I run a casino in the immortal realm.

Heavenly Demon City, side hall of the Leisure Palace.

Zheng Yifei was sitting cross-legged on a futon when a series of hurried footsteps suddenly came from outside the door.

Zhang Biao pushed open the door and entered, his face so gloomy it seemed like water could drip from it, and he tightly gripped a communication jade slip in his hand.

Something's happened.

Zhang Biao's voice was hoarse. He glanced at Su Chenyuan, who was meditating not far away, and hesitated before speaking.

Su Chenyuan slowly opened his eyes. His already aged face was filled with a sense of dejection. Although the cracks on his golden core were temporarily suppressed, his aura was still weak.

"Tell me, what happened at the Qingyun Sect this time? Was the Xu family's property completely divided up, or did Hu Lie kill someone again?"

Zhang Biao gritted his teeth and handed over the jade slip: "The news that Tie Feng just brought from Xuantian Market is about the Su family."

Su Chenyuan's heart skipped a beat. He grabbed the jade slip and probed it with his divine sense.

The side hall was deathly silent.

In just a few breaths, Su Chenyuan's hand holding the jade slip began to tremble violently, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged. His face went from pale to bright red in an instant, his eyes wide open, and his eyeballs were bloodshot.

"Hundreds of thousands... hundreds of thousands of clansmen..."

Su Chenyuan let out a roar that sounded like a broken bellows.

The next moment, he suddenly spat out a mouthful of black blood, mixed with small pieces of internal organs, and fell straight backward.

"grandfather!"

Su Wanqing, who was organizing spiritual materials in the next room, heard the commotion and rushed in just in time to see this scene. She was so frightened that she immediately stepped forward to support Su Chenyuan and continuously channeled pure spiritual energy into his body.

Zheng Yifei also stood up, his brows slightly furrowed.

Su Chenyuan pushed Su Wanqing's hand away and struggled to stand up.

His eyes were bloodshot, and his previously listless aura surged violently as if in a final burst of energy, with the pressure of a Golden Core cultivator spreading uncontrollably throughout the side hall.

"Hu Lie, you old dog! Hu Pengfei, that beast!"

Su Chenyuan gritted his teeth, his voice hoarse with extreme anger, "He slaughtered hundreds of thousands of members of the Su family's collateral branches! He even went so far as to plunder female cultivators in the Qingyun Sect, turning it into a den of demons!"

Su Chenyuan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, turned and walked out: "I can't swallow this! My Su family's centuries-old foundation, tens of thousands of lives, can't just be left like this! I'm going back to the Qingyun Sect, I'm going to kill these beasts!"

"Grandpa, you can't go!"

Su Wanqing clung tightly to Su Chenyuan's arm, tears streaming down her face: "With your current physical condition, you can't even exert thirty percent of your usual strength. Going there would be suicide!"

"What does it matter if I die? I am the ancestor of the Su family. My clan is all dead. What face do I have left to live?"

Even if it costs me my life, I'll sneak back into the Qingyun Sect, kill a few high-ranking members, and take them down with me!

"Please calm down!"

Su Wanqing clung to him desperately, crying and pleading.

Just then, Zheng Yifei flashed and blocked the entrance to the side hall.

"Get out of the way!" Su Chenyuan glared at Zheng Yifei.

"Fifth Elder, going now will only lead to your death; it will be pointless."

Zheng Yifei's tone was calm and unwavering, yet it was like a bucket of cold water poured over Su Chenyuan's head.

"How can you expect me to remain calm when hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake?"

Su Chenyuan roared.

"Precisely because you have tens of thousands of lives on your hands, you should save your life and use it wisely."

Zheng Yifei looked at him and analyzed clearly, "You just said you were going to assassinate the high-ranking members of the Qingyun Sect? Who are the high-ranking members of the Qingyun Sect now?"

They're just a bunch of dogs promoted by Hu Lie, or deacons sent by the Xuantian Sect to monitor them. What's the use of killing them? If you kill one batch, Hu Lie can just promote another batch tomorrow.

Su Chenyuan's breathing quickened as he stared intently at Zheng Yifei.

"The Hu family was wiped out back then, and now only three people remain: Hu Lie, Hu Xiaotian, and Hu Pengfei. These three are your true enemies."

"Hu Xiaotian is Qin Cang's personal disciple in the Xuantian Sect. You can't enter the Xuantian Sect's mountain gate and can't kill him."

"Hu Lie is at the peak of the Golden Core stage. Although his Dao Foundation was injured by you and Sect Master Xu back then, he has recovered thanks to the resources given to him by Qin Cang."

"You are still recovering from your serious injuries, and your golden core is damaged. You are no match for him."

Zheng Yifei lowered two fingers, leaving only the last one: "As for Hu Pengfei, he does indeed only have the Foundation Establishment cultivation level, but he is currently the only heir of the Hu family. Hu Lie is counting on him to continue the bloodline. Do you think Hu Lie would put him in danger?"

Su Chenyuan was stunned, and the madness in his eyes faded slightly.

"Hu Pengfei is definitely protected by top-tier Golden Core cultivators, and may even have a life-saving trump card bestowed by Qin Cang."

In your current state, forget about killing him; you wouldn't even be able to get close to him before being hacked to death by the outer guards.

