression suddenly changed, and she lowered her voice.

"The back mountain of the defense zone. The capital's imperial prison. There, the most vicious and heinous death row inmates and criminals convicted of ancient martial arts crimes are imprisoned since the founding of the nation. It's said that at the bottom of the prison is a stagnant, frigid pool, with a year-round temperature of minus ten degrees Celsius. Even the guards dare not approach it."

Ye Qingcheng swallowed.

"I heard an elder from the alliance mention it when he was drunk. That stagnant, icy pool wasn't used to imprison people at all. It was a forbidden area jointly enclosed by the Wang and Ye families of the capital. Every month, they would send living people in there..."

Lu Yuan smiled.

He looked up towards the direction of the back mountain of the Beijing Defense Zone.

The night rain poured down.

"The Wang family and the Ye family."

Lu Yuan patted the water droplets off his windbreaker.

He fought his way back from the East Sea, having already laid out the bait of the Nine-Turn Rejuvenation Pill. His original plan was to let these powerful figures jump out and take the bait themselves.

It now appears that these people not only took the bait, but also tied the fishing line to someone else's water pump.

"Clean this place up."

Lu Yuan threw down a sentence.

Before Ye Qingcheng could respond, the white marble ruins beneath his feet exploded with a deafening roar.

He transformed into a streak of light that tore through the night sky, braving the torrential rain, and crashed straight toward the capital's prison.

That was the hunting season for Great Ascension Stage Immortal Venerables.