"If you go, not only will you fail to avenge your family, but you'll also lose your own life. After you die, who will avenge the blood debt of hundreds of thousands of people?"

Zheng Yifei's words were like a heavy hammer blow, striking Su Chenyuan's heart.

He stood there, motionless, as the fluctuations of spiritual energy around him gradually subsided.

He looked at Zheng Yifei, then at his granddaughter whose face was covered in tears, and suddenly his legs went weak, and he slumped down on the prayer mat.

"What can I do then...?"

Su Chenyuan covered his face, tears welling up between his fingers, his voice choked with sobs: "Am I just supposed to hide in Heavenly Demon City and watch those beasts go unpunished?"

Zheng Yifei walked up to him, his voice low and firm: "Be patient. The foundation of the Qingyun Sect is still in our hands. Zhao Ling is breaking through to the Golden Core stage, and Wanqing is also at the Foundation Establishment stage. As long as you give us time, once we all reach the Golden Core stage and your injuries have healed, we will personally return to the Qingyun Sect."

"At that time, you can personally cut off the heads of the three members of the Hu family, one by one."

Su Chenyuan lowered his hands, a struggle flashing in his cloudy eyes, which ultimately turned into a deep ruthlessness.

He took a deep breath and forcefully suppressed the frustration in his chest.

"Alright, I'll wait. I'll spare my old life for now. I'll wait to see the day the Hu family is wiped out."

Seeing that Su Chenyuan had finally given up his suicidal thoughts, Su Wanqing breathed a sigh of relief and gave Zheng Yifei a grateful look.

In the days that followed, the side hall of Xiaoyao Palace fell into a deathly silence.

Su Chenyuan stopped mentioning revenge and instead secluded himself, desperately refining healing pills in an attempt to repair his damaged golden core.

Time passed day by day, and in the blink of an eye, two months had quietly slipped away.

During these two months, the Xuantian Sect continued to search for the remnants of the Qingyun Sect, and the Hu family's atrocities within the Qingyun Sect's territory intensified. However, Zheng Yifei suppressed these reports and did not provoke Su Chenyuan further.

All attention was focused on the Earth Fire Spirit Cave behind the Xiaoyao Palace.

That's where Zhao Ling went into seclusion.

On this morning, the sky above Tianmo City was originally cloudless.

Suddenly, a deep rumbling sound came from the direction of the back mountain of Xiaoyao Palace, as if a giant dragon was rolling underground.

Immediately afterwards, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth within a radius of dozens of miles seemed to be strongly drawn, frantically converging towards the back mountain.

Zheng Yifei rushed out of the side hall immediately and looked up at the sky.

Above the back mountain, the once calm clouds began to churn violently, forming a huge vortex of spiritual energy.

The center of the vortex was a faint bluish-gold color, and countless visible spiritual energy points poured into the Earth Fire Spirit Cave below like rivers flowing into the sea.

"This is... the celestial phenomenon of Core Formation?"

Su Chenyuan also came out, looking at the strange phenomenon in the sky with shock in his eyes.

When an ordinary cultivator breaks through to the Golden Core stage, it does indeed attract the surrounding spiritual energy to gather, but the scale is usually only within a few miles, and the commotion is relatively mild.

The vortex of spiritual energy before them covered dozens of miles. If it weren't for the fourth-order Hidden Spirit Array of the Free and Unfettered Palace forcibly suppressing it, the entire Heavenly Demon City would probably have been alarmed by this fluctuation.

Just then, Ye Tianqiong and Zhao Wenyuan also appeared in mid-air.

Ye Tianqiong stood with his hands behind his back, looking at the huge vortex of spiritual energy, a strange light flashing in his eyes.

"Sect Master, isn't my sister making a bit too much noise?" Zhao Wenyuan asked with some concern.

"It's not just big, it's excellent."

Ye Tianqiong smiled and pointed to the center of the vortex: "Look carefully."

Everyone stared intently, and saw a faint, illusory three-legged cauldron emerging from the depths of the cyan-gold vortex. Around the cauldron, faint cyan lotus phantoms appeared and disappeared, and a refreshing fragrance of pills actually penetrated the barrier of the formation, permeating the entire sky above the Free and Unfettered Palace.

Upon smelling the fragrance of the pill, Zheng Yifei felt a slight loosening of the spiritual energy that had been stagnant within his body for a long time.

"When the elixir is formed, extraordinary phenomena occur, and the fragrance of the elixir permeates the array."

Ye Tianqiong spoke slowly, his tone tinged with admiration: "This girl not only formed a Golden Core, but also an extremely rare, flawless one. The phantom images of the cauldron and lotus flower indicate that her Dao and Dao of Alchemy are perfectly aligned."

"This kind of talent far surpasses that of ordinary people. With the foundation she has shown, as long as she doesn't perish along the way, breaking through to the Nascent Soul stage in the future is almost a certainty, and she even has a great chance of glimpsing the path to the Divine Transformation stage."

Zheng Yifei looked at the strange phenomenon in the sky and was slightly startled.

He knew that Zhao Ling had consumed the Earth Spirit Essence and possessed profound inner strength, but he never expected it would trigger such an astonishing phenomenon.

A future Nascent Soul or even Divine Transformation stage alchemy grandmaster—that's their greatest source of confidence in their future confrontation with Qin Cang and Xuan Tian Sect.